My nervous system healing journey

I began studying biodynamic craniosacral therapy at the School of Inner Health in Denver after a 20-year career working in environmental policy. During this time, I worked for nonprofits and for local and federal government, I ran my own consulting business, and I taught economics at a small college.

No matter the setting, I spent many long hours sitting at a computer. This had all kinds of effects on my body – neck and shoulder pain, eye strain, back stiffness, sciatica, and ultimately intense nerve irritation in my legs and feet. Over the years, I sought treatment within several bodywork approaches. Many of them gave me great short-term relief, but none of them changed the overall pattern.

Increasingly, I was stiff, slow, and constantly jangly and hypersensitive. I had to be very careful about how I sat, how I moved, how long I stood for, and how far I had to walk. I never knew how much endurance I would have for the things I had to do and even for the things I wanted to do!

Worse, I had come to feel cut off from myself in some way — like I wasn't really myself anymore. I was a narrower, tighter, crabbier, slower version of myself, and I had no idea if it would ever be possible to get back.

Finally, after experiencing some intense burnout during the pandemic, I knew I had to make a career change. Although I'd experienced several different styles of craniosacral therapy before, when I found the biodynamic approach, I knew it was right for me.

The biodynamic approach starts with the provocative principle that all living things – including ourselves – are always rooted in a deep underlying health that cannot be broken or taken away. We are also always connected to the deep health in the entire web of life. When I began my training, this idea felt very distant and difficult to believe in, but also very crucial for my healing.

The first thing that BCST did for me was teach me to slow down. I still remember coming back from my first class, very mellow and relaxed, and slamming right into a wall of hurry-hurry-stress, trying to take a conference call in my connecting airport. I hadn’t realized how slow and still we’d gotten until I felt all the rushing and stressing come back!

Really feeling that contrast in my body, and learning in class about the different modes of the autonomic nervous system, helped me to start noticing when my nervous system was settled and when it was in overdrive. Over time, I was able to gradually learn what helped settle and soothe my burned out, over-wrought nervous system. As I gained more confidence and more endurance, I was able to find some forms of exercise that softened and strengthened my body and relieved much of my pain and neuropathy. With all these changes, I began having more energy, more enthusiasm, and feeling more like myself again.

These days, I can still get stiff and sore if I don’t get enough movement for several days, but now I feel confident that when I get back to my routine, I’ll have freedom of movement again. And I’m delighted to feel connected to myself and to life again!

One of the most welcome surprises I've experienced with BCST — both in myself and in my clients — is a spontaneous re-integration of difficult past experiences into a more empowered present. Somehow BCST both roots us more deeply into our present selves and softens the jagged edges we hold around past experiences.

Several times during or after a session, I find that I’m suddenly perceiving a past experience in a different way, a way that has less tension and more kindness in it. Or I may find that I can really feel the distance in time between then and now, understanding what a different person I am now while also appreciating the person that I was then.

For both myself and my clients, this experience has always been a gentle one, just suddenly available when it wasn't before. It seems to arise after receiving a few biodynamic sessions, when the body has learned to work with the process, and the nervous system has settled. For me, it's been a big part of creating an enduring change in my nervous system, with a greatly increased ability to stay in the present moment and make different choices than I might have in the past.

I am also exploring ways to heal mind and body and support a sense of agency and thriving through writing, music, and working directly with the autonomic nervous system. I'm looking forward to sharing some of these approaches in future offerings.