What is Craniosacral Therapy?

  

A gentle,

non-invasive

light-touch bodywork that:

  • utilizes a whole-person approach, helping your system become quiet, renewing your innate ability to heal naturally and tap your reservoirs of vitality, energy, and health

  • helps body-mind-spirit unwind, releasing long-held patterns of tension layer by layer to get to the heart of the problem for lasting results

What Does This Mean for You?

  • Lasting change naturally, gently, when, and how you are ready 
  • Enhanced ability to go forward with ease, self-awareness, well-being, feeling grounded, centered, confident and at ease in your own skin

Who Can Benefit?

  • Baby-to-be, newborns, through all ages to those in their final life stages.
  • Those who are sensitive to touch, find it painful, or don't like to be touched.
  • Those not finding benefit from mainstream approaches
  • Those desiring a natural approach to health whether out of balance from injury, disease, trauma, or daily living
  • Those whose situations are overwhelming or confusing

Why Do I Use It?

I experienced first hand the difference between having someone else "help" me based on their agenda, or own "trained" idea of what I needed (traditional physical and occupational therapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy), and having someone support my body in following its own inherent "treatment" plan - with craniosacral therapy.  Craniosacral therapy helped me release patterns of tension in my body that nothing else did.  I didn't even realize many of them were there. It felt synchronistic, and magical, yet profoundly "right" when the releases happened.  AND, the changes lasted.  

I rested in knowing that whatever happened during a session was exactly what I needed at that time, and would not cause me further harm.  It may not have been on the timeline my Ego self would have liked, but I learned to trust the process.

And, it is my deepest desire to honor the inherent treatment plan of all of my clients, to help them achieve their greatest healing potential as well.

As a result of receiving craniosacral therapy as an adult on a regular basis:

  • I feel Great!!!
  • I have fewer headaches, and they are less intense
  • if I still had long hair, I could tolerate the weight and pressure of pony tails with far less likelihood of a headache
  • I can now wear sunglasses (need them most days) and hats with decreased chance of headaches
  • I can now tolerate wearing scarves and turtlenecks with decreased chance of stiff neck and headaches
  • My legs don't ache as often (as they did as a child -"growing pains", unresponsive to conventional treatment - because (I now know) they really weren't "growing pains")
  • When my back feels out of alignment, my body corrects itself
  • I use my body-mind as my guidance system - my Inner Wisdome tells me when I am out of balance and need to course-correct
  • I experience peace and deep connection, knowing I am living the life I was born to live.

 My Soul chose this life in which much of this tension was due to having been a breech baby, Cesarian delivery after many hours, compounded by "life" (falls, insults, traumas, years of orthodontic braces, not living consciously engaged with my Purpose).  Getting to the root in this way worked when nothing else did.  It is my health go-to now!

How's it Different from Other Approaches?

Craniosacral Therapy:

1. Healing that comes from you, vs. someone else's agenda, resolving chronic problems at the heart of the matter, vs. masking symptoms.

2. Treats you as a Whole Being, with physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects.

3. Focuses on health, and what is working, not the problem.

4. Helps release long-held patterns of stress, tension, pain, physical and emotional limitations. 

It resources and optimizes your Innate Healing Wisdom - the part of you governing regeneration and growth. Body, mind and spirit may unwind, resulting in new patterns of health and well-being.

 Your Innate Healing Wisdom "knows" what's at the heart of your challenge, what's needed for you to be better, and the best way to deal with it.

It is the orignial organizing Life Force in the embryo.  It supports life within you to keep you here.  

Unhealed problems become like an irritating grain of sand in an oyster shell. The oyster copes and adapts by coating the sand to make it tolerable (yes, a pearl).  The oyster must also adapt to, and cope with, the presence of  the pearl. So, too, we deal by coping and adapting.   

From one perspective, we have a "problem".  BUT, from another perspective its our pearl: an opportunity to learn, grow, release a problem and heal.  This work offers direct access to not only learn from, but also liberate the root source of, any pain (physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual) and activate the instinctive memory of who you are born to be. What is your pearl?

Through listening deeply to your body, heeding your pain's messages, and renewing your connection to the Life force that sustains and nurtures you, you can:

  • increase your nervous system's capacity for health, harmony and well-being
  • alleviate pain and limitations by releasing protective holding patterns
  • move forward from daily existing and reacting into purposeful heart-centered living
  • fundamentally change how you experience yourself and your life
  • Value your "Pearl".... Let your Inner Light shine on the world

Want the "Science" - How Does Craniosacral Therapy "Work"?

The craniosacral system consists of the:

1. fluid (cerebrospinal fluid),

2. membranes (meninges), and

3. bones (head = "cranio", vertebrae, and the sacrum = "sacral"= large triangular bone at the base of spine/above tailbone)

all surrounding, nourishing, bathing, & protecting the Central Nervous System (CNS=brain + spinal cord). 

The original organizing Life Force that formed you as an embryo concentrates in the cerebrospinal fluid and informs all other fluid in the body.  It manifests as a rhythmic fluctuation associated with very subtle changes in fluid volume within the craniosacral system. 

The quality and nature of these tides reflect, and influence, your health.  They're visible in early cellular development, "instructing" the orginal fluid "YOU" to become the physical body you are now, and you are becoming until death.

Optimizing these natural tides in the body supports health.  Your nervous system impacts: your connection to your sense of self, what you continually focus on, your emotions, behaviors, perceptions, consciousness and your degree of resourcefulness in the world (ability to thrive).  

How's It Done?
Craniosacral therapists use subtle palpation skills to work with these inherent subtle rhythmic fluctuations, or tides.

As I work with you, I use light touch to cue your body to release even long-held patterns of tension and trauma in the fascia and soft tissues that restrict and interfere with these rhythms, gently unwinding the body, mind, and spirit. The natural rhythms in the fluid can then re-express themselves in a healthier pattern.  This spontaneously activates the part of you that effortlessly creates new lifestyle strategies to support your advanced level of health (you know without thinking what you need to do!).

This is NOT MASSAGE. It does not involve stroking and kneading of the muscles.  It is quiet work with holds that may include tissue releases. 

The focus of this work is on health, and what is working, what feels safe, good, healthy, "ok", creating resources you can draw upon any time you need them outside of a session.  Resources for Life.

What if You Don't Like to Be Touched?

  • This work is well-suited to many people with touch issues
  • I am trained and commited to work within your comfort zone - communicating with you to honor your limits
  • Contact is light, holding only one area or a few -  it is not stroking and kneading 
  • You can stop the session at any time.

People are often surprised to find that within the safe context of a session they are able to be touched, or release their resistance to touch.

We are all inherently designed to thrive on safe, healthy touch - our nervous systems rely on it to develop properly. 

An Integrative Approach:

I often complement this work with massage therapy to help further integrate this natural self-correcting process, increasing the nervous system's capacity for health, harmony, and well-being.  Whether or not massage is used at all is ultimately up to the client. 

I also offer Transformational Coaching as a complement to this work to help clients discover,  choose, plan, and take their next steps to creating changes to feel less stressed and more fulfilled for lasting results.

And, Craniosacral Therapy helps embody the changes one is choosing and experiencing in the Transformational Coaching process.

TO GET A BETTER IDEA WHAT A SESSION IS LIKE CLICK HERE.

 

 

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