Just being there is no small thing. When we are present with someone’s expressions of their life force, there’s a profound effect created that brings about healing.
When you experience this, a wonderful healing takes place and there is a natural relief of your suffering. This can be so profound that you have physical sensations and changes as well emotional expressions.
Someone has acknowledged who you are. It might only be for a short time or just a moment but that’s all it needs. It is the deepest form of communication, being to being. There are no words in this connection and it feels timeless.
As a craniosacral therapist you bring your beingness into the therapeutic space. The more deeply you can manifest this the more powerfully people respond to your touch and presence.
Practice to try:
1. Sit for a moment and see if you can be with your state of beingness.
When you reside in it, you can truly be the witness. Its qualities are presence, clarity, simplicity and non-doing. It is a state of repose and acuity. It is not a sleepy state. You are actually bringing internal and external awareness into harmony.
2. From this place you can begin to see what is happening.
Let go of ideas of what you might find, or formats for making sense of things. Try to observe what is, unfettered by your own fantasies or anxieties. Only then will you be able to have any sense of what is happening in yourself or in another person.
In biodynamic craniosacral therapy we use touch as a way of communicating and listening. The focus is always on exploring sensations and the nature of being in a body.
The cranial paradigm teaches that there are certain phenomena that occur in the body and the space around us. These include a sense of stillness, expansion and contraction through all the tissues and structures, a surge and tide-like movement of fluids, and shifts in an electric-like charge we call potency. A skilled therapist can interact with these phenomena to support a movement towards health.
At the heart of craniosacral touch there is a state of being present. Practice will make you more skilful at being able to manifest this. Eventually this starts to become part of you in a more apparent way.
What you will notice too is a burgeoning sense of spaciousness, both gross and subtle. You will feel bigger and fuller as if you not only occupy your body but the space around it too. Also you will notice a mental and emotional spaciousness that allows you a deeper and richer experience of your thoughts and feelings. The spaciousness allows a disengagement, so that a natural state of non-attachment comes about.
You can engender this state through a practice of opening into this spaciousness. The wider the space, the deeper and more energetic the manifestation of health. As you widen out there is an expression of energetic forces within the body that can be felt as tingling or fluid-like movements throughout the body. This is the movement of potency and the phenomenon of primary respiration.
Upcoming Trainings with Steve Haines:
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST)
The Art of Touch Two Year Trainings:
London 2026: Join at the current training on Seminar two on June 17-21
Galway: starts March 2027
Waterford: starts Oct 2026
The Art of Touch Intro Events:
London (evening): April 22
Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE®) One Year Training:
London 2026: starts 27-28 June
