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Episode 3

How the essence of our approach might revolutionise your touch.

CST is described as being a gentle hands on approach, which I sometimes think can be a bit misleading! Don’t confuse gentle touch with being soothing rather than deeply effective! To understand what this means in practice we offer you the idea of using up to 5gms, which is roughly the weight of a 20p piece (or a nickel in the US!) Sometimes we might use less than that. Sometimes the body will draw or invite us in and then we add 5gms to what it has already requested from us.  So for some folk, recalibrating their touch can be a fun challange – whether you might be more used to working energetically and off the body (while light touch, CST is still an ‘on-the-body’ approach) or using heavier pressure in a more structured approach. We love the phrase ‘use as little force possible to get the job done’ – in touch, energy and intention!

There are other aspects of our essence that may be different from other modalities you have learned – and of course some may also be really similar.

We talk about the importance of being grounded and present in your body. For some this is very easy, for others there may be more work to be done here! We encourage you to discover more about where you are and what you need to be able to offer the best to your clients.

We also talk about the importance of being non-judgemental with our clients on every level – again we are all very different and are often uncovering areas within ourselves (from small nooks and crannies to larger caverns!) that are more or less judgemental than we might have realised! No judgement about that! It is part of the process of us unfolding as practitioners (and perhaps more compassionate human beings?) !

Another challange within the paradigm of this work, quite different from many other approaches, (especially the typical medical diagnostic models) is that we aim to have no agenda for what needs to happen in a session. What does this mean? That we aim to listen, with our hands, to what is going on for / with / within the body and follow its lead on what needs to happen. This may be following the tissue as it moves around under our hands, it may be being really still alongside it as the system finds a moment or 3 of quiet, it may be holding a really loving but open space with no agenda or expectation of what ‘should’ be happening that lets the client find or experience something different, something new, something healing.

We can do this most effectively if we are well blended or melded with the client. This is the idea that our touch creates an opportunity to listen with our hands to a persons’ tissues, not by merging or beinging energetically entwined (probably not so healthy or neutral – see next paragraph!), but in an engaged and grounded way. I have heard one of our teachers describe it as being very present and aware of our own body and at the same time extending ur energy field enough to listen respectfully to another’s. Its also about melding in just the way the client needs.

Along these lines is another word we use – neutral. For both of these conecpts I am going to pass you over to Chas Perry, one of the folk I think of as currently ‘grandfathering’ the work! He shared these words with a small group of us at an Advanced Clinical Applications Class he gave a few years ago. He puts it the ideas around neutral and melding in context so beautifully: