Chronic Depletion Class
I went to the most amazing craniosacral class last weekend for body/mind healing. It was mind-blowing. Game-changing. And although I don’t blog much, I need to talk about it.
The class was “CST and Working with Chronic Depletion.” I thought we’d learn about adrenal burnout, stress hormone levels, and craniosacral techniques to raise energy levels.
We covered none of that. Instead, the teacher, Eric Moya, developed a whole new way of doing craniosacral work. It’s working with epicenters.
Epicenters
In epicenter work, practitioners find various problems in the client’s body, which can be energy cysts (trapped chaos left over from injuries or trauma) and/or places where the craniosacral rhythm is low, or some other body/mind issues. Normally, we’d use our brains and intuition to decide which area to treat first. But in epicenter work, we find the central point of all these areas–a sort of center of gravity. Then we treat that area.
Get that? We’re not treating a problem, we’re treating an area that is totally fine. The epicenter receives the work and sends it along to the place that needs it most. The body knows how much treatment that area needs, and then sends it along to another area. The body also knows how to stop before the system gets overwhelmed.
Ah-maze-ing.
How do we know when we’ve found an epicenter? It feels different in a very specific way. Among other things, it feels connected to the whole body.
The next evolution in body/mind healing
I imagine the newer CranioSacral therapists thought, “Oh how nice, a new technique.” But all of us old-timers were sitting there with our hair on fire.
Eric Moya’s epicenter work and Tad Wanveer’s glia (brain cells that are not neurons) work are taking CST’s healing abilities to a new level.
It’s so mind-blowing.
And fun. What will come next in the evolution of body/mind healing?!
Here’s a link to the Upledger Institute’s description of the class, if you want more info. It is geared to practitioners and has a little video description by Eric Moya.
Chronic depletion
Meanwhile, chronic depletion is an interesting idea. A chronically depleted person has no long-term body resources to cope with short-term stress events. So no long-term, no short-term. Every little stress is too much, even something small like a ringing phone. They can’t rally.
Someone who has “regular” depletion does have long-term body resources, even though their short-term coping is low. They may fall apart but are able to rally.
Fortunately, epicenter work helps with all levels of depletion.
What does chronic depletion feel like?
In class, we were asked to remember a time when we Could. Not. Cope. Here are some descriptions we came up with to convey how we felt. I thought it was an interesting list and wanted to share it. Chronically depleted people would experience some combination of the following:
Emotionally:
The feeling of labile, fearful, anxious, hopeless, panicky, angry, raw, weepy, full of indignation, lonely, disappointed, depressed, suicidal, scrambled, flat, frozen, lacking compassion, fragile
Physically:
A lot of weight gain or weight loss, sluggish, in pain (especially in the joints), exhausted, unable to sleep, brittle, numb, having stomach pain, having a lot of accidents, heart palpitations, becoming hypersensitive to the environment, uncoordinated, dissociated, breathing problems, rashes, coming down with frequent illness, hair loss, migraines
Mentally:
Unable to learn, obsessive, unsupported, compulsive, hyper-alert, impaired communication skills, decreased relationships with other people, impaired time-management abilities, scattered, distracted, unfocused, unable to problem-solve and find solutions, shut down, stuck, forgetful, having a very narrow mental focus
Spiritually:
Feeling lost, disconnected, empty, faithless, isolated, only having bad luck, forsaken, seeking, praying for energy, dark night of the soul, questioning it all, God is gone, crisis, being punished, bargaining with God, hyper-focused on ritual
Interesting, eh?
Book a session!
If you want to come in and experience epicenter work, you can flip to my online booking page here. There were a few Seattle practitioners in class, and one from Bellevue, but this isn’t something widely available yet. (253 Pride, y’all!)