by Michael Kern
At a deep level of functioning, the rhythmic motions produced by the Breath of Life provide a clear and accurate barometer of mental and emotional processes. A lack of primary respiration in different parts of the body may reflect particular feelings that have become associated with the function of these tissues. For example, the mouth may relate to feelings we have about receiving nourishment, and the throat with self-expression. The lower back may be connected to feelings of support, and the pelvis with sexuality and grounding. Dr. John Upledger describes a common pattern of compressed tissues found in patients who suffer from depression. This pattern consists of a triad of inertial tissues at the spheno-basilar junction, the cranial base and the lumbosacral junction.21 It seems that when the motion at these important junctions becomes restricted, the flow of life’s creative forces gets significantly congested.
A clear, vital and smooth quality to the phases of primary respiration may be palpated where peace, happiness and joy are present. In many cases where there is sadness, fear or despondency, qualities of sluggishness, restriction or dullness may result. A lack of confidence may manifest as hesitancy, anxiety as shakiness. Some practitioners even draw a correspondence between mental and emotional states and the way the tissues expresses their rhythmic movements of inhalation and exhalation. Craniosacral inhalation (with side-to-side expansion) can be associated with action and extroversion, while the exhalation phase corresponds with passivity or introversion. According to how the body has become patterned, a person may be predominantly an inhalation-type or exhalation-type. A predominance of either inhalation or exhalation in the rhythms of primary respiration may be found with its associated mental state. However, please appreciate that these are broad generalizations.
Circular feedback
Any fragmentation of primary respiration correlates with a fragmentation of function affecting the whole person. Physiological patterns and emotional experience are mutually perpetuating. The influence of mind on matter and of matter on mind appears to be a kind of circular feedback system, with each one affecting the other. As psychological experiences become embodied, the fixed body patterns then influence our experience. What we call consciousness and our physical expression are a continuum. It is only when this mind-emotion-body continuum comes into a harmonious alignment that the Breath of Life is able to manifest with integration and balance and optimal health results.
Emotional experience
Earlier we noted how physical injuries can become coupled with particular emotions. As we are not just physical beings, the way that we respond to any experience in life naturally involves the mind as well. The mind is a part of everything that we do. If tissues contract in a protective response to stress or trauma, the thoughts and feelings that we have at the time can become an important element within that contraction. In particular, strong and overpowering emotions such as terror or despair tend to actively contribute towards the development of inertia, and can then play a significant part in its maintenance. In these cases, a fulcrum can comprise inertial tissues, fluids and potencies, together with entrapped emotions, feeling tones, self-views and beliefs. Dr. Viola Frymann concludes that, “It becomes apparent that there is no such thing as a purely physical problem, an emotional problem or a mental problem.”22
Helen’s story
Helen was a remarkably young seventy-eight-year-old woman who came for treatment after receiving a whiplash injury during a car accident. She was a stylish and active person who had not lost any of her elegance despite the advancing years. Another car had hit hers from behind just a few weeks after she had completed a previous course of craniosacral treatment for neck pain. All her old symptoms had since returned. In addition she was experiencing chest pains where she had been hit by the steering wheel. She was furious about the accident and explained that she would get annoyed every time she felt the pain.
Helen felt better immediately after the first couple of treatments, but each time her symptoms soon came back. At the third visit she became visibly agitated while my hands were gently placed over her chest. Her eyes were open and furtively looking around. I felt that her upper ribs were restricted in their primary respiratory motion and there was a strong pull towards her back, probably sustained from the force of the steering wheel hitting her. Although her body made some tentative moves towards a resolution, the process still felt incomplete.
By Helen’s next visit her chest pains had slightly improved, but the neck pain persisted as before. While my hands were at the base of her skull, the tissues in her neck went into strong contraction and shutdown. Helen declared that she was fed up and deeply worried that she might never be pain-free again as a result of the accident. She found these feelings hard to accept, as she had always thought of herself as someone able to cope with difficulties. A few reluctant tears appeared in her eyes.
With a little support, Helen allowed herself to explore her feelings of vulnerability. Slowly she began to let go and became progressively more weepy. As a result the remaining tension in her chest was able to subside, primary respiration restarted in her neck and a much fuller sense of rhythmic movement could be felt throughout her body. When I saw her again two weeks later, Helen’s symptoms had dramatically improved. It seems that once the emotional fulcrum—which was an integral part of her distress—had resolved, the healing of her trauma could progress.
Frozen experiences
While to some extent suffering may be a natural and unavoidable part of our lives, it can become trapped in the body as a frozen experience if we are unable to let it go. Both the retained physical and emotional conditioning then remains in our everyday lives. This frequently occurs at an unconscious level.
