Vivien Ray Craniosacral Therapy Herefordshire

29/10/2025

How I hate Halloween

I loathe and detest what has happened to Halloween. Plastic pumpkins; the ubiquitous and unpleasant fake cobwebs that trap and kill wildlife; the ugly depictions of ghouls and ghosts; the pursuit by young people of huge quantities of sugar; Yuk.

And feel angry that a word that could mean so much has been conscripted to describe this travesty. Holy night. The time in the year when the veil between the worlds is thin.

All over the world, the dead are remembered, honoured, communicated with at this season.

In my own imagination, this time, known also as Samhain, is the beginning of a descent into the darkness of winter. A time for focusing inwards, warming our bodies and caring for our souls.

The descent takes us all the way to the solstice, the darkest time of the year. A time where a miracle happens, represented in Christian tradition as the birth of the Christ child, the advent of light in the depth of darkness.

Picturing the nativity in a cave, lit by love, I feel connected to the stirring of the seeds underground, reaching towards the light.

The journey into darkness, in my own imagination, is accompanied by the fire and fury of the dragon. Not slayed by the young Knight at Michaelmas, but joining with the Virgin to support the descent. We need that fire and force to nourish the deep earth and to nourish our humanity.

And we need to offer our young people something more nourishing than plastic ghouls to help them understand death as a rich part of our lives.

we need to offer our young people something more nourishing than plastic ghouls to help them understand death as a rich part of our lives.

22/10/2025

Imagining old age.

I have been thinking a lot about age and aging. Inevitably, as seventy odd years have slipped by since I started counting.

I don’t think I ever expected to get old. I know when I was very young I looked at older people as if they were a different species and attributed to them attitudes and characteristics based on their years. My imagination was nothing like the reality I am living now.

I do count the years now. Not those that have gone, but those I hope are still remaining. I don't want to waste a moment. I treasure a day spent in joy, without having to measure it by achievement or activity. I seek out small pleasures all the time.

I have to confess that I pay attention to the age at which people’s death is announced on the news. “Oh no, that’s not long enough” if they have died close to my own age. But then those who linger on too long don’t always have the faculties to appreciate the extra time.

I think a lot more about death. I had a quite a long time where it was a constant preoccupation. “What will it be like?” “What happens afterwards?” “How can I bear to leave this beautiful world? My beloved people? This beautiful body that has served me so well?”

At first it was an anxious preoccupation that would catch me in the early hours of the morning and then it became a conscious exploration and gradually a friendly voice that reminds me to treasure this moment.

And of course there are the fears that go alongside that. What if I become unable to care for myself? What if all my faculties desert me?

I am fascinated by how our cultural expectations have coloured how I view my own ageing. What did I expect? How was that coloured by the way the older generations of my family aged and how was I influenced by the larger picture of our culture?

I saw a film where some people from Ladakh were shown a modern care home and were moved to tears that we incarcerate our elderly people in single rooms in institutions.

As long as we measure personal worth by income or the hours of work, the old will be seen as a burden. In Ladakh, before the advent of roads and modern influences, the old were honoured and cared for without question. I experienced that reverence once in India when a young man knelt and kissed my feet because I was a grandmother.

But here, it feels very different.

The stereotype of the “little old lady”

“You don’t look your age” is offered as a complement.

And, of women “ despite her age she was still beautiful.”

How I hate the road sign outside residential homes. A man leans forward on a stick, a woman walks behind him apparently leaning on him. Ageist, sexist and the epitome of the stereotype of old age.

Illness often accompanies getting older and can be thrown into the mix; “I’m feeling my age”, a client may say when they come to see me. But when we are well we can sail on into even older years without complaint.

And many, many people are ending their lives in our culture in poverty and loneliness. A crime we should all look on with shame.

I would like to shout from the roof tops that age is just not like that. Look at the old people you see and imagine the richness of all those years of life, but imagine also the possibility that they may be peacefully savouring each passing day.

I have been thinking a lot about age and aging. Inevitably, as seventy odd years have slipped by since I started counting.

08/10/2025

Inner Hospitality

Your friend arrives, somewhat worn by the day. You offer them a comfy seat, a drink and an attentive ear. Very soon they feel revived.

I would like to introduce you to a little practice that could be called "Inner Hospitality", because, although I have described how we would treat our guest, we often forget to extend the same courtesy to our own beautiful bodies that serve us so well and also get somewhat worn by the day.

