So You Want to be a Craniosacral Therapist?
by Candice Marro R.C.S.T., B.C.S.T. (former CTET Teaching Clinic Director)

First tell me, do you have a quest?

Do you want to explore the moving waters of your existence? Do you like to dive deep into the unknown? Do you have in your heart nostalgia for something you can’t name?

Then, open your eyes, take a deep breath, widen your attention, listen, feel, sense, taste, smell and prepare yourself. A mystery is waiting for you; something is waiting to engage with you, something that you can’t imagine, you can’t create, that you can only discover. You may be afraid to answer this call, you may prefer to skim the surface of the water, its uncomfortable but familiar fluctuations and its predictability. You may prefer to stick to your symptoms, resistance, identification, complexity for at least you have got used to them. You may argue that this is as good as you could do anyway, it is as far as you could go, as you are not equipped for deep exploration. And what lies beneath? Is it worth the diving, the risk and the letting go? You’re attracted to this unknown, this darkness, but you keep coming back to your familiar surroundings.

This is familiar but you feel lonely, isolated, fragmented and tired to be pushed from one wave to another, to go from one experience to another without finding the sense of it all. When you think you’ve managed to get some stability, when you think you are in control of your life, when you think you can explain and fix things, a force and the play of its groundswell takes it all away from you. So you get more and more tired of fighting, losing, gaining and losing again as you try to grasp emptiness. You keep a smile on your face, but despair and fear are ruling in your heart. You wouldn’t admit it but you’re lost. Can’t you see that this world of shapes you cherished and believed in is ruled by impermanence only?

So start your quest – use your grief and anger to find the strength to explore new layers. Deepen your breath, slow down your pace, get grounded and start your journey with a fellow explorer who is also not satisfied with the answers given so far and who wants to go deeper.

From the sea of impermanence to the still heart of the ocean

How to give it a try? You are going to use your hands as the servants of your heart. Your hands will be the eyes, ears and medium of your heart; not your confused and emotional heart but the heart of your heart, your Still Heart, your all-knowing and all-encompassing Heart. What is the gateway to this place within yourself? Find a neutral, a place within you where there is balance, calmness, availability. There is always such a place but not always the same one. Search for that place and settle into it. Let the neutral gradually spread to your whole system. Then open to your friend on this journey, this friend who is going to be both your client and your teacher. This is it, you have found a sense of stability within yourself and you have established your fulcrum, casting the anchor that will provide a sense of safety on your journey. Now open your perceptual field to the third presence that will be with you both, that is generated by your coming together: the relationship. Then start your exploration.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Leave your fears and uncertainty behind, focus on your breath until you meet or are being met by The Breath, a deeper and slower inhalation and exhalation. The Breath breaths through you – actually it is breathing you. Can you feel it?

Stay with it. You are now invited to follow the cycles of primary or universal respiration. You are invited to trust the Breath of Life. Yes, the Breath that carries Life expressed to you as motion. This primary respiration leads you into the realm of life forces and principles. Let yourself be rocked by the long immutable rhythm of primary respiration. It is your fundamental support, a living presence that has always been there and will never cease.

Can you feel a shift happening? Can you feel your confusion, your noise and your fears now floating into the distance? Can you feel the relationship is orienting you both towards a place of resource, a place where the different layers of function work as a unit and are interdependent? However, this is not yet the place where you are One. But here, at least, you are not fragmented anymore. You are still in contact with tissue memory, symptoms and shapes but something more is there: organising forces.

In this realm you have allies: fluids and the potency within fluids. Yes, you can start to sense potency within the fluids, the ocean. Fluids that pass everywhere, go around any obstacles and patiently try to erode the barriers. And there is the fluid at the core of all fluid: a golden, subtle, potentized fluid that will teach you to be an alchemist. Can you now feel that your hands have become like antennas, more receptive, more empowered and potentized? Do you notice that one part echoes the whole, that the smallest fragment in the system is vital to the whole and plays a key role in maintaining balance?

But beware for these fluids are being moved and crossed by deep forces at work that you now start to feel; deep forces of creation, forces of health and forces of inertia. The fluid may be your ally provided that you learn its language, know how to work with it and know the nature of these forces that move it.

Because Stillness attracts Stillness

There is another discovery for you to make: this is the place where you can observe the ballet between biodynamics and biokinetics, out of which symptoms and shapes are organized. Simultaneously, you can now collaborate with and rely on your inner physician and that of your friend, your intrinsic intelligence that is constantly looking for the best possible dynamic equilibrium.

