Nutrition

Empowering Parents to Keep their Children Healthy

May 21, 2020 by craniohealing Leave a Comment

Introduction

We’re living at an interesting time because the cracks in the status quo are starting to show. Issues like ADHD, autism, Asperger’s and environmental toxins are common knowledge. Campaigns are raging pro and against vaccination and all sorts of other issues affecting children are headline news. It doesn’t matter which side of the arguments you decide to support from my perspective. What matter is that you reached your conclusion yourself from your own experience and research, rather than believing someone else. Each child is different and parents know their own children best.

I was just recently in the USA where I was observing children and parents with great interest. The USA has the highest rates of autism, ADHD and childhood disorders on the planet. They have also have the most processed sugar and fat-laden diet, and have awarded 4 billion dollars in compensation to parents for vaccine injuries. There is plenty of food for thought…

Why Today’s Parents need Empowerment

The media run daily fear-inducing health scares and different business interests promote drugs as safe or preventative that then go on to kill people. Therefore parents need to be on their toes and using their common sense to screen some of the more harmful influences out of their children’s lives. Being embodied and noticing how things affect you or your child are essential. You have to be your own health advocate. This begins with food additives like MSG and aspartame, which are both extremely damaging to a growing child’s development. Many of the conditions I have seen in children have been treated solely with diet and supplementation. .This says a lot about both the poor quality of nutrition and children’s ability to bounce back. Their bodies have a strong innate healing capacity.

The reason that I feel parents need empowering is that clearly something is not all right as far as healthy child development is concerned. As a society something is off for children. And yet the information being offered by mainstream health professionals is not complete, based mainly on medicating rather than looking at diet and lifestyle, and often doesn’t make sense. Children are totally vulnerable to what their parents – or their school or culture – decide for them, and I’m here to help parents take a stand in their children’s best interests, whatever it is that they personally decide.

I’m not sure that there is a right and a wrong per se. Since every child is unique it is very important that each parent make their own assessment since they know their child by far the best. Vaccinate or not? How much and when? Special needs school or extra tuition? Additive-free diet or steroids for asthma? There are endless choices when issues arise. How do you decide?

Tools for making health decisions

So what are the tools that parents need to make their own assessment of their child and meet their individual needs? I’ve spent decades observing children and getting inside their minds to see things from their perspective. I bring years of anthropological observation of indigenous cultures to what I do. My nervous system is in the extremely sensitive range, and the everyday challenges I face navigating normal life have given me tools that help me translate children’s experiences for their parents. What I discovered in the process is that there are two very key elements that parents need.

Embodied Experience or Presence

One is embodied experience – through using my body and emotions as a sensor or satellite dish I discovered that it is very simple to pick up what is going on for others. This is why I think craniosacral practice (learning to experience body sensation) is such a phenomenal tool for supporting parents. It helps them getting in touch with their own abilities to sense their children and know what’s going on. Absolutely anyone can learn this – it’s an innate human ability. Being present and embodied is just about learning to experience the current moment exactly as it is. If you’re interested in knowing more about this, you can find a variety of information here.

The first step to empowering you as parents to make positive decisions for your children is to enable you to sense your child and their needs for yourself. Then you can intuit what would support them. I call this looking afresh without judgment. It is extraordinary how simple things can become for the child when parents just take a good look with an open mind.

Empathetic Attuned Relationship

The second skill that empowers parents is learning a more attuned way of relating. Some people call it empathy, others talk about attuned attention. It’s a way of relating to another person where you allow yourself to receive emotional and mental information about them without judging. It also includes learning to really listen without thinking or answering back.It makes all the difference to your child’s development because they need this in order to develop a sense of themselves and of their innate talents and characteristics.

The bonus is that apart from having a healthy child if you learn to do this you will likely never have to visit a psychologist or mental health professional with your child. You will have an exceptional understanding of your child that will fulfill you totally as a parent. And it’s actually very simple to do. There is more information on empathetic relating and some fascinating case studies of problem-solving in families on www.sensingchildren.com.

