The starting point for my journey into the Craniosacral and Polarity Therapy world was one door closing and another opening. I had been an actor for a long time and I wasn't making any money. I loved the craft of it. The business of it, was a different experience. I had been seeing a healer, who at times could be blunt if he felt it was needed. He point blank said to me that the acting thing wasn't working out and asked what I was going to do as a career? I was a little shocked (I'm sure to others who could look at my life objectively, this would come as no shock at all), however, I had nothing to support an argument (...well what about that time that student director was so impressed with my scene performance he gave me $20?).
Next, he asked me if I had ever heard of Craniosacral Therapy? I hadn't. He said he thought I would be good at it. I was open to it, so soon after I received a craniosacral session from a wonderful man whom the healer knew, named John Allen. He looked like a wizardly king who just walked off a `Lord of the Rings` set. After the session, I went home and laid in bed for three hours. I cried for no apparent reason and slept. Something in me had been touched that hadn't been in years. It was something deep. I knew this was awesome work and I wanted more of it. I couldn't make sense of it. All I knew was that I had felt 'seen' in a way that I didn't even 'see' myself. This wasn't only muscles, tendons and ligaments - this was something that touched my soul.
Four weeks later, I was in my first Craniosacral Therapy class at the Upledger Institute. I also started studying privately with John Allen. I would get a session from him and then work on him. His dog Toby, always slept under the table as we worked. John said Toby liked the energy from the sessions.
I had quickly planted the seeds to crossing over into my new career. I studied at the Upledger Institute for two and a half years before switching to the Life Energy Institute, where I continued my studies in Cranial, and also added Polarity Therapy. Both modalities required me to trust in new levels of sensitivity in myself, because at the foundation of every technique was what was most important, listening.
Many of us are listening to our mind chatter away, latching onto something we like or dislike, while the sensations in our body get forgotten. If we begin to notice that this chatter is taking our attention, we can re-orchestrate it by dropping down into our bodies and feel those sensations. We may feel tensions and through just meeting them with our whole body listening, we make it possible for tensions to start to unwind, we can feel more space, freed energy and a resonance in the body that feels attuned to something quiet and deep in ourselves, something that feels like home, that we can remember, that feels important.
One of my teachers, Gary Strauss, said in class one day, that at one point in his life when he was asked what he did for a living, he said `I help people remember what is important`. I do not know for sure if this is what he meant, but it is how I interpreted it. I never asked him to clarify and neither did anyone else that day and I think it was because we had all asked ourselves in that moment what was important to us and the feeling from our table sessions answered back.