The Field Dynamics Podcast W/ Gary Strauss (Excerpt)

Today's episode is with master practitioner and renowned Polarity Therapy and Craniosacral Unwinding Instructor, Gary Strauss. We discuss the primary pulsation of life, coming back to the self, esoteric anatomy and how we are dimensional beings operating within broader fields. We explore the therapeutic journey of practitioner and client, how energy helps us transcend the polarities of life and how to orient towards effective trauma healing. This is an excerpt from the Field Dynamics Podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to the Field Dynamics podcast.

We're here to facilitate inspiring dialogues about the nature of consciousness across disciplines,

Communities and practitioners,

All with a holistic perspective.

From energy healing to somatic therapies,

From neuroscience to meditation,

We believe the most interesting things happen at the boundaries of disciplines.

I'm Christabel.

And I'm Keith.

Thanks for joining us today and enjoy the episode.

Hello,

And today with us is Gary Strauss,

A master practitioner and world famous polarity therapy and craniosacral and winding instructor.

He is the founder and director of Life Energy Institute and Polarity Healing Arts of California.

Gary has helped thousands of people find greater health and wellbeing with his work and mentoring.

His educational programs have uplifted many students to greater levels of skill,

Self-awareness,

Empowerment and deep understanding of the principles of life energy.

To experience Gary's unique perspective on healing energy and holding space is profound.

His compassion and devotion to helping people through his work is deeply touching.

And with over 30 years experience in the energy medicine field,

His expertise,

Techniques and skills in the energetic healing arts are unmatched.

Gary,

Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Good to be here.

So as the founder of the Life Energy Institute,

Could you share with our listeners how you define life energy and by chance,

Is this the same or different than traditional terms like prana,

Chi,

Life force,

Et cetera?

That's a deep question.

You started pretty deep.

Let's see.

So our world is made up of energy,

Everything.

If you look at the,

I love physics,

I'm a student of physics and in particle physics,

They're always trying to find out what's the smallest element of matter.

And when they get down to that level of infinitesimal reality,

Which they think is not even the bottom,

They think that reality is actually a probability,

That it's not even a solid substance.

And the greatest,

The theory that I love the most is called string theory.

And that theory says that our whole entire universe,

Which we are a part of,

Is woven together by threads of energy and very fine vine filaments of energy.

And actually that's the same theory in Ayurveda,

Which is the ancient energy medicine system of India.

They say those threads,

They call those threads,

Aka threads.

And they say those threads come from the greater Akash or the Akashic record.

And our world is woven out of that.

That's actually theory that fits exactly with physics theory on how the universe was created,

That our universe is woven out of a great source of energy,

Much greater than what we live in.

So life energy is a subset of that,

Not that.

It's an expression of that weaving.

And then we are as an entity woven in with those threads,

Our own individual energy,

And probably also the electromagnetic field of the earth as well.

And so when you say energy or life energy,

Life energy is a subset,

I think,

Of the entire energetic continuum of life.

Beautifully put,

Gary.

What was your calling to healing work?

What attracted you to polarity therapy and cranial work in the first place?

I was on the track to become an environmental engineer.

I was doing wastewater recycling,

Which has become very popular today.

About 50 years ago,

We knew that there were our resources were limited and we needed to be in recycling.

And so that's what I was engaged in.

And I started studying polarity when I was in college.

Somebody introduced me and I always thought it was incredible.

And the more I went on in the work of environmental engineering,

Which I did quite a bit of it,

I started doing polarity.

I met a teacher,

Another teacher,

Started playing with it.

And the more I played with it,

The more I felt like I was home.

It answered so many things.

I grew up in a generation of,

You know,

In the sixties and the theme was how do we help or how do we be a part of life or how do we add value?

That's what I heard.

That's why I was doing environmental engineering.

And I found with polarity that I could just help somebody immediately because in environmental engineering,

You had to go through politics and systems and companies and cities and jurisdictions.

It was really enormous.

And I thought the state of the art was like,

So not visionary.

And when I started doing polarity,

I felt like I helped somebody immediately.

It was immediate.

And more and more,

It felt like,

No,

This is a better way.

And so you're talking about working on others.

I'm curious about what was your attraction or was there any at that point in terms of self-healing,

Self-development?

I was attracted for myself originally.

I didn't think about doing this because I was in college.

I started doing yoga and meditation.

I was practicing martial art because I had this idea.

I definitely,

You know,

Yoga.

We grew up in that idea,

Oh,

We need to cultivate the self.

