“Traumas Are Released If They Are Listened To Without Judgment”

His hands are as big in reality as they are powerful when placed on his patients. Through them, he ensures that he can listen to the soul of the people that, according to what he tells us, is always expressed in their body. And deep listening transforms them.

Mike Boxhall, a British psychotherapist and craniosacral therapist with a long history, former President of the Craniosacral Therapy Association (CTSA) of the United Kingdom, has spent 15 years traveling the United States, South America and Europe to teach his particular technique of contact craniosacral therapists.

A way of working that for years filled his practice with couples seeking to resolve their infertity and that has made him the “grandfather” of more than fifty children.

Mike Boxhall, psychotherapist and craniosacral therapist

His technique is rooted in craniosacral therapy, a method developed by the American doctor Andrew Taylor Still, who discovered that the bones of the skull, brain, spinal cord and meninges are connected to the sacrum and in all of them there is a rhythmic movement. driven by cerebrospinal fluid. This rhythm expresses the imbalances of the organism.

But Mike Boxhall, who is also nourished by the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and is based on Buddhism, after years of practice has reached his own conclusions about life, illness and the mysteries that make them up.

-How do you define yourself?
“I like to see myself as a bridge between science and ancient wisdom.” I am a psychotherapist and craniosacral therapist; that is to say, I work with the mind and with the body. I am also the bridge between the two and I like to help people discover and integrate spirituality in their body.

Much is said about spirituality without taking into account that any spiritual experience takes place in the body and corresponds to a sensation. Spirituality is above all a sensory experience, otherwise we would be facing a concept, we would talk about it, but without really knowing what it is.

—And this settlement of spirituality that you promote, is it really healing?
—Healing of both the body and the mind and soul is the result of complete acceptance, the easiest and the most difficult when it comes to living. I say this very often: there is nowhere to go, everything is in its place, we just have to wake up. Looking for happiness, we turn away from it.

It just takes presence and stillness. Stillness is a state in which we are aware of what is happening without being trapped or attached to it. What I facilitate is for people to get in touch with themselves and see who they are, where they come from …

And at the core of my work is the integration of the feminine and masculine principles, as defined by Jung. I am not talking about genres. The feminine and the masculine can only be integrated through trust.

It is said that thinking is male and intuition is female. The world in all areas – and also in medicine – has an excess of masculinity and has been suppressing the feminine. In these conditions we can never feel complete or balanced.

Spiritual work also means for me to rebalance these two principles and to return to the feeling of wholeness.

“Everything seems to lead in the same direction: honor the heart, whose highest expression is trust and not search.”

“And how can we regain balance; that is to say, recover our feminine aspect?
“It’s basically about surrender, surrender.” It is about abandoning the processes that take place in the head to allow the Intelligence with capital letters to emerge, an Intelligence located in the heart.

It is learning to function with the heart, which is the source of authentic wisdom – philosophy in Greek – accompanied by the brain, but in a more balanced way. Currently scientists question the sovereignty of the brain and there are many who say that it is the heart that directs us.

Everything seems to lead in the same direction: honoring the heart, the highest expression of which is trust and not search. The more we let go, the closer we are to Intelligence itself, which is the source of the universe.

“And this is health?”
-Absolutely. My work is a journey undertaken between two or more people at a level of being where there is no disease. The more capable we are of surrendering, of shedding armor and accepting who we are, the closer we are to the source of Everything.

And by visiting or touching this deep place, then, in my experience, it is possible to return to your daily life without your pathologies returning with you. It is a rebirth in the present because you discover a deeper dimension of yourself, your essence, who you really are.

And for me that is what spiritual work consists of: it is not about going in search of an object, but about recovering the subject that you are.

—One of his mottos, and something he repeats to his students, is: “Let the work do the work.”
-Yes. Most knowledge ends up being a limitation. So I go back to “I don’t know.” Scientists say that 90% of our pathologies arise from stress, which takes shape on a physical and psychological level. Then someone comes in, labels it and ends up treating the label, forgetting about the person.

Embarking on a spiritual journey means entering the unknown and the limitless, and that can be scary because we don’t know what we are doing. It’s what I teach my students: no goal, and learning to trust the process. If you knew where you are going it would already be a limitation.

I show that I can let go, and what do I let go of? My limitations. My little “me” to get closer to infinity. There is no success or failure, there are no silver cups, there is only learning and expansion of consciousness.

—And what, specifically, is the role of craniosacral therapy in this spiritual work?
—Craniosacral therapy is a very beautiful way of getting in touch and establishing a first connection with the body, but then I go further and say to myself: “I don’t know. I trust.” And there things start to happen …

Let’s say I work now with Diana, who is here with us. I would be in physical contact with her, but my hands are not transmitters, they simply receive the person. The two great needs of a human being are to be sustained and to be heard. And we hardly ever have them covered.

My symbolic work is based on holding and listening to the person through my hands.

—Is it important to put your hands in the right place?
—The place where the hands are placed on the body of the person is not relevant because I do not treat organs or parts, but rather I support the Being.

And as that Being feels listened to, without being judged or analyzed – which in many cases is something extraordinary for him – then he begins to trust that he is fine as he is and can find the courage to go deeply in their suffering.

The patient trusts that he will continue to be supported even when he visits his darkest places and allows himself to explore them. The magic is that those traumas buried for years, now heard and received without judgment, are released, that against which they have spent their lives reacting suddenly disappears for the simple fact of being treated.

—You can say that the body tells its story…
—I don’t know what the story is because this would be a limitation. What you know will always be a limitation in the process. The important thing is what the other person, the patient, feels. I encourage my students to create the conditions for the patient to become empowered and aware of their habitual patterns of behavior. But even under those conditions there are stories.

A woman I am currently dealing with was about four years old when she picked up the phone just like girls pick up the phone at that age, picking up quickly and saying, “Hi.” Then a voice said to him: “You should go find your mother because your father has been murdered.”

Over the next few years she gradually lost her hearing and is now totally deaf. He limited his listening due to this episode. I am now working with her and I hope that she will also gradually improve, but we will see.

“What makes us sick?”
“I think it largely has to do with not being present and being tied to undigested matters that continue to ferment within us.” The tendency to punish ourselves when we are not perfect, an energy that keeps us trapped in dissatisfaction.

And the body finds a way to express its discontent, its suffering or the trauma it has experienced, which may not be its own but that of the parents and can also affect us. The solution is to return to the present, where the cause of this suffering no longer exists, and take responsibility instead of continuing in the role of victims.

In that moment of present awareness there is the possibility of opening a door to let go of what torments us. Simply by expanding consciousness, the transformation of people is observed.

At 85, Mike Boxhall radiates energy. He has been a craniosacral therapist and psychotherapist for 45 years, but before that he was a businessman, a military man and a rubber planter. Jung’s approach to Buddhism and psychology changed his life. Now he seeks to create a coherent model of body therapy that integrates mind and body. His books include Conversations in stillness (Ed. Advaitia, 2015), and The empty chair (Ed. The mustard grain, 2012).