Creature and Natascha sit in a home office in Eureka, CA after a craniosacral massage. Before the interview, Natascha relaxed into her second session with Creature full of powerful energy from the Hunter’s Moon. Natascha wanted to get to know this practice through the practitioner more thoroughly. Together they wrote down Creature’s bio and dove even deeper with a few interview questions. On the end of this post you can read Natascha’s experience during the massage and how she has benefited from Creature’s practice.

Natascha: Hello, welcome to the Little Lost Forest blog. Today we’re going to be interviewing Creature (they/ them) from Eureka, California, practicing massage, spiritual energy work and craniosacral therapy. It’s a beautiful cloudy October afternoon. Hello, Creature. How are you doing today?

Creature: I’m doing really well. I just gave a session not too long ago, and afterwards I feel very clean and clear and centered. Happy to be doing this with you.

Natascha: Thank you. And thank you for the craniosacral massage experience. I really appreciate that as well. What is your mission?

Creature: As far as this work goes, doing body work with people, it really is to offer what has been inherently bubbling up through me over the last decade.I’ve been getting nudges for a while now to offer healing work, and have been hesitant and insecure about it as I’ve been working through my ups and downs. I would say my mission is just to meet people where they’re at. I’m working with this concept of a mirror medicine and really just wanting to help folks get to an empowered state with themselves, with their body, mind, spirit. And I feel like I’m really just here to be a companion on that path for folks. I’m not here to heal anyone, but I’m just here to listen and respond and follow the lead of their own body and nervous system.

Natascha: Okay, thank you. What are your philosophies?

Creature: I would say that I walk a line between spirituality and politics. I don’t feel like they can be separated from me. In my own journey of healing has been very tied in with my identity as a queer and trans person, and also my journey of decolonizing as a white settler person. With those two realities, it’s also this experience of of neurodivergence that the more I embrace, I realize that I’m also embracing my healing gifts, and that being someone that doesn’t operate in dominant culture actually strengthens my role as a healer. It’s directly in opposition to a capitalist, patriarchal, society. And so I see healing and self-care and rest as resistance. And I also see the more that I let go of the expectations of what success looks like in this world, the more I listen to my inner guidance- that I have a lot more to give to other folks. So it’s really for me getting outside of my head and analytical mind and dropping more into trusting my intuition and trusting my energy and my body and my spirit and less of a like. Less of a, um, like I have. I have the answers or the tools to heal you. More like, um, something brought us together, and I’m here to be present and respond.

Natascha: How has plant medicine helped you on your spiritual journey?

Creature: Plant medicine has definitely helped me unlearn and unwind a lot. I was pretty naive and sheltered from a lot of the challenges of the world. Before I started working with plant medicine I was a big believer in college education and feeling like I needed to use that education to have upward mobility in society. But plant medicine really broke that down for me in big ways that that weren’t so much fun all the time. Now that I’ve managed to come through the… Dismembering, falling apart… I realize that there’s a lot more to me than I was aware of.

Natascha: On a spiritual path, what does “doing the work” mean to you?

Creature: It means a lot of things. I think primarily it means being in my integrity, which is kind of a constant path of falling in and out of that and finding it again. There’s also lots of layers to that. I also think it’s interesting and funny that we use the word “work,” because I also like to think of it as play. It’s strange to use that word, but also, I think, good to reframe that word and take it back. There’s the work with myself and unlearning, decolonizing, returning to my integrity. Then there’s the play with with others and finding peers who are similarly on that path and learning to discern boundaries and who are healthy people to be around. When am I attracting unhealthy relationships with people? So definitely discernment is a big piece for me.

Natascha: Thank you for that. How does spirituality play a part in your massages?

Creature: I would say spirituality plays a part in most every part of it. Because in order to be present and open enough, I need to to to do the work to wind down and rest and not get all swirled up in the chaos around me. So it requires a certain preparation and lifestyle. I definitely am nowhere close to perfect in that and have my own, you know, struggles like anyone, my own addictions and coping mechanisms. But it requires me to to intentionally drop out of that and take take time to rest before and after. I experience my work as as being a channel of sorts. And so it requires that I have relationship with guides and ancestors, and that I have a practice that is familiar enough to step out of my conscious ego mind and listen and follow. And yeah, it’s, um, about recognizing the more than physical aspects of us our energy body, our emotional or spiritual body, and the many layers involved. It’s also pretty integral with the somatic quality of emotion and trauma and memory and Ancestral generational kinds of of ways that energy gets locked and trapped in our body. I guess beyond the physical layers of muscle and membrane and bones and structure of the body, everything else is entirely spiritual.

Natascha: Thank you. That’s really great to hear. How does self-care play a part?

