Forgive my Self-Indulgence,

and this is, but in the post below I would like to share a satirical piece entitled “Is Cranial Sacral Therapy Right for You? A Step-by-Step Guide.”

I presented this paper as a project for my Anatomy & Physiology class, in which the assignment was to research and present a massage related topic that affects the nervous system. For those who don’t know, Cranial Sacral Therapy is a growing bodywork method employed by a wide variety of practitioners, and is well respected within the bodyworker community.

Reading this out loud was really fun, and no one in my class including my instructor realized that any part of this essay was tongue in cheek, which kind of made it perfect.


Is Cranial Sacral Therapy Right for You? A Step-by-Step Guide

[All of the following information is sourced from:
http://www.allexperts.com/
www.healing-arts.org
http://www.consciouschoice.com/
International Alliance of Healthcare Educators
http://www.scepdic.com/
http://www.quackwatch.com/
Some text from the above sources is quoted without direct reference.]

Background:

Cranial Sacral (or CranioSacral) Therapy is an outgrowth of the Osteopathic healing method. Andrew Taylor Still, MD (1828-1917) originally expressed the principles of osteopathy in 1874, when medical science was in its infancy. A medical doctor, Still believed that diseases were caused by mechanical interference with nerve and blood supply and were curable by manipulation of "deranged, displaced bones, nerves, muscles—removing all obstructions—thereby setting the machinery of life moving." His autobiography states that he could "shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck." The admission standards and educational quality are a bit lower at osteopathic schools than they are at medical schools. The required and average grade-point averages (GPAs) and the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores of students entering osteopathic schools are lower than those of entering medical students—and the average number of full-time faculty members is nearly ten times as high at medical schools (714 vs. 73 in 1994). In addition, osteopathic schools generate relatively little research, and some have difficulty in attracting enough patients to provide the depth of experience available at medical schools.

Cranial Sacral Method

CranioSacral Therapy (CST) was pioneered and developed by osteopathic physician John E. Upledger following extensive scientific studies from 1975 to 1983 at Michigan State University, where he served as a clinical researcher and Professor of Biomechanics.

CST is a gentle, hands-on method of evaluating and enhancing the functioning of a physiological body system called the craniosacral system - comprised of the membranes and cerebrospinal fluid that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord.

Using a soft touch generally no greater than 5 grams, or about the weight of a nickel, practitioners release restrictions in the craniosacral system to improve the functioning of the central nervous system.

Cranial Sacral Therapy relieves or cures such conditions as:

Migraine Headaches
Chronic Neck and Back Pain
Motor-Coordination Impairments
Colic
Autism
Central Nervous System Disorders
Orthopedic Problems
Traumatic Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries
Scoliosis
Infantile Disorders
Learning Disabilities
Chronic Fatigue
Emotional Difficulties
Stress and Tension-Related Problems
Fibromyalgia and other Connective-Tissue Disorders
Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome (TMJ)
Neurovascular or Immune Disorders
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-Surgical Dysfunction

Craniosacral therapists work by detecting a craniosacral "rhythm" in the cranium, sacrum, cerebrospinal fluid and the membranes which envelop the craniosacral system. The balance and flow of this rhythm is essential to good health. The rhythm is measured by the therapist's hands. Any needed or effected changes in rhythm are also detected only by the therapist's hands. No instrument is used to measure the rhythm or its changes, hence no systematic objective measurement of healthy versus unhealthy rhythms exists. The measurement, the therapy and the result are all subjectively based. Cranial sacral clients use their nervous system to determine if they feel better. No instrument can measure how the client feels. But what if the client thinks they feel better and they really don’t? This is a problem only science can solve! Scientists will determine whether the client’s mind has healed them or whether it was the cranial sacral therapy, or the third option, which is that the client is really not healed but they think they are. In summary, measuring results or diagnosing is beyond the scope of the massage therapist.

Dr. Elaine Stocker has been practicing cranial sacral therapy since the 1970s. She explains to new clients that by participating in therapy "You’re making a good home for the central nervous system as it exists in the head and the spine and the body." She calls the cranial rhythm "the moving tide of life," saying that when the movement of cerebrospinal fluid from the head through the spinal column, into the cranium and back is "full and complete, these fluids flow through the whole body and provide the tissues with nutrition and information." Stocker says she can feel the cerebrospinal fluid at many different places around a client’s body, including the fingers and legs. She specializes in the use of cranial sacral therapy with children and mothers.

Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona, M.D. prescribes CST for children with autism. He got his MD from Stanford University in 1975.