If you find congestion or a place of lesion, don’t try to fix it. Try to see, feel, question the inner intelligence and its medium the fluid, so that they can show you what causes this strain. If you hold your enquiry with spaciousness and without expectation, if you work as a humble but active servant of the Breath of Life, then fluids (or something else) will take you to the center of inertia. This may frighten you, for the area may seem dense, dark, locked and almost without any life or light, but as you approach you may feel deep forces at play expressing a certain pattern. This is when you can work with the fluids, gently supporting or encouraging their lateral fluctuation. You can also learn the art of generating space. But the critical thing is to deepen into your own stillness. Why? Because stillness attracts stillness and at the heart of this fulcrum, stillness and health are waiting to be liberated. So, don’t fight inertia as you would reinforce it. Rather, increase stillness and resources. Again, find a neutral, suggest balance between the forces until you feel an opening and a way through. Deepen into this neutral and this dynamic equilibrium and wait to see how far these forces want to reorganize. If it’s too early, just establish more peaceful conditions in the area and come back later.

So you see, you are going to spend time learning how to listen and how to be with what you find, getting to know the territory, developing your perception based on experience. Get familiar with the embodied forces and their different qualities: dark, light, luminous, heavy, dense, clear, congested, compressed, etc. The main danger for you is to end up chasing shapes, you would only be chasing ghosts. Remember the Knight’s example: always look for the heart of the dragon. If your sword cuts pieces, limbs and parts, you would be so exhausted by the time you get to the core, you wouldn’t be able to see the door. You would have used up all your resources in the fight as well as run down your friend’s battery. Always work with potency, even at the heart of the fulcrum. Always look for the origins rather than the effects. Learn to collaborate with the inherent plan that unfolds its priorities for you, rather than trying to order the chaos. Chaos will always ultimately reinstall its supremacy, unless … you discover the inner principle present at its heart. And trust this luminous darkness that will unfold between your hands and know perfectly how to achieve balance and integration.

Wait until you are invited

What do you have to do now? Follow an elder’s advice. He’s been there before and knows what he’s talking about; “Trust the Tide and get out of the way!” Dare to participate and be contemplative; a humble servant always ready to engage. Don’t be afraid of inertia as it always leads you to Health. And wait, wait for a mysterious gateway into the unknown. Yes, you have come to a point when you feel your heart is longing for something more to happen, for the presence of the beloved. And you suspend your breath with both anguish and joy.

But wait, wait, wait … until you are invited. Get to rest. Be alert, be passionate, hold your quest and your faith deep in your heart.

The gateway is quite unexpected, it is as small as the eye of a needle but has the power to create stillness in the whole environment. Now there is a pause, as if everything is holding its breath. Something happens, quick! Go with the potency and fluids, take a deep breath, hold on and close your eyes. Open them now. Through this infinitesimal, localised place you have arrived at the Infinite Realm. You are at the heart of Life’s organizing forces, at the heart of the cellular information. There is an incessant activity and there is stillness. This is where the airy and infinite space meets with the dark and deep ocean. From this meeting, form is generated!

You don’t know where to go, you’re lost and overwhelmed, but you know this place, you remember it. Information seems to explode at the heart of your cells as the original blueprint within you meets the blueprint within the universe.

Come now, a presence is taking your hand. Many beings are welcoming and engaging you. They are so happy you’re here! They are leading you to a lotus flower at the center of which you sit. At this point, you realize you are naked, like at the beginning and at the end. You explore this realm, its infinite space, its spirals and its uni-directional, centripetal and centrifugal forces, its vacuums, its majestic darkness, its musical silence, its darker and darker yet dynamic Stillness. From this Stillness, you see life arising, materializing all shapes and forms, filling them with potency. You also see these shapes, forms, fluids and potency being reabsorbed back into the heart of Stillness. Can you see these mid-lines from which everything seems to be suspended in perfect balance? You observe the different rhythms of unfoldment, cycles of life and death and how all forms are bound together by a subtle liquid substance, a crystalline matrix. Yes, this is this subtle network that maintains form and dissolves it. And, this is just the beginning of your exploration.

Tell me, do you feel lonely in this place where you feared to go to? Open you ears, can’t you hear the murmur of a song that seems to be meant for you? You feel wrapped by a presence; a presence that comes closer as you surrender your fears. Now look – facing you, omnipresent, She is here, holding you in the palm of her hand that is also the center of her heart. Now, you know she is looking both at you and within you. You see majesty, beauty, silence. You see what you will never be able to describe.

© Candice Marro 2003