Listening with my hands

One question people I work with often ask me in sessions is: “what are you feeling?”
We both know that in their question they are referring to the physical and the more-than-physical. In this note, I describe some of the ways I listen with my hands, what I perceive, and how this impacts the therapeutic work in sessions. From a simple friendly hand on our back, to specific skills and techniques, it is our human nature to rely on touch to soothe, connect, and share experiences of friendliness and safety. In cranio-sacral work we are trained to work with touch in very specific ways, and each practitioner will also have their own individual ways, including their other knowledges, experiences, and who they are as a person. 

I remember receiving a treatment where multiple practitioners had their hands on me at the same time, and the main thing I noticed as the patient is how different each therapist’s hands felt; their touch was another fingerprint, uniquely identifying them. Each patient and practitioner duo seems to have that dynamic: what is offered, what is received, and how that feels, helpful or not. Sometimes we might benefit from a warm, soft, barely-there contact, and other times we want cool, precise, strong fingers marking out our edges.  

Going back to the question: what am I (as practitioner) perceiving? The only answers I can give are the ones that come through my own ways of hearing, looking, knowing. When they ask this, they would perhaps like to know if there are particular body parts or structures that I am assessing and working with.

Or, maybe they are asking: can you see me? what do you see about me? 

For example, with my hand on their torso, I might notice that the stomach feels tight, and that this kind of tightness feels to me more like an old stress response than a recent heavy meal. We might have a conversation about it, and we might both learn something about the person as we explore this tightness in their belly. Or, I might be holding their feet and from there perceive a tension in the right shoulder; we might then have a conversation about that: an old injury perhaps or a burden they have been carrying. It’s also possible that this individual has no feeling of the tight belly or tense shoulder, what I perceive at that time has no connection to what they consciously experience; or maybe it reveals itself later, weeks and months later. It’s not my job to tell people what their experience or history is; it is to note (and maybe share) any impressions, sometimes ask questions, have conversations or be with silence, and offer a space where their story can be heard. 

In these ways and more, I am listening to the whole person and their life. I could say it’s a passive state where information flows towards my perception, the ways in which birdsong or traffic sounds enter my awareness without me seeking them out. But it is also active, in that I am putting myself in a state where such information can come to me. All sorts of information may arrive: physical feelings like buzzing, pulsing, shaking, twisting; or sometimes broader strokes, like grief and anger, memories from decades ago, an injury from childhood, or anxiety about the future. Some days I feel more receptive than others, some days I wonder if what I am feeling ‘makes sense’. I don’t always say what I perceive; it depends on whether I think it will be helpful. It’s not an exact science; one gets a feel for it by doing, by seeing what leads onwards and what doesn’t, by building a rapport with the other, and by being willing to get it wrong. 

The practitioner’s job is to see-hear-know their patient, in whatever ways are possible in that time and place, with whatever sensitivity is available. My goal is to listen to the whole person, what they want to say, and whatever wants to speak through them, with words, sensations, images, and silence. The intention in this kind of listening, and maybe sharing what I perceive, is never to pry into anyone’s history or impress them with what I know about them. It is to hear what the body and psyche want to share, and to respond to it in some meaningful way. Sometimes the helpful response is to say nothing, to witness in silence. Whether consciously or not, and whatever the initial complaint, it seems to me that we are all looking to be known in our fullness, as the very particular people we each are.