Ep 11 - Part 2: Tired and Wired: Safe Relational Touch for Nervous System Regulation

In part two of our conversation with aesthetician, artist, and craniosacral therapy practitioner Amy Linville, host and PLA Director of Alumni Programming Dr. Stephanie Costa continues their conversation focusing on biodynamic craniosacral therapy (CST) and its relevance for healthcare professionals managing chronic stress and trauma.

Amy explains how stress can lead to “chronic bracing,” and describes how safe, negotiated relational touch can help the autonomic nervous system soften and regulate beyond simply telling oneself to relax. 
 
Learn more about Amy on her website: https://www.amylinville.com/

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Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the PLA podcast. This podcast was created to help graduates of the Physician's Leadership Academy at the Columbus Medical Association stay connected to the PLA Teachings, mindset and community.

If you're not familiar with the Physician's Leadership Academy, we're certainly glad you joined us today. And if you're interested in becoming a student in the Physician's Leadership Academy. Check out our website@physiciansleadershipacademy.org. Applications are open for the 2026 class commencing in September.

I'm Stephanie Costa, director of Alumni Programming at the PLA, and today I'm excited to continue a conversation with Amy Linville. Amy is a unique esthetician who incorporates touch and healing into her work. She's also an artist, and [00:01:00] last month on the podcast she spoke with us about how nurturing our creative sides can be a stillness practice.

Amy has this other impactful talent that is so important to her that I felt would be very timely and useful to people working in healthcare. That is biodynamic, craniosacral therapy. Amy, thanks for joining us again and sharing more of your wisdom and talents with us. Thank you for having me. Yeah, there's a lot of talk right now whether it's on social media or yoga circles really a lot of places about how supporting our autonomic nervous system can be so beneficial.

In the Leadership Academy, we help to nurture a mindfulness practice in our participants and our graduates find the skill to be so helpful in handling the unpredictability and stress that's associated with their careers in medicine. [00:02:00] But the system of medicine is. Fast-paced, it has high levels of responsibility and a need for constant adaptability.

And it would seem that additional ways to help us regulate our emotions and nervous system could really be helpful to those working in healthcare. A few years back, one of our PLA graduates, Bonnie Pugh, held a session here at the CMA. Bonnie is a yoga instructor and she offered to lead an evening program to help us support our autonomic nervous systems.

I found it to be profoundly relaxing and restorative, and I knew after that session that nurturing my autonomic nervous system, helping myself to fully relax was something that I wanted to explore more fully. Amy, can you tell us a little bit about how, chronic stress and working in a demanding way or just trauma, [00:03:00] can impact our nervous systems.

Yes. The nervous system interfaces with all the systems of the body, so it's so important and it impacts the way in which we live our life and the way in which our body might start to create disease for ourselves. The, I think the part that makes it we should cut this out 'cause I'm stumbling. That's okay. What I find is. It's like we're told we need to have less stress. We know we need to have less stress, but it's another thing to actually make it happen in the body in an embodied way. And because we are wired to co-regulate and we're wired to be in connection and communion with other people, I find that having a skilled practitioner, making safe, negotiated [00:04:00] contact with you, relational touch with you, is the difference between maybe sitting in the dark and trying to meditate and giving up because you're overwhelmed by your busy brain and all that is trying to show you versus having this relational safe touch and your nervous system recognizes this.

This kind of contact as being safe, then everything can just, the whole, the guards can come down the chronic bracing, which is what I experienced and still struggle with now can soften. So there's, I dunno if you've heard of that term bracing, but I know a lot of nervous system social workers and somatic experiencing practitioners and people like that.

Shared that word with me and I couldn't believe it was a word I had never heard before because I knew as soon as I heard it, that is exactly what I had been doing. It's like when the tension is, I used to call it my [00:05:00] steel rod. Oh, you're talking about my steel rod. I had this sensation in my body for, from my almost entire life that there was a stiffness in me that I could not soften, I could not remove.

Wow. And then that can develop, that's a really powerful term, bracing. Yeah. And so there is a term chronic bracing and it is only through experiencing biodynamic, cranial sacral therapy for maybe not the first time, but in a time when I was ready to receive it, I was where I was needed to be.