Our previous experiences may color our response to any new stresses that we face. These conditioned responses mean that we are no longer able to see situations for what they really are, but only in terms of what they trigger in us. The way we deal with new situations can then be like a record that is stuck, as we follow the same preset reactions. When our buttons get pressed we act in ways that have more to do with the past experience than our immediate situation. We become trapped by the past instead of just being open to the present. Examples of this are, an emotionally pressurized young man who has to escape on his motorbike and head out for open spaces whenever faced with demands, a young child abandoned as a baby who screams when left alone, and the victim of sexual abuse who freezes whenever she is approached with intimacy. The world is always seen according to the tint of the glasses through which we are looking. Moreover, these psycho-physical fulcra fragment the expression of our original intention of health.
Over-reactions
Previous traumas may sometimes become restimulated with the slightest provocation. If there is a lot of energy or potency held within one of these inertial patterns our reactions can be all the more powerful. If strong emotions are also coupled with the pattern, we may become like a time bomb waiting to explode. When these traumas become restimulated, the emotional reaction will probably be way over the top. The development of over-sensitivity and frequent emotional outbursts are common symptoms of this. In these examples, the present-time situation, rather than being the cause, is simply like “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
Role of connective tissues
While inertial patterns that have a psychological origin may manifest anywhere in the body, the connective tissues seem to play a significant role in storing these experiences as tissue memory. In particular the fascial network of the body provides a common medium for the storage of trapped emotional energy. For example, withheld anger may manifest as a restricted diaphragm and tightness around the solar plexus, which perhaps then leads to digestive problems and back pain. This type of pattern is frequently held in place by the inter-connections of fascia, which link different regions of the body. The inertial forces holding this kind of contraction in place can usually be resolved when states of balance are accessed in the fascial tissues. When this occurs it is not
unusual for any associated emotions to come to the surface.
Rings of a tree
The pioneering psychotherapist Dr. Wilhelm Reich wrote about how our tissues become contracted to help deaden feelings that are too painful to deal with. Tissues become organized in layers of armoring that serve to protect our vulnerable feelings. He referred to the self-protective buffer against feeling emotions as character armor, and of its manifestation in the tissues as body armor.23 Body psychologist Dr. Ken Dychtwald comments,
Body armor, the physical counterpart of character armor, served the function of encasing the person in his own protective muscular shell. This shell not only kept out harmful or painful stimuli but also served to limit the experience of fearful and painful emotions from within.24
This emotional and structural layering can be organized like the rings of a tree that develop according to age and experience. For example, an experience of defiance and anger may cover fear and hurt, which in turn cover timidity and disappointment. At the very core of these rings of patterned experience is our basic health, our original matrix and the core emotion of O.K.-ness and love (see Figure 8.2). Each layer of these feelings may have a structural architecture in the body. The outer layer may be stiff and inflexible, protecting and covering withdrawal and contraction, which in turn cover a sense of collapse in the tissues. Underlying this there is essential health and vitality. Letting go of these structural patterns can be likened to peeling away the layers of an onion (which also sometimes brings tears!). In this process, each layer of fragmented experience needs to be integrated before the next can be dealt with.
Patients’ languaging
I often find it very revealing to listen to the way in which people describe their symptoms. The words or phrases we use often point to the underlying psychological fulcra that organize our patterns. For example, we may describe something or someone as “a pain in the neck,” or not be able to “face” something, and consequently suffer from neck tension. We may talk about a situation that “makes us sick” or that we “cannot stomach,” or we may not have “the gall.” We may be “put out of joint” or “carry something on our shoulders.” One patient with acutely contracted lower back muscles described how he was feeling “held back” in his life. When I asked a patient who had diarrhea why she didn’t talk to her husband about some of the unhappiness she was holding inside, she replied that she “didn’t have the guts!” Another patient who had suffered repeated episodes of sexual abuse as a child had developed an acute rash around her pelvis. When she was being treated, the memory of her father approaching came vividly into her mind and she described him as “being all over me like a rash”!
Figure 8.2: Rings of experience (illustration credit 8.2)
Sometimes the way things are described can be amusing as well as revealing. I was taking the case history of a divorced middle-aged woman who came for treatment because she was in pain with sciatica that radiated down to her left buttock. When I asked her what was happening in her life, she replied that she was feeling “rather left behind”! Another patient described the pains down his leg as a problem with his “psychiatric” (sciatic) nerve! While taking the case history of a man who had come for treatment of a low back problem, he told me that he was born with an undescended right testicle. When he was ten years old he went into hospital for an operation to help this testicle descend. However, after the surgery it moved even further up into his pelvis. Being British, he described the operation as “a right balls up” (a complete screw-up)!
Tissue memory
To summarize, our emotions, attitudes and body patterns reflect, enhance and maintain each other.25 Emotional experiences and psychological beliefs shape the body’s tissues and this in turn predisposes us to particular emotions and set attitudes. Patterns of mind and body become mutually sustaining.
