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Craniosacral Therapy
Craniosacral Therapy
Accessing The Healer Within
By Paul Brown
Originally published in Body Sense magazine, Autumn/Winter 2010. Copyright 2010. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.
It’s no secret that proper nutrition, exercise, and living a low-stress lifestyle are among the keys to good health and longevity. If we pay close attention to these three cornerstones of our health, our body will reward us with vitality and well-being. Amazingly, even when our body gets a little out of balance—a sore tennis elbow, an irritating cold, or an achy neck from a tense business meeting—we are each equipped with a high-performing immune system miraculously designed to heal our body and protect us from disease. Craniosacral therapy is one way to optimize that system and create balance within the body.
The demands of a modern world often challenge our immune system’s ability to keep up. We get pulled in competing directions—work, kids, telephones—with everything vying for our time and attention. Stress has a way of creeping in and cutting us off from the precious life forces that lie at the root of our foundation for health. If we haven’t been building and maintaining the nutrition, exercise, and stress management cornerstones we need, then the sore tennis elbow, cold, or tense neck becomes more serious and our health foundation starts to crumble. When this happens, we instinctively reach out to our doctors to “cure” us. We fail to realize that nature has already provided us with our very own inner healing force—the craniosacral system. My role as a craniosacral practitioner is to help clients find a way to optimize their own healing force so they can build a solid, healthy foundation, or restore it if the crumbling has already begun.
A Gentle Touch
Craniosacral therapy is a healing modality that grew out of osteopathy, the ancient art of bone-setting. In craniosacral work, the subtle art of precise and gentle touch is applied to correct imbalances in the fluid and membranes surrounding and protecting the brain and spinal cord.
Craniosacral therapy is based on a particular understanding of human anatomy. Imagine your craniosacral system has a regular rhythm, much like the heart, only subtler and slower. Just as your heart pumps needed blood to the rest of the body, the craniosacral system pumps important fluid—cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)—between your brain and spinal area.
The CSF plays several important roles in your immune system’s performance. These include offering protective covering for your delicate brain tissue, delivering glucose (a type of sugar that nurtures and cools the brain) to the cortex brain, inhibiting viruses and bacteria in the brain, and forming a transport medium between the blood and the brain. CSF has a big job to do, but a variety of health problems can create an imbalance in the flow of the CSF, limiting health and clarity. If CSF can flow unimpeded, then the body has the opportunity to maintain and/or restore balance.
Proper performance of the craniosacral system and its fluids is essential to the entire central nervous system, which is a network of specialized tissue that controls the actions and reactions internal to the body, and the body’s adjustment to its environment. The crazier your environment, the harder it has to work. The two main components of this system are the brain and the spinal cord. Think of your brain as a computer and the spinal cord as the cable. The spinal cord links the computer’s input and output to the rest of the body. Remarkably, your entire motor function, learning patterns, and emotions are affected by the craniosacral system, as your whole body expands and contracts with the rhythm of the pumping fluids. This is where craniosacral therapy can improve the functioning of these essential self-healing systems.
Think of your craniosacral practitioner as your partner. You and your body do the work, but your practitioner lends his or her knowledge and skills to help you. Together you are able to bolster your body’s own resistance and improve how your central nervous system responds to stress and illness. When soft touch is applied to this system, clients can achieve incredible releases from long-standing restrictions, stress, and tension.
Craniosacral therapy achieves not only relief from physical pain, but also restoration of clarity and emotional wholeness as well.
What to Expect
During a craniosacral session, the practitioner will have a space devoid of distractions. In my practice, I refer to this as the “sacred space,” because I strive to embody the philosophy that time and space are special, unique, quiet, and restful. The practitioner will ask questions to try and understand what health concerns the client has. This is a critical part of the healing process because craniosacral therapy offers many techniques that can be directly customized to the client’s needs. By having a conversation first, the client and practitioner can work together to find the best option for healing.
Next, the client lies on a traditional massage table, fully clothed, and the practitioner begins to apply a slight amount of pressure (about the weight of a dime) to the craniosacral system. In my case, I draw on more than a hundred different techniques from my years of training and use a precise, gentle touch to areas such as the brain, spine, or other parts of the body. Intuition, perception, and intention come into play here and I use these gifts to direct me to go to those places needing the most attention. Once the body is in a relaxed state, craniosacral therapy has the ability to teach on a cellular level. The body knows this, that is, every cell in the body will remember the connection with the forces of healing, and the more the body remembers those forces of healing, the more it can allow itself to heal. For example, if you’ve had a stiff neck in the past due to stress, it is likely next time you have stress, your neck will get stiff again. The cells in your body remember and now equate stress with a stiff neck. This same “cellular memory” can be achieved in a similar, but positive, way by giving the body—and the central nervous system—an extreme and wonderful experience of deep and often profound relaxation through craniosacral therapy. The more the body remembers this natural state, the more it can allow itself to heal.
By the time you leave your session, you will most likely feel relaxed, refreshed, and re-energized. Some clients even report “a reawakening of power” as the body, mind, and heart find their own profound medicine.
