When I asked her what was going on, she said that when other people in the class started processing their feelings, she felt overwhelmed. She’d recently taken the Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries course, so I knew she had the basic skills to deal with what was going on. For some reason, she just wasn’t using them. I was curious about why. 

As we talked a bit more I discovered that unless she was actually thinking about them, her boundaries were virtually non-existent. Her default stance in life was to be helpful to those around her by being a human vacuum cleaner for any uncomfortable feelings anyone was having in her vicinity.  

She was a woman who was carrying a lot. At home she’d figured out how to manage her boundaries one person at a time. But on a bad day in her practice, if too many clients expressed emotions, she’d get wiped out.  

Now she found herself in this class with multiple people learning to deal with emotions in a healthier way. But her default stance left her overwhelmed. No matter what new skills she learned or books she read, as long as her default stance underneath those skills and knowledge was to automatically take on and carry the woes of those around her, she was headed for burn out.  

Please understand, I’m assigning no blame here. The brain works in amazing ways. If we had to consciously think about everything we do, we’d be paralyzed. So certain actions happen on autopilot.  

In her case, as for so many of us, her default stance had originated long ago in a dysfunctional family situation that was out of control. Being a sensitive, empathic child, she soaked up the pain to keep the peace, and she did that until it was so much a part of her psyche, she didn’t even think about it anymore. She was no longer conscious of it at all. 

Like the default font that automatically shows up when you open a word document on your computer whether you like it or not, a default stance shows up when you are living on autopilot. It’s what you do before you even think about it – your knee-jerk response.  

To change your default stance, you need to bring it into your conscious awareness, make a new choice, and take a healthier action until the habit, the default stance, has been extinguished.   

So my anxious student began by using her skills of grounding and filling to steady her system. Her anxiety subsided. She stayed conscious of her default stance so she could choose healthier boundaries. Again and again, throughout the next three days of the course, she reclaimed her power to choose how her boundaries were operating.  

I reminded her as the class went on that she was only responsible for her own process. She gave herself permission to stay inside her navigational system (her body) and deal with her own emotions, leaving everyone else to process their own stuff. She had to remind herself repeatedly not to vacuum up the emotions in the room.  

Now the skills she’d learned in the Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries course began to kick in and work for her. She had to give it a lot of conscious attention, but she was happy with the results. 

Her situation isn’t unusual in the healthcare field. She just did it to a higher degree than I normally see. The truth is, we all operate from default stances in many areas of our lives. But understanding your default stance is particularly important to your ability to be an excellent therapist. 

Do you know what your default stance is? Find out by answering the questions below. Look to your recent actions. Don’t judge yourself, just notice. Many automatic responses are fine. It just helps to be conscious of them so you can choose something different if you need to for your health and well-being. 

What is your automatic response to someone in need?

1. Do you start to extend yourself before you even think about it?

2. Do you feel like you don’t have a choice in extending yourself? In other words, do you feel like it’s your “job” to extend yourself?

3.Do you wall off in some way? For instance, do you put white light around yourself or put up an energetic shield?

4.Do you psychically recoil or run? Maybe you physically stay in the room and look like you’re present while you’re actually a long distance away.

5.Do you become a human vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the pain in the room? You’d know this because you’d feel the pain of the person in need in a visceral, unpleasant way. You may not even be able to let go of the pain without great effort.

6.Do you have some other creative way of separating yourself energetically from this person in need? 

Once you answer these boundary questions, assess your default stance in this crucial area. You may want to reread my previous blog called “Helping Out in Heathrow Airport.” It shows you how I’ve learned to check in with myself before consciously choosing to extend a helping hand. This has been a learning process for me as well. It’s a complex issue, but well worth the time and attention. 

This could be the beginning of a new day for you. You don’t have to continue to operate from an automatic reflex that drains you. Take the time to make the changes you need. If you’d like help, consult the Healing From the Core audio series for the skills to begin making this change. Then attend a Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries course.  I have also just completed a book with CD (that’s why you haven’t heard from me in almost 2 months!) that is all about having a healthy presence with others - how to have healthy boundaries. So stay tuned in future blogs for how to order it.

By practicing the techniques you’ll learn here you can change your life, your energy level – and your access to more joy!

That day I realized something that’s true for all of us who put our hands on people therapeutically, no matter what the modality. Even in the SER dialoguing process – a clearly structured verbal process – your therapeutic presence is a key factor.  