Communicate with your Child

Once you have got a sense of what you feel your child needs you can communicate this with them directly in an honest way. If you suggest a supplement for a child to take and explain why, they will also be able to tell you if it’s having the desired effect. Small children tend to be very honest and exact in their own descriptions of their physical and emotional state so you can get good feedback. You can figure out together what works best by trial and error, communication, and observation.

You are your child’s greatest ally

I believe that parents are the solution and greatest resource for whatever their children need whatever the cause of their children’s issues – yet we live in a global society that increasingly seems to try to tell parents what to do and to control our individual choices. This can be extremely frightening and confusing – yet if you just apply these three simple principles of sensing your body and being present, attuned relating and communication – you will be able to rely on your own perceptions.

Then you can choose your own path with peace of mind and a light heart. And as you do so, you will empower other parents to look again and open their minds afresh to observing their own children and meeting their real needs. Rather than their imagined ones. Just by applying your common sense and using your own perception when relating to your child, you can touch countless other parents and children’s lives by example. A different future begins with you.

The importance of diet in treating childhood “learning disorders”, ADHD, Asperger’s, Tourette’s and allergies.

January 14, 2019 by craniohealing 11 Comments

by MIRA on APRIL 24, 2014

Introduction

I’ve always approached life from the perspective that if your mind is well, bodily health will follow. And this does seem to be true. But what about the epidemic of children with ADHD, Asperger’s, Tourette’s, allergies and learning disorders? Are they all mentally disturbed? That seems unlikely. There seems to be another important theme – a basic clean diet and functioning immune system are also essentials of bodily health.

A personal story

Sometimes the body doesn’t function well because of what gets put into it, and then it needs extra attention. I was recently reminded of a time when I was extremely sick myself, and the doctors didn’t know what to do. Having done a CAT scan, EEGs, numerous blood tests and other studies, they pronounced my inability to lift my head off my pillow or cut a loaf of bread “psychogical” and said they couldn’t help me. I was still unable to think, couldn’t digest anything and was so tired and weak I could hardly make it to the bathroom. My will was strong as iron but I felt as if I was disintegrating physically. I had searing pains in my head and back and could hardly string a sentence together – I kept telling the doctors my brain felt poisoned.

As it turned out later, this was probably true. I actually had candida through my digestive system following several courses of antibiotics for typhoid, as well as mercury poisoning from 8 vaccines which i had had within a two week period to prepare for travel abroad – a fact which the doctors did not find significant. Sitting in the doctors surgery clutching my belly and my head i tried to explain that it was a problem with my gut and my head. The fact that i collapsed into bed the day of the second lot of vaccinations semed to pass by unheeded. I was sent home. Fortunately I had a dream about a book that lead me to an elimination diet. Within three weeks of a wheat, dairy and sugar free diet, I was back in the gym. I was astounded. It was a long time before I was fully better, and a long struggle with the Candida in my whole gut for which I had to take two three month courses of the antifungal Nystatin – prescribed by a homeopathic doctor. A short while later my mind cleared. However I did get better from a situation in which several had hinted I might die. It wasn’t until years later that I found craniosacral therapy, which helped release the tensions in my head that had caused so much pain. It took me over ten years to get back to normal. It must be even worse for young children who have these kind of symptoms and can’t develop. The science validating my sense of the gut-brain connection didn’t become public until ten years later, but even now that we have this crucial information, it seems that it is still being overlooked by many.

So what about the sick children?

