An Interview with Mike Boxhall

Yes, yes, I know. It has been a while since I have made a post to this blog. My podcast project www.craniosacralpodcast.com has taken on a life of its own, with thousands of downloads per month, so it has indeed been getting the majority of my attention for the last few months. But an opportunity to add content to the blog just came across my desk, so I thought I would post it for those of you who enjoy the dying art of reading written content. Personally, I love to read, but the younger generation has its own ideas …
In Episode 32 of the podcast I interviewed Mike Boxhall, a CST teacher from the UK. Mike has over 40 years of clinical and teaching experience in craniosacral therapy and other healing arts. He commissioned a transcript of our interview for submission to a publisher and recently sent me a lightly edited copy. I’ll include it today for your reference. Mike really is a treasure for our profession, and there are many nuggets of wisdom in this transcript. I hope you find it useful!

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Experiences of Stillness in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy: Cultivated or Conferred ?

Well, this is surely my most self-indulgent post to date. Please bear with me, as I hope that relating my own experiences will effectively illustrate an important point about stillness …


As a child, I was fortunate to grow up near a stretch of unspoiled wilderness that bordered the suburb where my family lived.  I could walk out of my back door directly into nature and pass through native grasslands and old growth forests, encountering few signs of civilization as I made my way to the Trinity River, the most substantial waterway in north Texas. I spent many afternoons there after school, either by myself or with friends. On weekends and summer break I often enjoyed entire days exploring in the woods. Some of my earliest and most powerful encounters with natural stillness occurred in that stretch of wilderness. It was there that I first discovered the value of sitting still.

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Loosening the Knot, Part II

In the first post on this topic (Loosening the Knot, Part 1 – finding the client’s neutral), I briefly discussed the client’s state of neutral, why it is important, and the involvement of the autonomic nervous system in prohibiting its expression. I will now present three of the more common situations of inhibited neutrality that we encounter in clinical work and offer some practical suggestions for how to work with them.

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Loosening the Knot, Part I – finding the client’s neutral

In this post I will briefly discuss the concept of the neutral. A following post will elaborate on a few common challenges to its expression that we see in clinical practice.

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