As someone who has worked to enhance my therapeutic presence for years, I tend to take this for granted. But for this group I purposely brought it from the background into my conscious awareness. And I had some startling revelations. 

When I have my hand on someone’s troubled heart, my hand registers the tension in the tissues – the tightness, the burning sensation. Yet when I am at home in the rest of my body, really present and grounded, then my body becomes a finely tuned navigational system that registers what’s going on in my client’s ribs, belly, spine, what have you – even though my hands aren’t on those body parts.  

So there’s an intimate partnership between what my hands are feeling and what the rest of my navigational system is reading about another person’s healing process. Yet as bodyworkers, we usually focus on what our hands are receiving, and we ignore the rest of ourselves in the equation.  

Yes, if we’re skilled we pay attention to body dynamics, proper table height and the like. But I’m speaking to a much deeper level of who we can be as therapists if we have the skills to use all of ourselves in the treatment room – the skills of holding a strong therapeutic presence. See Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries courses. 

To do this we must cultivate a wider field of focus; one that includes all of ourselves and the rest of the universe. But let’s just start with the rest of the room: the ground beneath your feet, the air you’re breathing. Self-care practices that help you hold a wider, steadier presence are of the utmost importance here. When you feel nourished and energetically full, this wider perspective is much easier to achieve.  

Another thought also struck me. By being grounded and steady, it’s far easier for me to receive whatever information is coming through my intuitive channels (what we call the non-conscious in SER) without being upset by it.  

Let’s face it, the images that come into our awareness during a therapeutic session can be surprising at times. Life happens, and it can sometimes show up on the treatment table. But when I’m grounded and steady, what’s troubling to the heart under my hands that day may touch me, but it won’t bring me down. Instead I can simply hold space for my client to heal – to help her heart soften and widen, her chest fill and her body relax. 

So tell me, how do you connect with your clients in a way that enables you to receive this much data without having to walk away with their emotional baggage – their “stuff”? And how do you keep your own issues from polluting your clients’ systems if you’re having a bad day/week/month/life? 

I’d love to hear from you.

In front of us is a woman who’s rubbing her neck and looking like she’s in pain. My daughter gives me a sidelong glance that says, “Aren’t you going to offer to help this poor woman?” I check in with myself. I feel tired, stiff and drained from virtually not moving for the last 8 hours.

Then I let my awareness expand to include the woman. She is in great pain. I take a minute to see what kind of energy refilling I can do on the spot. It goes well, but I know I need to watch how I extend myself.

Gently, I lean forward and ask her how she’s doing. She looks at me, grateful that someone has noticed. “As I was exiting the plane someone was taking their bag out of the overhead. It slipped and clobbered me right here in the back of my neck really hard.”

I ask internally whether this is something I should offer to help with hands-on, or whether it’s better aided with sympathy and kind words. I’m so tired I can’t hear a clear answer, so I continue to commiserate with her about neck pain and whiplash. As she explains how she’s feeling, I get a clearer sense of exactly where the pain is. I also realize that I can be of help.

“May I touch your neck? I’m a CranioSacral therapist and I may be able to help a little with the pain until you can see someone medically.” Her nod and look of gratitude say it all.

I gently put my hands on either side of her neck to assess the inflammation level. It’s hot. I take another moment to ground and fill, and assess how I can best serve her in these circumstances.

She immediately relaxes under my hands. My calm presence is having an effect before I can even do anything therapeutically. I murmur an affirmation that I can feel what’s happening in her system. Another look of gratitude.

At this point my daughter turns around and blurts out, “Mom, did you ask her if you could touch her?” The woman laughs and tells her I did. It’s wonderful having children. One minute they’re expecting you to do something and the next minute they’re chastising you for doing it!

I begin to do some simple Direction of Energy across the area of her neck pain. Heat starts releasing through my back hand. We’re inching forward in the customs line and my daughter dutifully picks up our carry-on luggage so I can keep my hands on her.

It’s several minutes before the woman registers that the pain is lessening. Thank goodness this line is so slow! I continue to gently direct energy to her as her system releases the inflammation. I can feel the movement of her cervical spine righting itself as I stand there holding her neck and simply giving it what I can. I’m starting to feel energized by the flow passing through me to her.

About 5 minutes later I can feel her neck signaling that it’s done for now. I gently let go and ask her to notice how it feels inside. She tells me it feels much better, but still hurts – maybe a 60% reduction in pain. I tell her how to find someone in her destination city who can continue with her. She’s amazed at what we’ve accomplished together in under 10 minutes.

