I’ve always wanted to find out what helps people de-stress.

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When I was a kid, I decided it was humor. Unfortunately, I was such a stress-mess myself, I did not see how much of my humor was actually coming across as sarcastic and injurious.

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When I was a brand new adult, I decided it was prayer. Prayer would fix everything. I would join a convent cloister where all they do was prayer, a convent cloister where the religious were as OFFICIAL as they could possibly be, literally ambassadors of the earthly Church before the Throne of God. I’d be part of the ultimate power of the universe, practically, saving everyone from their stress, their problems, or from hell at least in the next life if not this. I’d give and give and save everyone. Somehow, after 16 years of that, I was crushed in a nervous breakdown and could barely use my limbs when I walked away from there to either try a new life or die from sheer exhaustion and rejection, I wasn’t sure which would happen.

When I did crawl away to my new life, I took some convictions with me. Community destresses people, and nurturing touch destresses people, and facing their fears destresses people. But they have to be done together in a balance. I’d tried living in community for 16 years without nurturing touch or much support in acknowleging our fears.

With the help of some new friends who taught me about community and nurturing touch and facing fears all without asking anything in return, (because at this point I HAD nothing but my brokenness and broke-ness—leaving the convent doesn’t make you rich!), I was able to crawl and then stand upright and then walk forward toward my goal.

I decided to become a craniosacral therapist, (CST) using a bodywork modality whose hallmark is listening to the innate wisdom of the individual person, their psychosomatic being in order to find the source of the stress, to face it, to melt it gently, to respect it, to encourage it on the journey to healing and flourishing and clarity. I spent a year studying massage therapy in order to get a professional bodyworking certification and to be able to complement the CST with other modalities, because I will be the first to tell you no one technique is always the answer all the time for all individuals.

I am an entrepreneur starting from scratch with nothing but a few friends. I don’t require much to keep myself alive and happy in a moderate lifestyle, but I am wise enough to know I need to ensure that security. Beyond that, my dream is to pass on the investment my beautiful friends made in me to others who are trapped in the vicious cycle. So many talented members of society are trammeled by traumas which affect their health, which affects their ability to think and to work, which inhibits their ability to make money, which severely limits their options of quality healthcare, which keeps them sick and out of work and poor and unable to contribute to society at their full potential...which if you think about it, contributes instead to the general STRESS of society, which creates MORE traumas, and I need not spell out the entire cycle all over again.

Craniosacral therapy is not complicated, it doesn’t require fancy instruments or drugs, and people can learn to do most of it for themselves with a little training. It requires personal connection, listening, a grasp of anatomy, experience, gentleness, compassion, courage and firmness, negotiation skills, professionalism and respect, and nurturing touch. It is one of the primary ways I am going to try to offer society so that it can be WHOLE and not so broken. Will things always break down? Yes. But we don’t have to let them spiral out of control like we have. We can think of volunteering as an investment with returns that benefit us all with much less stress in the world.

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