Listening Hands offers advanced training for Rolfers®/Structural Integrators and craniosacral therapists. Thomas Walker has synthesized his decades of experience as a structural integrator, cranial sacral therapist, and biodynamic practitioner into a comprehensive curriculum that engages the physical, fluid, and bio-energetic aspects of the body.
Structural Integration has deep roots in Osteopathy. Dr. Rolf studied with the developer of the cranial concept, Dr. William Sutherland, DO, who taught that the body is a fluid whole with no subdivisions. He showed that cranial touch is not a stand alone therapy, but can be integrated into interactions with the entire body.
The curriculum is based on the principles of osteopathy and biodynamics. Shifting from "doing hands" to Listening Hands engages the self-ordering and self-healing function of Wholeness that is inherent in everyone. Shifting from "doing hands" to Listening Hands allows one to perceive Wholeness as an experience instead of a concept.
As your hands become much more sensitive, you will get more done, with less effort.
What Thomas offers is not meant to replace what you have already learned, but will enhance nearly any technique. Deepening into the principles of this training will enhance your perceptual skills as you continue to learn how much more there is to the body and healing than what we have all been taught.
Practitioners who are more energetically oriented often have different perceptual abilities and learning styles than most students. Listening Hands will help to build on and deepen these inherent energetic orientations while grounding the practitioner in the solid and fluid bodies for a more comprehensive interaction with clients.
Exploration
WHOLENESS
Wholeness and its ordering potential is a foundation of the LHS curriculum. Wholeness is often described as consisting of body, mind and spirit. You will learn that this definition is extremely limiting. You will experience the
Many therapies claim to be wholistic by recognizing that the mind and body are interrelated. However, their foundational principles are based solely on a scientific understanding of the mind/body connection. Biodynamics is a new way to integrate scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit in nature. Biodynamically speaking, at conception, spirit animates the fluids which stimulate the genes to create the physical body and its biochemical and neurological functions. Genes don’t act, they react to the environment. Scientifically, this is known as “epigenetics”. This process is present throughout life helping us to maintain and reestablish order, balance, harmony, and flow after trauma.
Wholeness is more than a concept. It is an experience of the movements of life.
FLUIDS
It encompasses all aspects of the whole body from dense bone to fluid, within and outside the physical body.
With trauma, the spaces compress, the solid pieces begin to stick together, and fluid flow is impeded. You will learn to relate to the fluid spaces and augment their return to normal function, flow and spaciousness. The solid pieces will return to their normal functions of order, balance, coherence, and flow.
You will learn that fluids have an intelligence that can't be pushed around. When acknowledged, respected, and augmented through our presence and listening hands, it has the ability to decompress and reorder trauma.
PRESENCE