I was so moved by. It. Just to have that removed and to feel my body not gripping was just, it just brought me to tears. It was so powerful. And not to say that everyone comes to me has chronic bracing, but there is something that there, even just to [00:06:00] show up in your day-to-day life, right? Get up, show up, put your face on, go do the things.

Be there for your family. Be there for your profession. It's all very demanding. And to have a moment in time where you are not expected to do anything, not even hold your body like the table is holding your body. The practitioner is another person holding the field for your body and 'cause your body is multidimensional, right?

We talk about the tissue body and the energetic body. So I'm there for all of those things and it just feels deeper, I think the image that's coming to mind for me. Not just for physicians, but many people as they wake up and start their day, they're really just armoring up to head into the arena and, in this defensive posture.

And of [00:07:00] course, if you're in this defensive posture of, tackling the day you are gonna feel like there's a bit of a steel stillness, whether that's a steel rod or it's there's a rigidness there. And what's also coming up for me is you're gonna need something more than just telling yourself to relax.

Yeah. And, just realizing that this kind of recovery that people need is in some ways a passive process, but in other ways. You have to actively seek it out. It isn't just going to happen when you stop doing. Yes. Yeah. And so that's where the biodynamic, craniosacral therapy can really be an I, I don't think active is the right word, but just to really support that, that total [00:08:00] relaxation, that healing, and just surrendering to not doing.

Yes. I remember a few months back Carol Chung, who's a PLA alumnus she came on this podcast and talked about the high incidents of trauma in physicians and how this impacts us as we care for people and live our lives. So Amy, I know you're using craniosacral therapy to give our autonomic nervous systems more flexibility and support the body's ability to self-heal.

Yes. DST is not a part of our traditional medical training, so I know people are probably saying, wait, what is this? So can you just describe to us and level set what is biodynamic? Craniosacral therapy? Sure. Craniosacral therapy without the biodynamic prefects. Came out of [00:09:00] osteopathic medicine, out of manual manipulation, and I don't honestly know if it is still taught in the do schools or not.

But there was a do named John up Ledger who at some point in the seventies had a desire to bring craniosacral therapy to a broader a broader set of practitioners. So people who maybe weren't physicians, maybe they were massage therapists. Hopefully somebody who has some, a lot of anatomy, but they're gonna get more to study it.

But, it takes a certain person to wanna to, to want to go into this. But he did open up the field. But my understanding is that later, and Franklin Sills is the guy who's most associated with biodynamic, cranial sacral therapy. And he just passed away a couple of years ago. My understanding is there was a group of craniosacral therapists [00:10:00] that felt like craniosacral therapy needed to be even further removed from a alignment model, which had come with the osteopathic training.

So this acknowledgement that the body is an inherent healer of itself. So really what we need to do is bring in support and maybe there's a way we can do that with doing less and not trying to impose some sort of treatment plan on a body that's already suffering. So this group of practitioners started to confess to one another that they were doing things a little differently and in fact they were doing less and they were having good results. And so out of that grew this other kind of arm, the biodynamic, craniosacral therapy. So we consider [00:11:00] ourselves as being less less doing and less of the alignment model even so than the other group.

Does that make any sense? It does. Okay. And I think it's going to become even clearer as we continue our conversation. When I introduced you for part one of our podcast that we did together, I had introduced you and used the words of Jim Marsden and said that you're doing the work that is yours to do.

Can you talk about how you came to be a craniosacral therapy practitioner? Absolutely. It was in, in receiving that work and feeling the steel rod move away and know that there was something really different about it because I had done a lot of osteopathic manipulation. I had done a lot of chiropractic, acupuncture massage.

And although in massage especially is one of those that seems for people like me that like it [00:12:00] can it's working because, they're diagnosing these trigger points in your body and they're helping you understand that the pain over here is really stemming from this other place in your body and how it's connected.

And it was all very educational, but then 24, 48 hours after the massage, my body would flare up its pain again. And almost as if nothing beneficial happened at all. And. Some massage therapists and I know this is true to a degree, will tell you that when you're this far gone or whatever, you're, when your body's this out of whack, you can't expect one session to heal you.

