About Craniosacral Therapy

In this video, my teacher Franklyn Sills talks about the origins of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and the training I did at the Karuna Institute, Devon, UK.

What is Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy?

Commonly, the first question is: does that mean you work with the head (the cranium)?

Yes - but not exclusively as also the rest of the body can be worked with or contacted during a treatment. Important details about this method are: the effortlessness and non-invasive or respectful nature of the treatment. A treatment uses very light touch that is not manipulative. No force is exerted on the tissues or structure of the body. Second the treatment is oriented to awaken forces inherent to the body that self-regulate and move the body towards health.

Cranial treatments can involve powerful sensations of change but rather than having something done to you it is your own body opening, letting go and moving towards its inherent balance. In this process we are asked to trust a process we never may be able to explain satisfactorily from a scientific point of view. In fact, some people are now referring to this method as the more spiritual of the craniosacral approaches.

Although a good practitioner is going to know the body's anatomy and physiology very well, when it comes to the treatment process, that knowledge is not put to work like a doctor or physiotherapist. There is no fixing or manipulating. The body is held (very lightly) with the hands. A connection is made to the body that is both unique to the area of contact but also encompasses the whole. Movements are perceived that are often described as fluidic in nature or in terms of spaciousness. Sensations of slowing down or stillness often accompany a change that is a movement towards health or the healing that we seek.

Who seeks out a Biodynamic Craniosacral treatment?

This method is safe for everyone. It is appropriate as adjunct therapy to any condition that troubles the body. I realize this is rather broad. Our lives have a broad range of difficulties that are being left behind or treated with medicines that don’t treat the problem (only the symptom). There are also a number of modern conditions that are not understood but do relate to stress or a lack of balance.

When using any complementary medicine it is important to remember it is not the same approach as (or a replacement for) traditional doctoring. Generally, a doctor is looking for signs of disease or for whatever problem has brought you into the office. Doctors are incredibly effective and use a great deal of intelligence to heal those symptoms. In the end though, doctors too are trusting that the body will heal after they remove the blocks (like setting a bone that is broken or even removing the cancer).

With Biodynamic Cranial, we intend to help enable that process towards healing through light touch and connecting to the forces that create health. What those 'forces' are that create health are mysterious and though I cannot explain them, I can vouch for this method as a viable and safe technique.

"Healing", Papa would tell me, "is not a science but the art of wooing nature." W.H. Auden