In my work as a craniosacral therapist I often have the privilege of witnessing the genius of the body as it unwinds and surrenders things it has been holding onto, sometimes for decades, because it finally feels safe to let go. A twisted vertebra can be more than the simple physical form of a twisted vertebra. There can be underlying emotional or spiritual reasons for the vertebra holding on so tight or it can simply be in the physicality. The letting go process can be a physical unwinding, an emotional release or a spiritual shift. Sometimes it’s very clear and other times you simply don’t need to know.

Recently I had a client on my table whose neck was very tight around C4/C5. As I worked gently to release the vertebrae I saw a vision of my client as a 9-year-old boy in murky water. He had one hand raised and kept being dragged underneath the water, he would bob to the surface again waving his hand desperate for someone to see him. Then I saw a hand reach in and pull him out. The vision was quick and precise.

At the end of the session I told him about what I’d seen. He looked at me and said, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly drowned when I was 9?’

He hadn’t. It had been a pivotal moment in his life where he said he’d seen an angel who had told him to be calm, that he would be fine. His father had finally turned around and noticed that he was struggling and pulled him out of the water. This moment, although deeply spiritual was also obviously traumatic and had been stored away in the vertebrae of his neck until there was an appropriate time for it to be released. A time when both the body and the spirit felt safe to let go. Needless to say my clients neck was much freer after this session.

Sometimes we don’t realise how we are hanging onto past experiences in our physical form. As we age we have a tendency to blame gravity for our hunched shoulders, our curved back, our aching knees. But what if during a particularly difficult argument ten years ago your shoulders became so tight that you didn’t completely let them go? Or what if the argument was so hurtful that you didn’t completely let it go and instead stored part of the argument in your shoulders? And maybe now the shoulders have been clenched for so long with so many other subtle layers of tension over the top of them that you don’t even realise that your shoulders are tight anymore.

To keep our body functioning in good physical form we must release stress and trauma from the past - physical, emotional and spiritual. The closer we can release stress to the occurrence of the trauma the better, but just because the trauma is in the more distant past does not mean it cannot be reached and released. Regular craniosacral therapy treatments are a fabulous way to break down the accumulative effect of trauma on your body and to prevent a build up from occurring. A simple and effective way of reducing the impact of ageing!