You need to come once a week or that's not realistic for some people, and it wasn't realistic for me. So to be able to go to a single biodynamic session and feel a sense of relief and release that I had never felt in a massage, no matter how I spaced them out was a [00:13:00] real moment. Yeah. I can only imagine.

In such a relief. So you went ahead, you did the training. You went into that and this was quite a commitment. Can you tell us like, what that looked like? Yes, I think it's 750 hours. Some of that time is lecture and experiential practice with each other. In the classroom, I would, I had to set aside a weekend, a three or four day, two full days and two half days, every other month, I believe for two years to complete it.

And during that time. We, we were making recordings written recordings of our sessions with other people and our experience as a practitioner. And then also when we were the person on the table, what was our experience like? There was a lot of anatomy studies. I did a lot of listening to podcasts.

I read a lot of books. It [00:14:00] was just, it was a very big commitment. And there is a wonderful podcast that's out there. He does not update any of the episodes anymore, but he did it for many years. And it is, he's interviewed all the heavies in the field, if you were and it's called the Craniosacral Podcast.

So if anybody is curious, you can go through that library and see that he's talked to, so many people who have all different styles and flavors of doing this work. Some very much, enclosed by a more medical sort of environment, a very scientific environment, and some who are very more on that esoteric spectrum.

And so there's certification and licensing. We are registered by the North American Craniosacral saac, north American Craniosacral Association. And that is something we have to [00:15:00] continue our edu every year we have to prove that we have continue education and that kind of thing. So it, it's different than like a massage therapist or a cosmetology practitioner.

It's and it has its own challenges as far as right to practice in different states. And we have somebody on the board whose whole job is to track rights of right to practice within all the states of North America. So for the person receiving CST, what might a session be like? I start with a rather short intake. I have learned that a lot of times by the time someone comes for craniosacral therapy, they may be already at an overwhelmed state. They might have a lot of frustration, they may have invested a lot of time and energy and a lot of other, and money and a lot of other modalities.

And so we, we tend, unless you know someone who knows someone, you might not think of this as your first. [00:16:00] Place to go. So I take that into consideration and with just practice, I've learned that the shorter my intake, the better. So we do a fairly short paper intake. I glance over it, and then we have a conversation because there's a lot we can learn.

I can learn by just how they're holding their body. I can sometimes recognize some bracing in their body just as we sit and talk. But it's real important to understand like especially if someone has had unsafe touch history, to make sure that they know that in real time. As the session continues, I not only want them to, but I really need them to stay with me and give me feedback because I really believe the work is collaborative.

So we set that expectation up. So it, as far as that beginning part, that's just building that relational field. And that can take. I try to contain that in 10 or 15 minutes if [00:17:00] I can, because I really wanna get on the table. That's why they're there. They're here, they wanna get on the table, they want to know what it's all about.

And so I get them on the table and I often start at their feet and it, and my, all my contacts are going to be static. And that's what's really different about craniosacral therapy than other body work modalities is we do not do, we do not impose any force into the tissue. It should be like the weight of a nickel, almost like you're working with the lymphatic system.

I think that is also a a way they describe that too, the weight of a nickel. So it's just holding, waiting for the system to recognize that it's safe, which can or cannot happen in a first session. It depends on the person's experience and what they're dealing and their level of trauma and their level of disease process.

So yeah, it's different for everyone. It's negotiated, it's collaborative, it's quiet, it's dim. I make them as comfortable as I [00:18:00] can. I bolster and pillow their body to wherever they need. I have some kind of non-music, music playing in the background. I check in. Is that okay? Would you rather have silence?

Would you rather have white noise? Because every opportunity that they have to speak on behalf of their body in a way that you don't get permission to in your daily life. You're in a office, you're in a meeting maybe and you're wishing you were in a different chair, or you're wishing, you could take your shoes off or whatever.

The thing is, you don't have those permissions always. So this, I want to be a space where not only do you have permission, but your body hearing you speak up on behalf of itself in a very, deliberate way. Is a type of healing in and of itself, I believe. Yeah. Agency is so important. Agency, that's the word.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That comes up a lot in the PLA. How long does the [00:19:00] session last? People can choose between a 60 minute appointment, which is about 40 minutes on the table, or an 80 minute appointment, which allows more like 60 minutes on the table. 40 minutes is great as a starter. Unless the intake time, overlaps a little too much, then.