As we part she’s smiling and my daughter is chuckling. I feel more energized as we step up, passports ready, to greet the British Customs officer.

Life brings us all kinds of opportunities to help out. Some are meant to be acted on, others to be passed by. Do you know how to differentiate when the moment comes? This is an important skill in our business.

I could easily have let that opportunity go by. I could have offered sympathy and advice on how to get help without touching her.

What we know how to do is out of the ordinary, and most people are delighted to experience it. Certainly it’s not appropriate in every circumstance. If I’d been ill or really exhausted, I would have let the moment pass by. If I couldn’t have summoned enough energy, I would have just talked to her. Not as effective, but helpful nonetheless.

Your presence and skill level is key here. Do you know how to assess yourself accurately in a situation like this? Do you act on your assessments? Ponder these questions as you travel through life with your own opportunities to help.

Healing is such an interesting process. For one thing, when I am feverish, I can feel parts of my body I am rarely aware of otherwise. Granted, the reason I can feel them is because they are aching. But still I find it fascinating, as long as it doesn’t last too long!

And, I love a good fire. I got this from my mother. She regularly enjoys a fire in the evenings when it is cold outside. A toasty fire takes the right ingredients - seasoned wood, a nice draft, effective fire starters. Then, once all the right ingredients are together and ignited, it takes tending.

I have been tending this fire all evening. I haven’t messed with it too much. But I also haven’t let it go out prematurely. There’s a fine balance to be kept here. Right now it is a beautiful and mature fire with a bed of rich glowing coals. The logs are about half gone. The room feels cozy from the ambience of the fire. I’m mesmerized and relaxed.

You can’t rush a good fire like this one. You have to let it run it’s course, feeding it as it needs more fuel, pushing it around when it needs space, and blowing on the coals when it needs more draft.

The healing process is much the same way, yet we often forget that. Instead we try to continue working. We ignore the illness or take something to suppress the symptoms so we don’t have to slow down. But this always feels quite counter-productive to me. When I do this, I take longer to heal. My energy level takes longer to return to normal. And I tend to get sick more often if I don’t fully recover.

Across the years I’ve listened to my body and learned what ingredients create the most effective healing for me. When I start to feel sick, I seek them out. Sometimes it is just rest and quiet. Sometimes it’s Chinese medicine, homeopathy or bodywork. Sometimes it is western allopathic medicine. (Nothing like a good antibiotic when I am in the middle of teaching a class and a bladder infection hits.)

So, what do I need for this bug? Well, my acupuncturist husband has been periodically feeding me Chinese herbs to assist my body’s ability to fight whatever bug got into my digestive system. I drink lots of water to stay hydrated. My son puts healing energy into my system by giving me a neck and should massage. I sleep.

And I watch the fire. Stirring it when it needs it and letting it do what it does best – crackle away in an orange glow of warmth and woodsy aroma. And I let my body do what it does best – recover when I give it the right ingredients, tend it with care and let the healing process run its natural course.

Do you know what ingredients help you heal best? Do you give them to yourself and surrender to the healing process? What healthy resources do you turn to? I’d love to hear from you.

He’s been in practice for almost three decades and serves many high-powered Washington, D.C. types. This morning he’s telling me about a particularly powerful male client he had on his table last week.

“This guy totally surprised me, Suzanne. He asks me if I know why he comes to me for regular sessions even though he lives in such an analytical and competitive world. I’m curious about the value he receives, so I ask him to tell me.”

He says, “Our sessions are one of the few places in my life where I’m supported to slow down and listen to my insides. I feel like you listen with me. You help me translate when I’m confused. You help me make sense of the signals I’m receiving in my world, even when I’m moving too fast to recognize them at the time.

He goes on. “You teach me how to connect with myself, to my entire system, three dimensionally. When you work on my foot and my neck stops hurting and my headaches go away, I learn something. This enables me to think and act in a more integrated manner. I’m able to resolve other problems in my life in a more three-dimensional way, looking at them from all angles and seeing distant relationships as important. And when I leave, I have a little more skill for doing it on my own.”

My colleague smiles. “That’s why I’m still in practice and extremely grateful for what I do.”

His point is important for all of us. When we show up and engage with our clients, connecting to them with our presence and our skills, everyone benefits. Our role in the culture today is vital. We’re helping people live from a more embodied place.

