The red logo at the top of the page is from a picture of the sphenoid and occiput bones forming the sphenobasilar junction (SBJ). These bones form a large part of the base of the skull. The big hole you can see is where the spinal cord enters the cranial cavity. The SBJ is an almost mythical place in the history of cranial work. It is the organising fulcrum for all the movements of the cranial bones. It is an important midline organising centre for all the expressions of primary respiration. That means that the SBJ often compensates and holds patterns due to the experiences and conditional forces that the person has undergone. Being skillful in orienting to the SBJ is a key skill in cranial work. It took me many years to feel comfortable to make a clear contact at the SBJ. The clearest impression I notice these days is health is expressed as the sphenoid diving forward on inhale and a sense of anterior posterior space at the SBJ.
Share this blog
Ged Sumner
Steve Haines
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
March 25, 2010 at 10:25 am
Tim Kirkpatrick
Hi Steve – I recall that in a treatment you gave me once that you verbalised your experience of my SBJ ‘opening like a flower’. I get this sometimes. Meanwhile, I am continuously surprised by how much space sphenoids need, and how ‘other’ they sometimes feel. Turkish saddle as the seat of consciousness?
March 26, 2010 at 7:30 am
Steve Haines
Hi Tim
The image of opening like a flower I first heard at Karuna. The SBJ is perceived as the centre of a flower, gently rising on inhale, and the sphenoid, temporal bones and occiput are like petals opening out. I use it a lot in practice – it is a very organic image and much softer than the gears and cogs. Alongside a sense of the head as fluid filled ballon it is often my clearest impression of the cranium. Once I have a sense of the above, then the details and precision of the boney relationships are much easier to feel. Often however the inertia will have resolved as you appreciate the flower like quality or the fluid ballon changing shape.
Sella Turcica as the seat of consciousness? Well, maybe, but why not the big toe? Descartes went for the pineal gland as the seat of the soul. Consciousness is a distributed phenomenon involving the whole body and, increasingly I realise, the surrounding environment. ‘You are the music whilst the music lasts’ – not sure any part or area can define consciousness. Maybe it is an important staging post or function that is essential for the working of the interactive modules (memory, emotions, sensation, reasoning etc) that together make up consciousness? Maybe when the SBJ is moving and breathing with the tide it is a key pathway? When open it allows for the distribution of information between the different modules.
March 26, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Elaine Koh
steve, …..an exercise of poetic licence??….but so coherently expressed in this richly mulitfaceted work that is BIODYNAMIC CST!!!
March 28, 2010 at 11:22 am
Steve Haines
Hey Elaine Always a bit of poetry and mysticism in a biodynamic explanation of how things work.