Then, an 80 minute appointment can be helpful, but I can work with what people have. And I don't just suddenly remove my hands and walk away and leave the room. That's the nice thing about craniosacral therapy is there's no disrobing. So you're fully clothed. So you come knowing you're gonna lie on a table, so be comfortable, but I am there, I'm helping you move out of that what maybe would have become a sleep state for some people.

So I just help to slowly bring them back to the present moment. Ask them if they can hear the sounds or if they can notice any aromas in the room or any air on their skin and just start to bring them [00:20:00] around, then I'm there and present when they start, when they sit up from the table. It's not uncommon for people who are suffering from a lot of.

Challenging health conditions to get dizzy when they set up. So I'm there and I have a problem with vertigo periodically, so I just really knowing that there's another person there. So I'm there, I watch them, I hand them water, they come off the table and we have a little chat to make sure they're back in their bodies.

I encourage people to go back into the lobby if they need to sit for a few minutes. And that's the gist of it. An overview. Yeah. But not woozy that they can't drive or I've never had that happen, go back to work or anything like that. Not that you wanna go back to work after this, but, so when they get home that night or even the few days after a session what might they notice?

I always encourage people to, if you can schedule it at a [00:21:00] time where when you leave, you don't have a high demand on you. Just, maybe you do meet with someone, choose that person carefully, right? We all have friends that like stimulate us and we have friends that can stay level with us.

So if you can schedule it that way, I encourage it. Take, it's like with any other body work, extra water, extra care. Just notice if you feel sleepy, maybe it's okay. Can you allow yourself to go to bed early? That's not a problem. Whatever you can do to support yourself to just continue that support.

Supportive field, I guess in a way. And I usually do mention that the work can still show up in the system for up to 72 hours. And the kinds of feedback I get are things like, I slept so deeply I didn't have heartburn or, things in the house or things at home just seemed a little easier [00:22:00] tonight.

Those are the kinds of things that can happen. Yeah, I know several of our PLA grads regularly seek craniosacral therapy, as do I. And I find such a profound sense of relaxation during the session and just feel so calm and settled in my body. And I do notice much better sleep afterward. The other thing that I notice, Amy, is it really helps me to be more effective in my work, and especially as I hold space for the people that I'm coaching.

So I'm sure there are so many benefits that CST is providing, but I may not see those benefits or feel them. But I think cumulatively that combined with a lot of the other things that I do to support my body there's just. The layering of benefit with all of that. So [00:23:00] I definitely have more awareness in my body because I do it, but I'm curious without, divulging any kind of confidential information.

Do have an example of how CST has supported a significant change in one of your clients? I have a couple that come to mind. One woman would travel pretty far distance to come and she had a lot of dental trauma and. Somewhere she had learned that this could be supportive. We have had training to glove our hands and go inside the mouth and not in the way that you might think.

It's not like buccal massage. It's not like TMJ release. It's just, I might rest my index finger and my middle finger on the upper arch of the teeth and just rest and notice if I notice any sort of reorganization or motion, but I'm not enforcing [00:24:00] anything. But interestingly enough. Most people, I tell them, let's just see what we can do.

Working with your head and your face. I don't find that I need to go internally, but I just might wanna check in and say, if as our work progresses, would you be open to that? Yes, most people say yes, but I found like with her that we never really never needed to do that. I think having my background as an aesthetician and having had my hands on people's faces for 20 years, I have a lot of just muscle memory about what can feel good about placement and contact and, the weight of my hands and I'm, and pacing and these kinds of things that have become second nature to me.

A lot of craniosacral therapists don't really get training in facial contacts. And that's something I've sought out, by reading extra. Extra bolstering around that information. And I find that was really helpful to [00:25:00] her. And just having yet another person that she could share her journey with.

Not even expecting that I would have the answers per se, but that I was like a neutral listener who just again, with curiosity asked questions and just understood and empathized that this was a difficult road she had been through, and that maybe some of her professionals had mishandled her to some level and didn't, she didn't have the best experience.

And so over a period of maybe four sessions or six sessions, she really had a lot of resolution with pain and even just I think. Being more comfortable with the changes that had occurred in her mouth. It's, some people talk about there being more space and I think we need space for healing.