The Stillness
Most of us have mastered the art of “doing” in our crazy, activity-filled world, but “being” is actually tougher, much more rewarding, and is truly a gift. Lao Tzu, the prolific sixth-century B.C.E. philosopher, said, “The source of all great movement lies in stillness.” I’ve often been awed by what the body can do when we give in to the stillness—when we slow down enough for the body to respond positively to its own healing ability.
While craniosacral therapy is a complementary practice, I also view it as a spiritual practice. Now, more than ever before, we are witnessing a return to healing that encompasses the totality and wholeness of the body, mind, spirit, and psyche. We are paying more attention to what we eat, we are looking for alternatives to drugs, and we are stopping to think for a moment before we make that call to the doctor. We are flexing the muscles of a deeper consciousness as we strive to experience what it means to live a healthy and authentic life. In many ways, we are reaching out to the spiritual roots of our healing. By tapping into our inner healer, craniosacral therapy helps us get there.
The Benefits of Frequent Massage
The Benefits of Frequent Massage
A Powerful Health Ally
Here’s the beauty of bodywork:
Its benefits are compounded when massage is utilized as a frequent therapy. The more you get, the more it does.
There’s no denying the power of bodywork. Regardless of the adjectives we assign to it (pampering, rejuvenating, therapeutic) or the reasons we seek it out (a luxurious treat, stress relief, pain management), massage therapy can be a powerful ally in your healthcare regimen.
Researchers say the incredible benefits of massage are doubly powerful if taken in regular “doses.” Professionals at the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami explain the more massage you get, the greater benefits you reap. Here’s why:
The Health Benefits
Experts estimate that upwards of 90 percent of disease is stress-related. And perhaps nothing ages us faster, internally and externally, than high stress. While eliminating anxiety and pressure altogether in this fast paced world may be idealistic, massage can, without a doubt, help manage stress. This translates into:
- Decreased anxiety.
- Enhanced sleep quality.
- Greater energy.
- Improved concentration.
- Increased circulation.
- Reduced fatigue.
Furthermore, clients often report a sense of perspective and clarity after receiving a massage. The emotional balance bodywork provides can often be just as vital and valuable as the more tangible physical benefits.
In response to massage, specific physiological and chemical changes cascade throughout the body, with profound effects. Research shows that with massage:
- Asthmatic children show better pulmonary function.
- Arthritis sufferers note fewer aches and discomforts.
- Burn injury patients report reduced pain and anxiety.
- High blood pressure patients demonstrate lower diastolic blood pressure and stress hormones.
- Premenstrual syndrome sufferers have decreased water retention and cramping.
- Preterm infants have improved weight gain.
Research continues to show the enormous benefits of touch—which range from treating chronic diseases, neurological disorders, and injuries, to alleviating the tensions of modern lifestyles. Consequently, the medical community is actively embracing bodywork, and massage is becoming an integral part of hospice care and neonatal intensive care units. Many hospitals are also incorporating on-site massage practitioners and even spas to treat postsurgery or pain patients as part of the recovery process.
Help Yourself to Health
Here’s the beauty of bodywork: Its benefits are compounded when massage is utilized as a frequent therapy. The more you get, the more it does.
Taking part in this form of regularly-scheduled self-care plays a huge part in how healthy you’ll be and how youthful you’ll remain with each passing year. Budgeting time and money for bodywork at consistent intervals is truly an investment in your health. And remember: just because massage feels like a pampering treat doesn’t mean it is any less therapeutic. Consider massage appointments a necessary piece of your health and wellness plan, and work with your practitioner to establish a treatment schedule that best meets your needs.
Stress and Massage - What you should know….
Massage can relieve stress, and so much more
By Jeanie Lerche Davis
WebMD Weight Loss Clinic - Feature
If you’ve never had a massage, don’t put it off — not for a minute. In our stress-worn world, an allover body massage might be just what you need.
Just ask Ms. Connelly, a plucky 60ish southern lady. Her fallopian tube cancer became evident only after it had spread through her pelvis. The weeks when she’s getting chemotherapy are tough; her energy is zapped. She’s making the best of the cards dealt her.
“I have my achy days,” she tells WebMD. “I get these knots in my neck, in my back.”
Massage helps relieve that tension, but it also does much more, says Becky Getz, RN, CMT, who is Connelly’s massage therapist at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Va.
Cancer patients like Connelly are often dehydrated, and a chemotherapy treatment causes areas of the body to become stiff, Getz tells WebMD. “I think massage helps bring chemotherapy, fluids, into the body a little more gently.”
In fact, Getz works with many cancer patients long after their treatment — soothing the dryness, tightness, and pain that surgery leaves behind. “Sometimes the effects of cancer last for years,” she tells WebMD.
That’s not all. Studies have shown that massage helps with all sorts of conditions — arthritis, gastrointestinal problems, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms. Alzheimer’s patients and kids with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may also benefit from massage.
Even more interesting: Kids with diabetes have more normal blood sugar levels after massage. Premature babies gain weight faster when they’re massaged. Massage eases depression, keeps depressed mothers from giving birth too early, and prevents postpartum depression.
