There was something happily mad about all these sessions and I felt Shmuel (Stuart) Berger facillitating my healing even though in a way I did not have the faintest idea what was going on.
Nearly 70 years old, I am a retired teacher. I taught for 30 years then worked as a therapist and counsellor, mainly in the Charedi (Jewish Ultra Orthodox) world, and as a an artist. I’m coming from a Charedi (Rabbi Nachman) Breslov perspective.
Following some shock and grief in my life I developed a ‘health problem’. I was told gently by an expert that an ultrasound indicated 2 out of the 3 markers for cancer (of the throat) and a biopsy was advisable. A second doctor confirmed this.
My first thought was to turn to tefillah (prayer) and brochas (blessings) and seek ways to work on my new challenge and sadness. I was skeptical of any physical / manipulative approach being helpful. It may be that nowadays I tend to live in the clouds of the soul rather than always having my feet on the ground. Perhaps for various reasons I don’t have a clear sense of the body.
But I ‘happened’ to see a session of CranioBalance. I caught sight, across the room, of Shmuel (Stuart) Berger, who I’d never met, working on one of my grandsons and I was struck by the sense of seeing something I’d never come across before.
This person ‘knew’ the body deeply in a way I’d never seen before. It was entirely new to me that someone could so confidently holistically ‘know’ and be so at home with the physicality of the inner body, its subtlest connections to the inner person, to the soul. And I sensed that this practice was a dialogue, ‘as if addressing the ‘interface’ ‘ with the reality of the body as G-dly manifestation.
He was listening and responding to ‘something’ in there, confidently, boldly and powerfully. It seemed as if he knew and was so familiar with the miracle of the body’s ‘physical-material’ systems that the practice ‘flowed’. It looked simple, cheerful rational and easy. And it worked!
He worked systematically like a seasoned detective. He was neither ‘airy fairy’ nor did he treat the body with cognitive vacuity as a doll or a robot or a machine. It was like watching an artisan or one who ‘knows the terrain’ well; someone reading the invisible inner situation and proceeding to rectify it and ‘allow’ it with the consent of invisible systems of creation as they presented themselves. Amazing! I wondered if he might help me after all.
Now I had another cautionary reluctance. We are in galus (exile) and I felt (and feel) a strong connection with a source – the Source beyond the physical. In fact I’m often challenged spacially, restricted by ‘agoraphobia’ – generally often I can’t be expansive or feel tangible in the reductionist physical world of Assiyah (Lower World of Action). And I’m used to that. (I belong in a shul (House of Prayer) and not in a gym.)
If I ‘submitted’ to a CranioBalance session would there be some illusory investment in Olam hazeh (The Material World) or a disruption of the precious vital contact with ‘Above’ with which Hashem (God) blesses me?
I decided to try, on the principle that Hashem put this scene in my room for me to see it! I had witnessed in my grandson a playing out of released energy, the emergence of a meditative state and also the achievement of greater focus and sense of reality.
This is consistent with Rebbe Nachman’s descriptions in Likutei Moharan (The Writings of Rabbi Nachman). The Rebbe speaks of the dams and blocks to the light and Shefa (Spiritual Flow) and the vitality; and describes the cosmic and bodily flow and pulse. Shmuel’s work seemed to be about this release (and it met the necessary halachic (Jewish Law) requirement that a significant responsible body of opinion holds this approach to be effective) so what was I hesitant about?
My concern for myself had been that the treatment might redirect me in some way too much to the physical.
In the first session I noticed on the contrary a ‘letting go’ of negative attachment to this world and even a regression to the fetal, which in my case was halucinatory, while the helplessness in handing over to the ‘bold expert’ was no problem at all – it was a relief as I sensed him sensing the exact areas of contraction and knowing where the sparks of life were to be found. Rapid changes occurred particularly in sight, touch, vocally, across memory – there was an opening of the heart simultaneously and in light. These changes were reaching all levels of the body and beyond.
At the end of the session though needing some encouragement to re-orient spacially to sit then stand I was enlivened in every sense and had an awakening parallel to the spiritual gratitude of the experience of the mikveh (ritual bath) but in powerful physicality – a bodily gratitude – a sense that there was now circulation and flow of the kind Rebbe Nachman encourages and explains (L M 54). My body was saying ‘Thank you’.
A number of sessions followed in which I sensed that the ‘totality’ was addressed. The body’s bones and sinews and whatever went this way and that, the kedushah (holiness) was ever-present and it felt maybe sometimes as if a special silver ball was being rolled as on a board which was being carefully tipped this way and that until all came to rest with the ikker (essence) – which was then healed / exposed and released with simchah (joy): sometimes it included shouting something as if in accompaniment or song and I found my voice singing out either from a precipice or like a child (even at times like a baby!) and then laughing a lot.
Like all true healing these sessions were based on love – release while being held – and one was aware of Shmuel following a specific dialogue based on his self nullification – ‘blind’ expertise (this is the way an artist works).
These were extraordinary life-changing sessions.
Following the last in a series of sessions, others remarked that I seemed taller and younger. I feel some negativity has left me.
One could attribute logically the result of the next ultrasound to human error – simply the inaccuracy / subjectivity involved in interpreting ultrasounds but it showed no signs of cancer. A second specialist told me ‘You definitely shouldn’t have a biopsy. There is no need for it at all.’
This treatment which seems to come from the wisdoms of athletics, physiotherapy, cranial osteopathy, confident intuitive connection, and the blessing and blessed light of the great Masters is unique and I unreservedly recommend it. My body was literally blessed. I was actually blessed. All true therapy comes from Hashem. When healing is a blessing there is nothing higher.
Boruch Dovid
craniobalance 