In Your Hands
Teaching Healing Skills For All
by Jo Hanstead DC MSc FMCA FCC RCST
I have been a chiropractor and craniosacral therapist since 1987. More recently,
I did the professional Ishta Spinal Touch training with Allyn Edwards and
Sue Weller.
Love of Teaching
Early on in my chiropractic career I learned I loved to pass on practical
skills to enthusiastic students as a tutor with the McTimoney Chiropractic
College. In those days we had student clinics all round the country and teaching
was on a one to one basis. The tutor sat with the student for an entire day,
and could easily pick up at a very subtle level what was being effective,
and offer any small changes that would help the student's technique. After
many years of this I became a senior practical tutor. Still a joy, but far
more paperwork and politics.
Having stopped teaching chiropractic I wanted to find a way to carry on working
with small groups. Teaching chiropractic to non-professionals is not allowed,
but the basic vitalistic philosophy can be shared. That the body has an intrinsic
wisdom is something many people have never consciously realised. It blows
their minds, a good place to start to teach healing skills. I had also assisted
in several craniosacral therapy trainings and workshops. I increasingly realised
that hands-on core skills should not be labelled as belonging to any particular
therapy. They are skills intrinsic to humans, often temporally forgotten,
but it does not take much to help people to remember.
Dances of Unversal Peace
One of my other long term loves is the Dances of Universal Peace. These are
simple chants from all spiritual traditions, danced with simple steps in
a circle. This becomes a body prayer, and is a powerful way to connect to
oneself, the group, and the whole.
At DUP camps we spend a week where we eat, dance, and pray together. Being
together in this way makes people very open to picking up new healing skills.
In the last few years I have offered short workshops at UK dance camps with
the tongue in cheek sub-title "I can't believe its not craniosacral
therapy". This may be funny to those of you who see "I can't believe
it's not butter" at the supermarket, also to those of you who, like me, are
stunned at how much desperate ownership there seems to be these days of skills
that are our birthright.
We have forgotten how to help each other.
The camps are a wonderful place to teach the hands-on healing skills that
can be 'caught, not taught'. This is because:
-
A heart space is common to both the dances and simple hands-on healing.
-
It is simply permission and tuning-in that is required.
-
The skills are intrinsic to us.
- By having no outside-led agenda, there are far fewer blockages
to picking up what is going on in someone's body.
Often during a professional course it can take months to 'feel' anything.
Yet in a field, having danced all week, it takes minutes! Many people who
have never tried before find that their partners experience lasting and positive
physical and emotional effects from their first ever five minutes of hands-on
work. This is in all senses truly a Field effect.
Samuel Lewis, the founder of the dances, and John McTimoney were both pioneers
with many similarities in their vision. In the past, hands-on healing skills
were passed on from teacher to student, rather like a Sufi silsilla, or
Kabbalistic shalshelet; a chain of souls.
Teacher and pupil were only different in relation to time. The stream was
passed through the generations. My experience of teaching chiropractic showed
me that whereas there is still a component of this, it is often engulfed
in politics, and other 21st centaury hurdles.
Refreshingly, DUP is still able to hold a large component of 'catching' the
teaching. Many of the teachers teach by their very presence and how they
bring through the dances; teaching from the heart.
Sharing the skills
I have already shared basic skills with therapists and some lay people out
in the world. Now I am doing it more efficiently, under the title In Your
Hands, with its website
www.inyourhands.net.
It is a network, an umbrella, for short, inexpensive
courses to teach whoever wants to learn the basic hands-on skills
needed to help friends and family physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
It is not about professional qualifications, although professionals
find the skills helpful in their practice.
As well as tuning-in workshops, it networks other
skills that can be picked up/caught/remembered quickly and cheaply.
In Your Hands currently also promotes Ishta Spinal
Touch.
I trained in Ishta Spinal Touch in 2008 with Allyn
and Sue. As well as being an elegant and powerful technique, the
basic procedure can be taught in a weekend to lay people, with immediate
therapeutic effect.
Spinal Touch used to be only taught to chiropractors,
but was many many years ago released by politics! This is one of
the positive effects of politics, making things more available to
all.
There will be big changes over the next few years
in the Earth, in society, and in our consciousness. We all have
a unique contribution to creating a connected and heart centred
society. There are many other people out there who also want to
help create heaven on earth.
For more information about the courses Jo organises please
email her on info@johanstead.co.uk
or vist www.inyourhands.net
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