Welcome to My Practice • Gerry Clow, RCST®, BCPP
Santa Fe, New Mexico
“Transformative Healing”: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years
I call my practice “transformative healing” because I not only want you to feel better physically from the hands-on work but I also want you to feel you have found your path forward again. It is so easy in this world we live in to get distracted, discouraged, disengaged. When we move forward, we are focused, emboldened, and involved!
This sounds like a tall order: to not only take away the aches and pains, but to instill the client with a renewed sense of direction. However, when you fix one essential aspect of your life, the rest of your life becomes much clearer, more accessible, more encouraging.
And “fixing” can be easier than you might think. Why, because you are a participant in that process, not just a receiver. Often, I think of myself as a coach and trainer, and the sport we play is called Life. All it takes is a healthy body to participate in that Game of Life. We all need to take a time-out now and then, and then we need to get back into action.
The tools I work with are all body-oriented. Polarity Therapy deals with the bioelectric currents that connect our mind to our body. We, as humans, are products of Earth’s elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether. Often we lose touch with one of more of those elements, and Polarity connects us back to those elements. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy addresses our life force, our vitality, and the breath of life that inhabits all of us; we find it expressing itself in the fluids of our cells, in its movement through the watery pathways of our body. “Where there is movement, there is health.” Just hearing those words should evoke in you a response, perhaps a new breath, a sense of rejuvenation!
I am very optimistic about all of us: all we need is a reminder of the path forward and perhaps a few smiles, and a few tears, along the way. Some of us carry old injuries—both physical and emotional—and they stay with us until they are addressed with awareness and compassion, and sometime even a sense of humor! What we all appreciate in this fast-paced world is heart-felt touch and a new sense of freedom and direction.
The best tool that I am trained in, besides the “tool” of having seen many clients of the past 25 years, is the tool of helping you find your inner balance so you can reconnect to your higher self, to “what comes next” in your life. Some like to call this “Finding Your Muse.” Others, who have studied and worked with the Nine Dimensions of Consciousness, would say this is living in the Sixth Dimension, the place of inner balance in all aspects of our lives: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I like to think of it as making your life into its own special cathedral, for you to occupy and your fellow humans to enjoy visiting!
When we do good bodywork together, it is natural for your body, and then your mind, to find a sense of higher purpose and direction. By addressing any imbalances in our bodies as we work in the safety of the Fifth Dimension, we find our way to the perfection of the Sixth Dimension. Other higher dimensions will follow, but the doorway is through 6D.
Each of us will find this perfection of 6D in our own way, so there is no simple outline I can give you in words. You naturally will find your way there. As you read these words, perhaps you have an inner sense of knowingness, a renewed sense of relaxation and balance. Our work together will only increase and deepen that relaxation and balance.
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As I write these words, I am celebrating the completion of one year with my new healing studio in Santa Fe, NM, which is the city where Barbara and I birthed Bear & Company forty years ago! Our daughter Liz lives nearby and our son Chris visits often with his family, as this is his home city too. I am working three days a week in a beautiful and peaceful studio space near where we lived back in our early Bear & Company days.
My practice is small and very personal, meaning you get maximum attention! For out-of-town clients, I can adjust my schedule to accommodate yours. Whether you are a local client or a visitor, I prefer to offer you three integrative sessions, after which we can work together by phone, email, or in person on a selective basis. All my sessions are 1.5 to 2 hours, and the cost is $150 for each session. I take checks or cash only; no credit cards. You can book me by writing me at gerryclow@telus.net or click here: Contact Gerry Clow . Thank you for your support, and I send you a great healing hug from afar! Long live touch and the human heart!
Thank you for your interest in my work. I look forward to serving you!
Gerry Clow, RCST®, BCPP
Registered Craniosacral Therapist/Board Certified Polarity Practitioner
gerryclow@telus.net or click here: Contact Gerry Clow
May 1, 2024
Welcome To My Practice (Part Two) – Gerry Clow, BCPP, RCST®
Part 2 – Intake Form Click here.
