Several years ago, a gentlemen in his late 70’s came to me for treatment following a stroke. The CVA left him with weakness in the right side of his body, loss of balance, but he was cognitively intact. During one of our sessions, he recalled with great fondness the treatments he had for many years with his long time Chiropractor. “Whenever I would get a severe headache, I would just make an appointment with the Doc and he would adjust me and my headaches would miraculously disappear.”
I wondered out loud , “when did you get those severe headaches?” He answered without a pause, “Always at work.” “What kind of work did you do?” I asked. ” I was an accountant, and I hated every minute of it. I always wanted to do something in the arts or music, I was a talented musician but due to family and financial pressures, I settled for a job that would be secure, so I chose accounting. But boy, was I miserable all those years.”
How sad, I thought. For years, he was denying the voice of his inner wisdom that came out as headaches that was telling him something was out of balance in his life. “I am angry, I am frustrated, I am doing something I don’t want to be doing. I am forced to lead my life in a way I would not ideally chose.” Like the warning lights coming on when the oil is low in a car and needs to be added before the engine burns out, the body sends a warning light in the way of pain, discomfort, or dis-ease. (The word disease says it all-when the body /mind/spirit is not at ease, there is tension, restriction, tightness which leads to the disease.) Now who in their right mind would just cut the wires and turn off the the warning lights in his car allowing the engine to burn out. However , this is precisely what we do when we take a pill, get an adjustment, go for surgery, etc and try to take away the dis-ease instead of looking at the root cause of the illness. The western Medical model is based on suppression of symptoms and taking away pain rather than identifying root causes whether they be physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual.
In the Holistic CranioSacral Model, the Therapist helps the Client find the root cause by helping him get in touch with the Inner Physician , or Inner Wisdom that everyone one of us possess. In the words of Dr John Upledger, “surgery is often a way of silencing the voice of the Inner Wisdom of the body.”
In my next post, I will explain how the CranioSacral Holistic Model works and how we can use this as a new paradigm in Healing and Health Care.