We need space and I wanna say it's energetic, but I do [00:26:00] think it goes beyond that because I can hold somebody's respiratory diaphragm and over the course of a few minutes, I can feel less constriction. I can feel that they're taking deeper breaths. This is space that's actually physically being created in the body.

And so you think about when you're sitting with a kidney, for example, at first it can feel like, I don't know, is there a kidney in there? I have no sense of it. Five minutes passes and I start to have a feeling like I can feel. Maybe even some subtle movements of the kidney. We forget that the organs are expressive and they're constantly swaying and expanding and moving toward the midline, moving away from the midline.

These sort of subtle motions are the language of a body that's alive and we see these drawings in anatomy textbooks and we think that we look like that inside, but it's so much [00:27:00] more dynamic than that. So I know I muddled, again, a couple of different things together, but that experience with her and her dental stuff was really.

Nice. I appreciated that. Literally you were holding space for her and bearing witness Yes. To what she had been through. And, as humans, to have another human give so generously in that way. Really it was giving and receiving bidirectionally. But also your description of the inner workings of our body is so beautiful because, as a physician, I think about kidneys as something that is a detoxifier and a filter.

And the physiology, and I'm not really thinking about. Our inner workings the same way that you are. And that was really lovely [00:28:00] to hear that description, so thank you for that. I would also think that CST could be incredibly complimentary to the work that a person may be doing with their physician or their therapist.

Can you speak to that a little bit? Yes. And that's one of the things that eventually, whether it's not, whether it's the first day we talk about the intake or as my intake says, as our therapeutic relationship grows, I hope that you will feel more open to share more with me. And that does happen over time and I think that's a better way for me to do it than bombard someone with a lot of questions.

'cause they've probably already done this with so many people. And now I've forgotten your question. It was it being complimentary to complimentary Yes. That people may be doing with a therapist or their physician? Yes. So I always ask who else is on your team? And that is literally the work that I, the word that I use, who else is on your team?

And then if they don't know what I mean, [00:29:00] I say are you seeing a counselor? Are you having other body work? And tho those are all check boxes on my intake form too, because I think that is very it's very good to know. It tells a lot about that person's personal challenge. How resourced are they? How, how many other types of practitioners are they working with, have they reached out to?

And so yeah, that's always a part of it. And I do love, I do see more progress in people who are. Who've got a team who it's like, oh I love this person for this, and I love to go to this person for this. And I also tell them that if they give their practitioners permission, that I would be willing to speak to them if they ever wanted to know more about what we're doing together.

Client to practitioner. Yeah. That's great. Any last comments before we wrap up?

I just, I think it's just a great reminder that the body [00:30:00] is a wise and just like I utilize my right brain a lot with my drawing practices. This, I have had a teacher for transforming touch Steven Terrell. He always says that healing is a right brain process, and I do believe that. I think I've seen it enough times.

And so when I have someone come in and they say, oh, I'm gonna do box breathing while I'm on the table because that helps me settle. I say, okay, that's your choice to do. But just know that you could also let that go if you wanted to. You could do even less. You might notice that your breath is shallow and that might start a mental track for you, but see if you can just notice it without any judgment or needing to do anything about it.

So I think that everybody seems to [00:31:00] need to hear over and over again that healing is a right brain process and maybe if nothing else. Maybe because so many people identify with being so left-brained and being so list oriented and knock it off the list, get it done. Achieve.

And it's oh, she really is different, or this is really gonna be different. It just opens up this door to something a little unfamiliar and unknown. And I think we all need a little of that, whether you have a spiritual practice or whatever, wherever you get that acknowledgement of the unknown, I think it's really necessary for the human experience.

Well said. And I think, I'm realizing as you say, healing is a right brain practice. Boy, if you didn't catch part one of this podcast go give that a listen. But Amy, thanks so much for being on our podcast for the Physicians' Leadership Academy and being so [00:32:00] generous with your unique and impactful talents and really gifts.

So thank you for joining us and listening to us today. If you're curious about the PLA more information about the Leadership Academy and application for the Academy can be found at the website for PA physicians leadership academy.org. And we are currently accepting applications for the next class beginning in September 26.

Thanks for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.