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Notes by Steve Haines on a lecture given by Dominique Degranges, Da-Sein Institut, May 2011. Dominique is a hugely experienced and very inspiring teacher. His workshops are full of laughter and generosity, he has a very playful style and a real passion for birth dynamics.
This lecture was on seminar five on the undergraduate training in BCST. He has studied with and worked alongside Sills, Castellino and Levine. Dominique is also the illustrator for Franklyn Sills’s books. He runs the Da-Sein Institut in Winterthur, near Zurich, offering courses in biodynamic craniosacral therapy and pre and perinatal work. I was really interested in how he integrated creative resistance into his teaching and treating. After the lecture the group did a table exercise on meeting, acknowledging and supporting any expressions of the birth impulse. The focus on engaging the power behind any movements and supporting natural pauses I am finding very useful.
I have recently discovered Gil Hedley’s videos, just fabulous. This video, ‘The “Fuzz” Speech’, will change your relationship to stretching forever. Check out the fuzzed up left scapula compared to the unfuzzy right scapula about half way through, and then try to not want to move your shoulders.
Mayan skull deliberately moulded post birth
Students are frequently far more creative than the tutors. The above was part of a great presentation by current CTET students Rana Ward, Claire-Cecile Desroche, Daniel Kingsley, Hilary Tulloch and Lucy Wrinn. The question was about the differences between a stillpoint and a shutdown.
Here is what Ged and I wrote in Cranial Intelligence about shutdown:
click here for the article: ‘Let slime moulds do the thinking!’
‘Every part rhythmically expands and contracts, pushing around the fluid inside.’
Great article on slime mould. It is nice to see something more recent. The amazing slime mould video, that is shown on cranial courses around the world, is from the 50′s. (Available to buy here if you have never seen it The Protoplasm of a Slime Mold, DVD (two different spellings of mold/ mould?))
Thanks to Jeanne Wallin on the Body Intelligence Vancouver course for spotting the article.
Amazing illustration of the mobilisation and immobilisation phases of the overwhelm response. Initially aggressive and quick, but when its head is trapped and there are no options for escape the snake goes limp and plays dead.
If you ask me, playing with snakes and spitting out the venom they have managed to spit into your mouth is slightly too interesting a way of earning a living. Just saying.
Below are some interesting quotes on CSF flow from recent research using new computer modelling of CSF flow in the third ventricle from MRI scans. There are also some great images on the site of Dr Vartan Kurtcuoglu. (Many thanks to GP Visser, dentist and current student on the current CTET training, for pointing out the papers.)
‘Unlike the cardiac system, there is no dedicated pump, such as the heart, that directly drives the CSF flow. The CSF is propelled in a pulsatile manner, primarily due to brain motion caused by the expansion and contraction of cerebral blood vessels. Superimposed on this motion is flow generated by the secretion of CSF by the choroid plexus in the ventricles at the center of the brain and cerebrospinal fluid absorption, predominantly at the arachnoid villi in the subarachnoid space that surrounds the brain (Davson and Segal, 1996). Additional drainage into the blood-stream is purported to occur through the cerebral extracellular space (Greitz, 1993).’ (Kurtcuoglu et al 2007)
‘The CSF further serves as an intermediary between blood and nervous tissue, providing the latter with nutrients and removing waste products. Recent research shows that the cerebrospinal fluid flow is much more important than previously believed. For example, the pituitary gland and hypothalamus communicate through the CSF and new neurons follow the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the adult brain.’ (Kurtcuoglu 2011)
I came across the following recently in a book (Man with a Blue Scarf, p156) about the artist Lucian Freud:
‘LF arrives after a few minutes looking somehow as if an electric current had been passed through his hair. ‘How are you?’ ‘I’m feeling rather crazy, as I’ve just come from my cranial osteopath.’
It reminded me of something the receptionists at the centre where Ged and I worked used to say. They could always spot people who had just had cranial treatments because of the ‘cranial walk’. It also prompted me to dig out the following from the last couple of years.
Ged and I do not often get the chance to be in the same room together. We managed to write the book and organise our teaching by skype, dropbox and lots of emails. We recently met during seminar one of the new Body Intelligence course in Brighton. We took the chance to make a short video of us talking cranial; including how to define cranial work, presence, keeping it simple, the hardest thing to teach in cranial work, body maps, the embryo and other bits and bobs. We had one take only - the lighting is not great, there are some interesting zooms and lots of hands waving about – but we had fun and we hope you find something interesting in there.
Steve Haines
Ged Sumner