Welcome to My Practice (Part Three) – Gerry Clow, BCPP, RCST®
An Overview of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST)
“The bioenergy of wellness is the most powerful force in the world. It is dynamic. It is rhythmic. It is a force field that begins with the moment of conception and continues to the last moment of death.” (Rollin Becker, DO, 1965)
What is it?
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is a treatment of the physical body that connects client and practitioner (client and therapist) to the primary breath in the body. This breath is deeper and at a longer pace than respiratory or secondary breath and expresses itself as “tides” of movement, felt by the competent practitioner within the fluids, connective tissue, vertebrae, and paired bones of the body. Primary breath is the signature of the health within all of our bodies, and the practitioner’s job is to establish contact with that health and let it optimize its benefits for the client. The practitioner’s job is to listen through light touch, to be curious and present, but not to input any energy or force into the system they are listening to. For the client, this means dropping into a deeply relaxing and resourced state, which is the foundation for all future expressions of health.
How does it work?
Our bodies, energetically, have natural fulcrums, which operate at both the physical and non-physical level. BCST treats the client at the physical level, and allows the client to re-establish their natural fulcrums that may have been rendered into “inertial” fulcrums due to trauma, injury, or disease. The sacrum and occiput are good examples of natural fulcrums, given their location in the body. Occiputs can hold compression and torsion from birth trauma throughout our lives, and also retain the effects of sports injuries or accidents; once that trauma is released, our whole body can start to relax. Our sacrum is often the first landing spot in a fall, and our sacroiliac (SI) joints are critical features in fluid hip/leg movement. Sacrums can also hold a lot of sexual and birthing trauma, and their freedom of movement is essential to spinal and visceral health.
What’s it good for?
BCST is good for anyone who is experiencing chronic or acute pain or who has had a recent physical or emotional trauma. It is also good for clients wanting to better optimize and maintain their body’s ability to heal itself. And emotionally, it helps clients reconnect in a healthy way to their nervous system and “find their center.” Therefore, this work is ideal for all ages, from newborns through elders. BCST has also been an effective treatment for hospice patients wanting a more grounded way to face their transition from one realm to another.
What are the key terms used by BCST?
Key terms used by BCST practitioners with their clients are:
- “The tides”
- classically, the movement at the point of contact, then within the body itself, and then a longer tide that engages the larger field of which the body is just a receiver-with each tide having its own distinct pace from faster to slower
- “Potency”
- The vitality found within the fluid tide of the body
- “The midline”
- The vertical center within all of us that arises from our earliest embryonic development of cells, tissue, and fluid
- “Settling”
- The process of achieving a deeper state of relaxation; coming into contact with gravity in the present moment
- “Stillpoint”
- When tidal motion comes to a deep state of stasis; the point where your inherent treatment plan takes over
- “Relational field”
- The intentional field of interaction established between client and practitioner
- “Presence”
- The key ingredient in establishing, and maintaining, an effective relational field with yourself and others
Where did BCST come from?
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is a direct outgrowth of the practice of Osteopathy. Its founder, Andrew Taylor Still, MD, DO (1828-1917), was proud to call it “an American invention” back when so many other inventions in science and industry were happening in the late 19th century. Dr. Still was another of these individuals who sought deeper understanding as to the nature of health in human beings. Having witnessed the slaughter of thousands of soldiers in the Civil War, as well as the sudden, unstoppable deaths of three of his children to spinal meningitis, he announced, “Medicine is poison!” and pondered other ways to bring healing to his clients. Gifted with a vision in June 1874, he realized the human body is capable of healing itself, provided it has proper structural alignment, allowing arterial flow. His four principles have become the tenets of Osteopathic practice today:
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- The body is an integrated unit of body, mind, and spirit. (“All parts in the whole body obey the one eternal law of life and motion.”)
- The body possesses self-regulatory and self-healing mechanisms.
- Structure and function are reciprocally interrelated.
- Rational treatment is based upon applying these three principles along with a sound and thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology.
