Category: Article

The Relational Field

Take a moment to look at the photo accompanying this article. This little girl is being held—cradled—within a profound holding field. And it’s not just the physical embrace. Look at everyone’s faces, their smiles. There’s joy here, love, acceptance…qualities that are palpable, energetic. How different would this group hug feel if everyone were angry? Or sad?

In biodynamic craniosacral therapy, we call this space the relational field. It gets called other names, too…therapeutic presence, holding environment, held space. All refer to a shared field of awareness and energy, centered by a practitioner who is grounded, heart-centered, and deeply listening.

Think of this field like stepping into a warm, energetic bath. You may not consciously feel it—though perhaps you will—but your whole self responds. And it’s perhaps the most important aspect of any healing session.

The electromagnetic heart

Consider the fascinating research being done on the human heart field by the HeartMath Institute. Both the brain and the heart generate electromagnetic fields. This activity is what doctors measure as brain waves and electrical signals on EEG and EKG machines. But the heart field is by far the larger and more powerful, extending several feet around the body. And it has some interesting characteristics.

For starters, our heart fields intermingle. They are detectable between people near each other—even when they’re not touching.

Second, the heart field contains data. The heart encodes and processes information, such as emotions, transmitting it electromagnetically throughout the body…and beyond.

Third, the electrical coherence of your heart field changes depending on your emotional state. Emotions like anger or frustration make it less coherent. Emotions like love, compassion, and appreciation make it more.

Add all that together and HeartMath postulates that a practitioner’s caring emotions may get electromagnetically transmitted to their clients, perhaps even at a distance. More research is needed, but in my professional experience, this transmission definitely happens, including at a distance.

The ground of healing

The relational field is the entry point to healing together. It’s where we meet, in this warm energy bath. The more coherent, grounded, and caring I can be, the more your body can attune to that, let go, and settle. And that’s when the body’s self-healing mechanisms really turn on. That’s when the deepest healing processes start.

Not everyone had this kind of attuned relational field growing up, first in the womb, and later in the holding environment of the family. For many of us, that field did not often—or ever—feel like the little girl’s field in the picture. But those early experiences can be rewired in connection with a skilled person. The relational field is the ground where this healing emerges.

Allostatic Load

Maybe you can identify. You take decent care of yourself…eat your veggies, sleep okay, exercise, and don’t overindulge. And yet, you’re often exhausted. Even if you rest all weekend, you sometimes don’t recharge. What gives?

The answer will be slightly different for everyone. (But spoiler alert, it’s stress and trauma.) And the intricacies can best be explained using the model of allostatic load.

The cost of doing business

Think of allostatic load in terms of the price you pay each time your body responds to a stressor. Every time you fight a virus, argue with family, struggle with pain, or even just exercise, you’re expending energy. And then you’ve got to eat, drink, relax, and sleep to recharge.

In an ideal world, we’d fully recharge each day. But this modern world is not so ideal for our ancient organism.

Instead, chronic stress typically whittles away at our energy. Day by day, we add a bit more debt to the load and slowly get depleted. So, allostatic load is this cumulative wear-and-tear that chronic stress takes on the body.

How this often plays out

Let’s say you’ve got decent reserves, so most days you handle the load just fine. But then comes a particularly stressful day, where you barely eat or drink, let alone sit down. At a certain point, you splutter out. Now it’s going to take much more rest and fuel than usual to recharge.

What if this happens day after day? Or you start out depleted? Like if you live with…

…unmanaged chronic infections like Lyme or covid
…unresolved trauma
…ongoing, systemic stressors like racism

What if the demands pile up overwhelmingly high? Welcome to overload.

Allostatic overload

At some point, too many demands will outstrip our ability to replenish. Then, no amount of food, drink, or sleep can keep up with the output. We’ve reached allostatic overload.

We either keel over or pull the energy from somewhere. That somewhere is the fight-or-flight system. So, all the stress hormones and changes meant to help you lift a car? They’re now helping you go to work.

But this “fuel” has a high cost, especially over time. Eventually, tissues break down, chronic fatigue sets in, or chronic diseases appear.

Giving ourselves a break

Many of us have been fueling on stress physiology our entire lives—we’ve had to. It feels normal. So, when we “reset” after a stressful period, it’s back to a baseline that’s still quite draining.

And then we wonder why we’re still tired. It’s because we are tired.

