Welcome to our newest practitioner!
 Barbu Panaitescu, RCST, RYT-700

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy & Yoga

Barbu Panaitescu, RCST, RYT-700, has been practicing and studying mindful movement, somatic awareness and various healing therapies since 2004, when chronic back and knee pain and psycho-spiritual troubles became too serious for him to ignore. Beginning initially with Reiki, shamanic healing and body-based psychotherapy, Barbu began to experience some relief. A deep curiosity and longing to better understand anatomy and neurobiology led him to Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) training with Franklyn Sills, a pioneer in the field, and to this beautiful form of therapy that integrates science, deep empathy and spirituality, as it is based in both osteopathic medicine and universal principles of inter-connectedness.

This is what he offers today, drawing from a well of personal experience that includes three yoga teacher trainings, many hours on the meditation cushion in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Non-Violent Communication and interpersonal neurobiology, mixed with caring and playfulness. He is available for sessions on Wednesdays at Soma Space.

“I continue to challenge myself to grow, heal and develop maturity, engaging in weekly therapeutic work of my own and ongoing craniosacral treatments. I participate in group work and am committed to ongoing training, study and learning opportunities in various healing arts fields. My personal history has turned out to be the perfect background for learning Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, where I have been trained to tune into something called primary respiration, listening to how it expresses and what healing it would like to bring forward in a session.

I bear witness to the process, ask resonant questions of the client, find stillness in myself and something incredible happens – something shifts, something old releases and the body’s life energy is freed up. A calm, yet energized, state of being emerges. Biodynamic work allows both practitioner and client to experience depths of stillness, quietude and peace that can be normally unavailable to us, as well as a sense of expansiveness and connection to universal forces – called in our work the Breath of Life. Thus it is spiritual as well as medical, practical as well as esoteric.”

BCST is performed fully clothed on a massage table and employs light touch and resonant language to help clients drop into deep states of relaxation, support and wholeness. There is no pressure applied to the body so it is useful in times of injury, activation or inflammation. BCST is helpful for chronic pain, anxiety, depression, PTSD, emotional trauma of all kinds, inflammation, auto-immune disorders, insomnia and general discomfort. The biodynamic approach is grounded in something called Primary Respiration, which is the way that the life force expresses a particular breath-like movement through the whole body.

These rhythms, tide-like in nature, show the practitioner the patterns that are held in the body as a result of trauma, injury and difficult life circumstances; they also make the healing decisions that the body is ready for, session by session. Thus the client’s deepest needs for wholeness and well-being are slowly but steadily addressed, in a gentle and powerful way. BCST is recommended as an ongoing therapy-kind of like regularly changing the oil in a car-since it deeply soothes the Central Nervous System, helping to release somato-emotional patterns of stress and shut-down/freeze/dissociation.

Having weekly or bi-weekly sessions for a period of time can completely alter the way a person lives in their body and create a deep sense of well-being. It is also effective as a form of “first aid,” if there is an injury like whiplash, and is an excellent support for pre-and post-surgical procedures.

When: Wednesdays, by appointment

Where: SomaSpace, 4050 NE Broadway St, Portland, OR 97232

Session Costs:

Single Session: $75
5 Sessions: $350
10 Sessions: $650

To learn more about Barbu’s offerings and to schedule an appointment: somaspace.us/practitioners