The Latest from our Blog

What Can Octopuses Teach Us About Pain and Consciousness?

What Can Octopuses Teach Us About Pain and Consciousness?

What would it be like if your arm had a mind of its own? Even stranger, if you had eight arms so ‘suffused with nervousness’ that they wander, explore and feel with their own goals, acting as ‘agents of their own’. This is the model offered for being an octopus in...

Most pain is not a tissue issue

Most pain is not a tissue issue

Here's a big question for you: if you have pain in your big toe, is your pain in your big toe? Or is your pain inside of you?  We used to always think that the pain was in the big toe. That the issue was in the tissues. And that's useful to some extent – of course the...

An unusual way of thinking about pain (new course)

An unusual way of thinking about pain (new course)

We used to think that pain was just about the tissues; we focused on operations, we focused on aligning things. But we now know that a huge contribution to our pain experiences is the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we’re given by other people. The modern...

Pain as a bad habit (new course)

Pain as a bad habit (new course)

 I want to explore a very powerful notion with you - that pain can be like a bad habit. At one stage the reflex to withdraw, to rest, to protect yourself from a difficult stimulus is important. For example, if you twist your ankle, you do need to rest and protect so...

Humans are Rhythmical Beings

Humans are Rhythmical Beings

I love biodynamic craniosacral therapy; the art of using touch to support health. When you touch people they change. It is that simple. Many people struggle with safety; it can be hard work negotiating being in the body. Coming into a relationship with a skilled...

How can TRE® help manage auto-immune conditions?

How can TRE® help manage auto-immune conditions?

This article was written by Sylvia Benoist. (Note from Steve: Sylvia recently completed her training as a TRE - Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises - supervisor (mentor with me), and I asked her to share her journey with TRE and Ankylosing Spondylitis, a type of...

3 Ways to Engage Your Body to Transcend Trauma

3 Ways to Engage Your Body to Transcend Trauma

I think it’s very useful to define trauma as “anything that overwhelms our ability to cope”, as well as to view trauma as a continuum.  The overwhelm that leads to trauma patterns in the body may be from a specific experience such as a car accident, sexual abuse,...

8 Books for Your Holiday Wishlist

8 Books for Your Holiday Wishlist

If you’re looking for recommendations for books to read or request over the winter break, I’ve compiled a list of eight of my recent favourites, my go-to recommendations, as well as my own books. ONE: Look Again  By Elizabeth A Trembley I can’t recommend ‘Look Again’...

How to Make Your Brain Feel Safer?

How to Make Your Brain Feel Safer?

There is a lot of pain around: In a huge study (Breivik et al 2006) across 15 European countries, 19% of people reported living with moderate to severe pain for more than 6 months. That’s 1 in 5 people in persistent pain states, the majority for many years. Holy moly....

Why Touch is Essential For Humans

Why Touch is Essential For Humans

Touch can be an incredible way to soothe, create safety, and help us to feel whole and healthy. Numerous studies have revealed that touch is essential for us humans to thrive and in this blog I’m going to share the details of these studies and what they can teach us...

What I’ve Learned From Teaching TRE to 2000 People

What I’ve Learned From Teaching TRE to 2000 People

Over the past 13 years, I’ve had the privilege of teaching TRE (Trauma and Tension Releasing Exercises) to over 2000 people. Here are some of the insights I’ve gained about the power of this simple trauma healing practice: People expect change to be painful or...

10 Things to Remember When Working to Heal Trauma

10 Things to Remember When Working to Heal Trauma

It’s now well understood that going slow is actually the quickest way to heal trauma. That’s why all modern trauma healing focuses on teaching how to regulate intense feelings.  The truth is that feeling is a difficult business, and if it is hard to feel, it is hard...

Zen and the Art of Craniosacral Therapy

Zen and the Art of Craniosacral Therapy

My journey to becoming a bodyworker started with the study of Zen and Shiatsu. Zen opened up a whole new worldview for me and immersed me in a rich tapestry of philosophies and new ways of approaching the world, birthing a fascination with the idea of ‘non-doing’....

My Four Favourite Books About Flow States

My Four Favourite Books About Flow States

A few years ago, I offered a series of workshops with a dancer called Marina Collard. It was very inspiring for me to bring awareness to simple gestures for hours at a time. Every time Marina moved, she looked like water being poured - always carving an elegant...

Five Ways That Shaking Can Help to Heal Trauma

Five Ways That Shaking Can Help to Heal Trauma

Shaking can release long-held tension patterns and promote new feelings of connection and ease. It is a novel stimulus to the central nervous system. New stimuli, approached with safety and curiosity, can support learning and growth. TRE®, Tension and Trauma Releasing...

Become an Expert in Touch: Train with Body College

Become an Expert in Touch: Train with Body College

Last month we held a seminar on our ‘Art of Touch’ Biodynamic Craniosacral 2-year professional training and the feedback has been excellent.  The course is suitable for you if you’re a health professional considering adding a new modality to your work or an individual...

Childhood Trauma, ACES and TRE

Childhood Trauma, ACES and TRE

The body is central to understanding what trauma is and how we should deal with it. In this blog I discuss how to work with the body to help to resolve the effects of early, childhood trauma. This is taken from a recent podcast interview I did called Living With...

Four Keys for Using Touch to Heal Trauma

Four Keys for Using Touch to Heal Trauma

Whether you’re personally working to release and heal trauma within you, or you’re a practitioner helping your clients to work through trauma, touch is an incredibly powerful and simple tool.  I recently had a fascinating conversation with my long-time colleague Jane...

The Power and Limits of Touch

The Power and Limits of Touch

Touch in manual therapy does not work in the way most people think it does. Evidence increasingly shows there are clear limits to our ability to diagnose and treat structural issues by focusing on local tissue dynamics. We can however negotiate ‘affective touch’ to...

To Heal Trauma We Do Not Need to Remember

To Heal Trauma We Do Not Need to Remember

When trying to recover from overwhelming experiences it can be helpful to understand how memory works, particularly how memories are related to feelings in the body. Memory is a complex perception. In this blog I’ll explore how memory works and why it can get confused...

Can we ease anxiety through embodiment?

Can we ease anxiety through embodiment?

Anxiety is most commonly framed as a psychological problem, and helping people with anxiety has traditionally been seen as the territory of mental health professionals.  However, through over 20 years of clinical experience as a bodyworker I’ve discovered how safely...