Can Craniosacral Therapy help me, I have…………….

You may have come to this site to find out if Craniosacral Therapy can help you or a member of your family with a specific ailment:

The answer may well be yes.

But the focus of Craniosacral Therapy is on the health of the whole person. It is not the ailment you are suffering from, but your capacity to heal that is the basis of the work.

Using a very light contact with the body, the therapist enters into a “conversation” with the tissues, organs and fluids of the body which offers a chance for re-evaluation and change.

It is the miraculous ability that the body itself has to put things right which Craniosacral Therapy calls upon.

Craniosacral therapy doesn't aim to change or repair the body; it offers an opportunity for the healing systems of the body to reawaken themselves.

So Craniosacral Therapy is appropriate for people of all ages with probably any ailment or discomfort: Babies respond very well, adults in the throes of the stress of life find relief, even for those experiencing terminal or life threatening illness, there is room for comfort, peace and joy.

What happens in a craniosacral therapy session?

Have you ever been asked what happens in your Craniosacral therapy sessions? It's not easy to answer, is it?

Mostly people say something like “I don't know what she did. She just put her hands on my head and did nothing.” Hopefully they will add something like “I felt completely different a few days after the treatment” or “my pregnancy was so much easier afterwards” or “if only I had known I would have made you the first port of call!”

So, what is going on in a Craniosacral therapy session?

Let's start with some history.

Craniosacral therapy began at the end of the nineteenth century with an Osteopath called Sutherland. He wondered about the accepted teaching that the bones of the head were incapable of movement. Why, then, did the temporal bones on the side of the head overlap in a way that looked like fish gills, capable of breathing-type movement?

He invented a bizarre range of contraptions to restrict the bones of his own head, one bone at a time. He argued that if the bones weren't moving, it wouldn't make any difference if he restricted them. In the end his wife threatened divorce because the consequences on his health and temper were so extreme.

So he started to work on other people. Not by putting pressure on their heads, but by resting his still hands on the different bones and observing the movements he could feel.

Sutherland discovered that each bone had a rhythmic movement which is influenced by the tidal flow of the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. He found that accident, illness or shock disturbed these rhythms and that the attention of his “listening” hands enabled the disturbed rhythms to return to a more comfortable pattern.

Over the years he refined his practice, until he came to have great faith in what he called the “Inherent Treatment Plan” - the body's own capacity for healing and its wisdom in knowing how to do it.

He suggested that therapists, having steeped ourselves in the anatomy and physiology of the bodies on which our hands rest, put that knowledge “behind the curtain” and “rely on the tide”. (Sutherland's phrases).

That's not as easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of skill to do nothing; it isn't the same as not doing anything. It is an active attention to the rhythms and the patterns of the body, an active interest in the way the body expresses its capacity for health and an active reflection of how it has coped with the effects of accidents, illness and other upsets.

It is this ability to reflect how the body has organised itself without trying to change things that makes Craniosacral therapy so effective.

We are designed so that, if we hurt ourselves, we don't always deal with it at the time. If you are being chased by a lion, it is important to ignore the wounds the lion has already inflicted and keep running. (…continued)

On the whole our dangers are less extreme, but with our large brains we can override the messages our body is sending us: The exam you have to finish even though your whole body is screaming to stretch, the long car drive with your hands clamped to the wheel and your eyes peeled, even the time you spend keeping a polite smile on your face while you are inwardly groaning with boredom. So our bodies get confused messages and learn to create patterns of tension to mitigate the discomfort: We override our Body Wisdom with our Intellectual Intelligence.

With knowledgeable hands the therapist mirrors these patterns of tension back to the body to create a situation where the body can literally re-member itself.

So now, when someone asks you what happens in a Craniosacral therapy session, you can say “Oh nothing, but it works!”

If you would like to know more or speak to me personally,
telephone 01981 580577 and please visit the Contacts page.