Our body tissues store information — be it from that time a teasing boy in middle school pulled your chair out before you realized it and your tailbone smacked the rock-solid cafeteria floor (😬) or your heart experienced a great, aching loss. The trauma or hurt is taken in by the body and the residue is held within it. Here, it can be processed out, lie dormant (taking up vital space), or worse, wreak havoc on our well-being.
John Upledger, the founder of craniosacral therapy, explains, “As far as the body is concerned, externally derived energy is disorganized and chaotic. It does not fit into the bodily organization of the intrinsic energy systems. The unwanted energy may lodge in such organs as the brain, intestines, or heart. Once there, it can disrupt the visceral function or lodge in the connective tissues, bones or joints, causing pain as well as discomfort.”
As a craniosacral therapy energy practitioner, I’m struck over and over again at how the connections I make to the natural world relate to my work assisting others in their journey to release restrictions held in the body and spirit. In particular, I marvel at how trees — these alive wisdom-keepers in our own backyard — mingle with and mirror our own processes in both practical and mysterious ways. Tree roots sodden down through the earth, enmesh with one another, and communicate with a grand network of beings via the underground network of mycelium. They provide protection, stability, and a steady stream of nutrients that flows up ↑ through the trunk and out through the branches. Leaves photosynthesize the sun’s offering of light into life, bestowing the sweet nectar of its alchemy in the opposite direction. It seeps back down ↓ into the soil, where the roots can spread that energy in the undercurrents of this Earth.
Trees—these quiet sentinels we so often overlook — are simultaneous conduits of graced light from above into the Earth and water-blessed nutrients from the Earth back out into the ethers. Similarly, our bodies are created to be in a synergistic flow with the Earth (below) and the world around us/the universal force about us/a greater power beyond us (above).
Trees have also proven to store memories within their frame. Australian scientist Dr. Monica Gagliano conducted an experiment on mimosas to test their learning capabilities. She found that over time, leaves that originally closed off to water droplets eventually began to trust that they were safe and remained open. Weeks later, the mimosas remembered the experiment and their role in it and allowed their leaves to stay open to the water rather than close up as is the typical response.
In his book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben suggests that the place trees store information is in their roots:
“We know that plants can learn, and we have evidence from the laboratory as well as from the forest. If plants — and that includes trees — can learn, that means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanism inside the organism. Just where it is, no one knows, but the roots are part of the tree best suited to the task. Where else would it store important information over a long period of time?
Roots absorb substances and bring them into the tree. In the other direction, they deliver the products of photosynthesis to the tree’s fungal partners and route warning signals to neighboring trees. But for there to be something we would recognize as a brain, neurological processes must be involved, and for these, in addition to chemical messages, you need electrical impulses. And these are precisely what we can measure in the tree.”
The root network in a tree is the boss of all the chemical interactions within the tree. Much like trees, the stored information in our bodies can send signals to our overall body or to an isolated unit of the whole. This interior intelligence also communicates via chemical messengers and electrical impulses and is receptive to the healing effects of energetic manipulation.
In a craniosacral therapy session, practitioners use specific hand positions in alignment with the body’s bone, muscle, and diaphragmatic structure, the craniosacral rhythm, and unwinding techniques to alter the chemical messengers’ programming set in place by trauma. Using the limitless power of energy, the therapist reveals and releases restrictions stored within the tissues. Once the blockages have melted away, the body can restore its intrinsic flow to itself.
As trees take in light, alter it, and emanate the sweetness of it back out, we too are vessels of radiant, warm light. The more we can clear out the cluttered pockets of precious space in our bodies, the more that light can take up residence there — nestling us back into our true selves. The more of our own essence we can feel pulsing through our bodies, the more we give our pure beings permission to plant our lives in the direction of wholeness and purpose.
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