What is Cranial Nerve Sequencing and who is it for?

Therapists, counselors, and teachers who serve others primarily through verbal dialogue often lose a felt sense of their own bodies while being present to clients.

When we do check in with ourselves, we can become overwhelmed with sensations and feelings that seem like they distract us from our work. How can we access all that somatic information as a source of non-cognitive intelligence and wisdom?

What if simply being aware and present, in very specific and focused ways, presented new, easier ways of being in the relational field with less effort?

One thing I know for sure. I've learned from my students that states of bodily dissociation and/or overwhelm, if they become constant over time, can lead to:

Losing interest in your work, increasingly anxious or compulsive thoughts and behaviors, lack of movement and exercise, and physical pain. These are just a few of the costs. Isolation is another.

There are many reasons for this, and it's not all on you. The brutal systems we all must navigate as professionals can isolate us and push us past what is healthy.

Our slowly evolved, biologically complex bodies need time to reset, recover, and then reconnect with others - often more time than we can give them.

When we do get somatic training, it's about other people's healing. It's very complex. We may understand it intellectually, but our bodies haven't had a chance to contribute to that understanding.

That's why this course is for you, and you alone, to create and sustain a pleasurable dialogue with your own body.

This 12 week course offers ample time for experiential practice, mini-breaks to digest learning, and dialogue among participants as an antidote to these issues.

You will not be required to learn massive amounts of information faster than your body can process. What you learn can improve your work, but it can also improve your life outside of work.

Every week, you will learn a new practices for one cranial nerve, as well as the anatomy and physiology of the nerve and its sense organ. You will slowly build up your practice repertoire to sequence through all twelve nerves from memory.

Your body will have time to catch up with your brain. Through investigating and caring for your own feelings, body sensations and cues, you will build trust in your relational instincts as well.

Quiet learning and somatic exploration, while not a direct treatment for trauma, can sooth a traumatized or stressed nervous system.

Attending to yourself and including another person in your awareness is actually a natural thing, but it can get trained out of us or overcomplicated. The course aims to restore this natural ability.

Benefits of the process, according to my students, are:

• Feeling good in, and about, your body
• Grounded presence
• Emotional, physical, and cognitive resilience
• A resonant, calming voice
• A more expansive awareness of environment and others
• A flowing connection between sensation, emotion, and thoughts

What is cranial nerve sequencing?

It provides somatic adjuncts for therapists and educators who are highly skilled at verbal communication - but have difficulty accessing sensate, embodied support for their own nervous systems while working.

l guide you step by step through an embodied experience of all twelve cranial nerves. Smell, vision, taste, balance, sound (both hearing it and making it!) and internal regulation via the vagus are some of the territory we cover. We learn concrete practices for each nerve, exploring its sensory or motor function in stillness, and then linking it to mobility within your environment.

You learn the basic anatomy and function of each nerve. Recordings with visual support materials will be provided afterwards to help you remember what you've learned so you can share it with clients if appropriate.

You will return to your senses, one sense organ at a time. Discover neglected areas of perception and re-integrate them for sense of wholeness and peace. Experience the easy poise of your head and spine, and an overall dynamic and balanced posture that the Alexander Technique is so famous for.

It's actually very difficult for our bodies to think and feel at the same time. Thinking "hard" sometimes results in unconscious motor activity that can be felt as tension.

When your motor system is always active, it drowns out the nuance of sensory experience. When your sensory system feels unsupported by your structure, you can feel easily overwhelmed.

Through exploring each cranial nerve, how it connects to and animates your physical structure, you experience a more springy and resilient relationship between inner and outer worlds.

I've been developing this material for over 10 years. If you would like to experience an earlier iteration for a very affordable price while supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Alexander Technique, you can access recordings available for donation below:

HERE is course 1, cranial nerves 0 - 3

HERE is course 2, cranial nerves 4 - 9

I've learned so much more since then though! I invite you to jump in and give the newest version a try.