What the heck is craniosacral therapy?

Let’s be honest, craniosacral therapy will never rank highly as a spectator sport. With massage you can see the movement and the dance of the treatment. You can watch the clinician rhythmically move and create physical relaxation in a client’s body. Not so with craniosacral therapy. Instead, it looks, well like someone has their hands still on the body. One on top and one underneath and you hold for a bit there and then move to another bit.

But as a client and a clinician… WOW!! The clinician engages the body tissue and enters the realm of the inner body that pulls the client in too; and the most amazing thing happens – a relaxing and unwinding of tissue, heat as tissues change and a rhythmic pulsing as the body indicates that you’re working on the right spot. As a clinician we use 5g of pressure – yep that’s right about the weight of an Australian 5c coin to create this amazing change that works with the body, not against it.

And as a client – it literally feels like the clinician has their fingers deep within the layers of your body and is pulling apart the bits that you didn’t even realise were tight. It can have many reactions; for me I experience both physical unwinding – like a weight being lifted from the area. I also experience emotional releases which can be tears, sighing, or laughter and anything in between. Through all of it though I feel safe knowing my clinician is there to guide me through what comes up. (I’ll explore more about emotional release in my next blog – what the heck is somatoemotional release?)

So, what are we actually doing? My youngest daughter describes the process as massaging brain juices – and look she’s not altogether wrong, so let’s explore that a bit more…

As with most bodywork – a craniosacral therapy treatment affects the body, mind and spirit. The reason why these are called holistic treatments.

What happens physically?

The clinician uses specific hand holds throughout the body and head to measure the craniosacral rhythm and identify where there are differences in rhythm intensity and movement (for example if the movement is smooth and flowing or choppy and jerky). This identifies physical areas to work with.

Arcing

As part of this process, your clinician will also ‘arc’ through your body to identify areas of hyper-reactive tissues. We all have hundreds, if not thousands of these in our bodies as they are formed from every knock and fall we’ve ever had. In most cases these cause no issues, however if they are compounded with other factors which stress the body, they can be responsible for creating holding patterns in the fascia that adds to discomfort and dis-ease. These areas are called ‘energy cysts’ which I’ll cover in depth in a later blog.

Your first session

At your first session, your clinician may perform a basic whole-body treatment. This is a great way to learn about how you respond to craniosacral therapy and see what you notice about the tissue changes for the next few days after treatment. The places the clinician identifies are held in a way that encourages the tissues to release and relax.

As the tissues unwind and release, you may have memories surface, see images about things that may or may not have occurred in your life and even smell and taste different things. As an example, I worked with a client who had surgery for cancer and she could taste the anaesthetic as we worked. This is a totally normal part of the process, and your clinician will guide you through what you experience so talk to her about what you see, hear, touch, taste and smell. It’s all relevant to your personal healing journey and nothing is considered silly.

Why does this happen?

Well, the next part of the craniosacral therapy session is the non-physical component – mind and spirit. For this, we are accessing the non-conscious (or sub conscious) that works hard to keep us safe and provides responses back to the amygdala in the brain – the gatekeeper of safety.

If you imagine your body as an iceberg (yes, I know… bear with me), then the part that you see above the water represents our physicality – our body in ease and dis-ease, how we show up in the world and what people see. Below the surface is where the magic happens and we will explore the non-conscious more in depth in a later blog, however for today’s purposes it is the storage of our personalities, experiences, and the component that takes all of these and holds them as cellular memory and uses them to keep us, as an organism, alive and kicking.

The non-conscious is the aspect that craniosacral therapy accesses beautifully to assist with the treatment and effect long term changes. Craniosacral therapy works on the basis that everyone has the innate capacity to heal themselves. We know what we need to do to heal…. although this may be at a subconscious rather than conscious level.

The still-small voice of calm

What do you do with that small voice inside you that guides you every day? Do you listen to it as it suggests that going for a walk would help with your stress levels? Do you feel it in a different way? Maybe with a really strong push/craving for something (more of a physical response)? If you could give this part of you that guides what’s best for you every day a name, what would you call it? For now, let’s call it your Inner Wisdom – the part that knows what needs to happen to help you bring your body back to health and wellbeing – the process of homeostasis.

What if there was a way to let your Inner Wisdom have their moment and guide your healing? This is where craniosacral therapy comes in, along with many other energetic medicine bodywork forms including reiki and more physical forms such as massage. We are never independent of the Inner Wisdom, it all depends on how much faith we have in our ability to heal ourselves; and I don’t know about you, but I was not taught to listen to my body’s needs.

All you need to bring to the session is an open mind and a curiosity to see what is different during the session and after the session. Be willing to talk to your clinician about memories that come up, or other things you notice and let her help you on your journey and facilitate change and healing.

What is it used to treat?

Craniosacral therapy works to treat many dysfunctions including, but not limited to:



• Headaches/migraines
• Chronic pain
• Anxiety/depression
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Fibromyalgia & other connective tissue disorders
• Sleeping issues
• Central nervous system disorders
• Orthopaedic problems
• Stress & tension-related problems
• Temporomandibular joint issues (TMJ)
• Immune disorders
• Post-surgical challenges

It is deeply intuitive work, and you will find your clinician can identify, through light touch, areas that have felt held and restricted for a long time. Their connection with that tissue and the subsequent tissue release affects change like no other physical therapy.

Curious? Then come on in and see how craniosacral therapy might work for you.