Margaret Rosenau from Courageous Heart Therapies offers individual transformative therapy sessions in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Somatic Experiencing®, Polarity Therapy and Pre and Perinatal Therapy. We chat with her to find out more. Margaret also owns and runs The School of Inner Health in Denver (www.schoolofinnerhealth.org) where she teaches Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy classes and practitioner trainings.
How do you determine which therapy to offer your client, or do you sometimes use a combination of all you have to offer?
Sometimes clients come for a specific modality that they have heard about but quite often I use a combination of my skills. My clients trust me to figure out and perform whatever I feel is best for their circumstances. I always ask them questions about what is going on in their lives so I can hear from them what their challenges and healing priorities are.
You speak of Stillness as being an important part of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy – can you elaborate?
As a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist, I am trained to listen to and recognize different rhythms in the body, including different qualities of movement and stillness – including how to tell the difference between a restful and rejuvenating Stillness, which is alive, timeless and infinitely present) versus the sense of stuckness or blocks in the body when myself or clients perceive that something isn’t moving that wants to move. Practitioners learn to differentiate between different qualities of stillness and motion and in fact, the rhythm between the two is at the heart of our work – what happens on the other side of the Stillness. As with meditation, spending time in stillness, helps people’s bodies to reset and have more clarity and awareness.
How can we prevent imbalances within the central nervous system?
This is a really important question because studies have shown that over 80% of the conditions for which people seek out support (whether physical or emotional) stem from some kind of imbalance or dysregulation of the central nervous system.
I prefer to help a person remember the balance in the nervous system because if we look at it from a biodynamic perspective we never lose our innate ability to regulate our nervous system – it gets covered over or obscured by trauma and unresolved life experiences, but it doesn’t get lost.
I invite the body to remember the health and balance that is already there within. This gives the body access to increased capacity to meet any challenges that are causing the imbalances. I trust the intelligence within that area of the body to find its way to balance through the supportive remembrance of its health and wholeness.
“This approach skillfully invites physical and emotional life experiences that have become isolated by pain, strain, disease or trauma to find their way back from isolation to wholeness.” – Only once we find wholeness can we heal?
No not necessarily but it means that if we know that wholeness is already there (as I mentioned above), then healing takes a different route. I think life has many opportunities for healing and challenges, and they will always be unfolding.
Wholeness is always there on one level but, on another level, staying in that sense of wholeness is not something we can aspire to 24/7. I think healing is all about remembering and finding moments of knowing that the wholeness is always there.
What would you describe Courageous Heart Therapies mission to be – and what can clients expect to walk away with?
Our mission is to help clients turn their wounds into tools and to teach skills that support clients to have a different relationship with their story – one that really empowers them and creates resilience in the spaces where there was once perhaps trauma or hardship.
Clients can expect to learn simple tools that they can use at home to support better their nervous systems. They can also expect to have a better sense of their bodies and a better capacity to manage their own nervous systems.
The other side of ‘challenge’ is joy and enjoyment. Often we seek help because we are struggling with something but we don’t always pause when things are good or help learn to feel the sensations of feeling good. At Courageous Heart therapies we do both so people get a better sense of how to hold their challenges and how to really be with happiness and health. Health is not a commodity – it is something we have within us that we need to nurture and uncover from whatever it is that is obscuring us from feeling its presence.
Do you offer online sessions?
Yes! Somatic Experiencing sessions can be done remotely and are helpful for all types of recent or past injuries or traumas. These sessions involve following the body’s sensations to recognize what happened and what else needs to happen for greater resolution and integration of a past experience or future concern.
