The AGM last weekend was an opportunity for those who attended to meet Jan Trewartha and hear her speak with a gentle conviction about Sharon Wheeler's ScarWork. Her demonstration of a couple of techniques and opportunity to practise on each other added an experiential element to a really relevant and fascinating session.
 
For myself, I had the added experience of being able to  volunteer a scar and thought I would share a little bit about it. Jan worked on my caesarean section scar, using feather touch and down the rabbit hole techniques. Using the lightest of touch and subtlest of movements I could feel shifts down my left leg, gluts and abdomen, leading to a feeling of more freedom of movement as I walked to the station. That night I was exhausted! 
 
At home both my partner and daughter noticed a change in the shape of my belly, less of a fold tightly pulled in and more of a flop! For myself, my gluts remain more relaxed, and I feel less constricted across my lower abdomen. My scar is shallower than it was and less tightly attached to my abdominal muscles. 
 
It is difficult to feel that I am doing justice in describing Jan's skill and the changes she has instigated in my scar. It feels that these benefits are continuing over time and I sincerely thank her. 


Written by: Laura Hawksley, December 2019
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Sandra Heider is a practising body psychotherapist, trained at CBPC, and also a yoga teacher. We were lucky enough to have her at our Afternoon Session at this year’s AGM and to discover how biodynamic practice informs her yoga teaching.

Some of us there had done lots of yoga, some still did yoga, and some not very much at all. But we were all biodynamic massage therapists and were intrigued to find out whether there could be a meeting between yoga (which one attendee described as a more ‘top-down, structured approach’ to physical practice) and biodynamic massage. How would it make it different?

Sandra’s approach was one of allowing ‘gentle curiosity’ with ourselves, as our bodies followed her instructions. How does it feel to constrict the breath in ujjayi breathing? How does it feel to wrap our arms and hands around each other and bring our elbows together? What is happening internally when we take on the detailed positioning of each part of the body? Bringing a level of attention to the internal aspects of taking a pose not only meant we worked more interoceptively but also with an added sense of taking care of ourselves. Often Sandra would remind us to relax our  necks and heads – often forgotten when we are concentrating on aligning ourselves. Using our hands to hold our own heads as we came out of a pose also gave an added feeling of safety and care.  In a way that is more typical in body psychotherapy, we  also encouraged to make sounds and movement in the usually silent and still savasana (corpse) pose at the end of the session.