John Upledger says, "By connecting deeply with a patient while doing CranioSacral therapy, it was possible in most cases to solicit contact with the patient's Inner Physician the inner physician could take any form the patient could imagine -- an image, a voice or a feeling...once the image of their Inner Physician appeared, it was ready for a dialog with me and answer questions…" Paul Sutliff, who is an expert on cults and a renowned religious leader makes specific reference to this quote, saying, “The description given here could very well be of demonic possession. This can only be fixed by finding Jesus. No amount of ‘physical adjustments’ can change this. Another thing to note regarding this therapy is that almost all therapists of cranial sacral therapy are also certified in various other fields that are directly connected to occultist practices.”

In summary, it appears that cranial sacral therapy could help you, but unfortunately there has not yet been invented a machine so that you could see the printout of your treatment as done with an EKG machine or X-Ray. There is also a danger of associating with demons, so the best advice is if you are sure your Inner Physician is not a demon, then it may be safe to proceed, but if you are not sure of this, it is best to leave well enough alone!

Poetry is as poetry does

My friend Charles says that everything in the world is either prose or poetry. He, of course, knows loads of Wordsworth by heart. My problem is that I think I am mostly prose, wishing always to be poetry. What I mean is, I am a dreadful snob with a terrible memory. That kind of hypocrisy cracks me up.

So, we have got the food thing down. We have made the consciousness shift, and will not, can not change. Understanding our place in the food chain is so essential and obvious that reverting now would be like giving up on recycling. There is no way. This commitment is still only slightly satisfying though. I still have only a vague idea of where my clothes come from- and few viable alternatives to sustainable articles. I have no idea how my phone or this computer works, and much of the labor and materials that went into my house is completely lost on me. (How DO they make paint? How DOES electricity work?) And my car- no idea. So, I move into the poetry of things, because inevitably my prose soapbox gets kicked out from under me and there I hang.

My rants are mostly internal. My life holds a lot of time to think, and so it becomes essential that I come to peace with my thoughts. Poetry is often that vessel. As T.S. Eliot said, Poetry" may make us... a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."

And so, with all of the discombobulated parts of this life, grab a hold of its poetry- the gift of food, the magical light of autumn, the goofiness of your dog. Perfume. The preciousness of rain. Too many apple pies and too few stars. The prose is so important, but don't forget the poetry.

In the mean time, you should know that the saffron is blooming.

Perfume

I thought you might want to read the description for the perfume I made for my teacher:

Indian Devotional
Fall into a rabbit hole and find yourself at a long banquet table set with rose and tuberose centerpieces. The pavilion is made with beams of sandalwood, and dancers stomp in revelry over a dance floor that has been strewn with dried clove buds. Blood orange fruit hangs low in the periphery over a rising moon.

And that's exactly what it smells like!

"I'll Have a Veggie Burger, Hold the Violence"

I don't know if it's this conversation that caused it, but I committed murder in my dream 2 nights ago. It was truly awful, the act itself wasn't the main event, I think it was kind of an accident but then I hid the body and had to go through this whole thing of convincing myself that confessing would be the best thing to do.

But I do tend to agree with you that anything not done in love is a form of violence. I know it sounds extreme but it doesn't really have to be, considering that love is the "om" baseline of the universe. Not exactly hard to tap into. I think this principle of non-violence is called ahisma in Hindu, and it extends to the concept of vegetarianism. In the last few years that I have been obtaining my animal products, milk and eggs included, from local farmers who raise animals appropriately, I have developed a real distaste for the general assumption in our culture that vegetarianism is by definition less violent than omnivorism. Shrink wrapped inside a Morningstar (Kellogg) veggie burger is a genetically modified soy product sowed as a uni-crop robbing it's home farm of any biodiversity, literally killing all Monarch butterflies who dare to rest there along the way, then processed in a slurry with irradiated spices and monosodium glutamate and shipped off to your local grocer up to 2000 miles away. But the average householder can knock the box into their cart and feel more virtuous, more generous of spirit, more evolved than a meat-eater. Let's not stack up the Monarch against the chicken, because that is not the point. The point is, we are not separate from any of it, and so we can do violence to all of it. To the gene, to the farmland, to the vegetable matter itself which lived a noble life, and though it may not (or may) be a sentient being, it is goes against the grain (so to speak) to subject it to a manufacturing process that creates a product that none of our ancestors would have dreamed of, let alone eaten.

And so I guess I'm saying, I don't think we can get non-violence on the cheap.

