Last month, I wrote about the body’s liquid light nature, about the tides and energy that move through our inner ocean. This month, I want to talk about the intelligence within the tide, the “spark” in the fluids that guides healing processes.

In the beginning…there can be chaos

People often show up for sessions in either highly activated or shutdown places. They’re stressed or in pain. They’re running on empty or stuck in their heads. There’s fragmentation in the body-mind, disorganization in the subtle biorhythms. 

As a craniosacral therapist, I can feel this chaos. Tidal motions through fluids are disorganized. Tissues buzz, lit up by stress in the nervous system. Or I have a sense of the client’s head or upper body, but no connection to legs or feet.

Letting it settle

Healing processes can’t arise from chaos, so first I support the body to slow down, gather resources, and cohere. To do this, I focus on my own grounding and calmness, and on feeling my own tidal rhythms or stillness. Through resonance, the client’s body will start to follow mine into settling.

I also focus on the health in the client’s body, because what we focus on grows. I pay particular attention to signs of slowing and softening, of rhythms organizing, of vitality. Soon, I may start to feel their body down to their feet. Tidal motions, or deep stillness, will clarify. And health energy—that “spark”—will often gather in an area to work.  

The self-healing ability awakens

That gathering energy is powerful. Let’s say a client comes in with sciatica, and I’ve been holding their low back. Now I feel energy gathering around two compressed vertebrae. This can feel like a balloon expanding…or champagne bubbles.

Soon, a healing process engages. The joint pulses as fluids hydrate and wiggle the bones. Heat builds, followed by an energy discharge. Finally, a vertebra gently rotates and, with a small pop, decompresses off its neighbor. Space enters the joint, relieving pressure on a sciatic nerve root. Afterwards, the body rests and integrates.

This process describes a physical blockage, but the energy works in the same way to heal mental, emotional, and spiritual blockages and wounds.

The power of witnessing

I didn’t choose the treatment plan and I didn’t heal. The body did. I facilitated by holding space and witnessing.

Witnessing wakes up our self-healing ability. In the mirror of my awareness, the body notices an area of dysfunction. And with more resources now than before, it heals it.

As for why witnessing is powerful…. We live in a quantum reality in which just the act of observation changes the experiment. Is it so hard to believe that awareness has powerful effects?