Sometimes my client and I start a session of Craniosacral Therapy by allowing the body in all its glorious complexity to realise that we are going to be paying it some attention. You can do this any time

Sit or lie down, maybe offer yourself that cup of tea.

Now bring your attention to your feet. Are they a matched pair?

Don’t try to change anything, don’t wiggle them in the hopes of making things more comfortable, just feel what is happening.

Listen to the story of the feet, or travel inwards to see with your inner eye what is happening in those two amazing structures with all the little bones, the complex pattern of muscle and ligament, the amazing gravity-defying arch of the foot, the toes – are those toes the same on the right and the left?

What about your legs? Are they both meeting the chair underneath you in the same way? Is there the same weight in each leg? Can you feel all the complexity of your ankles? How are the knee joints? And your buttocks? If you were sitting or lying on sand would you make the same imprint with each buttock?

Go on up your back; the shoulder blades like to tell their story when you are lying down, then you can feel if they too are making the same print under you. Maybe one shoulder is nearer your ear than the other?

Your neck? Two arms and hands?

And what does the glory of your face have to say? Does your face feel symmetrical?

Each time you do this Inner Hospitality, you will find different stories being told, different parts of your body will be be crying our for attention. In the same way as you would have a different conversation with your friend (the one we were giving tea to at the top of the page) each time you got together.

Let us, for a moment, go back to that original scenario, the friend who is visiting: Imagine that the friend has a problem they are trying to resolve. You could offer them a solution, you could (but you probably wouldn’t) shout at them to sort themselves out. But if you are kind and wise, you will offer them the gift of your listening attention and probably be amazed as the solution comes to them in its own time and in an unexpected way.

With our bodies we are often not so kind. We have learned to over-ride the messages they are sending to us until they have to scream to be heard and we land up ill or injured.

But bodies too can find a solution to problems if we extend to them the same courtesy of our non judging attention. Of course if you haven’t done this for a long time (or ever) there may be a lot that your body has to tell you.

Trust the process. If your friend were really distressed you might have to give her a while to feel better. If your time is limited, promise to come back and discover a bit more later.

And if your body needs a friend to listen with you for a while, a Craniosacral Therapy session is really two people offering to pay close and skilled attention to the beautiful complexity of a human body.

Craniosacral Therapy session is really two people offering to pay close and skilled attention to the beautiful complexity of a human body.

17/09/2025

The Healing Power of Crying.

When I was a child my father would go to Pakistan for anything up to 9 months. He usually left very early in the morning and I was bereft.

I think I was very fortunate to have learnt so early how to heal my grief.

My strategy was to cry: To weep and wail, letting waves of grief flow over me and through me until there was none left.

I carried on until it was time for school when I tucked away my grief and lived through the first day without him.

When I came back from school, my grief having been carefully under control all day, it was hard to find it again, but somehow I knew that until I had finished crying there was going to be a part of me trapped in pain.

So, I would go and seek out signs of his recent presence, his pyjamas still on the bed, his coat hanging up behind the door, deliberately calling up his absence to reawaken my grief, burying my head in the pillow and crying until I could cry no more. Then I would play my saddest songs on the recorder.

This went on for about three days and then? ------- And then it was over, life came back into focus, I could enjoy the activities of the day and feel whatever feelings the day brought.

There are aspects of this story which seem very sad to me now: I have no idea how my mother felt about my father going and I don’t know if she was even aware of my three day weeping marathon. As far as I can remember I cried in solitude.

But the skill I learnt then has stood me in good stead dealing with the griefs that inevitably come in life. And also dealing with the minor hurts and injuries of every day.

Looking back, I have great admiration for the little girl who had learnt this strategy to get over the pain of separation.

Sometimes when a client comes to my practice for the first time they are surprised to find themselves in tears as they tell their story. They are often a bit embarrassed too, after all, we have only just met and tears are not a usual part of the social scene in our culture. But tears are a part of healing, part of releasing the held stories we carry so they can be gently incorporated into our whole being.

After a lifetime of being encouraged not to cry, we have to relearn the art of expressing grief- weeping, sobbing, wailing, howling, screaming, roaring, whimpering, moaning, groaning, sighing- all the glorious noisy expression of pain.

In many cultures there has been a tradition of wailing after a death.

In the celtic cultures this was known as “keening”: Professional keeners would express the grief in sound and song, leading the mourners to enter a liminal state between life and death, a “controlled madness” of grief.

There was no attempt to hush the bereaved, the whole community would join in, comforting and wailing too. It is easier to make the sounds of grief in noisy company.