(Please don't mistake this for a tirade against vegetarianism. We're on to something totally different here.)

Happiness (is a warm gun)

You are really good and attuned to feeling energy though KT. Most people would be completely overwhelmed if they attempted that kind of openness. If they even could... And that is part of the tragedy of the human condition, I think.

I have been polling other people on your question regarding separation, and most people agree that a major driving element of human nature is its animal side. In their view, violence is thus inherent in the base part of us, some piece of survival of the fittest still animating us. Some even think that it is in our attempts to become civilized and quell the violence makes our savagery rise up to become an even even stronger influence on our actions. One friend, (who has actually slaughtered chickens herself during her Peace Corps term in Senegal), thinks we sentimentalize that energy though. To paraphrase Michael Pollan, when wilderness is no longer a threat to us, we romanticise it. Of course, there are also some who believe that we cannot have good without bad, light without dark- you know the drill. I don't know if I buy that. Undoubtedly though, we must consider the consequence of our separation from others (and our connection to all things) due to our lack of consciousness. Of course, (too) sensitive me thinks that any act not done in love is an act of violence. I swear, this will either be my peace or it will be my undoing.

So, my question that stems from all of this is, why is do we think of violence as stronger than love? Why do acts of violence motivate and stick with us more easily than acts of love? Why is darkness regarded (and respected-maybe out of fear) as so much deeper than light?

Ok-so, here is a (very silly) example. On the tv show, The Office, Jim and Pam have finally gotten together. And it is so right and good and perfect. (I have a song about it- it is more of a cheer really, but that is just how right it is...) Anyway, viewers are so wary of Jim and Pam getting together so early in the season- like the only thing that can happen to them is that they could now break up. As if they have already reached their pinnacle, and it is all downhill from here- as though there is not as much adventure to be had in the good times as in the bad. No one (but me) thinks that they can just be happy together. I mean really, if happiness doesn't sell, what good is it?

Chicken Love (continued)

So, I dropped off 15 of the chickens to the butcher and kept the other 5 whole. While carrying the whole chickens in, I noticed that they felt good. Energetically, they had a very strong, loving presence. And I felt grateful, really grateful. The kind of grateful I realized is the true feeling behind our custom of saying a grace before a meal, giving thanks and asking that the food nourish our bodies. This is the feeling that being close to your food will give you, and that our ancestors in some corners of the world felt as a part of their daily life and ritual. I wanted for a quiet place to truly embody this feeling, to be with it. At the same time I realized that I had committed some small sin in abandoning my chicken to the butcher and the electric blade, introducing them to violence for the first time when even their slaughter had been done in love. It went against the true flow of life, and in some ways felt like a denial of our shared life, the life that runs through chicken, beets, dandelion, and woman alike. A denial of life, a denial of true gratitude, a denial of our interconnectedness.

Too late.

The next day I went to pick up my chicken and the scene was awful. The place smelled weird/bad, not like meat turning bad per se, but just bad. I looked in the back where there was a line of 6 or 7 workers all in a row holding various cuts of meat with knives in their hands and thoughtless looks on their faces. Yikes. They brought my coolers out and the chicken hadn't even been packed back in its bags. It was piece by piece just thrown back into the coolers loose. The work was still for me to do to package it all in freezer paper and ziplocs. Oh, my, I was not prepared for that, I thought I would take them home and pop them in the freezer. As I raced to the store for ice and supplies, I was met with the warm smell of bacon-ny nastiness and unfresh meat that had built up on the outside of the coolers from being in a commercial butcher's walk-in. I began to cry. As I was packing the pieces, I was struck with the disrespect of it all; the pieces didn't have the smooth logic a handcut piece would, they were squarish and weird. Some of the legs would have the end of the leg be broken, and I was sad for the chicken that had its leg broken after death.

The story turns out ok. The chicken seems to be fine, all considered. But it doesn't have that feel anymore. It met it's true death at the butcher's saw.

And so I ask myself, what else in our life has lost its energetic presence, its life, it's connection to the One, as a result of our denial and our violence? What else and who else?

(Yet) Another Revolution

Funny you should mention Mennonites. For days I have been trying to put in words something that just won't come. This weekend, I had dinner with a young rebel, Chris Haw of Camden House, an 'intentional community' in Camden, NJ. He spoke of how to change the world by love and food. He shared stories of such reverence about the anabaptists, especially the Bruderhof and Huddites- all are pacifist communities who, of course, grow their own food. His group lives in a deserted urban area, rehabbing buildings, teaching at the local school, and growing food.