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Dr. Still founded the American School of Osteopathy, in Kirksville, MO, in 1892. One of his early students was William Garner Sutherland, who during his senior year in 1899 viewed a specially prepared and mounted human skull. He noticed the intricate beveling in the suture between the sphenoid and temporal bones and the thought occurred to him: “Beveled, like the gills of a fish, and indicating an articular mobile mechanism for respiration.” He then spent the next thirty years working out the relationships of the “cranial mechanism” as he called it. Sutherland’s cranial concept is organized around the” primary respiratory mechanism,” includes the following components, all of which organize themselves around primary respiration:
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- the fluctuation in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), what he called “the potency of the Tide”
- the reciprocal tension membrane-the strong dural tissue connecting the cranium to spinal cord to sacrum
- the ability of the brain and spinal cord to subtly change shape (“like a tadpole pulling in its tail”) during respiration
- the ability of the cranial bones to subtly move at their articulated surfaces
- the involuntary movement of the sacrum between the hips
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The work of Drs. Still and Sutherland was carried forward by yet another great osteopathy, Rollin Becker (1910-1996), who is credited with naming such terms as “biodynamics,” “bioenergy of wellness,” “inherent treatment plan,” and “rhythmic balanced interchange” when discussing the nature of the work. Dr. Becker also is credited with describing the three stages of a healing session: “Seeking, settling, reorganization/realignment.” His work inspired yet another generation of biodynamic craniosacral therapists and teachers in the United States and England, including Franklyn Sills, Michael Shea, Roger Gilchrist, and Scott Zamurut, all of whom are practicing and teaching today along with thousands of BCST practitioners worldwide.
What is a Session Like?
Sessions are pretty straightforward. I sit with you for a few minutes to have us both settle. I ask you what your intentions are for the session today, and if you have any questions. As you do this, I assess the relational field setting up between us, as this work begins before there is any form of touch. The relational field is a felt sense of presence, much as when you meet someone and you pay full attention to them, not just mentally but with your whole body, finding the right space and connection to establish between each other.
At the table you remain fully clothed and placed under a sheet for comfort and coziness. Comfort is the operative word, and the work does not begin until you are really settled, really comfortable, on the table. The same is true for me as the practitioner, as I settle on my stool next to the table.
I tune into my own body, my own primary breathing, and then I do the same with you. Each person is unique in how his/her “system” runs. This is the beauty of the work, to find again and again an expression of life that is unique to that person. We each express life and vitality in our own way, based on our singular creation, from fertilization to birth to life experience.
Favorite contacts to your body are at: your ankles, from where I can read the tidal rhythms of your whole physical body; your sacrum, which is the primary grounder for your fluid body; your shoulders, from where the upper torso speaks; and your cranium, which is a world unto itself yet the creator of the CSF which flows rhythmically down your spine and then into your body as well. A whole session can occur from just one hold, but usually several are used during the 80-minute session.
Communication is key in the work, and I will ask you from time to time to share what you are noticing in your body, in your field. This keeps you involved and aware, and also helps guide me and reinforce my own assessment. Speaking of “force,” this work proceeds without any force being put into your body; the only force is the forcefulness of your own health, your own vitality, your own potency, speaking.
Generally, we both become aware of your tides, your midline, and an area of your body that is asking for special attention. Focus will go on that area, sometimes from a distance, and sometimes more directly. The result is deep relaxation, and deep self-healing, as your body is given the opportunity for full focus of its healing mechanisms.
How Often Do I Need to Come for a Session?
Some clients simply need a “tune-up”, a chance to find their energy field and rebalance it. Others need to set up a short program (3-6 sessions) during which a particular pattern in your body needs to be recognized and reintegrated into your system. We speak of “natural fulcrums” and “inertial fulcrums” in the work, and any inertial ones need to be addressed in order for your body to running at its full potential. Generally, coming for a minimum of three sessions is a good idea, as the first establishes the relational field between client and practitioner and often identifies an area needing more attention; the second deepens the work from the first session; and the third integrates the work into the whole field of the client.
I look forward to serving you!
Gerry Clow, RPP, RCST
gerryclow@telus.net or click here: Contact Gerry Clow