Creature: It’s definitely essential. I struggle, you know, having regular routines sometimes deciding to commit more to this practice and this way of making a so-called career or identifying as a practitioner, um, was an impetus for me to take self-care more seriously and not put it on the back burner. Um, I spent a lot of time in fight or flight mode, you know, racing around feeling like I need to hustle in this capitalist world. And often self-care it takes a second or third or fourth and so on to all these other things that seem like a priority. This practice is teaching me that it’s actually a guiding force that once I do have a baseline of self-care that speaks to everything else that I do from that state. And and it adds to the quality of, of anything that I have to offer to the world. Whereas without that self-care, I’m more fumbling, agitated and not showing up at in as good a way as I could be.

Natascha: Who introduced you to Craniosacral practices and why did you start practicing?

Creature: Let’s see. I first encountered Craniosacral actually during ayahuasca retreat. I’d never experienced it before, but I was already struggling with, um, dysregulation from the medicine I wasn’t quite prepared for entering so quick and so deep. And there was a practitioner there who gave me some sessions that were really helpful. And since then, it’s been the primary type of therapy that has helped me integrate from my ou-of-body plant medicine trauma. And it’s also been really key to me healing some physical traumas. I have a brain injury, concussion from forest activism. And I’ve recently been able to integrate that more through craniosacral. Out of all the modalities that I’ve experienced, Craniosacral stands out as, it’s hard to compare with with other modalities because there is this there is this spiritual kind of trance state quality to it that. It rides the line between energy work and physical manipulation. I’ve been privileged to receive a couple practitioners really only want one practitioner consistently. It has been pretty inaccessible financially for me. So being able to study it in a beginner way has helped me have a relationship with that [Craniosacral therapy] and myself. So I do some of the work on myself sometimes, and I’ve even learned to, to just sense, the shifting and unwinding in my own body as I do my own meditation and self massage practice

Natascha: What can your clients expect to get out of a session? And what about multiple sessions?

Creature: A lot can happen in one session, but yeah, it’s really the multiple sessions that start to really, really ingrain and train the nervous system to do its own healing, but to keep that new shape and posture.

I think it can be kind of- what’s the word?- It can be surprising to realize how much tension we’re holding and how much dysregulation we experience from the world, especially if we’re used to functioning at a pretty decent level. In my experience, I’ve spent a lot of the last decade very dysregulated, and so even one session can do a lot as far as just a little nudge or reminder that there is another way to be and exist. With multiple sessions, it’s just an opportunity to go deeper and to return to those places that we find the stillness that we’re seeking. It’s certainly not likely that after one session, we won’t just return to those old holding patterns that we’ve likely been familiar with most of our lives. So, each time we return and get that reminder, it’s more likely that we will be able to stay in those new shapes and those new postures and those new vibrations.

Natascha: Yeah. That’s great. What do you think while performing craniosacral therapy?

Creature: Oh, what do I think?

Natascha: What is going through the practitioner’s mind when they’re performing?

Creature: I would say very little. I mean, there’s definitely, um, moments where I’m wondering, like how how the client’s doing. Are they are they feeling this? Sometimes I’m like, “Oh, it’s just working.” You know, little mundane things like, you know, the temperature in the room or how much more time we have. But I would say the majority of the practice, I’m dropping out, out of thinking, and I’m going into a trance state. Um, that’s that’s familiar, you know, from plant medicine or being in ceremony where I fall into a mode with spirit more and I’m feeling the subtleties in the other person. And so my mind is going more into sensation and to feeling the depth of of tension and feeling all the knots and the twists and where those travel and almost just into my hands and not even in my head. So that’s part of why it’s so therapeutic for me as well because it allows me to step outside of that head space that our society teaches us to spend most of our time. It’s actually a huge gift to be able to drop into that state with other people because it does have a mirror effect for me, and it allows me to slow down. And I come out of a session feeling a lot more still and centered and whole then I feel most of the day when I’m not in a session with someone.

Natascha: That really resonates with me. When I got my massage, I’m much more in a state of meditation than I would be in a normal massage. So to think that you’re meditating to while I’m in this like, heightened state of meditation is just such a beautiful combination, like you said, a mirroring effect.

Creature: Yeah. It’s like like co-regulation kind of, you know, it’s that, you know, maybe someone’s coming in just regulated and I have probably some degree of dysregulation from being in the world. But the moment we like tune in there’s this balancing back and forth effect that starts to create this quality that allows for the healing process to unfold.

Natascha: How do you cleanse yourself from the client’s energy after a practice?

Creature: These are great questions. I mean, there’s ways that I do it during the session. The snapping is probably my favorite. Or just flicking the energy off. I can start to feel like pain build up in my arms if I’m, like, holding too much. And so I’ll just release that. I would say even just simple things like washing my hands, going outside and just kind of like opening up to earth energy. Yeah, just brushing myself off. Pretty pretty simple methods. I don’t really have like any sort of complex, wild way that I do that, but it’s definitely important. I definitely don’t like to go rush into something else and like to kind of take a good while to, um, just be in that state and not jump in a car or, you know, go out into, you know, go grocery shopping or something where it’s going to be overstimulating or dysregulating right away because, yeah, it’s important to feel. Let the process of returning to myself before what I might have to like accomplish for the rest of the day. But I would say like, oh, I forgot we had tea. Yeah, like tea or ingesting some sort of, like, gentle plant food. Eating is really good and helpful.