The issues that have prompted me to share this experience are that more and more children that are brought to me extremely sick are not being treated on any kind of dietary level, and I puzzled as to why not. When I was ill i only had my own experience of my body to go on, but in 2014 we have hard evidence from stool and gut flora tests on large groups of children. Dr Natasha Campbell-Bride states that

“The mixture of toxicity in each child or adult can be quite individual and different. But what they all have in common is gut dysbiosis. The toxicity, which is produced by the abnormal microbial mass in these people, establishes a link between the gut and the brain. That is why I have grouped these disorders together and gave them a name: the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAP Syndrome). The GAPS children and adults can present with symptoms of autism, ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia, depression, sleep disorders, allergies, asthma and eczema in any possible combination. These are the patients who fall in the gap in our medical knowledge. Any child or adult with a learning disability, neurological or psychiatric problems should be thoroughly examined for gut dysbiosis. Re-establishing normal gut flora and treating the digestive system of the patient has to be the number one treatment for these disorders, before considering any other treatments with drugs or otherwise.”

There is a wealth of information available about Gut and Pshychology Syndrome – GAPS – a term coined by Dr Campbell-McBride to describe what i was trying to talk to doctors about twenty years ago, which happens when the balance of healthy and unhealthy bacteria in the gastro-intestinal tract get out of balance. This can be due to taking several courses of antibiotics, which disturb the gut flora and allow unhealthy bacteria to proliferate. There are other factors like the birth process, the mother’s gut flora during pregnancy, vaccinations and then how much sugar and additives a child eats daily that can all lead in the same direction. Children living at the current time face further hazards because the amount of chemical pollution in the air, in food and water increase daily. If their body’s ability to detoxify is compromised, as described below, then they really struggle with the extra modern environmental load.

What goes wrong in the gut?

The corrective diet is based on the theory that many disorders, including autism and ADHD, are caused by imbalance in the microflora or probiotics of the digetsive tract. ?When the balance of the gut is disturbed, overgrowth of microbes creates inflammation and immune dysregulation. This situation is similar to a sprained ankle. There is swelling that puts pressure on all the cells in the area. Swelling in the digestive tract allows material from the digestive tract to escape. This is often described as “leaky gut”. Harmful or undesirable microbes can also migrate to the small intestine where they compete for nutrients and disrupt digestion by damaging enzymes needed to break down food (like GLUTEN, CASEIN, SOY AND CORN).? ? Carbohydrates, that are not completely digested, stay in the digestive tract and become “food” for unhealthy microbes. As the microbes digest the leftover carbohydrates, the fermentation damages the digestive tract.

The effects of gut imbalance

According to Dr Campbell-McBride,

“The most common pathogenic microbes shown to overgrow in the digestive systems of children and adults with neuro-psychiatric conditions are yeasts, particularly Candida species. Yeasts ferment dietary carbohydrates with production of alcohol and its by-product acetaldehyde. Let us see what does a constant exposure to alcohol and acetaldehyde do to the body.

Liver damage with reduced ability to detoxify drugs, pollutants and other toxins.

Pancreas degeneration with reduced ability to produce pancreatic enzymes, which would impair digestion.

Reduced ability of the stomach wall to produce stomach acid.

Damage to immune system.

Brain damage with lack of self-control, impaired co-ordination, impaired speech development, aggression, mental retardation, loss of memory and stupor.

Peripheral nerve damage with altered senses and muscle weakness.

Direct muscle tissue damage with altered ability to contract and relax and muscle weakness.

Nutritional deficiencies from damaging effect on digestion and absorption of most vitamins, minerals and amino acids.

Deficiencies in B and A vitamins are particularly common.

Alcohol has an ability to enhance toxicity of most common drugs, pollutants and other toxins.

Alteration of metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids in the body.

Inability of the liver to dispose of old neurotransmitters, hormones and other by-products of normal metabolism. As a result these substances accumulate in the body, causing behavioural abnormalities and many other problems.

Acetaldehyde is considered to be the most toxic of alcohol by-products. It is the chemical, which gives us the feeling of hangover. Anybody who experienced a hangover would tell you how dreadful he or she felt. Children, who acquire abnormal gut flora with a lot of yeast from the start, may never know any other feeling. Acetaldehyde has a large variety of toxic influences on the body. One of the most devastating influences of this chemical is its ability to alter the structure of proteins. Acetaldehyde – altered proteins are thought to be responsible for many autoimmune reactions. Children and adults with neuro-psychiatric problems are commonly found to have antibodies against their own tissues.”

