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?

Your body is made up of 50–70% water. Think about that for a moment. We typically think of ourselves as solid, as tissue and bone. But we’re not—we’re mostly liquid. We’re more like islands of interconnected tissue and bone floating in an inner sea.

In essence, the body is like a giant, fluid-filled sac. And it doesn’t take much to get the fluids in that sac to rock. Indeed, the movement of our inner sea is not so different from its oceanic roots. It has faster waves near the surface and slower, deeper tides. When I put my hands on a body as a craniosacral therapist, or tune in from a distance, I can feel those waves and tides.

Feeling the fluid tide

The fluid tide is one of the body’s natural biorhythms, like your heartbeat or breathing. It wells upwards toward the head, while also slightly widening and flattening the body. Then after 10–15 seconds, it recedes downwards toward the feet, while also subtly narrowing and deepening the body.

This tide is often most clearly perceived in the head and spine, in the slow up-and-down movement of cerebral spinal fluid. But it can also be felt as a gentle rolling outward and inward of the arms and legs, or as a subtle ballooning and deflating of tissues anywhere on the body.

What makes the fluid tide move?

Some practitioners describe a pressurestat model, a semi-closed, hydraulic system contained by the dural membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. They posit that pressure changes caused by the production and reabsorption of cerebral spinal fluid create the motion. However, these motions can be felt through all the fluids of the body, not just in the spine, and they continue even if the dural tube is surgically cut, breaking the pressure seal.

Other practitioners believe it’s the spark in the fluids that causes the movement. They describe a vital, life force energy that moves through and enlivens the fluids. This spark is most concentrated in the cerebral spinal fluids—like liquid light. And it’s this vital life force, they say, that engenders the rhythmic motion in the fluids. 

Listening to the tide (and its spark)

I can’t yet say from personal felt-experience what makes the fluid tide move—that might take a lifetime. But I can feel that spark, the powerful energy pulsing and flowing within the fluids. And when I sit in stillness, tracking and following the tide and its liquid light within a person, powerful healing responses awaken. In next month’s article, I’ll talk about this innate, self-healing mechanism—how the energy and fluids work to repair and heal our tissues, emotions, and psyches.