Energy Cysts: Burried Trauma In The Body

My client Carol couldn’t stop thinking about her mother’s funeral which had taken place a month earlier. Sadly feeling that the burden of holding the family together had now shifted to her, she decided to do some gardening to distract her from her feelings of grief and resentment. As she lifted a large container of planter mix, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her lower back. This was the beginning of a year and a half of chronic back problems. Carol tried regular chiropractic adjustments for her back pain but these only brought her temporary relief.

Our bodies often retain the emotional imprint of a physical trauma. These imprints are caused by especially intense feelings such as grief, anger, fear, or resentment that we may have experienced at the time of an injury. These emotional imprints can leave residues in the body at the injury site. The residues are referred to by CranioSacral therapists as ‘energy cysts’. A trained CranioSacral therapist can treat and expell this emotional trauma from the body.

Our bodies have the ability to adapt to ‘energy cysts’, but if the buried emotional trauma is not released, time passes and the body’s energy pathways become blocked by the cyst. Then the body must change the way it adapts by trying to re-route its natural energy flow past the ‘cyst’. As years pass and the body becomes more and more stressed, it can lose its ability to adapt so that painful physical symptoms and dysfunctions begin to appear that we simply cannot ignore.

By the time Carol came to me for treatment, she ws desperate for relief from the back pain that had disrupted her life. I directed Carol to lay down on my treatment table and then I gently placed my hands over the area of her pain. I started by asking Carol to tell me about what was going on in her life when she first began having problems with her back. Carol recalled the events which led to her initial back injury as I applied manual therapy and gently guided her through therapeutic visualizations and dialoguing to help her release the pain. As we spoke, I felt Carol’s tissues relax along her entire spine. An hour later, when Carol got up from the treatment table, she said that most of her pain had disappeared and she felt as though a large burden had been lifted from her. The next morning Carol felt even better and was able to get dressed with no pain for the first time in several months. Since her therapy session, Carol has been able to return to her normal activities without pain.

During therapy to release ‘energy cysts’ from the body, a CranioSacral therapist engages in imaging and dialoguing techniques that can gently and painlessly guide the client through a release of long held negative emotions. As this occurs, the therapist can feel the tissues of the body relax as the energy cyst is expelled. Then the client’s body is able to return to its optimal levels of functioning.

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Gloria Flores LMT,CST,HHP is an A.A.D.P. Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and an Upledger Institute Certified CranioSacral Therapist. She has a private practice in Burbank, CA and is a volunteer therapist at Wellness Works Holistic Health Center in Glendale, CA. Her practitioner profile can be found at iahp.com/gloriaflores