Craniosacral Therapy
The first thing you will probably notice in a Craniosacral Therapy treatment is a sense of deep relaxation, which will generally last throughout the session. This release of tension often extends into everyday life, giving you the feeling of having your 'batteries' re-charged. Sometimes the benefits are not immediately noticeable, but become obvious on returning to a familiar environment.
Sometimes during a treatment you might feel tingling or numbing sensations, or you may experience momentary discomfort related to past events. When this settles, the net result is one of feeling better. You will often feel as if things are re-organising inside your body, or as if a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.
Craniosacral Therapy works very well with the following conditions:
- Mental stress and anxiety
- Depression
- Back, neck and shoulder pain
- Migraines and headaches
- TMJ syndrome
- Chronic pain conditions
- Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and M.E.
What happens during a Craniosacral Therapy treatment?
Craniosacral Therapy is known as a subtle and profound healing form. In a typical treatment of Craniosacral Therapy, you will usually lie (or sometimes sit) fully-clothed on a treatment couch. I will make contact by placing their hands lightly on your body (mostly on the head), which allows me to tune in to the subtle movements and rhythms of your whole body and encourage (very subtly 'jump-start') the restrictions of nerve passages to be eased, the movement of cerebrospinal fluid through the spinal cord to be optimized, and misaligned bones to be restored to their proper position.
A brief history of Craniosacral Therapy
Craniosacral Therapy is indirectly derived from the work of William Garner Sutherland, DO (1870-1954) and his colleagues in the field of osteopathic medicine. Sutherland discovered a subtle tiny movement in the bones, membranes and fluids of the body, which he thought resembled breathing and its cycles of expansion and contraction. He developed therapeutic methods based on interacting with this movement and found great clinical success with his patients, including a wide range of conditions. Exploration of his work began to occur outside the osteopathic profession in the 1970's, leading to the development of Craniosacral Therapy.