SomatoEmotional Release trauma work – sacred alchemy

If you are patient enough and brave enough to sit with your deepest pain, with your most challenging and difficult feelings, both physical and emotional, then you will experience the most extraordinary journey. My job and my privilege is to hold you and accompany you on that journey, so that you feel safe enough to make it. In every case, it is journey of fabulous discovery, a journey to the depths of your own inner wisdom, a journey of growth, transformation, a journey that puts you in touch with your own strength and power, that connects you to what your life means, what’s important to you, what really matters. If you’re interested in all these things, if this is a journey you want to embark on, Craniosacral Therapy is a brilliant way to do it. And I’m not saying that it will be easy, or quick, but if you are willing to be curious about what’s going in your body, and in your heart and soul, there are infinite riches there for you to tap into.

The seeming paradox is that this journey often begins when we’re at our lowest ebb, when we feel really and truly lost. This is my understanding of the meaning of alchemy, because we can transform this ‘base metal’ into gold. It is precisely at this moment when all seems lost that we find a precious nugget within ourselves, some strength, something we’d long lost touch with. Some deep, wise part of ourselves that we just didn’t know was there comes to the fore.

In SomatoEmotional Release trauma work, a key strand of Upledger Craniosacral Therapy, the therapist closely tracks the body’s tissue responses while facilitating a process of therapeutic imagery and dialogue with the client. This process enables the client to bypass their conscious mind and access their subconscious ‘body mind’, so that they can bring the unconscious into conscious awareness.

‘The observer changes the observed’ is a concept from Quantum Physics that can also be applied in this context. As soon as we become aware of something within ourselves, be it physical pain, constriction, or an emotion such as fear or anger, and give it our full attention, it changes. This might be a very subtle something at first, just under the radar. It often becomes amplified when we first begin to attend to it, which is the point at which we are most likely to withdraw our attention to sidestep the pain or discomfort. If, instead, we are willing and able to stay with it, that’s when the magic happens and we feel a transformation take place. In this process, I the therapist am your rock-solid support, who holds your body just as it needs to be held, for as long as it needs to be held, with my attention on the physical structures and systems in your body that are affected, and with you 100% as you stay with the process through any difficult ‘humps’ when the unpleasant feeling temporarily increases.

The only way to teach our nervous system that it is ‘safe to go there’ is to go there. And this can feel like the hardest thing when a traumatic memory and the associated feelings present themselves from your subconscious. Learning to trust your body’s wisdom in these matters is vital – your body will always keep you safe. The memory and feelings have presented themselves because they need healing – which is not about banishing or overcoming, but first and foremost about accepting. With acceptance, transformation occurs spontaneously.