Natascha: Lovely. Where do you see yourself in the future?

Creature: Oh. Where do I see myself in the future? I see a lot of potential paths. I think the one consistent goal for me is to be on land. It’s really important for me to live with nature, live with the trees and the plants and have respite from the hustle and bustle of even a town like Eureka or Arcata. I am pretty sensitive and easily overstimulated, and this work only kind of heightens that, sometimes. It both heightens it and strengthens my capacity to have boundaries from a chaotic, frenetic energy. I really see myself living on land and having some semblance of community.

A lot is up in the air as far as, like how how those goals would work with a body work practice, but I’m staying open. I hope to be in a place where I am just living in reciprocity with with the land and with the people of that place.

Natascha: This is our last question. How has your healing journey positively affected your life?

Creature: My healing journey has positively affected my life just in the way that I can relate to people. I think I was pretty disconnected a lot of my life up into my 20s, and I didn’t really have a sense of purpose or understanding of the miracle of this planet that we live on. And so being able to have a personal living relationship with the earth, with trees and the plants and the animals and the other humans that relate in that way is immensely positive for me. Being able to feel connected to a lineage and like a way of existing before colonization is overall really positive. It’s it can be a challenge at times and has been fairly dark and self destructive for me at times. Just moving forward and continuing to find hope and find guidance has been able to pull me through that. And so now I feel like I have the life experience to to offer to other people, no matter where they are, on that non-linear path. And it just kind of imbues quality into most aspects of life. When I can see through that lens of, of spirit and the more than mundane reality before us it’s very easy to get weighed down by all the pressures of the world and all the toxicity of dominant culture and the ways that it seeps into communities that I’m a part of. When I returned to that simple path of just trusting what’s before me and not getting ahead of myself. Not getting too righteous about where we’re at as humans, then I’m able to, just slow down, sit back and have a more like. Just there’s a simplicity to life through that perspective that is really healing in its own right. I’m grateful for that.

Natascha: Well, thank you, Creature. Thank you for being vulnerable with us, for sharing your gifts, your service and your kindness. I really appreciate your time. I hope you have a wonderful night.

Creature: Yeahhhhhhh.

That was a lot of information for one blog post, but wait I’m not done. I want to share with you my experience with craniosacral massage. I found the results calming, my awareness heightened, and my body more capable of relaxing throughout the day.

My first session was very mesmerizing. I walked into the massage expecting a female’s presence and was happily surprised when my practitioner had the hands of a man. Relaxing on the table I started face forward. Again, I had these expectations that I would start on my back. When we began the massage there was a lot of focus on my head and face, something I had never expected before. As time went on, I noticed that I was becoming very relaxed. So relaxed, I almost fell asleep. Everything was so calming, I felt relaxed in places I didn’t know I had tension.

I think we spent a lot of time on just relaxing my mind and then body. It was like no massage I’ve ever had before. Pressure points were hit but it wasn’t the deep tissue massage I was used to, and I loved it. They flipped me over and massaged my back as well. When I came out of the massage I was beyond grateful for the experience. Even better later when I left the massage, I felt incredibly calmed, like someone had taken their time to feel my body and understand my body rather than mindlessly preform a service. This was like working with body and soul, not overlooking where the pain comes from but giving that pain attention and nurturing it’s needed to process and heal. Maybe that’s why they say they don’t do the healing but offer space for healing, I felt like my body for the first time in a long time could relax.

The second massage was after a stressful week. I was able to relax on the table, back up this time but I was not able to calm my mind. My rushing thoughts were on past and future but hardly focusing on the now. I wonder if this was because the intensive cranalsacral work that we did on the first massage was not the primary focus. This time I felt more energy shift, moving tension and emotion through the body. There was a point when I felt an intense pain in my shoulder I never felt before, not because of their touch but because like some stored trauma was raising to the service. This made me think that there is a lot more going on during Creature’s work than what’s on the surface.

Coming out of the massage I was very relaxed. My body felt great, and my mind was at ease. I felt like I trusted, bonded, and have achieved some kind of mental clarity with my practitioner. I also felt like some emotional wounds I was dealing with earlier on that week was processing. It makes me curious what multiple sessions would look like. What kind of person would I become if my body had time to process pain and emotion so that I didn’t store it in my body. I think I handled problems that arose afterwards with an honest and open hearted. More willing to go through arguments without getting heated. After I was able to relax into my bones. I really appreciate the work that Creature offers, and I look forward to working with them again in the future. I highly recommend trying carinal sacral massage and working with Creature if you want a safe, honest, and receptive light worker. It makes me wonder what I was really getting from the deep massages I’ve received over the years, was it healing my body or was it an instant gratification that wasn’t really allowing my body the time to rest, settle and reset.

Book your appointment today and get a 2 for 1 special: Creature (707) 572-7302