What Is Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy?

Biodynamic craniosacral therapy is an interactive process of embodied connection. The main tool is non-doing, relational touch, informed by meditative awareness. Biodynamics is a simple and powerful practice that supports presence, groundness and health.

Craniosacral therapy is an active engaging with the complex business of feeling. There is an explicit goal of supporting embodiment and perceptions of safety inside the individual.

In the dynamic of relational touch, there is the potential for new feelings, new stories and new meanings to arise. Truth emerges as a shared story between client and therapist, informed by phenomena of being within a sensitive organism. We aim to generate concepts that promote health and sensations of joy, ease and agency.

We are shaped by experience. Biodynamics attempts to work with the whole person and the totality of their story. From pre and perinatal experiences, to adverse childhood events, to being embedded in oppressive and unequal power structures in society and culture. We support people to self-regulate and develop resilience in the face of a morass of intense, and often overwhelming, feelings, drives and behaviours.

There is a enormous power inside all of us to learn and grow from adverse experiences. We have a body that is self organising and always striving for harmony. Health is expressed as connection and coherence in a rhythmically pulsing body. In biodynamics health is met as an active seeking for balance that is inherent to being alive.

Biodynamics, as taught by Body Intelligence, is trauma-aware bodywork informed by neuroscience and pain research. We aim for coherence, clarity and repeatability and avoid complex esoteric anatomy. ‘Keep it simple’ is one of our mantras.

However simple is not simplistic. We teach in-depth understanding of the anatomy of the body and the physiology and psychology of the defence cascade in response to the perception of threat. People learn life changing skills to support down regulation of overprotective reflexes. We celebrate complexity in our ability to make and remake meaning as we respond to body events and stimuli.

Biodynamics is fundamentally hopeful in our belief that even the most painful stories and constructs can be reshaped with the right support and enough resources.

Body Intelligence focuses on down-to-earth biodynamics, stripped of outdated biomechanic paradigms, cautious of mysticism and of imposing spiritual paradigms on healing. Embodied spirituality is explored as a sense of connection to self, to others, to nature and to mystery. The wider field of connection is rooted in deep embodiment.

Biodynamics is a process of learning how to feel with the therapist as a somatic guide. A guide who is focused on supporting clarity and connection to the world of sensations. A guide who is skilful in promoting self regulation to safely discharge cycling defence cascades. A guide who can help us feel more than our history and open doors to new feelings of joy, connection and ease.