At a basic level, craniosacral therapy aims to get in touch with the body's inate sense of health. A practitioner is listening for the health within the body, rather than illness and is helping the body to do what it wants to do. It is using the body's own healing properties.

In this respect, it is very much like homeopathy, as it works with the energy of the body and at a dynamic level and is looking for the health within the body.

It comes from osteopathic routes and William G Sutherland, the American Osteopath discovered it, after studying osteopathy and also reading a lot of Andrew Taylor Still's work. He was the father of osteopathy.

He discovered by self experimentation, that there was in fact room for movement within the skull and discovered the basic concepts of cranial osteopathy.

His work has been developed by Rollin Becker, another American Osteopath.

Laterly, John Upledger, who has the Upledger Institute was the one who was primarily responsible for naming it craniosacral therapy.

Basically, it is tuning in and listening to the rhythm of the Cerebrospinal fluid that flows through the spinal cord. The name arose really from the fact that the spinal cord is attached at the level of about C2/3 and then is again attached at the sacrum.

Basically, when you listen, you are listening for the gentle tide like motion of the CSF or the Cranial Rhythmic Impulse. This is felt as Inhalation and Exhalation or a rising up and a receeding of the fluid. There are several parts of the body where you can tune into this, namely the feet, the sacrum and the head. When you 'tune in', you will feel the breathing and the cardiac cycles, but then below this, you will then feel the CRI or Cranial Rhythmic Impulse.

As you go deeper and begin to listen at a deeper level, you then feel what is called the Mid tide and then the Long tide. This is the deepest level of dynamic stillness.

In acupuncture and Chinese Medicine the concept is known as Qi, in homeopathy it is the Vital Force, and in Craniosacral therapy, it is known as the Breath of Life. From the Breath of Life there comes what is known as Dynamic Stillness and from this Dynamic Stillness comes the CRI, then the Mid Tide and then the Long Tide.

When a practitioner tunes in at diffferent levels, they are able to sense what the rhythm is like, how powerful it is. They can also detect any blockages that need to be moved and there are different treatment techniques for moving these.

When you get these releases and during a treatment, patients may feel tingling and heat. There may also be emotional releases too, especially in cases of trauma.

Both as a patient and as a practitioner, I have found this therpay to be very powerful, as a practitioner can actually feel what is happening in someones body. A practitioner is just listening to what is happening in the patient's body and the practitioner will then go with whatever the patient's body wants. If they are not ready to go there, then they don't have to. It is really doing what the patient is ready for and wants all the time. The practitioner is led by the patient and can feel what is going on within the patient's system, but it is then following the patient's body and allowing it to self-heal as the patient wants to. The practitioner does nothing except to listen and to follow the patient's body.

I hope this helps you to get a flavour of what it is about.

If you ever want to do any reading on it, William G Sutherland has written books about this, but they approach it from more of a scientific standpoint. Rollin Becker's books, Life in Motion and the Stillness of Life are good to read, also John Upledger's Somatoemotional Release Technique is another good one.

The best books I have found though are called Cranio-sacral Biodynamics Volume I and II by Franklyn Sills. He is one of the tutors at the Karuna Institute in Devon. He runs this with his wife Maura, who is a psychotherapist.

Someone called Michael Kern has written a book called The Wisdom of the Body, The Craniosacral Approach to Health. This is an introductory book that is a very good and easy read. He is a British trained osteopath, naturopath and craniosacral therapist and runs the Craniosacral Educational Trust in London.

I am a homeopath, and have used craniosacral therapy myself for many years, and I am continually mazed by how many problems can be helped by it. It works very well indeed with homeopathy, and I always recommend it to my patients, particularly if they are apprehensive abot chiropractic or osteopathy because of fear of pain.

Liz

1. What are the illnesses where this therapy has been successfully applied.
2. Is this also prone to the trial & error that is inherent in homeopathy or does it yield results 100% of the time.
3. What are the limitations of this therapy.
4. What are the basic requirements for learning it.
Thanks.

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Don't take life too seriously, it aint permanent.

Thank you natural for your kind info. Very informative... thanks

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Homeopath

My homeopath told me that when there is a mechanical problem she found Osteopathy the best method of helping get it sorted. If there is any residual pain that lingers then following up with a well selected homeopathic remedy is very effective.

