After-Class Review: Touching The Brain

The Importance of Gradual Transitions

Last Sunday I presented Touching The Brain at Cortiva. This is the second time I have taught this class, the first was at Rich Experience a couple months ago.

I was hesitant to begin teaching this class. It is my version of what I imagine Dr. Bruno Chikly and Dr. John Upledger are teaching in their brain classes. Their classes require tons of prerequisites and mine has none. I wondered if students would really come away from a 5 hour course feeling they could really touch the brain, could really learn something useful for their practice. I asked this at the end of Sunday and every one of the 5 students said a confident, “Yes.” Feedback forms all put 5 out of 5 in every category, the only suggestions for improvement were to make the class longer. I am very excited to continue providing this class in Tucson! I won’t make the class longer but you may repeat as many times as you want for only $25 as a repeater (no certificate given for repeaters), space permitting.

We began the class gradually by touching the cerebellum while the person was prone in a face cradle. All the students felt this was non-threatening to give or receive and I think they were not challenged enough. So I speeded up the pace a bit with a circle exercise, where each person was working on the brain of the person seated in front of them, sending healing forward, while sensation went rearward. This definitely woke everyone up.

One thing I emphasized at both Saturday’s and Sunday’s class was that soon you therapists will have enough tools and skills that you can help a person move very fast, releasing lots of issues and becoming more of their true nature. You can move a person too fast for their lifestyle to accommodate. While a person is lying on a massage table feeling safe in your kindly presence, they may agree to move very quickly through a lot of stuff. The parts that open and shift and change are then scrutinized by other parts of themselves, and the culture they accept. If the “majority” of inner and outer influences “vote” that the new changes are too radical, there will be a reaction. A person experiencing this may feel worse the next day, even though you did really good work. Another evidence that the person is moving too fast is that they have an emotional reaction on your table. If you are moving at a comfortable pace for the person, you will sense emotions arising and moving on, perhaps cleansing breaths, and maybe a single tear. The person will feel calm and the change is not so much that when they go back into their normal world, they are shocked. Over a course of years or a lifetime, a person will make more progress with these more gradual shifts and have more fun and less suffering in life, than if they jerk forward and have reactions, three steps forward and two steps back. The jolting jarring effect tends to make people not want to progress any more and they give up.

People make more progress in the long run if their transitions are gentle. The peak of progess should be in the middle, then coasting the second half of the treatment, to give time for assimilating the experience. Steps should be well-defined (verbally explaining what to expect and checking-in to see where the person is in regard to the steps) and gradual.

During the third exercise we touched the Amygdala, for about five minutes with hands-on then gradually lifting the hands off the head a few inches. Some people preferred to do their treatments silently while I demonstrated keeping a running conversation (about what they were feeling) going with the people I worked on.

This third exercise was after I gave the little talk about gentle transition and making small changes, and wouldn’t you know, there was an emotional burst during this session. The giver did a great job providing support, safety, and grounding. I do not think the giver was moving the recipient too fast, just that this recipient was very ripe for the shift and just popped with little warning. We had enough time after the session for the giver and recipient to talk together and then for the group to provide a transition back to what is normal life. While the person who changed shared that it was very intense, the person had no regrets, in fact I thought looked lighter after the exercise. This person wrote on the feedback form that they gained intuition, skills, and balance.

A Note to All Therapists Regarding the Pace of a Session:
Most therapists who have worked on me in the last 17 years seem to save their most precious maneuvers (like reiki or craniosacral) for the end, as if they had to “talk me into” receiving the good stuff. So with five minutes to go, I feel, Wow, this is great! and suddenly its over and we’ve said goodbye. It was too confusing for me to accept these healing gifts.
I think a therapist should start with his best stuff, rising to a peak of change about halfway through, then sort of coast through the second half using more traditional maneuvers like Swedish Massage and Jostling.

Most massage therapists tend to create a silent, meditative space for the recipient. This is good. Still, checking-in verbally is very important in the first few minutes to see how the recipient is responding to “the good stuff.” Then about 30 minutes of silence in the middle is fine, if that’s what the person wants. With 15 minutes to go, the therapist should again ask a few questions because this causes the recipient to do some brain processing, perhaps open her eyes once or twice. You might think this would disturb their peace, but the interruption serves the recipient in several ways. You’ll get more feedback about what you could do differently, and guess what, there’s still time to give them some more treatment based on this feedback! Secondly, as they speak about what is happening, they begin to assimilate the changes with the other parts of self that were “out of it.” The inner negotiation and balancing begins here, while you are still around to help, rather than beginning once they step out into the street with no nice person to help. Your speaking begins to gradually shift their body back from delta and beyond to an alpha awake state in a nicer transition. Transitions that are too quick lead to reactions, “two steps back.”

By asking her a few “check in” questions with 15 minutes to go, she will be able to assimilate and keep more of what has just occurred than if she were comatose up to the last minute and then rushed out the door.