The paths out of these cycles are many, but the first step is trusting your body. If you feel tired, you likely are. There are reasons, even if you don’t know them. So start by giving yourself a break. And then, really, give yourself a break.

Some Favorite Relaxation Techniques

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You reach the end of a long, stressful day and finally get to relax in front of the TV. But when you go to bed, your mind’s still racing and your body’s keyed up. That blue light from the screen—and most shows—is stimulating. So your body never actually gets to relax.

To reduce the toxic effects of chronic stress, and actually relax, you’ve got to elicit your body’s relaxation response. This restful state slows your breathing and heart rate, relaxes muscles, and lowers blood pressure.

But what relaxes you may differ from what relaxes somebody else, so it pays to try different techniques. Here are some of my favorites.

World’s Most Relaxing Song

Dubbed the “world’s most relaxing song,” Weightless by Marconi Union was engineered to be relaxing. Collaborating with sound therapists, the musicians chose non-repeating melodies that let the brain switch off and an underlying beat that slows from 60 beats per minute to 50 over eight minutes, letting your heart entrain and slow down.

Learn more and listen here.

Relaxing Acupressure Points

Acupressure involves massaging specific points along energy meridians. Several of these can relieve stress. I rub central points on the soles of my feet whenever I need to draw energy out of my head and calm down. And the point between my eyebrows really helps with anxiety (and draining my sinuses!).

For simple guidance with diagrams, see this post.

Restorative Yoga: Legs-up-the-Wall

Yoga offers several wonderful poses for relaxing and restoring mind and body. One of my favorites is legs-up-the-wall pose. I often do this to relax and relieve back tension. It’s also great to do right before bed, as it can leave you feeling deeply still and sleepy.

To learn this and other restorative poses, see this article.

Alternate Nostril Breathing (Nadi Shodhana)

Long revered by yoga practitioners, alternate nostril breathing is a great way to relax and reduce stress. This simple breathing technique helps calm the nervous system and balance the mind and emotions. I use it to settle my mind before morning meditation. But it’s also a good sleep aid, helping ease stress and anxiety.

See this article to learn it.

And if you missed them, here’s a look back at some of my past articles offering more techniques:

When a technique’s working, your body will slowly shift into rest-and-digest. So, if you feel relaxed or your tummy starts gurgling…you’ve got a winner.

Navigating the Pandemic Anxiety Field

Ever walk into a room full of people and pick up a vibe? Perhaps there’s a pervasive sense of warmth and fun. Or maybe it’s the opposite, everything looks fine on the surface, but feels hostile underneath.  

As humans, we are finely tuned social creatures. We pick up a great deal of information from body language, facial expressions, and yes, from the energetic emotional vibe around you. Even if you don’t consider yourself “sensitive” or “empathic,” you are still affected by the emotional energy signature from others, especially if it’s strong.

Cue the pandemic. Now we have a worldwide energy signature supercharged with anxiety and other painful emotions. For simplicity’s sake, I’m calling it the Pandemic Anxiety Field. And on top of our very real, present-time fears and struggles, it seems to be the extra punch that’s sending people off kilter.

So, if you’re feeling extra off-kilter or in crisis, as so many of my clients are, it might be worth considering whether this feeling is all yours. Try asking yourself this: How much of this is mine and how much am I picking up from others?

To determine what’s yours, you may need to sit with the sensations and feelings you’re having. Just notice them. See if you can differentiate what’s arising within you—and feels like yours—from what’s affecting you from without. Because even just the realization that you’re feeling stuff that’s not yours can bring relief.  

Now, on the flip side, some of what you’re feeling is going to be yours even when it feels foreign. That’s because this pandemic-induced anxiety field is also stirring up a lot of ghosts. By this I mean, your unconscious feelers pick up painful emotions out there, and then that outer “stuff” resonates with and wakes up old emotional wounds and traumas in you, bringing them to the surface.  

Regardless of origin, if you continue to feel unbalanced by an emotional state, it’s time to stop focusing on it. What you need is a counterbalance. For example, if you feel overwhelmed and lightheaded, then you need something grounded. You might walk on the beach, sit on the ground against tree roots, or eat nourishing, protein-rich foods. Likewise, if you’re feeling scared or panicky, then focus most of your attention on something that feels safe, like a warm comforter, a happy memory, or your puppy dog. 

And if you’re still struggling to rebalance or determine what’s yours, then reach out to me for a quick call or a session. It’s often much easier to find yourself when you’re held in clear relationship by someone else.

