Reasons people received Craniosacral Biodynamics, Fall 2022

These are the issues that people came to see me for between September 26 and December 6. Several people had more than one issue, and several people identified the same issues.

I use the terms here that clients used to describe their primary reason for seeking sessions.

Specific parts of the body

Atlanto-occipital joint misaligned
Sinus infection
Pressure in head and ears from recent flu
Imprint of being force-fed bottle as infant
Past physical abuse to head
Migraines
TMJ issues
Jaw tremors
Upper palate tension
Neck pain
Shoulder pain
Upper respiratory illness
Mast cell activation in lungs
Stuck energy in chest
Heartbreak
Broken heart syndrome
Digestive issues
Back pain
Herniated disc nerve pain
Hip pain
Knee pain
Feet pain

Whole body issues

ADHD
Acute anxiety
Acute stress
Anemia
Autoimmune issues
Chronic stress
Curious about modality
Depletion
Desiring stillpoints
Early onset Parkinson’s
Family stress
Fatigue
Grief
Lack of motivation
MRSA
Memory issues
Menopause
Pain all over
Perimenopause
Reboot nervous system
Recovery from cancer treatment
Severe mold allergy
Stage 4 cancer
Stress
Stress reduction/bliss uptake
Travel stress
Work stress

Here’s a link to the summary for summer 2022.


Reasons people got Craniosacral Biodynamics (summer 2022)

What is Craniosacral Biodynamics? The name may not mean much if you are unfamiliar with this type of hands-on therapy.

It helps to share why people seek it, so I write these seasonal summaries of what my clients are seeking.

Craniosacral Biodynamics is different from most types of bodywork in that it works from the inside out, with internal rhythms and patterns, rather than working from the outside in, like massage therapy.

It can help with a wide variety of issues.

In every session, receivers shift into a deeply relaxed state in which the innate intelligence in their system can pause, reflect, and reorganize their tissues, fluids, and energies toward greater health.

One of the benefits of this modality is that it affects specific physical issues as well as whole body issues. The deep relaxation that clients experience empowers the body’s innate healing abilities for all kinds of issues.

Some clients come in with one issue, others with three or four. Often there’s a mix of specific physical issues and whole body issues.

Changes occur during sessions and continue afterwards. Sometimes clients notice a week or so later that an issue has disappeared.

The work is also cumulative. Often issues do not reoccur, and in subsequent sessions the work addresses deeper strain patterns and imprints of overwhelm, releasing these bound energies to return you to greater wholeness and vitality.

Specific physical issues

tension in thoracic inlet
atlanto-occipital joint tension
pain around C1 transverse process
frontal headache
tight cranial bones
mid-back strain
chest and upper back tension
neck, shoulder/s pain or tension
jaw tension or pain
sacrum unbalanced
dysfunction from old knee injury
structural asymmetry from playing a musical instrument
energy block at back of heart
vestibular cranial nerve and brain stem issues
foot pain
hip joint popping

Whole body issues

healer burnout
work-related stress
long-term stress
dysfunction from trauma
deep attachment trauma
reorganizing after releasing deep attachment trauma
fixations from Enneagram type
post-partum recovery
overwhelm from mothering young children
insomnia
anxiety
depression
PMS
overwhelm from excessive heat

Here’s the list for spring 2022.

Reasons people seek Craniosacral Biodynamics (winter 2021-22)

I was curious about the reasons people have sought me out for Craniosacral Biodynamics sessions, so I looked through my intakes for sessions given since December 1, 2021.

It’s now March 29, 2022, so this sample spans nearly four months.

The variety is broad. The range includes working with very specific conditions in the tissues, chronic issues, acute issues, energetic issues, mental and emotional issues, imbalances of all sorts, recovery from medical treatment, recovery from illness, stress, and issues caused by stress.

Adjusting to Invisalign braces

Anxiety

Bell’s Palsy

Chiari malformation

Chronic pain

Depression

Emotional overload

Energetic imbalance

Familial and ancestral imprints

Fatigue, exhaustion, depletion

Feeling compressed energetically

Headaches

Long-haul COVID

Mental stress

Muscle tension

Recharge from cancer treatment

Recovery from surgery

Regular self-care

Relaxation

Strain patterns, habitual tension

Tinnitus

Trauma, PTSD, C-PTSD, childhood abuse, neglect

Treating TMJ issues: de-stress quickly with these breathing techniques

Learning how to de-stress yourself is huge. Everyone experiences stress. It’s just part of life.

Stress becomes an issue when there’s too much of it, and your system has trouble rebounding resiliently to a calm, alert state.

How is this relevant to TMJ issues? So much TMJ misery is related to chronic and acute stress. It’s one of the major contributors to TMJ issues. People clench and grind due to stress, and stress is always accompanied by muscle tension, which causes a lot of jaw issues. 