I learned about Chris because of a book called 'The Irresistible Revolution' by Shane Claiborne. Shane and Chris are writing a book called 'Jesus for President', due out next spring. At first I saw this rebel as a wellspring of unbounded brilliance with a real sense of integrity, then he started quoting Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan, and yes- that was it. To top it off, he kept speaking of his wife in adoring and wondrous terms. Imagine- a Roman Catholic, (new) monk, in love with nature, the world and his place in it, as well as with his wife. And he is LIVING his beliefs, those beliefs that would tend toward naive if they weren't coming from a man more brilliant than most. I can't really speak to them though- it is one of those rare cases that if one tries to name a thing, it crushes the spirit of the thing. What a strange place to be in- to have such a huge message and not be able to share it. Obviously, since he wrote a book about it, it is my problem more than his. Both the message and the problem have filled my head though, spun me closer to (being accepting of) my own rebellion.

I'd put a link to his blog or website up, but they seem to be doing and not just taking about what they are doing for a while. I'll let you know when I am finished with Shane's book, but in the mean time, look out for the 'Jesus for President' biodeisel campaign tourbus, coming soon to a town near you. And smile.

Chicken Love

Ok, so I have found this beautiful Mennonite woman in Pennsylvania about 40 minutes north of here who has 2 cows and laying hens, and I have often bought cream and eggs from her. She is my favorite farmer to buy from because she is equally taken with the Weston Price research on traditional foodways as I am. She pastures her chickens and cows on green grass, and lets them run around with plenty of space. Her chicken run all around in about a 2 acre area that she has marked off merely with stakes and that orange construction tape kind of stuff - they want to be there. Then they have these cozy little huts for sleeping in. She has kefir grains digesting milk on the counter, goes through a lot of coconut oil - you get the picture.

So anyway, at the beginning of the season she told me she was thinking about raising chickens for meat and was I interested. Well, the other day she and her husband were slaughtering them by hand at their farm, and so I drove up in the Jeep with 4 coolers and 4 bags of ice in tow. As usual it was great to see them and their operation, but I had to leave soon to get to the butcher in time to cut them up for me. On the ride up I had been anticipating the chicken and the feeling had come up in me that I would really rather I cut them up myself. These chickens were raised for me and it began to feel somewhat wrong to have someone else cut them for me, especially since when I had talked to the butcher shop on the phone they had mentioned what time they cut their saw. I had been envisioning hand cutting. But basically, I became concerned about handing my chicken over to be in someone else's care.

On the way home my rational mind took over and I thought certainly taking the chickens to the butcher was the obvious choice. I mean, come on, 20 chickens.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Confession

I have a new tactic for dealing with people I find difficult. I picture them as children. I see them with glasses too big for their faces, with shoes they did not pick out, with haircuts they did not choose, (or that they did themselves.) I see them with dreams of becoming heroes. I see them searching for truth- for an understanding of the way this crazy world actually works. As children, we are vulnerable and have not yet built the armour that protects our soul from the outside world. We have no firm grasp of truth. Hell, for all we know, there is some magical man at the North Pole who knows our innermost (albeit materialistic) desires.

And then, those truths come crashing down. People become fallible and hard to count on. Santa is, well, you know. And so, the armour is built. Piece by piece of painful memories and regrets that constitute our reality, 'protecting us' from emotional vulnerability. Until we discover that truth is not just what is in front of our noses, it is that which is both seen and unseen. Truth has a past, a present and a future of which we can only guess. And we discover that love cannot possibly act through that armour of pain we have built.

I absolutely adore Joseph Campbell. He changed my life with one command- Participate. You cannot love if you do not participate, act, roll around- do the chicken dance. You must BE in this world. You must BE love.

This works for me, when I can get past my own reaction and see the objects of my frustration as children. I can see the importance of loving those children, and of helping them release that armour of pain they must be carrying. I have always known love through its action, though love is not only a verb. It is a noun as well- a presence that can BE in us, with us, instead of the pain.

And, that is also the spirit in which I approach this blog. I have no idea who is reading it. I send it out into the great wide world with the faith that it is taken in the right spirit by the people who love me. It is my exercise in release, in loving that which is true to me, and doing so without fear.

"Jack pines... are not lumber trees [and they] won't win many beauty contests either. But to me this valiant old tree, solitary on its own rocky point, is as beautiful as a living thing can be... In the calligraphy of its shape against the sky is written strength of character and perseverance, survival of wind, drought, cold, heat, disease... In its silence it speaks of... wholeness... an integrity that comes from being what you are."
-Douglas Wood