Over this holiday season I’d like to declare that I’m extremely grateful for what I do. Are you?

I recently heard from a friend, an emergency care physician who attended my Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries workshop several years ago.

“Suzanne, had an interesting experience with a patient tonight in the ER – call me!”

Naturally I was intrigued and minutes later we were talking. Here’s what he told me.

A 19-year old girl was brought in by her parents, unable to stop belching. It was constant – seconds between each burp. It had impaired her speech for days. She was quite upset, and things were getting worse, not better.

After running all the proper tests to rule out more serious issues, my friend sat her down and asked her if she was willing to try something with him.

At that point, she said she’d try anything. So the doctor took a moment to consciously remember his own grounding and therapeutic presence. Then he proceeded to guide her to breathe through her nose rather than her mouth.

Between his calm presence and her breathing, things in her body started to relax within minutes.

He then slowly and calmly offered a series of suggestions that led her deeper into her body. Ultimately she got her awareness down to the ground under her, connecting her to the rich energy field of the earth and its relaxing and energizing qualities.

He followed through with some additional suggestions that offered her ways to connect to the healthy, relaxing resources that were available to her right there, even in that busy emergency room.

All of 15 minutes had passed as he held his calm presence – and offered her access to her own.

“Suzanne, it was startling to see how easily and quickly her whole system relaxed and let go as I talked, right there in the ER!”

By the time he was finished she was smiling. And she was no longer belching.

Then he let her know that she could do this for herself anytime she needed it. He referred her to my website to get the CD version of what they’d just done, and off she went – healthier and happier.

A calm, strong therapeutic presence is valuable in a variety of situations, even some that we might not ordinarily think of. But here’s the big key: It needs to be enough of a habit for you that it’s easily accessible, even in the toughest situations.

It’s the “being” state that helps any technique you “do” work more effectively, no matter where you are doing it!

Over the next few blogs I’ll be talking about some other unlikely situations that were transformed by a healing presence. And by all means, if you have your own story of how you’ve used your healing presence in an unlikely setting, I’d love to hear from you.

Enjoy!

We play a pivotal role in the health care arena right now. We help people slow down in a world that runs far too fast. And no matter what our modalities are, hopefully we are all offering our clients the nourishment of therapeutic touch.

This is deeply healing in a touch deprived (or sexualized) culture. We take time with our clients when other healthcare providers are squeezed to spend less and less time with each patient. The connections we make have a lasting impact on health. It may show up immediately or it may be an influence that blossoms over time.

I was reminded of this recently when a client of mine with multiple sclerosis (MS) came in for her regular visit. She’d been receiving bodywork from me for over three  years (every two to three weeks for an eclectic mix of CranioSacral and other modalities).

In her latest CT scan the largest plaque on her brain meninges had disappeared. Her neurologist was stunned. He couldn’t explain it. MS “does not go away.” Yet he had witnessed the plaque disappear on her CT scan.  And now the client is getting better. Her fingers and hands are no longer as numb.

I tell you this story not to toot my own horn. But to share with you that week by week I wasn’t feeling a great deal of change in her system. I felt like I was simply maintaining the status quo.

Occasionally I’d  wonder why she kept coming back. She didn’t have any big “aha” moments, and her system definitely needed the same work every time.  Yet here she was telling me these treatments were making a huge difference in her life, one tiny bit at a time.

In my early years of practice, I would have been tempted to feel like I hadn’t been doing enough, or worse, that she must be resisting the healing process in some hidden way.

As I have grown and learned to stay grounded and be a strong presence for each client, I know now that I can relax and know that if I do my best that day, the healing process will take place. I simply need to get out of the way and let my therapeutic presence and connection speak for itself in the healing process - whatever it may look like that day.

What I have learned after many, many years of practice and hearing from thousands of students is this: the clearer and stronger our therapeutic presence, the better we feel after each session. And the more impact we have on our clients, aside from any technical skills we may use.

So my mission in this blog is to keep you up on what is feeding and nurturing me and the therapists in my classes, and what I am exploring that may feed and nurture you in some way, so that you can be a better therapist and lead a happier life while you are at it!
We have to walk our talk or it just doesn’t make sense in the long run.

I hope I can be of some help, and I look forward to hearing from you. If you’d like to receive an e-mail whenever I post something new, please subscribe below. I hope to eventually post audios with some of my latest guided explorations and perhaps a video or two.

Stay tuned. And,enjoy!