There is an intelligence and self-regulating principle at the heart of the human experience. Our bodies are always striving for health and trying to optimize their balance, and they do that very intelligently. There are millions of years of evolution behind the processes and flows and movements in the body.
I’m a bodyworker, and although I’ve trained in many approaches, I focus on Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, which is an amazing way of touching people. At its heart, it’s an entering into a relationship with another human being, but using touch as the way of exploring that relationship or supporting the body of the other person to move towards health.
Here are seven of the bodywork principles I use in my clinic work and in my Art of Touch Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy professional training:
One: Get out of the way
One of the core ideas in Craniosacral work is that the creative forces from within are far more powerful than any blind force that we can apply from the outside.
It’s really about kind of getting out of the way, giving the body a chance to rest and recuperate, holding a mirror up to the body. So putting our hands on areas that are out of relationship, that are tight, painful, and just reminding them they can move differently and not be fragmented. The whole nervous system, all the control mechanisms in the body, can engage and sort of reignite processes of healing that might have been frozen or overwhelmed due to stress or lack of time.
Two: Do less
In Biodynamics, we allow things to happen rather than force things to happen. For example: if you’ve had a baby whose head got twisted and compressed as it moved through the birth canal, that may have put a little twist or compression into the jaw. Associated with that were also some activations and nervous system patterns; the baby got scared or overwhelmed when it got that little compression at the jaw. We come along in adult life and this person’s tooth grinding maybe. They’ve had lots of other problems in their life, but their jaw seems to be a persistent stressor in their system.
Now, we could come along and just stretch the jaw muscles or yank the jaw to help the jaw move or even strongly invite the jaw and say: “We know the jaw should be aligned as much as possible, and we’re going to help your jaw move in a way that is more optimum in our external model.” That’s good and it can work, but the problem with that is that sometimes you can’t really respect the history of the whole story; you have to wait to see all the nuances that are enfolded in that pattern of experience.
We work a lot on allowing resources to develop and a sense of things change in their own time. We are not forcing things from the outside. We ask questions rather than tell the body what to do. I might have a question: “I notice your jaw is tight, and do you want to move?” But I never say: “You have to move,” or: “This is the best position for you.” That’s one central feature I think of Biodynamics, this huge reverence and respect for the intelligence of the body.
Three: Include the whole person
The total history of each human being is enfolded in their physiology. If we start forcing things or inviting things too strongly to change from the outside, then you’re taking risks. You meet that baby’s jaw in the adult and a story that was really, really scary and really, really active. If you ask it to change too quickly, then you might have to pick up the pieces of all that anxiety and fear that are coupled with that pattern of experience.
Four: Help people come out of stress patterns
Cranial work can facilitate embodiment, presence, a new capacity to feel your body, having a complete body schema, more relaxed muscles, more easeful breathing, and better blood flow, which are all important for helping people come out of stress patterns.
We know that stress is implicated in nearly all diseases; heart disease, metabolic disorders such as diabetes, breathing issues, immune failures, chronic inflammatory patterns, issues around joints. By understanding stress and by helping people de-stress through embodiment, and doing that in relationship through this light, gentle touch, will help prevent an enormous range of conditions.
Five: We don’t need to spend that much time aligning tissues
The biggest insight around pain recently is that pain really is not around what’s happening in the tissues. Chronic pain is much more a habit, a bias, a sort of learned pattern in the nervous system. So pain is a perception and over time, the experience of chronic pain is increasingly divorced from what’s happening in the tissues.
That means, as therapists, we don’t really need to spend that much time aligning tissues – though that can be useful and important particularly at the start of a problem – but long term it’s much better to help people reframe and embody and creatively retrain their nervous system. That’s a very individual approach. It works well when done in relationship with a skilled therapist who constantly challenges you to re-examine your experience of your body, and tries to explore new ways of inhabiting your body.
Six: Pay attention when things go really quiet
Often we find in cranial sessions, there’s a time when things go quiet, then it goes a little bit quieter still and then really, really quiet. The term ‘dynamic stillness’ is an attempt to describe the ultimate quietness, the sense of non-separateness between you and the client, between you and the environment, between you and all that’s not you. Stillness is a defining link in that relationship.
When people enter stillness, their physiology works differently afterwards, as though there’s been a deep rest, and a pause, and a reorganization, and a coming back into a relationship with the intelligence of the body.
Seven: Skilled hands can perceive subtle rhythms
There are all sorts of rhythms and pulses in the body; we’re breathing, our heart’s pounding, our fascia actually is contracting, our muscle tone changes when standing as we are constantly swaying to help us deal with gravity, neurons oscillate in the brain, there’s flows of lymph and blood and much bigger rhythms; circadian rhythms, rhythms of maturing, and dying, and sexual cycles.
We have a whole rhythmic quality in our body and these rhythms coalesce to give us moments of coherence, a deep pulse you can feel expressed throughout the body. That’s a profound and defining part of the cranial paradigm; there are subtle rhythms that skilled hands can perceive.
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 introductory events
Galway: 28 May, 3 Sep, 19 Nov, 23 Feb 2027
Waterford: June 3
Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE®) One Year Training:
London 2026: starts 27-28 June
