Reasons people received Biodynamics, Spring 2023

Recovery

After dental work
Difficult home birth recovery
Full moon eclipse overwhelm recovery
Post-COVID recovery
Recovery from brain surgery
Recovery from hernia surgery
Releasing anesthesia after dental work

Specific Areas of the Body

Back pain
Cranial tension
Diagonal strain pattern (L hip, R shoulder)
Emergency neck pain
Headache
Intestinal upset
Jaw issues
Joint pain (shoulders, elbows, hips, knees)
Low back pain
Memory loss
Mid-back pain
Migraine prevention
Osteoporosis pain
Pain from dental work
Poor digestion
Release of force vector after injury
Respiratory allergies
Sacrum pain
Sinus congestion
Spinal pain
Tachycardia
Upper neck tension and pain

Whole Body Issues

Anxiety relief
C-PTSD relief
Long COVID relief
Depletion
Dysautonomia
“Everything”
Grief after loss of pet
Healing
Insomnia relief
Marital separation
Mast cell activation syndrome
Renewal
Seeking calm after a shock
Seeking calm before making major decision
Stress relief
Wellness boost

Click here to read my previous seasonal summary, for winter 2022-23.


How can Biodynamics help with well-being?

For a year now, I’ve been summarizing the reasons people have sought Craniosacral Biodynamics from me and felt better afterwards.

The range is wide.

That may be surprising, but if you understand how it works, it makes sense.

Our systems at all times try to maintain homeostasis.

Picture your body as having many systems — digestive, endocrine, nervous, immune, etc. — that have individual functions but also work in harmony with each other to maintain your well-being.

Every hour of every day, your body is working to keep these systems operating harmoniously.

And yet, things happen that can impair the functioning of your systems: illness, stress, injury, insomnia, exposure to toxins, trauma, etc. Life brings challenges, and homeostasis — while still working to harmonize your systems — doesn’t always function optimally.

If your systems are functioning well, you are resilient, recover from challenges, and return to high-functioning homeostasis.

If you experience too many challenges too close together, or too severe a challenge, your homeostasis doesn’t just automatically bounce back to good health. Although it’s still trying its best to keep your systems working harmoniously, it can be a real struggle to recover.

This is where Craniosacral Biodynamics helps. It improves coherence, which allows your wholeness to reset in the direction of optimal homeostasis.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/your-sense-of-coherence#1

Those who receive Craniosacral Biodynamics sessions report feeling more relaxed after a session, sleeping better, and feeling more whole. Their symptoms lessen, and their well-being increases. Their homeostasis shifts toward coherence and greater health.

Regular sessions (every 2, 3, or 4 weeks) work cumulatively over time to increase your sense of coherence and well-being.

This is why Craniosacral Biodynamics works well with integrative medicine, which focuses on treating the whole person to improve well-being.

This is why I’m grateful to work with the practitioners at West Holistic Medicine in downtown Austin, as well as in my private practice in West Lake Hills.

If you are interested in giving it a try, click here for West Holistic Medicine, or click here to schedule at my office in West Lake Hills.

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.

Treating TMJ Issues: you can learn to stop clenching

In every TMJ consultation that I do, I ask about clenching. I consider it to be an important factor that contributes to jaw tension, which I treat with manual therapy.

Clenching is a habit that people do unconsciously, and most of the people who come to me for TMJ relief consultations and sessions clench and/or grind their teeth, which is called bruxism.

How does this habit start?

Common sense tells us that clenching comes from stress. If you clench, do you do it when you’re feeling relaxed and happy? Probably not!

It seems likely to be a response that represses free speech, or perhaps it started that way and then became a habitual response to stress.

People of all ages past infancy do it, even as young as three, I’ve heard anecdotally.

We’ve probably all experienced an authority figure (parent, teacher, boss, partner, etc.) who doesn’t want to hear what we have to say and who has the power to shut us down — unless we are willing to experience the consequences…which could be getting fired, isolation, abuse, punishment, abandonment, or violence.

We still think the thoughts, we still feel the emotions, but now we also have to shut up and hold our feelings/thoughts in, unexpressed. We feel threatened and want to feel safe. This creates even more stress.

We may learn that clenching our teeth keeps us safe by keeping our mouth shut…but at a cost to our own well-being.