Massage does much more than relieve everyday stress, and studies are proving it.
Ancient Health Practice Gaining Credibility
Massage is one of the oldest of health practices, found in ancient Chinese medical texts written some 4,000 years ago. Hippocrates advocated massage in the 4th century BC, as have doctors since then — until the 1930s and ’40s, when the practice was virtually abandoned as medicine became high-tech.
During the 1970s, massage went through a slight resurgence — one that’s finally taken hold in more recent years as healthcare practitioners become more attune to ancient healing practices — and as Medicare and insurance payers have begun covering it.
“We believe in it in our clinic,” says Ka-Kit Hui, MD, director of the Center for East-West Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine. “We believe it does more than just help people feel better.”
In Chinese medicine, massage is called acupressure, he tells WebMD. In essence, massage and acupressure both work with the body’s own healing systems — the nervous system, blood vessels, lymphatic system.
“The concept is to remove stagnation,” says Hui. “When your muscle spasms, it’s a form of stagnation. The blood is not moving as smoothly as it should, either because of internal stress or as a reaction to pain.”
He runs a “clinic of last resort” for patients with various pain problems — fibromyalgia, neck spasms, frozen shoulder, and what’s called “failed back syndrome.” They’ve had two or three surgeries for back pain and nothing has helped.
“Oftentimes our patients either do not respond to pain medications or can’t tolerate medications, or can’t tolerate surgery or don’t want surgery, or they fail surgery,” he says. “We have been a resource center for them.”
Doctors have been slow to refer patients to massage therapy simply because most aren’t acquainted with it in their training, he tells WebMD.
“Today’s massage therapists are better trained, better regulated than ever before,” Hui says. “In prevention of disease, health promotion, massage may be an adjunct for patients who need our medication, who need our surgery. It may decrease complications, decrease pain and suffering.”
People with migraine pain, lower back pain, arthritis — they all can benefit from massage. New parents know that babies who are massaged are calmer and sleep better.
The effects on premature babies are especially dramatic. The babies gain weight faster — and leave the expensive hospital neonatal intensive care unit earlier — if they are massaged, says Tiffany Field, PhD, a psychologist and director of the Touch Therapy Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
Premature babies who are massaged three times a day have 47% more weight.”
Field’s own daughter was born prematurely in 1976 and inadvertently became her first study subject. “We were trying to help her grow,” she tells WebMD. “We found that massage helped.”
Since then, she’s led 83 studies looking at massage’s effects on depression, pain, autism, autoimmune disorders such as asthma and diabetes, and immunity.
Her research group is trying to understand the biological mechanisms that make massage so powerful — looking at basic physiological measures such as heart rate, blood pressure, EEG; stress hormones such as cortisol; and chemicals in the brain that are thought to affect stress and pain.
Among her findings: Premature babies who are massaged three times a day have 47% more weight, are discharged six days earlier, and the hospital cost savings is approximately $10,000.
Depressed mothers who received twice-weekly massages before they delivered had lower levels of cortisol, which reduced their risk of premature delivery. It also reduced their risk of postpartum depression. Something else: None of their babies was born with higher cortisol (which affects babies’ development.)
Her work has also included children and adolescents:
Two chair massages per week made adolescents less aggressive.
Asthmatic children who received massages had increased air movement, lung function, less anxiety, and reduced stress.
Teachers rated adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as being less hyperactive — and more able to spend time on tasks — following one month of twice-weekly massages. The adolescents rated themselves as happier and were observed as fidgeting less.
During massage, a major nerve in the body called the vagus nerve is stimulated, which slows heart rate, Field explains. “The heart needs to be slowed down for a child to pay attention. We think that’s how it works with ADHD.”
Other findings:
Autistic children were more sensitive to touch, paid more attention to sounds, and related to teachers better after massage.
When diabetic children received regular massages from parents, glucose levels decreased to normal range; they also followed diet requirements better.
In a recently published paper, Field reported that when patients with fibromyalgia had massages, they had less pain and slept better. They also had lower levels of “substance P,” a chemical messenger for pain.
She speculates that massage works because it elevates serotonin — the body’s anti-pain hormone — and reduces cortisol, the stress hormone.
Ready for a Massage?
Stress is indeed a big problem for everyone these days, and massage is a legitimate way to eliminate that stress. People who are “big exercisers” also need to give their bodies a break, Getz says.
“We all need to give ourselves a focused time to relax,” Getz tells WebMD. “We’re all operating on flight or fight.”
If you’re slightly reluctant about that first massage, just relax, she says. “A professional therapist will provide professional treatment, professional draping. All trained massage therapists are very conscious of people’s fears about being touched and can help make you comfortable.”
Hello all… Been a while… time to take care of yourselves and get some bodywork!! Appointments available!!
Deep Tissue - Muscle Therapy - Cranial Sacral - Swedish - Sensory Repatterning…. Which do you prefer?
#DeepTissue, #Swedish, #CranialSacral, #MuscleTherapy, #Relaxation, #PainRelief. What do you need this Holiday season? Give me a tweet
Future doctors will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in caring for their body, in diet & the cause & prevention of disease.
