Wellness is truly about the mind AND body, says Zoe Egerton as she reminds us that the cells of our body hold more memory than our brain
What does wellbeing mean to you? For some it means managing stress levels due to a busy lifestyle, while for others it’s overcoming an indelible sense of fear that’s ruled their life, or it could simply mean eating a balanced, nutritious diet. The general term ‘Wellbeing’ incorporates a great many aspects and means different things to different people.
And how do you maintain your wellbeing? It may be practicing yoga or visiting the gym on a regular basis or taking time out each day to sit quietly and meditate. We might also visit a therapist, to talk things through, as a way to clear our head of mental chatter.
But what about areas of the body other than the mind that also hold anxiety, stress, memories of unpleasant experiences that have stayed as an imprint within the cells well after we have forgotten them in our conscious mind? The cells of our body hold more memory than our brain, so while we may forget certain events, the body does not.
This can explain why certain situations in our environment trigger us throughout our life, without our understanding why. As the science of epigenetics has established, it is the response to our environment, rather than our genes, that determines our health and wellbeing. Those imprints can have started very early on in our life, sometimes even pre-birth.
So how do we unlock those imprints? How do we get to the source of the issue, rather than treating merely the symptoms? One way to do this, in a safe space, is with the help and support of a Craniosacral Therapist.
Craniosacral therapy is a gentle, non-invasive hands-on approach to releasing tension and trauma held in the system and is equally suitable for a baby who has experienced birth trauma as it is for an adult coping with stress, migraine or whiplash (to name a few).
The practitioner ‘listens’ with their hands, quietly and calmly engaging with your nervous system and the subtle rhythms in the body so that it feels heard and supported. By doing so, the inherent healing ability of the body that has possibly become overwhelmed by injury, illness or trauma can begin to let go of the tension it has been holding, possibly for many decades.
Clients sometimes say during treatment that they’ve suddenly remembered an event they had long since forgotten about and later report that the knee pain, headache or other symptoms they had been experiencing have disappeared as a result of treatment.
While some clients see a craniosacral practitioner on a regular basis, others incorporate sessions into their wellbeing schedule, with regular though less frequent visits in order to maintain their overall health. It’s not about making it a part of their ‘to do’ list so much as it forming an incremental aspect of their ‘to be’ plan. This gives them the time to be in the calm and quiet of a craniosacral session so their system feels heard and can do what it needs to in order to heal and be well.
Zoe Egerton is a craniosacral therapist working from our Brighton and Hove rooms
