State of Balanced Awareness
Definition
State of balanced awareness, SBA or SOBA, is place where attention is neither coming nor going. Your awareness is balanced between your own internal space and the space around you, including the client. It is equivalent to a ‘practitioner neutral’.[1]
Derivation
Ged Sumner in Cranial Intelligence? [2]
Discussion
A state of balanced awareness is the optimum place to treat from in biodynamic craniosacral therapy. The practitioner, by grounding themselves in their body space, prevents merging with the client or spacing out and being too distant. In addition, by skilfully holding part of their awareness in the surrounding field it is possible for the practitioner to receive information from the whole of the client and support shifts in their physiology. The trick of being in a state of balance awareness is staying with all three possibilities: internal space of practitioner, clients body space and the surrounding space.
Not to be confused with a state of balance. This is an event in the physiology of the client as a pattern of experience shifts in response to primary respiration.