That is one long and wide-reaching list of sysmptoms. Isn’t it asstounding that many of the symptoms that children with learning disorders experience, such as foggy brain, not being able to think or speak, inability to concentrate, co-ordinate their movement, involuntary muscle movements are all symptoms of digestive dysfunction and consequent central nervous sytem breakdown? When we look at the link between digestion and the brain function it becomes clear that in this whole spectrum of childhood symptoms, tackling diet can be a very useful start to improving bodily health and reducing symptoms. If substances are blocking and affecting nerve fucntioning int he brain, then those substances need to be removed urgently.

How can we tell if a child may have gut issues?

Even without medical tests, there are obvious physical symptoms like bloating, stomach-ache and frequent farting. Tiredness, lethargy, emotional swings, black circles under the eyes, and rough or lumpy facial skin are also common. From a simple practical perspecitve, when i look at a child i can sense immediately if they have internal disconnects. They don’t respond as fast, often have a foggy look around their eyes, move clumsily and just don’t seem all there.

Yesterday i was in the park with my sister’s son and his friend. I commented that the other boy seemed in quite a state, and she said he had recently had another lot of vaccinations and had been quite out of sorts since. She could see what i was describing – in her words “yes even i can see that broad as daylight”. These children need help and they need the adults around them to notice that there is a problem.

When children are diagnosed with a condition like Tourette’s which is said to be “untreatable” (not the case in my personal experience), the first place to look would be diet and gut health. Once gut health is restored and the immune system has been boosted symptoms are likely to imrpove. It just makes sense. Even if you doubt the science, it is worth following these procedures and taking the improvements in your child’s health as evidence that you are doing the right thing.

If symptoms don’t improve significantly, it is worth doing a general bodily detox for heavy metals. Again, you can google this online. It just involves taking certain supplements. If the body’s ability to detox is severely impaired, this may get it going again. Isn’t that a bit extreme? I hear you wonder. Yes, it does seem unlikely and shocking that a child as young as 8 or 9 years of age should need to detox their body. However the effects of vaccines, mercury fillings and heavy metals ingested form food can be extremely strong in some children, and the mercury that lodges in the brain really seems to impair cognitive function. I have no evidence for this other than the experiments I have done on myself, and my observations from watching what happens to people’s ability to think, their bodily ability to detox and their general levels of energy and well-being when they do a mercury detox. But isn’t that enough?

We are what we eat – literally – and I think that the modern generation of western children sadly demonstrate that what is being eaten is sub-standard and a least partly toxic. Processed foods are not foods – they are mainly preservatives and additives – ie toxins. You only have to look at the figures for ADHD, Asperger’s, Autism and so on and realize how rapidly they have increased in the last decade to begin to wonder. Can it really just be that busy working parents are neglecting their children? It’s not likely to be the only factor. All these conditions seem to affect the central nervous system, in ways like those described by the effect of GAPS.

So if you have a child, or are yourself suffering from excessive tiredness, foggy thinking, inability to concentrate, low level depression, bloated stomach and gas, and difficutly digesting then take a look on the internet and inform yourself about a basic wheat, dairy and sugar free diet. It is also helpful to get a Candida test done, so that you know the extent of candida overgrowth in your gut. If so, you need to treat it as its very unlikely to die off completely just through diet. Supplement the diet with a good probiotic, omega 3s from a non-mercury contaminated source, and and grapefruit seed extract or another natural antimicrobial. If you or your child have cognitive issues, you also need to include all the B vitamins, especially vitamin B3, B6 and B12 (methylcoblamin), vitamin C, E and selenium to boost the immune system, MSM or alpha lipoic acid to get the detoxification process going again. These are the basics things to look at, but you will need to look up your own information. You may also need more specialist information on doing liver or kidney cleanses, but they are all available online, as well as from a variety of alternative health practitioners. Don’t listen to people who say it doesn’t help, because it does, it can really make all the difference in most cases, and can even safe your life.