I've can vouch for this since I've needed to visit an Osteopath a couple of times. However, the osteopathic treatment was enough - I didn't need to follow up with a remedy.

Personally I think Osteopathy is much gentler and more effective than Chiropractics. That's just from my personal experiences with both.

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"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

fitness1st,

In reply to your question, craniosacral therapy can be used to help lots of things. It is particularly good for helping tinitus and also the release of trauma, whether this be mental or physical trauma. When physical trauma is released from the body, the emotions that went with this at the time can also be released too. It is also very good treating babies with colic and birth trauma particularly.

Craniosacral therapy can be very effective 100% of the time, but this actually depends on what a patient says and what a practitioner can feel going on on the patient's system and whether the two correspond. A patient can say one thing and really say that they want to work on their "stuff", but when you actually tune into their system, their body may be telling you something completely different. If their body says that they are not ready, then there is no good work you can do with them until they are ready really. Also, it depends on the practitioner also. You have to be able to trust your practitioner and get on with them for it to work well too, as a lot of things can come up during treatments that can be quite hard to deal with.

I would say that it is not really hit and miss, as a practitioner is actually having direct contact with and feeling for themselves what is going on in a patient's body, so in this respect it is not. If they can feel what is happening, then they can also have an effect.

There are several training colleges in the UK that provide training in Craniosacral therapy, these being The College of Cranio-sacral therapy, The Cranio-sacral Educational Trust, The Karuna Institute and The Academy of Bioresonance. There is also the Upledger Institute in England and the USA. There are a couple of others too.

Basically, there is no requirement now that you have to have training in Osteopathy either as there used to be. Craniosacral therapy is considered to be a discipline in its own right, although it has its routes in Osteopathy and a lot of practitioners are Osteopaths as well, but a lot are not. People come from lots of different backgrounds, including nurses, doctors and other alternative health practitoners.

As to the limitations, I am not sure that I would treat cancer patients, but having said that, if you read John Upledger's book called Somatoemotional Release Technique, then he cites a case of a lady who came to see him with a breast lump that was cancerous and she was booked into have a mastectomy. He treated her almost daily for about a week and when she went back to the hospital for a repeat scan, they found the lump had reduced so much that they could hardly detect it and cancelled the planned surgery.

Upledger treated her again and she never needed the surgery and her cancer never returned.

I am glad that you have all found this informative.

Thanks a lot for such a detailed reply.

Could you please elaborate what you said about the "patient being not ready". Isn't this a one sided work, e.g. I know CS therapy, I have a patient, I feel his flow and accordingly try to set it right if its not the way its supposed to be.

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Don't take life too seriously, it aint permanent.

Would there be any long distance course on craniosacral therapy ?
I have tried checking through the search engine on this and Iam not getting.
Anybody with any solution?[color=DarkOliveGreen]

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We are all spiritual beings in physical manifestation...

No, unfortunately there are no distance learning courses for this. It would not work really. It is not like homeopathy, where you can learn the theory via distance learning. Craniosacral therapy is such a practical subject that it just would not work at all. It is one of those disciplines where you really need to combine the theory with the practice all at once. Sometimes it is easier for a student to feel something rather than trying to explain it and put it into words.

There are lots of training institutions around the world and not just in England. There are training schools in the US, with the largest being the Upledger Institute and others in the USA, I am sure. There are also others in other countries though, Germany and France and also schools that train predominantly in massage therapy also offer some training in craniosacral therapy techniques.

fitness1st,

Yes, I understand what you mean, but what I meant about a patient not being ready to 'let go' so to speak was at the beginning of treatment and at the first consultation. It is no good then saying that you can help someone if you feel that their system is going to be resistant. It could be that perhaps, although they say they really want to deal with their 'stuff', perhaps their body is not and will tell you this if you listen well. Perhaps you are not the right practitioner for that particular patient and they will need to find another one to benefit.

I have had other practitioners myself where I have just not clicked with them and have had to leave eventually. I was just very lucky with my craniosacral therapist that we just got along and clicked straight away and nearly a year later, we have done a lot of very valuable work together.

I think it is brilliant. I tell all expectant mums to take their baby to a CS therapist to be checked out after birth.
I can't tell you how much it has helped me. Mostly it has helped with a chronic catarrah- brilliant.