And when I found polarity as a form,

I was like,

Wow,

This cultivates yourself better than I thought,

Better than yoga,

Martial art.

I thought much better.

And so that was originally why I was attracted to it because I thought,

Wow,

This is incredible because my energy opened up.

I awakened literally through that work is what I thought.

I was just doing it for myself for years before I said,

You know what,

This could be a profession.

Cause like,

Imagine 50 years ago,

This is not,

People are not doing this kind of work really.

Right.

So you were,

You were around in the formative aspects of some of this,

These movements and these therapies.

And you're talking about the polarity therapy being kind of the starting point.

But now you're also a cranial sacral teacher or integrative cranial sacral unwinding as your program is called and your methods called.

So given that you teach that many people who are going to be listening to this might be unfamiliar with some of the core concepts and cranial work,

You know,

Might you briefly inform our listeners about this particular healing art and not only the description,

But what is the,

You know,

What does the session look like?

Okay.

So I think we live in the era awakening to energy that our world is made up of it and that everything is,

I think that's our time.

And so then we say energy medicine and polarity is a work based on Chinese and Indian,

Egyptian and traditional indigenous people's views of energy and life.

And so it's an energy medicine system.

Cranial is a subset that deals with the cranium and the pelvis and the spine and the fluid and the energy and the physiology that goes along with it.

And at the heart of cranial is an idea that there's a pulsation of life that comes out of the brain and spine.

It's that's the same thought in many indigenous systems or in Ayurveda or even in Chinese as medicine,

They believe that that pulsation is what imbues health,

Potency and radiance in life.

So they think this is the first pulsation of life and cranial people,

All cranial people think cranial is the first pulsation of life around which your body and your life takes its cue.

So finding cranial within,

I found cranial within polarity because polarity is energy medicine and working with the head,

The spine and the currents around the spine,

You find cranial.

So the cranial is more about that,

We say the midline or the primary respiration of life or pulsation from which all the other pulsations come.

So my teacher,

Dr.

Randolph Stone,

I mean,

He's the originator of polarity.

He said that cranial was like the Nile.

It was the one river of life that gave rise to all the other.

In connection to this,

Gary,

I think we're coming close to this question I had,

Which was to share a quote of yours here about healing works with your system.

And the quote is,

There is an inherent unifying intelligence within the system itself that is deeply meaningful.

The job of the practitioner is to help that intelligence by organizing energy and that helps to maintain integrity where people have lost it.

This seems to connect very much to what you've just been talking about,

But can you tell us a little bit more about that idea?

I don't remember writing it,

But that could be traditional cranial script.

Any teacher would write that almost exactly the same.

So partly what I learned is I've been a practitioner for more than 40 years.

So I've done a lot of sessions.

Maybe I've done something like 50,

000 sessions in that range.

So I've learned by doing the work.

So what I see is when you do this work and people receive it,

It's like they come back to themselves.

That's the overall thing that I see that they come back to self.

They don't come back to self because I'm thinking I want to bring you home.

They come back to self because you're holding the spine and that's where the self originates from.

And in the esoteric anatomy that I learned,

We would say that spirit comes into your body and the center of your brain and the center of your spine.

The first structure formed in a newborn is called the neural tube.

And we have a tube like that in our body that it evolves into.

So before differentiation,

Here's this midline and your body and your being evolve or gestate around that to become who you are.

So when you do this work and I didn't know in the beginning,

I wasn't taught that,

But you would hold the sacrum and an occiput or you would do some cranial and people would get off the table.

I had this happen almost every time,

So much.

They get off the table and they say,

I feel like myself.

And I feel like myself for the first time in a really long time.

And that's like such a quote.

It's like ridiculous already.

I mean to hear it.

So then you have to infer from that,

But you'll find it in the literature as well.

That's something about the spine in the brain brings you back to who you are.

And so we say that's who you are is like you have intelligence in your frontal cortex,

Not very evolved I think personally,

Not too smart.

You have memory in your parietals and you have structural integrity in the balance in the back of your brain.

In the center of your brain,

There's a fluid core.

And in that fluid is your essence.

And so we think that when you hold that essence that it has,

You know,

Intelligence is a limiting,

It's not really a great word,

But unifying principle way better.

And that there's a unifying principle in our universe that's organizing it as well.

And we have this idea that the smallest thing looks like the biggest thing.

And usually they do,

They behave the same.

And according to,

We think this principle that lives in the center of your brain and that's fine.

Reviews

Inspiring, thank you!