Staying stressed for too long is bad for your well-being. It affects your digestion (including absorption of nutrients and detoxification) and creates unnecessary wear and tear on your vital organs.

I’m talking about bad stress as opposed to good stress, such as the anxiety before a performance that makes you a better performer, or the adrenaline you feel when a bad driver nearly hits you that helps you react quickly and successfully avoid being hit.

In my opinion, bad stress includes most news about politics (just donate money and volunteer for candidates you like) and traumatic events (there’s always something awful happening in the world).

Also, the desire to control others’ behavior can bring about bad stress. Better to focus on accepting them as they are and work on a healthy path for yourself.

Maybe they’ll witness you and want to change themselves.

You can still care and have a constructive strategy to manage stressors.

You can do these things from a calm, alert state. Imagine that.

The beauty of using a little breathwork to get yourself out of an unhelpful state of stress (any stressor that does not require immediate action) is that breathwork bypasses your mind.

Has “you need to calm down” ever helped anyone to actually calm down, whether it’s yourself or someone else telling you this?

Breathwork is also quick. You can simply do a little breathwork when stressed, and your system starts shifting into parasympathetic mode.

A note to the chronically stressed: here’s how to tell when you’re in a parasympathetic state. Your whole body starts to feel a softness and relaxation because you have let your guard down. You notice your that breathing has changed, to becoming slower, deeper, with longer pauses. 

If this is hard, because maybe you’ve been carrying the guarding that often occurs after a trauma, try this: Imagine yourself in a completely safe environment where you don’t have to be guarded against anything. Maybe you are surrounded by softness, or floating in body-temperature water. You may have any objects (real or imaginary) that bring you comfort. 

Let go of your thoughts and just be. 

The more you practice breathwork and conscious relaxation, even when not stressed, the more it gets wired into your neurology.

The physiological sigh

The physiological sigh is breathwork technique that’s getting a lot of attention now. It’s been recognized for 80 years as a behavior people do automatically when claustrophobic and in other stressful situations.

Now you can put it to work for yourself when you need to de-stress yourself.

I learned about it from Dr. Andrew Huberman, a Stanford University professor who runs a neurobiology lab and has a podcast.

In brief, it’s two inhalations through the nose, and one longer exhalation through the mouth. (I think of it as the “sniff sniff ahhhhh” breath.)

Here’s a video demonstrating technique.

Dr. Huberman says sometimes people fall asleep if they do it 15 times in a row, but just three of these physiological sighs are enough to start slowing your heartbeat down in 20-30 seconds.

I nearly always yawn when I start doing physiological sighs.

4-7-8 breathing

Another fairly quick breathwork technique for reducing stress is the 4-7-8 breathing (the Relaxing Breath). Dr. Andrew Weil, who has been practicing and writing about holistic health and integrative medicine for 30 years, came up with it.

Dr. Weil recommends doing four of these breath cycles at least twice a day for two months to get the benefits. This wires it into your neurology.

He recommends slowing the cycle down, with the limiting factor being how long you can comfortably hold your breath.

It can also help with cravings and falling asleep.

In essense, you are retraining your nervous system to be more relaxed.

You may become less stressed from using either or both of these techniques and still benefit from receiving a TMJ Relief session to retrain your jaw muscles into relaxation. The breathwork will help your body retrain itself more quickly and prevent relapses.

If you’re ready to have that conversation with me, please connect. I’d love to hear from you.


What to do if you have jaw issues? I offer a 30-minute in-person TMJ consultation to gather information and evaluate your issues. I teach clenchers an alternative to clenching as well as the above information to stop grinding.

These habits are major contributors to TMJ issues, and you can change them.

If you’re not in Austin, I can do the above as well as help you learn what to ask about when seeking TMJ relief near you. Just let me know if you need a phone or Zoom consultation.

I offer a combination TMJ Consultation plus TMJ Relief session in person in Austin, Texas. The consultation serves as an intake, so I have a better idea of what your issues are and how we’ll measure progress. Your consultation is free when combined with your first TMJ Relief session. This is a two-hour session.

To be fair, when you’ve had TMJ issues for a long time, or they are acute, you may need multiple sessions to retrain your system to retain the ease and alignment, along with doing your homework to stop clenching or grinding your teeth.

I offer a package of four TMJ Relief sessions for 10 percent off single sessions, best done a week or two apart. These sessions are 90 minutes and integrate various bodywork modalities — including work in your mouth — so that you feel great when you get off the table. They are best done over 4 to 6 weeks.

If you’re really adventurous, you can schedule a 75-minute Self-Treatment for TMJ Issues session on Zoom where we’ll do an intake and I will teach you how to work on releasing the tension patterns that cause problems, including working in your own mouth. You’ll need clean hands and short nails. It’s really not that hard! Learn more about it here.