I believe acupuncture and craniosacral therapy are incredibly powerful healing modalities to release us from the past. I will try to explain more about this here.
Firstly, the human body is utterly miraculous – and as a practitioner I am continually humbled by the way clients respond to the treatment I give, which is really very minimal in terms of intervention, especially compared with conventional medicine.
It has taken me a long time to develop strategies to work with clients as I do now, and I like to be as gentle as possible. With both acupuncture and craniosacral therapy, I am not putting anything into a person’s body – but I am connecting with my clients using touch, very fine needles, and sometimes medical lancets and moxa – a Chinese herb that is burned to warm the person. The two approaches are however very different from each other because with craniosacral therapy I am not ever directing the person’s body – I am bearing witness, whilst trying to be as open as possible myself. It is much less interventionist than acupuncture. Nevertheless, the listening skills of craniosacral therapy have given me so much more to take into the treatment room and when I do decide, together with my patient, to intervene through acupuncture, this is a gentle and minimal as can be. After all, acupuncture must surely have the power to harm if it has the power to heal – and I do not want to impose stress on my clients by going in with something the body can’t handle or understand.
Craniosacral therapy is incredible, because just through bearing witness and being open and calm myself I can tell when a person is accessing a deeper level of healing stillness – and it is in these deeper states of stillness that transformation happens and at the very deepest level this can mean transmutation – a fundamental re-organising shift that releases more ‘potency’ into the system. A huge release has occurred when this happens and it is likely that something that is long held has been let go of. That the person is closer to their original state.
With acupuncture however, I feel I have access to a really sophisticated and highly developed understanding of exactly where things have got stuck. Through palpation and observing the clients body, and through carefully listening to a client’s story and words, I feel I am able to understand quite precisely where there might be a problem – and try to address it appropriately.
As we go through life we cannot always throw things off. Some things hit us too hard or we do not have the resources to deal with them. The body always always wants to help and protect however, and with these hurts or stressors that cannot be overcome at that time, they are held within the fascia and tissues. Holding onto them requires energy and it can be draining to hold onto a lot of trauma and stress, which can be held at a superficial level, or more deeply within the body. Acupuncture diagnosis helps me to understand how things have become stuck, where they are stuck and at what level. Intervening with acupuncture (and with craniosacral therapy) can bring about a profound release. I can draw on the different traditions I have studied and use many strategies. An energy block treatment such as a ‘possession’ treatment, or an ‘aggressive energy drain’ or a ‘luo’ treatment might all be considered when there is a sense of an emotional or spiritual block. The aggressive energy drain and the possession treatments are powerful energetic blocks from the Five Element tradition. The patient may have a strong sense of being changed after an event or period of their life. The luo treatment is from classical acupuncture following Jeffrey Yuen. The theory behind the luo treatment, whereby a small amount of blood is released from a channel where the ’emotion’ connected with the hurt has been stored, is that the release of the blood is the letting go of the hurt and trauma. The heart spirit or Shen (as it’s called in Chinese medicine), imprints into the blood – so when there is hurt or suffering this is carried in the blood and held in the luo pathways. Often one finds blood vessels at the skin surface near the luo points and letting the blood out here brings about a release for the patient. For those of you who would like to know more about luo treatment, in this Heavenly Qi podcast, acupuncturist Sean Tuten talks about how this treatment in particular can be transformational for patients.
Sometimes however the problems are held at the most superficial level in the body and releasing and working on the ‘Sinews’ is what the client needs. Releasing the Sinew channel that is affected will help the person to let go of what it is that is holding them in a state of discomfort – and it is important to remember that there is no distinction between the mind, body and spirit – as they are all affected by treatment. At the same time it is helpful to understand how and why the person ended up storing their hurt in the way they did and through careful diagnosis it becomes clearer how and where the body/mind/spirit needs support.
Of course there are myriad other ways to help clients let go of the past other than those acupuncture methods I have described – and craniosacral therapy is so much more than holding our clients and doing nothing. Connecting with a person on a deeper energetic level requires skill and sensitivity. Nor am I advocating for acupuncture and craniosacral therapy to be used instead of talking therapies, which have immense value. There is no right or wrong way to release the past. My aim in writing this blog has been to open people’s eyes to the possibility that acupuncture and craniosacral therapy can bring about transformational change that goes far beyond the relief of troublesome symptoms. These healing modalities can bring about powerful release and help set us back on our path in life, bringing us closer to who we are meant to be.
