OAK PARK and Evanston, ILlinois | 708-289-3899 | nancy@lyricalhealing.com
What wealth of love and insight we can find in our bodies!
Let me help you find that wealth.
Photograph by Edward Steichen
I feel Love in the trees and from the bees, in the wind and when birds sing.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, writes at length about this nurturing Nature love and ways we can reciprocate. I reciprocate by paying it forward; channeling love to clients through my hands and with my attention. CranioSacral therapists teach "neutral" touch, not "loving" touch; but to me they are the same. I don't try to fix or change, I love with neutrality. I think the trees and plants do too. And as Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Accepting ourselves as we are can be powerfully therapeutic.
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death." ~ Anne Frank
Photograph from elifskies, Pexels
Recently I felt what some might call God, aka Love, The Tao, Chi, Spirit..while communing with a tree. It felt lovely/loving. My logical brain led me to "why can't I feel this from people?" Then I thought, maybe God/Love is there, beneath the "complications;-)" I do feel it in myself as a healer; I feel like a conduit of that Love. So if I, with all my human neuroses and imperfect humanness, have a bit of that Love in me, I would think everyone does! Wouldn't it be nice if we could all believe in the God-ness/goodness in everyone?... in spite of everything....
“Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.” ~ from Emerging With Wings by Danielle Bernock
Getty Images
I have realized that my specialty is Being With. I'm not a fixer/convincer/advisor. I honor, companion, witness. And I believe that's what heals. As Freud wrote, “Analysis is, in essence, a cure through love.” By analysis he meant psychoanalysis.
I listen. I get it. And doesn't it feel good to be truly heard and attended to body/mind/spirit?
"If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred." ~ Walt Whitman
Photograph by Edward Weston
You've got a sacred body!
To me that means it is imbued with Spirit; it means it IS Spirit. You could say that listening to your body is prayer.
During a Lyrical Healing session that's what happens; We listen to You. We listen to your body and your words, your heart and your head. It is all worth tending to. Because healing, in my mind, involves Tending and Befriending. Seems like a good idea to tend to something that's sacred, right? Not to fight it or resist it or try to fix it.
“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.” ~ Rumi
Photograph from "The Family of Man;" MOMA exhibit in 1955
Wouldn't it be nice to accept all parts of ourselves and feel welcomed onto the "caravan?" We all have broken vows, we have left people behind, we have wandered astray.
AND we are sacred. My goal is to help you know that.
"The best this to do when it is raining is to let it rain." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Photograph by Edward Steichen
What does it mean to let it rain when it's raining? (Or snow when it's snowing ;-) My answer points to a core tenet of Craniosacral therapy.
Yesterday I was feeling agitated, angry, distressed. I went to a quiet place to walk it out, leaned against a tree, and felt its neutral witnessing. (Yes, I feel things from trees ;-) The tree did not shame or judge or suggest, and that felt good!
The tree was practicing mindfulness! I think of mindfulness as Neutral Witnessing. Listening, seeing, being with what's there.
Craniosacral touch is a kind of neutral witnessing. We honor the body and psyche by listening. We don't impose our will, we ALLOW and trust the body and psyche to heal itself. As Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." Carl Rogers was not a Craniosacral therapist, but he could have been! When we as Craniosacral therapists are just WITH what's there, whether it's sticky fascia, tense muscle, or inner critic, then healing starts to happen. The body/psyche feels seen, honored, trusted, and " Inner Physician" (CST's name for Inner Wisdom}, takes over.
Are we blaming, rationalizing, blocking, approving, judging, grasping? Loving, hating, adoring? Mindfulness to me seems to be noticing any and all and ...just noticing.
I know I am going to practice being like the tree -- standing tall and accepting. Being with myself, being with you, noticing, allowing.
"...instead of struggling to erase what are referred to as negative emotions, we can learn to use them in positive ways. we could describe the principle like this: while pounding on the piano keys may produce noise, removing them doesn't exactly further the creation of music. The principles of Music and Living aren't all that difference, we think." Benjamin Hoff, from The Tao of Pooh
Art by Wassily Kandinsky
I don't believe in "negative emotions." I believe in misguided parts of ourselves. Recently I tuned into what felt like tension in my belly and I felt love! My belly was trying to give me the message "beware!" That felt like self-love, if misguided (there was no real danger). It's as if a protective entity was looking out for me. So instead of shutting out the warning, I can thank it. I can hear it and help it to harmonize with the rest of me. I can help you do that too.
And if you cannot find your way out of the darkness I will sit there with you and show you the stars."
N.R. Hart
Photograph by Miguel Claro
During a session recently I found myself mindlessly utilizing a Zero Balancing technique on a client's wrist. I "came to" as I realized that nothing was happening. So I stopped doing Zero Balancing and started listening. His wrist wanted to rotate, the bones asked for pressure, the fascia yielded. I had mindlessly applied a technique, but when I really listened, I felt what his body really needed at the moment.
To me "showing you the stars" means being with you. Giving you attention. Showing you that you are worth my deep, focused attention. Showing you that your body and psyche have wisdom. When I pay attention I can "hear" your body's wisdom, follow its lead. I don't follow a protocol, or apply a technique. I sit with you and listen. And feeling heard, viscerally respected, seen, feels like finding your way out of the darkness.
"These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb" Najwa Zebian
Photograph by Ansel Adams
..wouldn't it feel good to let go of those "mountains?"