Surrendering to Your Body

In my last article, I looked at how you can let your body move without consciously willing it—and how this can lead to richer movement sessions. Today, I’ll explore how to surrender and let that subconscious, body-based intelligence take control.

But first, let me address the “me” versus “my body” problem. Who exactly am “I” surrendering to? How do I talk about this distinct part of myself without sounding like I have multiple personalities? It’s all me. But it’s different parts of me—often with very different agendas and ideas. So, while I know there’s no me without my body, I have to distinguish between them to write about this. Which, I know, makes it a little weird.

So, to quickly recap…

My morning practice involves putting down a yoga mat and inviting my body to move. Then I wait and listen. I’m tracking my body sensations, noticing when an impulse to move builds, and trying to stay out of the way of the movement.

How “I” interfere

It’s the staying out of the way part that’s tricky. Below are the most common challenges to be mindful of:

Oh, this is what you’re doing. In this pitfall, I think I know what my body’s up to. Let’s say my arm sweeps over my head and I think, “Aha, a side bend!” Then it’s easy to subtly take over the movement, thinking I know where my body’s headed. Now I’m directing rather than witnessing.

Hold it, hold it…. What starts as a nice, body-initiated stretch, can turn into me holding that position—no matter how subtly—determined to “make” some muscle release.

Getting impatient. Sometimes my body pauses to rest and I’m waiting…and waiting. If I get impatient, then rather than wait for a movement, I imagine I feel an impulse and force a move, telling myself it was spontaneous.

Oh, I hope it will…. This one is less invasive and starts as a wish: “I hope we stretch the hamstrings.”  Then maybe 10 minutes later, my body may oblige. This can be a nice dialogue with yourself—if you’re not attached to outcome—or it can be a subtle way of imposing your will.

What should I have for dinner? Here, instead of being too involved, I’m absent. My mind’s wandered off and I’m no longer present with my body. So I’m moving, but I’m not aware. Or the body intelligence simply disengages too, so movement sputters out.

As you practice, notice whether you’re witnessing, conversing, taking over, or absent. And if you’ve left or taken over, how much more might you learn if you witnessed?

DEFCON 1 Level Stress

Imagine feeling overwhelmed with stress by even the smallest problem in your day. Huge energies and feelings just roar up out of nowhere. And try as you might, you can’t seem to relax.

Such massive arousal in the stress response system—the DEFCON 1 of threat responses—often has a common denominator: oxygen deprivation.

Being deprived of oxygen for more than a brief period is arguably the most extreme threat your nervous system can face. It thrusts your whole body into a near-death state—brain cells die within minutes. So your body responds with extreme, last-ditch survival responses, sending out a storm of nerve signals and stress hormones.

What Situations Cause It?

With oxygen deprivation, we tend to think of the obvious: choking, suffocation, and near-drowning. Less obvious are things like being born with the cord wrapped around your neck, medical intubation (potentially), and lightning strikes or electrocution.

Other situations can produce this extreme survival response, even if they don’t cause oxygen deprivation. Anesthesia and high fevers have the potential to cause it, because they blow you out of normal reality into altered states. And any kind of fetal distress, birth trauma, prolonged infant distress, or early surgery can cause it because a baby’s nervous system is so underdeveloped.

What Happens After You Survive?

Here’s the thing…the nervous system may never really reset. So now, whenever something stressful happens, the body has just one extreme response. This can feel like:

  • Energy storms: your body buzzes or floods with electricity
  • Overwhelm: you have to do everything “right” (e.g., diet, meditation, avoiding stimulants) just to stay calm
  • Floating away: your head gets foggy or swimmy
  • Chest constriction: your chest tightens, your heart pounds
  • Extreme sensitivity: to lights, sounds, scents, etc.
  • Intense fear: with nothing to connect it to
  • Shaky limbs: arms or legs that shake or tremble

The Light at the End

Does the above describe you? If so, one, know that it really is harder for you to relax than for others. You can’t just make it happen. So give yourself a break.

Two, you’re already doing a lot to successfully manage the activation and overwhelm. The key is to start doing it more consciously. One simple tip: Picture your arms and legs as drainpipes and let the contained energy drain downward.

And three, there’s help. Work with a body-oriented trauma therapist. It will likely take time…you’ll be working with small, 2% downshifts. But over time, you’ll reset.