It takes courage to enter this other place. Like the descent into the underworld depicted in mythologies, we have to embrace the dark, the fear and the pain and wait for the right time to return.

However, it is common now in western culture for a bereaved person to be congratulated for not expressing their feelings and for keeping everything “under control”. Widows in modern fiction and popular culture are given a year to recover and “move on”.

I remember my aunt, after the death of my uncle, crossing the street to avoid friends who might commiserate with her. She would say they were trying to “catch her out” by showing her pain.

Women wearing makeup will worry first about their mascara.

Shame and embarrassment cut deep.

Even babies are judged: Is he a “good” Baby? Meaning does he cry a lot.

Almost all of us have been taught not to cry: “ Pull yourself together.” “ You’re too big to cry.” “Big boys/ girls don’t cry.” “Be brave”. Children are told “It didn’t really hurt.” and even sometimes tickled to “distract” them from the pain.

And so our deepest feelings, our connection to the part of us that suffers, is shut away and silenced. To the detriment of our wellbeing and to the loss of joy.

It’s not easy to maintain contact with our grief and to have the courage to acknowledge it and express it as it arises. The tragedy is that when we shut ourselves away from painful emotions we numb ourselves to the joy and delight that is also a part of life.

Pain that is not recognised and given time to express itself is stored away and becomes a burden that we carry with us.

03/09/2025

https://www.vivienray.co.uk/post/summer-goodbye

I want to celebrate New Year right now, as the season changes, new terms start and we gather ourselves in to prepare for a different season.

I've never been very impressed by the celebrations of New Year at that arbitrary date in mid winter. It has become a very noisy and rather self congratulatory occasion.

But this moment, when the mornings and evenings are colder and the sun has lost some of its power, when the darkness arrives a bit earlier and the plants are creating seeds, berries and fruits in preparation for their winter rest and next year’s growing and blossoming, now is the time to party, to draw together our communities and our families and encourage each other to get ready for winter.

Encourage---- a beautiful word from the french “coeur” = heart. Lets fill our hearts ready to go into the dark, ready to pick up the threads of work and labour and study.

I have loved this long hot summer. I know----global warming, drought, water shortage, but at the same time, for me, it has been blissful to go barefoot, to dress in moments, to dry clothes in a couple of hours and to spend all my time outside.

This week I have been very aware of the changes, as I was camping as they happened: the sound of rain on canvas, the need for extra layers in the morning. A far cry from the week before when I was also camping and searching out areas of shade, splashing cold water on my face and moving slowly through the heat, relishing its caress, recognising its power.

I remember so clearly the end of summer as a child. I never enjoyed school, and my holidays were free and spacious, so, for me, the preparations for the start of a new school year were a time of grief. How I would have welcomed some recognition of the transition, some support to negotiate the change from breathing out into the countryside to gathering back into autumn and term time. (Oh! those school shoes, even my toes were cramped by the requirements of term time.)

So, as you search out your slippers, check that the winter woolies haven’t been eaten by moths and start thinking about warm soups and stews, let's have a party, a “farewell to summer” party, a courage building party, and fill our hearts with summer sun to see us through to spring.

Maybe this is even the time to make our “new year resolutions”. The time to draw strength to achieve our dreams and overcome our challenges.

A song we sang in for autumn in the kindergarten:

Summer goodbye

Summer goodbye

You may no longer stay

Autumn is on the way

Summer goodbye
Autumn hello

06/08/2025

I am often asked how I came to be practicing Craniosacral Therapy. Well……… there were these sheep, you see.

I am often asked how I came to practice craniosacral therapy.

03/08/2025

Lammastide greetings to you.
And now it is August. A little of the heat has gone out of the sun. The trees, having reached up towards the sky, lose some of their vibrant colour and pause before they drop their leaves. The bright green is slightly faded, the plants in the hedgerow are growing that white mildew, the nuts are nearly ripe and there are blackberries on the brambles.
So what is required of us as the season turns?
When I was a child, my mother used a phrase I hated; if I was upset she would say "pull yourself together". But I wonder if we can repurpose this phrase to express something of what is required of us now, a gathering in, a collection of our summer dreams to forge into lasting creations;”pulling ourselves together” to become strong enough for the changing year.
To mark the change of season, a very simple thanksgiving with a loaf of new bread is all you need. Give thanks for the blazing june and welcome the harvest.

celebrating Lammas, the season of the harvest