Transformative Healing

Welcome to My Practice • Gerry Clow, RCST®, BCPP

Santa Fe, New Mexico 

Gerry

My 25-year practice has evolved, as all practices must do, to accommodate the times we are living in, and the additional skills and/or trainings this practitioner has brought into the work, thanks to the ongoing support and insights you clients have brought home to me! I have realized in the past two years that I am bringing all of my healing modalities into my practice.  What follows is a deep contemplation of my evolving healing practice.

My biggest trainings have been in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, a deep and expanded version of osteopathic cranial techniques. By deep, I mean it works deeply within you, with your own body doing the work; the practitioner holds your field, holds a focus, as you yourself tune into how your body talks to you, and how the fluid tides within you provide movement through resistance and inertia.

And since I am also trained as a Polarity Therapy practitioner, I enjoy first responding to you from a place of complete and pure neutrality. Polarity is based on the three movements of electromagnetic bioenergy: positive (sending), negative (receiving), and neutral (pause), and Biodynamics works with, and tracks (listens to), those same qualities of energy, starting with the peace and grace of neutrality. Polarity also works with the five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether, and has special protocols for balancing each of those elements. The elements are special doorways for grounding, flowing, activating, communicating, and being open and present.

One of my favorite aspects of working in these energetic therapies is how we establish a relational field with our client. As in all healthy relationships, good energetic (emotional as well as physical) boundaries must be observed at all times. In my work with you, this relationship begins as soon as we make contact, whether by phone, email, or in person. I have a felt sense of who you are, starting with that first contact, and our interconnecting as client and practitioner goes from there. By the time my hands make contact with you, we have already made contact at many relational levels.

I also add another important level to our first encounter and that is through your date of birth. You’ll see that I ask for your DOB on my entry intake form, and that allows me to assess what planetary transits you might be undergoing that affect your health and wellbeing. For the past fifty years I have lived with a gifted astrologer, and the lessons learned from astrological transits get deeper every year. Many of you over the years are going through Saturn Return (age 29), Uranus Opposition (39-42), or your Chiron Return (around age 50), and it helps to sort out how those aspects are affecting you emotionally and mentally as well as physically.

I have two additional “doorways” I like to take you through as our work evolves from session to session.   One of those doorways is the Nine Dimensions of Consciousness, which is the teaching brought in by my life partner, Barbara Hand Clow, in 1995 through her channelings for The Pleiadian Agenda and then described in scientific and therapeutic terms in Alchemy of Nine Dimensions.   I offer sessions that take you through those sessions while you are on the table. However, I ask first that we do at least three regular sessions prior to embarking on the 9D sessions. I have to be connected to you first before I can take you on a guided journey.

The other special doorway is for you to sit on my healing bench and receiving a Spiritual Healing as I stand behind you, my hands lightly placed on your shoulders. This means we let “spirit” come in through me as your practitioner and seeing what messages come forth. Sometimes it is just overwhelming peace, other times it is messages for special healing.

I was trained in this modality at the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York, and it remains the deepest foundation of my work. Ask me when we first meet about “the Little Tree” I first placed my hands on during my training and what it taught me then that has lasted me my whole practice.

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I have called my practice “Transformative Healing” as my goal with my work with you is to give you a transformative experience—not just to free yourself from physical discomfort but from emotional and mental discomfort as well. This means that the changes you experience from the sessions are not just temporary but are transformative in all aspects of your life. This is what I am looking for myself when I go for a session with a colleague.

What makes the work truly transformative is doing three sessions during the first month of working together.   You can follow the lunar cycle (New to Full to Waning) or just space your sessions 10-14 days apart. This allows your energetic system to adjust to the new awakening in your body, and for your mind to pick up new cues and insights. The first session lets the two of us introduce ourselves to each other, like two dancers beginning a new dance together. The second session lets us dive in deeply to what we have uncovered.   And the third session lets us integrate what we have discovered.

You can use the Polarity triad I mentioned above: first session is energy out (sending), the second is energy in (receiving), and the third is pause (integrating). After those first three sessions, you can book a session whenever you want a “tune up” as well as when you want to explore another modality or doorway we may not have opened.

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For the past fourteen years, I have been practicing out of my home on Bowen Island, BC. In late 2022, we moved from BC and Canada back to Santa Fe, NM and the US. Barbara and I are citizens of both countries, yet it was time to return to our country of origin as it goes through its own healing process.   Santa Fe is where we co-founded our publishing house, Bear & Company, back in 1983, and is a very special tri-cultural meeting ground for healers, visionaries, and artists.

I am happy to announce the opening of my new Santa Fe studio on October 1, 2023, located off Old Pecos Trail, a ten-minute drive from the Santa Fe Plaza. Please contact me at gerryclow@telus.net for directions on how to find me and book a session. My best contact is through my email, after which I will send you more information. Part Two of this posting gives you my intake form, and Part Three goes into more detail on the terms and methods used in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy.

My current prices (effective 7/1/23) are:

  • $100 for one hour
  • $125 for 90 minutes
  • $150 for two hours

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

Welcome To My Practice (Part Two) – Gerry Clow, BCPP, RCST®

Part 2 – Intake form FormPart2 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:

  • 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.

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:

  • 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

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