CranioSacral Therapy
An article by Jane Turney, published in "Healing Today", August 2002
CRANIO-SACRAL THERAPY is truly a healing modality of the 21st century combining advanced concepts of energy medicine with a scientific approach to the body. It enhances the core life essence of the patient through the gentlest of touch, often successfully tackling problems that have resisted other forms of treatment, and preventing the need for more invasive techniques.
Because cranio-sacral therapy is essentially concerned with building health and vitality at the core of one's being, it treats a wide variety of acute and chronic ailments including back pain, digestive disorders, depression and chronic fatigue. It tackles dis-ease and dysfunction on many levels - whether physical, emotional, musculo-skeletal, neurological, or visceral, and whether the problem originates before, during, or after birth.
Cranio-sacral therapy also has a unique ability to tackle birth trauma - either caused by the emotional shock of birth and/or persistent compression of the skull following difficult labour. It has a growing reputation amongst midwives, health visitors and GPs for its ability to treat common problems in babies and young children including ear infections, sleeping disorders, colic - and also more serious problems such as epilepsy, learning and behavioural problems and even cerebral palsy and autism which can all result from undiagnosed birth trauma.
Thomas Attlee, principal of the College of Cranio-Sacral Therapy in north London recalls two vivid cases of dysfunction due to birth trauma that responded well to treatment: "I was called to hospital to see a six-month-old girl whose birth had been very long and difficult and who had been suffering severe epileptic fits continually every five minutes, day and night, for the past three months. She was being given a continuing stream of different medications but this was bringing no relief at all. After her first cranio-sacral session, the fits reduced down to approximately three a day.
After two more sessions, her fits were virtually eliminated. I also treated a nine-year-old boy with dyslexia, who had fallen way behind at school, and who, on his very first treatment, improved dramatically. By the end of term he was top of the class."
Cranio-sacral therapy was originally developed in the early 20th century by an American osteopath Dr William Sutherland who, after years of research, moved from a structural/physiological understanding of the body to a biodynamic concept of health.
At core, cranio-sacral therapy carries a revolutionary premise: that beyond the cardio-vascular and respiratory systems there is an even more fundamental life-giving process in the body - that of the cranio-sacral system. This consists of the bones of the cranium (skull) and sacrum (tailbone), the membranes surrounding the brain and central nervous system, the fascia (connective tissues) which radiate out from these membranes to all parts of the body, and the cerebrospinal fluid. All of these structures ebb and flow rhythmically, as part of an `involuntary breathing system', distributing vital healing energy throughout the body.
Dr Sutherland called this healing energy the `Breath of Life', and named the symmetrical rhythm behind it the `primary respiratory mechanism' - reflecting its essential life-giving qualities. The function of the system, he believed, was to provide a `blueprint for health', a kind of ordering principle which maintained wellbeing at the highest level in the individual.
Early in his research he tested his ideas concerning the primacy of the system in a real-life situation when he revived a drowned man who had failed to respond to all resuscitation attempts. Gently holding the sides of the man's head, he encouraged a rocking motion in the temporal lobes, thus stimulating the primary respiratory mechanism - and the man's heart and respiration started up again.
Sutherland surmised that the Breath of Life was the same fundamental energy - known as chi or prana in oriental medicine - that moved the planets, the tides, the seasons and manifested throughout Nature and the whole of the universe. It was therefore our connection to the wholeness of life itself. He came to believe that the potency of the Breath of Life resided primarily in the cerebrospinal fluid and interestingly this concept is also found in Tibetan and Chinese medicine. Although there are many different theories as to how the cranio-sacral system works, one belief is that the cerebrospinal fluid is potentised with the Breath of Life in the third ventricle of the brain where universal biodynamic forces become transmitted into bodily fluids. Again this corresponds with oriental medicine in that the third ventricle is associated with the ajana chakra, which is considered to be the primary energy centre of the body.
The Breath of Life is seen as an intrinsic healing force which is never lost. Even in the most resistant pathologies, it will still be present and the aim of cranio-sacral therapy is to re-establish the relationship between dysfunctional or diseased tissues and cells and the potency of the Breath of Life. So the cranio-sacral practitioner is essentially looking to enhance the life force in the body. This is done by gently palpating the bones of the cranium (skull) and sacrum (tailbone) and other parts of the body as appropriate, to identify the strength - or weakness - of cranio-sacral motion in different structures. The practitioner also looks for resistances and blockages in the bones, membranes, tissues and fluids in the body which may also be affecting energy flow and physiological function.
