I have long been a grateful recipient of many kinds of bodywork, since 1997 when a slightly mystical Swiss masseuse restored in two short sessions a badly sprained ankle that had kept me housebound for weeks, and for which medical science could apparently offer me nothing except more prolonged and painful immobility.
When I moved to Brussels in 2000, lower back pain, aggravated by the rigors of handheld camera work, meant I continued to be a regular client for many different bodyworkers and movement teachers - from osteopathy to Pilates, and from Alexander Technique to Ilan Lev Method, TRE® or Gaga dance. I am very grateful to them all for everything they showed me about how to become more fully embodied, and more fully myself - as well as for my comparitively pain-free existence today.
In 2018, I came to craniosacral therapy largely by chance. I was looking for a way to make a film about therapeutic touch which would include me studying some modality for myself, so as to gain insight into the perspective of the practitioner, not just the client. Craniosacral work did not only resolve an immediate pain issue I was having - a small injury to the neck following a slightly reckless contact improvisation session. It also, over time, helped me unwind long-held physical tensions I was not even aware that I was carrying, and settle my nervous system, so that I began to experience the whole of life from a new “baseline”, with less perceptual and emotional “noise”, and greater sensitivity and awareness.
In 2019, I started studying the Biodynamic Cranial Approach with its founder Giorgia Milne, graduating from her first Touch of Presence® intensive for practitioners in June 2022. Since then, my interest in cranial work has become an enthusiasm in its own right, independent of whether I one day make the film I once imagined, or not. In the summer of 2023, I began to offer Touch of Presence® sessions free of charge to anyone who is interested at Les Magnolias, Brussels. And in 2024, I will begin assisting Giorgia on her introductory courses in Europe.
“Craniosacral” refers to the fluid system - literally, the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes the brain and spine - whose rhythms mediate between body and mind (or spirit), and between the individual life and the larger field of shared reality. “Biodynamic” refers to the insight we owe to the father of cranial osteopathy, William Sutherland, that the application of “external force” to correct a lesion is often, or perhaps always, less effective than - and often contradictory with - the unfolding of the system’s own intelligence, or what his close colleague Rollin Becker termed, the “inherent treatment plan”. And that the only thing needed to allow that unfolding, is the compassionate presence of a truly neutral, non-judgemental witness.
Touch of Presence® approaches cranial work in the spirit of Sutherland and Becker, as an act of humility and deference before the subtle forces of Nature that are constantly at work in all of us, and which flourish best when the practitioner gives up “doing”, “diagnosing” or “treating”, and is simply and fully present to whatever is unfolding. The practitioner “listens” with their hands to whatever rhythms or patterns may arise, while cultivating a state of “neutral”. These rhythms can be sensed anywhere in the body, or even “off” the body. By modelling a responsive style of non-doing for the client, the practitioner offers them a different experience of how they can relate to themselves that encourages self-acceptance, and cultivates the pre-conditions for healing. Working in silence, largely without words, the brain is able to rest, and the whole system can begin to repair and recover, at whatever level(s) it needs, from the many forms of imbalance and disconnection that are endemic in the society around us.
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Since March 2022, I have also been training with Karen Whalen and Roberto Larios in their evolution of Eugene Gendlin’s focusing work, as a Relational Wholebody Focusing professional. I have a daily meditation practice, and began attending satsang with Naropa in August 2023.
To book a cranial session in Brussels with me, please write to relationalwhole(at)gmail.com.