Processing the Past Through the Present
by Elaine Hanson

Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, of Missouri, in 1885 founded Osteopathy, a medical practice emphasizing the treatment of medical disorders through the manipulation and massage of the bones, joints, and muscles.

Influenced by the neighbouring Shawnee with whom generations of Stills had intimate encounters and relationships, Still absorbed the knowledge of bonesetting. This close relationship, explains Still, often using “the phrase as ‘Taking an Indian look’ at something. Forgetting what you know and just to quietly observe with no thoughts.”

In other words, Dr. Still was renaming an ancient practice dating back to our Neanderthal cousins, while the tradition of bonesetting remains alive in many parts of the world, including Russia, China, India, and in many cultures of what are called the Americas.

Dr. William Garner Sutherland, Doctor of Osteopathy (DO), Dr. Still’s most famous student, in 1935 published a book introducing the cranial wave of movement of the bones and dura within the skull—a radical idea as traditional osteopathy taught that these bones were immobile. Dr. Sutherland, however, through extensive experimentation, proved otherwise. Thus was born Craniosacral Therapy.

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) is a non-invasive touch modality based upon an informed touch tuning into the tissues, fluids, and energies of the body. The craniosacral system includes our brain, spinal cord, and nerves, and cerebrospinal fluid bathing those structures.

BCST is a whole-person approach to healing, honouring the body’s innate capacity to self-regulate. It is a holistic practice regarding the body, mind, and spirit as one functioning entity.

Each individual comes into the world with an “Original Blueprint of Health,” which is retained throughout the course of his/her/their life. Life itself, however—physical, emotional, mental stress, trauma, medications, pollution—effectively compromises or fragments the optimal expression of that Blueprint.

BCST reintegrates those fragments, allowing the Blueprint to more expansively express itself. As the central nervous system rebalances underlying causes of pain, trauma, and discomfort, the effects are significantly reduced.

Symptoms which BCST addresses include:

• Chronic Neck and Back Pain
• Migraines, Headaches, and Concussions
• Stress and Trauma Related Discomfort, Insomnia
• Anxiety, Depression, Fear, PTSD
  
• Sport Injuries, Inflammation
  
• Post-Dental Procedures
  
• Trigeminal Neuralgia, Fibromyalgia, TMJ
  
• Oncology Treatment Support
  
• Pre and Postnatal Support

I have spent a lifetime working with the body. As a retired professional contemporary dancer, actor, and choreographer, I was engaged in intentional shaping and directing energy of the body; of embracing and utilizing the body’s entire physiology, including not only the outer structure but also the inner workings of the breath, fluids, and organs. Through that process I learned that movement has a life of its own, that my role as a performer was to get out of the way, honouring the capacities and intentions of movement as expressed through the vehicle of the body.

As a devoted 30+ years practitioner of somatic release work, I endeavoured to release compression biomechanically, aiming to synchronize the balancing forces spiralling through the body. This somatic approach produces the fullest expression of movement and sound unhindered by restrictions held within the body.

Upon retirement, I discovered Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST), recognizing that BCST required listening to the body though in subtler, more refined ways than dance. To work as a practitioner demanded a deep humility, allowing the therapist to become subservient to the inherent desires of a client’s body; that the role of the therapist is not to impose an agenda, but rather to sit back and allow the emergence of a client-directed plan, otherwise known as an Inherent Treatment Plan.

Sustaining a daily meditation practice for 47 years has allowed me to cultivate a quality of stillness supporting a sense of safety. For a container of safety is the paramount requirement allowing the body to approach, process, and ultimately digest life experience.

Always drawn to the Healing Arts, I have earned my Usui Method of Reiki Level II and am certified as a Crystal Light Healer with Universal Life Tools. Additionally, I have trained with the Conscious Dying Institute of Boulder, Colorado, as a Sacred Passage Doula. In other words, I view human embodiment—one’s journey from in utero to death—as one sweeping arc, deeply informing my beliefs and practices.

I am a registered member in good standing with the Biodynamic Craniosacral Association of North America, currently working from Prairie Sky Integrative in Regina.

Elaine Hanson Loo ,BA, B.Ed, RCST, lives in Fort Qu’Appelle on the idyllic shores of Echo Lake from which she runs an Airbnb and practises from Old Fashioned Foods. She can be reached at (306) 331-5828 or elaine@innateintelligencebcst.ca. To learn more, go to www.innateintelligencebcst.ca.