Some useful websites for the basic information are:

www.gaps.me/?page_id=20 – basic info on the gut-brain connection to get you motivated

http://tariganter.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/anti-fungal-treatment-for-candida-and-intestinal-yeast-overgrowth/ – useful information on natural antifungals and nystatin protocol

There will be more information about healing childhood issues in my forthcoming book: Sensing Children. To find out about publication and follow new developments, please see my facebook page: Facebook/Mira-Watson-Author for more parenting and child health information.

Please feel free to share this article, but please give credit to the author. Thank you

Craniosacral Therapy & Ego Death – how sessions can support the process

August 23, 2011 by craniohealing Leave a Comment

by Mira on AUGUST 23, 2011

Introduction

There is a lot of mystery and unecessary fear surrounding the process of ego death, and many people therefore don’t even know what is going on when it happens to them. They may experience very strong and inexplicable emotions and the life they know collapsing around them as everything seems to descend into despair. This article aims to give some pointers and practical guidelines as well as providing information on how and when craniosacral therapy can be beneficial as part of this process. It also gives an overview to encourage people and help them to orient themselves in the process and find their way through more easily.

What is Ego death?

There is no definitive answer, but the experiences that many people go through are similar. In new age speak its may be referred to as ascension, and undoubtedly ego death is a prerequisite for this shift in consciousness. Some branches of psychotherapy refer to it as a process of integrating the shadow, and suggest that it is also the entry point into adulthood. However not all people are destined to go through an ego death in their lifetime, and not all people have the ability to look into themselves that an ego death requires…

So where does this leave us? Well, there are some very common sense ways of looking at the whole issue to demystify it.

As children we learn that some emotions and behaviours are acceptable to our parents, and other’s aren’t. The stuff that is too much for us to feel or that isn’t allowed gets put in a separate compartment in the unconscious mind, to be forgotten and ignored till a later date. This means we end up rather like a donut, with a sticky centre that we don’t really know about and can’t access. The sticky centre is what psychotherapists call our “Shadow”.

The process of ego death is a bit like having a café latte in 2 layers, coffee on the bottom and milk on top, black and white, and gently stirring the two together till they become a homogenous light brown mixture. The outer layer of our peronsality that we have developed in childhood to please our parents and survive can’t stay separate from the true self or inner layer forever. Over time the tension seems to build as those other hidden energies make a bid to be included. Eventually some external event like betrayal by a partner, or death of a loved one, loss of a job or something else really significant, will challenge the person’s world view so drastically that they let go of control and their whole personality structure starts to disintegrate. It can seem a bit like falling into a hole between two worlds, or letting go of all that is known and familiar. Indeed, that seems to be what happens.

To be really clear, the ego does not actually die. People can’t survive without an ego. Rather the very rigid protective structures formed in early childhood dissolve and reconfigure as a new ego that is rather more in line with the “true” self. People often have the idea that they want to get away from or live without ego, but this is a new age myth created by lack of understanding of psychological process. Without ego, an individual would be totally overwhelmed by the contents of the unconsious mind, and would be classed as insane. Ego is the necessary filetring mechanism or gate keeper between the unconscious and conscious experience, letting the person decide how to respond to the emotions that they experience, rather than mistaking them for reality…

Emotional Process

When you have an experience that is so immense or painful or shocking that it can’t be grapsed by the thinking mind, it opens up a space for unconscious emotions to be accessed, and become conscious. It’s as if the contradictions that are experienced are too big to reconcile and something breaks or gives. The whole personality structure can start to collapse and it can feel as if internally it is raining bits and pieces. There can be intense confusion, sadness, anger and terror as the whole world seems to fall apart and all fixed reference points are lost for a while. Often at this point you lose your partner, job, home, money and various other external factors which contribute to the general sense of insecurity and loss.

