Ah, the emotions! So much fury, joy, angst, fear, sadness in our inner worlds! E-motions are energies in motion, just like everything ( according to Einstein) in the universe is energy.
Energy is what it is and has many faces: energy shifts, energy gets stuck, energy gets depleted, energy gets restored.
Energy cysts are a concept in Craniosacral Therapy that will be explored today. I experienced energy cysts firsthand, before I started practicing Craniosacral Therapy.
I was in my car, making a left turn, when a drunk driver ran a red light and t-boned my car, destroying it, and also giving me whiplash injury. At the time, the crash was so loud, fast, and forceful, that I thought I was going to die. My fear was real and visceral. I was lucky that I wasn’t paralyzed or dead.
I recovered from my accident by getting chiropractic care and massage for my injuries. As much as these two modalities were helpful, I had a hunch that the injury wasn’t completely healed in my body, as if something was still in there, but I couldn’t access it.
Ten years later, when I was attending a Craniosacral Therapy course, this injury revealed itself again in form of having an emotional release on the table, i.e. I was being touched gently on my right shoulder, but I let out a big scream.
My brain, had walled off the FEAR from the accident/trauma from the rest of my body, i.e. my brain chose to ‘outsource’ this emotion by placing it in my right shoulder by creating an energy cyst (of fear). Consequently, the emotion’s energy was sealed off, hidden, and kept from the rest of my body “safe” from its harm.
The student therapist at that class had unwittingly broken down the walls of the energy cyst, so much so that the emotion of fear was let loose by my scream! My body felt good, relaxed and joyous now that it “knew” that it wasn’t going to die.
“The energy cyst holds the memory of its physical creation as well as the emotion that was present at the time. As the person becomes aware of the emotion and re-experiences it, the last effects of the energy cysts are removed completely. He or she can now view the whole incident in a symptom-free condition with a certain emotion-free, objective detachment.” ( John Upledger D.O., “Somatoemotional Release” p.33).
In times of trauma, the body has two choices in terms of how to deal with emotional energy: it can either disperse the energy, or make an energy cyst and wall it off.
“A background of destructive emotions, such as fear, anger, or guilt, favors energy cyst formation, whereas a background of constructive emotions, such as love or joy, favors dissipation followed by normal healing and rehabilitation.” ( Ibid.pgs. 33-34).
As I always say, the “issues are in the tissues!”.