If there is no inertia present, thoughts, feelings and sensations can flow freely through the body without attachment or obstruction. However, overpowering or repetitive experiences are physiologically stored in the form of tissue memory. As Ken Dychtwald remarks, the body becomes “a storehouse for emotions and beliefs.”26 At a fundamental level, tissue memories are maintained by trapped inertial forces (from physical and psychological causes). As long as these forces remain in the body, experiences keep cycling in recurrent patterns without getting resolved.
The psychological aspects of a pattern are often the key elements maintaining it. These trapped emotions and attitudes may only dissipate when we find the resources, the space and the skills to let them go. Creating the conditions for this to happen is the essential point in treatment.
BODY AND ENERGY
My notion of the life force doesn’t arise from complex metaphysical or philosophical doctrines. It’s based on simple observation and a workaday understanding completely accessible to anyone.27
DR. ROBERT FULFORD D.O.
The nature of life
All life is composed of energy. In modern physics, the electron microscope has enabled us to view particles so minute that the boundary between what is called physical matter and energy is now difficult to define.28 Essentially, matter can be seen as a mass of vibrating energy that has become crystallized into particular forms. Furthermore, this energy is not static. It is part of a dynamic process, with cycles of birth, decay, death and regeneration occurring at every moment. Consequently, our physical selves and our physical universe are not as stable or real as perhaps we might think.
Creation is a constant process, not just something that happened a few billion years ago or at the time of our conception. The cells of the body are continually changing, in ever-shifting cycles. Every day we make about 150 million new cells. The cells in the digestive organs live an average of about three months, while muscle cells live for fourteen months. The cells that line the stomach will probably go through two generations by the time you’ve finished reading this chapter. Bone cells live for up to six years. By the end of seven years you’ve made a whole new body!29 Nothing is fixed. The body’s form is something that has become arranged in a certain way at a particular point in time. This means that in each moment we possess great potentialities for healing and positive change.
What is at the basis of this process? This, of course, is the big question! While the mystery of life remains, one thing is clear; there is an intelligent force that operates throughout creation. This much, at least, we can observe and experience. The presence of a fundamental and intelligent force becomes apparent if we simply look at the staggering degree of organization in the natural world. This fundamental force is a universal principle, which in craniosacral work is called the Breath of Life. The individual expression of this universal principle produces the unique and distinctive rhythms found in each person. Without the organizing forces of the Breath of Life there would be no health, no life and no motion. As Franklyn Sills explains,
Creation unfolds in each of us, moment to moment. Creation is constantly arising in the present. As every moment arises and passes, there is a moment of creation. And it is creation which is centering our experience. It is that inherent intention and organization of a human being, just in this very moment, as an expression of the creativity of the universe, which supports our experience of life.30
Our life-force
The concept that there is an intelligent, vital force at the basis of life goes back for thousands of years. A balanced flow of energy as a prerequisite to good health is recognized in various cultures around the world. From Asia to Africa, Australia to the Americas, this knowledge of a vital force has long been incorporated into the healing arts. It is only in modern Western culture that vital force has become divorced from medicine (as well as spirit from matter). Certainly, it’s a sobering thought that a vitalistic approach to medicine is recognized in about eighty percent of the world, while a purely materialistic approach is practiced in only twenty percent.31
Nevertheless, the very foundation of medical practice in the West was built upon a
n understanding of our vital force as a therapeutic medium. In ancient Greece, the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, perceived this force as the “healing power of nature.” In seventeenth century Europe, the great alchemist and doctor, Paracelsus, emphasized the importance of dynamic forces of the natural world operating in harmony with the body. In the eighteenth century Viennese-born physician, Franz Mesmer, described the theory of “animal magnetism.” Mesmer wrote about a fluid-like energy surrounding and permeating all life forms. He asserted that the human body had poles and other properties similar to magnets, and that through this magnetic medium one person could act upon another to trigger a process of healing.
Figure 8.3: Animal magnetism (cartoon by Gerry Mooney) (illustration credit 8.3)
Many practitioners now recognize the presence of subtle bodies of energy that underlie and permeate the physical body. In her book Philosophy of Natural Therapeutics, Jocelyn Proby explains,
The physical body … is not the whole man and perhaps not really the essential man at all … The physical body … is part of a much larger whole and is linked to other bodies which act upon it and are acted upon by it … The physical body is subject to the influence of energies which are brought to bear on it and flow into it from both these other bodies and from outside.32
These subtle bodies extend beyond the confines of the physical body, radiating out and around as an energy field or aura. It is probable that we respond to these fields of energy without necessarily being aware of it. For example, someone may come and sit behind you on a bus or train, and you may feel a particular response even though you haven’t actually seen that person. Maybe there’s a discomfort or an attraction as they enter your field, even when no contact is made through any of the five senses.