However at the same time an energy begins to rise from the base of the spine, which flushes out all the old emotions and patterns as it rises. It also ignites creativity and when it becomes established, it can become a new point of reference in reality. This is a well documented process which you can read about in texts on psychotherapy or jungian analysis. Jungians follow the dreams to help bring the unconscious energies that arise into conscious awareness, and make the most of the opportunity to integrate these elements. This can help the therapist to monitor what is going on with the client – things can get very intense, and its good to have a guide or an anchor in reality to hold onto… Yogis also recognise this experiene but tend to refer to it as kundalini uprising. Different traditions have different ways of dealing with the same experience, and the overlap between these is considerable.

People tend to go through increasingly deep cycles of fear/terror, anger and sadness. In effect this is deep grief. One way of looking at it is that you are mourning the attention you never received from your parents as a child, and your own wasted potential. Another perspective is that you are grieving the loss or death of everything you have been – of your personality and the life that was familiar to you. When the shadow integrates and a new functioning ego has been established, you will literally be a different person, though maybe only your closest friends will notice. The grieving process simply has its own place and time, and there’s not much you can do but sit it out… it will pass.

Despair, powerlessness and total hopelessness often accompany this process. If you look at it from a common sense perspective, this is a natural response since your personality structure, which you have used to survive and make your way in the world, is dissolving before your eyes. These emotions are best experienced but not taken too seriously, since they will pass, and are not to be confused with reality. It is only your ego that has anything to despair about, since it is on the way out, in the form that you know it… You will be fine. If you are experiencing terror during the day or night, please read the article in the blog on fear for a detailed discussion and practical tips.

Clients often come complaining that they can’t handle it, that they want it to be over, that they have to get through it, that they need to find their real purpose now. This is often the ego wanting things to be different, wanting to stay in control and wanting things its way. Despite complaining, often these people also have a deep underlying sense of peace and the rightness of what is happening at the same time. When people eventually surrender and let go, it can seem as if life begins to live through them, and an ease, logic and lightness informs their experience. And often in the middle of this process a strong and spontaneous sense of clarity of direciton arises which gives the person a focus to help move through the emotions. This doesn’t however come through the will, but from surrender to a higher intelligence which is beyond the grasp of the thinking, wanting mind.

It is a very intense and bewildering process because it involves going totally into the unkonwn, and just experiencing the emotions and changing perspectives of reality without any guarantee of success or safety. There is no guarantee, and the beginning of this realization can be very upsetting. Effectively when this happens you are breaking into the childhood emotions that you were not able to feel at the time. Things can be pretty disorienting because feelings come up that you can’t place or recognise. Often it takes time to find the corresponding inner images and link them with the feelings. However this is an important part of the integration process.

People sometimes talk of it as having fallen into a black hole, and experiencing intense loneliness, isolation and sadness. The natural instinct is to want these feelings to go away. However they can’t be kept away forever, since they are present in the unconscious, and are arising to be integrated. The most helpful stance to take is one of acceptance and embracing the experience. It makes sense to accept it, because it’s happening anyway. If you don’t fight it mentally, its less painful, and you can adapt your practical life to make allownce for it better.

It’s hard when I have to tell people that on the whole it tends to take 6 months to a year before they have moved through this experience. Especially when they are expressing that they don’t think they can stand even one more day in their current state. This is understandable given the extreme emotions, sense of lostness and depression that can be present. But from another perspective this is one of the most profound experiences you can have as a human. And not one that everyone has the opportunity to live through…