(If you want to get better at interpersonal communication, I recommend Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication approach.)

We have to use our jaw muscles to clench, and overuse of these muscles creates the chronic tension in these muscles that so many with jaw issues complain about.

The pressure of clenching can cause teeth to crack and break. The dental solution is to replace broken teeth with crowns or implants. These are expensive procedures requiring a lot of time in the dental chair with your mouth wide open, which is tough on already chronically tense jaw muscles.

So what’s the alternative?

I teach what I call Relaxed Resting Mouth Position, aka RRMP. It’s very simple:

  • Close your lips and breathe through your nose.
  • Keep your teeth slightly apart.
  • Curl your tongue up so that the tip touches your upper palate behind your front teeth.

If you clench, try it now and see what you notice. How does it feel? How might it feel if it became habitual?

What if this could become your new default relaxed resting mouth position?

You can teach yourself to do this when you’re not otherwise using your mouth.

Any time you want to change a habit, first you need to become more conscious of your behavior. Then you need a healthier alternative to replace the unwanted behavior.

Repetition replaces bad habits with good habits. Enough repetition rewires your neurology.

How can I learn RRMP?

The way I teach it in my office (and now online) is to give people a few coffee stir sticks, 5-7 of them.

They can put one between their teeth, either flat or on edge, so their teeth are slightly apart, and then close their lips with their tongue tip on the roof of the mouth. Not hard at all, just to get a feel for RRMP.

I then advise them to place the coffee stir sticks in the places they habituate: for instance, on the bathroom counter, bedside table, kitchen counter, desk, dashboard, coffee table, by the remote.

Online readers, you can go to a coffee shop (buy a drink, please), take a few, and do this yourself.

Be sure to tell the neat freaks in your household to leave them where they are!

Here’s where the change happens!

The most important part of changing this habit is that whenever you spot one of these coffee stir sticks — and they will get your attention because they look like clutter — ask yourself, ”What am I doing with my mouth?”

This makes you more conscious of your clenching habit.

If you find yourself clenching, immediately switch to Relaxed Resting Mouth Position. Tell yourself how much you look forward to this becoming your new default mouth position!

Do this again the next time you notice a coffee stir stick. And the next, and the next, and the next.

No one knows just how many repetitions it will take for RRMP to become your new habit. It may take 5 times a day for 3 weeks, or more, or less.

But with repetition, increasingly you will find that your mouth is already in RRMP when you see a coffee stir stick and notice what you’re doing with your mouth.

When you’re satisfied that RRMP has become your new default mouth position, you can put the coffee stir sticks away.

Why tongue on the roof of the mouth?

This appears to come from Eastern medicine and practices. I haven’t found anything in Western medicine about it.

In Taoist practices, the two most important meridians regulating the flow of energy in the body are located on our midlines.

The conception vessel runs along your midline on the front of your body, and the governing vessel runs along your midline on the back of your body, coming over the top of your head.

These meridians meet when you place your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

This practice connects these meridians, strengthening your energy, balancing yin and yang, resulting in a state of calm alertness.

Tongue tip on the roof of the mouth is used in meditation, qi gong, tai chi, kung fu, 4-7-8 breathing, yoga, and probably more.


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.

Treating TMJ Issues: Learn to treat your own issues on Zoom.

I am now offering Self-Treatment for TMJ Issues on Zoom, in case you are interested in learning to work in your own mouth to relieve your jaw issues.

You’ll share your symptoms and history, address your habits and other contributing factors, learn to release tension and stress from your system, and … learn to work in your own mouth, with guidance from a seasoned manual therapist who can speak your language.

The upside: You’ll save money, get a brief video recapping the intraoral skills to help you practice and integrate these skills, acquire several other skills that will help you relieve your own TMJ issues for the rest of your life, and have the confidence that you got this — NEXT!

How hard is it? If you’re not afraid to get your clean fingers wet or wear medical gloves, and if you can tell the difference between touching something hard and touching something soft, and if you are willing to go slowly with sensitivity, you can do it.

It’s often a revelation.

There’s no need to learn anatomical language. I can share that if you like, but most of the instructions are like this: ”slide the side of your index finger down your bottom molars on the opposite side…”.

Click to schedule your session.

What have you got to lose?