Treatment again is through very gentle contact with the patient; the practitioner tunes in to subtle patterns within the body, essentially allowing the system to express itself. The goal is to facilitate the body's own potential for release, clearing and balance. Just the act of being present to the energy flow and the resistances, and using the gentlest contact as a counterpoint to these, is very often enough to stimulate the release process on one or many levels, be it physical, emotional or energetic.
This can make cranio-sacral therapy sound like a very passive process but this is not the case, as Thomas explains: "Cranio-sacral therapy is a very still process, but not passive. It is dynamic because the dynamism comes in the awareness of energy patterns and in applying that conscious awareness. It is the very fact that it is working on this very subtle level of awareness of the energy that makes it so profound."
The strength of cranio-sacral therapy is that its gentleness and subtlety allows it to penetrate through the body's ‘amour’ - whereas often with more actively physical therapies, the body will often use protective tension to resist even minor physical pressures. This gentle approach can he invaluable in many situations e.g. for those in acute pain, for people with a history of physical or sexual abuse, or where stored emotional trauma is maintaining a physical problem.
Many health problems are of course multi-layered; alongside the physical trauma of, say, a car crash or skiing accident, intense emotions will often be locked into the tissues as well. According to cranio-sacral thinking, the fascia is responsible for localising and holding psychological as well as physical trauma within the body.
In this way we `shut down' parts of ourselves which feel too overwhelming to deal with, but the price we pay is to inhibit our life force, and diminish our connection to our deeper selves and to Life itself. Interestingly, as the cranio-sacral therapist releases tension and blockages in the fascia, long-buried memories associated with the trauma will often come to the surface. Thomas recalls one typical case:
"A patient came to see me with a severe headache that had been with him continuously for over 10 years. He was in his mid-sixties and had tried every type of therapy and medical opinion he could find. He had had brain scans and a vast array of tests and no-one could find any apparent cause for his headache. Despite careful questioning he could not recall any injury or trauma that could have contributed to his condition.
"I identified a very strong fascial pull drawing his head down into his neck and upper thorax, especially on the right-hand side, with an element of twisting towards the right. I followed this fascial pull which led me very deeply into this compressive, twisting pattern to a degree where it was obvious to me that his head and neck had suffered a very severe trauma. The treatment didn't take long but the force of the trauma and therefore the nature of the treatment was very intense. Soon after following intensively into this severely compressed pattern we reached a point of release at which the whole neck and head freed up, unwound and let go.
“At that moment the elderly gentleman suddenly announced: “Of course during the war I was blown up into the air and came crashing down on my head.” This incident had happened when he was 19 but the symptoms had not arisen until nearly 40 years later in his mid-fifties.
But there could be no doubt about the clear relationship, demonstrated by the significant physical release, accompanied by a vivid recall of a long forgotten trauma, after which his chronic headache of 10 years soon cleared.”
Because of cranio-sacral therapy's integrative capacity working with physiological, psychological and energetic factors it appeals to holistic practitioners and other health professionals from all disciplines.
"Whether or not people are already conscious of a more esoteric understanding of life, when they come across cranio-sacral therapy they will often start to realise this is what they have been looking for. Students on their first training course are constantly saying it explains much of what they intuitively knew or had in the back of their mind but couldn't quite find a basis for," says Thomas.
"Cranio-sacral therapy penetrates to a deeper level. It is not simply treating the more solid physical structures; it passes deeper into the fluid levels, the energetic levels, into the central nervous system, into the fundamental core structures from which life emerges; and consequently it is influencing health - and life - at the deepest root level.
"The vast potential and power of cranio-sacral therapy is increasingly being recognised. It is a rapidly expanding therapy - both in terms of the growing number of patients it is helping and in the number of people from all walks of life training as cranio-sacral therapists."
Jane Turney is a journalist and a public relations office for the College of Cranio-Sacral Therapy. She is a former director of the holistic education program at “Alternative”, St James Church. Piccadilly London