Trusting the process

Sometimes it can be helpful to know that things tend to work out for the best, and afterwards when you come out at the other end, life is in fact much easier than before. The thought that “everything that happens in life is for me” can be a helpful mantra. You may still be doing the same occupation, or indeed something totally different, but there will be much less stress and difficulty surrounding the everyday basics, making money, relationships etc. Knowing this makes it a lot easier to surrender to the process, which is happening whether you like it or not, via the age old forces of evolution. It also helps you develop a sense of trust and flow, and its wonderful to experience the helping hands and experiences that come towards you on the way, especially when you feel that you don’t know how you will or can make it through…

Physical symptoms

Ego death is an extended process with different sysmptoms at different stages. Dizziness and nausea are very common as core energy starts to expand, and unusual sensations are experienced in the body. Often it’s a major challenge for people to learn to feel sensation, and experience the life force or sexual energy that is beginning to expand through their bodies, rather than to disconnect or dissociate. Exhaustion is common. The body and mind go through huge internal changes – doing inner emotional work uses energy, just as does running a marathon. It helps to slacken off the pace of life and extra commitments, and on the whole its probably not advisable to start new ventures till you are nearly through, since you may not be able to work consistently.

Many people experience a pulling through the ears that seems to connect into the chest. This can be extremely uncomfortable and disorienting, and accompanied by rage, frustration or general dis-ease. Although it may persist for months, it is nothing to worry about, and does not require medical attention. It is just energy that has been held in the core of the body, deep inside the central structures and membranes of the brain, that eventually finds a way to release bit by bit. Similarly, people complain of a pulling sensation or a pain in the eyes. Often this is associated with early childhood or preverbal neglect, and can be bewildering. Craniosacral therapy can be a gentle way to help you access and integrate these emotions, since they are often held deep within the body memmory. Behind the sadness that people experience in this area, there is normally rage or power, waiting to be felt and integrated. If you want to read more about experiencing and integrating anger, please see the article in the blog on anger.

Since so much is changing and releasing from deep within the psyche and body tissues, it can be helpful to be aware of removing toxins from the body during this expereince. Adding vegetable juices into the diet, as well as doing enemas several times a week, and can all contribute to helping your liver to eliminate the toxins coming out. If you want to know exactly what’s going on you can have your blood monitored with live blood analysis by a practitioner who can also prescribe appropriate actions to take, depending on the state of your blood. This can be very reassuring when you can hardly get out of bed due to fatigue, and find out that your blood is completely full with toxic waste. Then you can do something about it, rather than beat yourself up for being lazy…

Lack of boundaries is also an issue during this experience. Once your old ego or defence structure crumbles, and you start experiencing the pain underneath, you often find yourself in a very needy and vulnerable state. Not all people have the morals and awareness to deal with you kindly without taking advantage, so its good to be extra careful who you associate with. You may find it helpful to spend a fair amount of time alone. Certainly it helps to avoid loud, aggressive and negative people, as you won’t be likely to have much energy or resources to waste on such situations. In the long run this is a very constructive habit to train yourself in anyway, and will help your life run more smoothly and joyfully…

How can craniosacral support this process?

Craniosacral therapy is especially useful for calming the nervous system and helping individuals digest the considerable amount of emotional energy that can be stirred up. Having a weekly session can help keep things level and balanced, which can be very helpful in keep up your morale. Craniosacral therapy can also be helpful in working with persistent problems in particular body areas, such as lower back, and in helping your body build up the necessary energetic resources to move through certain patterns and trauma. In terms of handling mood swings and lack unusual emotional states it can be very helpful to see a practitioner regularely who can help you verbalise what is going on, and re-orient you to a grounded reality if you get a bit disoriented. The reason it works particularly well as a supporting therapy is the gentleness and subtlty of the method that allows unconscious energies to come into conscious awareness and be integrated, like drops of water returning to the pool. It can be extremely reassuring to have the experience of feeling relatively normal again after a session, when you are experiencing so much internal change.

Tagged as: anger, calming nervous system, Craniosacral therapy, dizziness, ego, ego death, fear, grief, integration, jungian analysis, life changes, shadow, strong emotions, transition, true self, unconscious mind