Craniosacral Therapy: Mechanics and Mystery
by Sigrid Heath, The Woodstock Times
When Heidi Washburn, whose business card reads "Craniosacral Journeys," worked on me the result was something like a journey, something like going to the movies, and unlike anything I'd experienced before. I won't go into much detail regarding the personal metaphysics (few things are as boring as hearing someone else's dreams and this is a little like that), but I will say that my body offered up image after image, unexpected, often mysterious, often delightful. A single example: I am being held by my father, one hand supporting my head and the other under my bottom, while my limbs move in the warm water off the southern coast of St. Lucia. (My father was stationed there during WWII.)
However, this wasn't a typical mental snap-shot with the point-of-view being that of observer. It was a sensation of the water's resistance and temperature, my limbs moving, medallions of light moving on the surface at eye level, and my father's hands holding me up. It took a moment, once all the pieces had assembled, to understand what I was recalling. There were many others, all similarly visceral - my body's recollections not yet translated into language by my brain - and evoked by Heidi moving her hands on my body. A reminder of that mind and body are interdependent parts of the self - an idea that allopathic medicine has chosen to ignore or denigrate since the early 20th century. Western science has preferred to consider them separate universes since Descartes.
I hadn't known what to expect from craniosacral work, I'd never tried it and hadn't had time to research it before visiting Heidi. Consequently, I was the perfect subject: innocent of the controversies, generally skeptical, as always, but willing to give myself over to something new. What helped immeasurably was having met Heidi some weeks earlier. I had liked her immediately and trusted her, critical elements in the success of any interaction between a practitioner and a consumer of the medical arts.
Among the many interesting aspects of the experience, I was very surprised by two events in particular. Before the session, Heidi had asked me about my medical history, current health issues, both physical and psychological, and I gave her a quick rundown. As she was working on me, I noticed she gave particular attention to the area of my left ear. After the session, I told her I had forgotten to mention I have tinnitus and am losing hearing in my left ear. I found this very interesting but Heidi was nonplussed. She said she'd also felt "something going on around my left hip." That remained a mystery until later that night when I remembered that I have osteopenia in the head of my left femur.
In the light, light touch - and sometimes non-touch, when her hands hovered a few centimeters over a part of my body - what was Heidi feeling? What was my body telling her? How was it doing the telling?
It's not easy to explain, apparently. The craniosacral (from cranium, or skull, and sacrum, the lower part of the backbone, ending in the coccyx) therapy practitioner uses a highly developed sense of touch (in addition to extensive training in anatomy and physiology) to "tune in" to the "rhythm" of the cerebrospinal fluid. This clear, watery substance surrounds the brain and the spinal cord, providing a buffer from trauma, circulating, constantly being absorbed and replenished, created from arterial blood, absorbed into venous blood. Proponents of the discipline hold that obstructions somewhere in the system, the result of physical or psychological trauma, result in dis-ease of various sorts. The trained and talented practitioner will detect irregularities in the tidal movement of the cerebrospinal fluid and make adjustments through subtle manipulation.
"The quality of this movement tells a lot," said Heidi, "its symmetry, vitality." In explaining what drew her to my left ear, she said, "I felt that side was 'thicker', not moving as much. It's as if it were drawing my attention."
Descriptions of the practice - an outgrowth of osteopathy - cover a spectrum from rhetoric that sounds like religious cultism (there's nothing it can't cure, except perhaps a cranial aneurism) to charges of quackery. An example of the latter: In 2002, two basic science professors at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine wrote: "Our own and previously published findings suggest that the proposed mechanism for cranial osteopathy is invalid and that interexaminer (and, therefore, diagnostic) reliability is approximately zero. Since no properly randomized, blinded, and placebo-controlled outcome studies have been published, we conclude that cranial osteopathy should be removed from curricula of colleges of osteopathic medicine and from osteopathic licensing examinations."
Not all effects are quantifiable by that gold standard clinical study, especially those achieved by methods that don't lend themselves to measurement and comparison using tools familiar to Western science.
Heidi described a highly individualized process that she frankly termed "mysterious." She said that often while working on a patient, she'd ask herself, "Can this possibly be helping?" Yet people report successful outcomes. She cited a patient who suffered from severe tinnitus that improved dramatically when Heidi made adjustments to the bones at the base of her skull in the vicinity of her carotid artery.
Heidi said she has studied two different craniosacral methods and tends toward what's known as the biodynamic school. As described by the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association, "The practitioner listens deeply to the fluctuations of the cerebrospinal fluid within the craniosacral system. The fluctuation of the cerebrospinal fluid creates a variety of tides within the system. As the practitioner from a place of stillness listens to these internal tides, the client's system begins to access its own inner resources... " This approach tends to be relatively mechanical.
Promoters claim it relieves headaches, neck and back pain, temporomandibular joint pain (TMJ, the hinge of the jaw), vision problems, chronic fatigue, poor coordination, depression, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, problems with the central nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, and many other conditions that I won't list here.
Heidi said her patients who have had the greatest success with craniosacral therapy have also been engaged in other modes, alternative and traditional, indicating a determination to improve their health.
Heidi came to craniosacral therapy via psychotherapy and her work as a licensed massage therapist. In about 16 years of practicing craniosacral therapy (and teaching massage therapy and pathology as well as continuing her own studies, she had just completed a course in neurology when I met her) she has evolved her own synthesis of approaches. While she presents a pragmatic, straightforward attitude regarding healthcare, she displays no defensiveness when questioned regarding the work and acknowledges its mysterious aspects. An appealing combination of attitudes. "It's like a non-verbal conversation with that body. When I feel something happening, I still ask, is this me? Is it them? It [the practice] is so much more than I know."
Though, without equivocation, she said, "I have faith in the body's ability to heal itself and I'm a facilitator of that process."
She creates an atmosphere that could not be more conducive to relaxation, a helpful element in any diagnostic or healing situation. The room was dimly lit, all the edges were soft. Heidi offered a blanket, but the air was warm. She is attentive and soft-spoken, calm, compassionate. She's got a fine sense of humor. She's candid. (A variety of studies have indicated that compassion and other elements of "good bedside manner" contribute significantly to good outcomes.) But while she can control the atmosphere, Heidi said she never knows how the session will go, there are too many variables.
"I can be thinking entirely mechanically [during a session], and the person might be having a more metaphysical experience."
I tried to pin her down regarding the mechanism. How does the movement of her hands affect these cerebrospinal fluid tides? "There's a synergistic element at work," she said. "At one point I had my hands close to your head, but it felt as if I was in actual contact with your head. There is an energy field that extends beyond our bodies. It feels magnetic."
I asked her to explain what's meant by obstructions in this movement.
"When animals suffer trauma, they freeze and when the danger has passed, they get up, shake off the fear or impact, and go on," she said, "People also freeze. But possibly because humans attach much emotional/psychological freight to the event, some part stays 'frozen'." She said the trauma "gets stuck and is expressed in some specific place in the body." The craniosacral therapist relieves this trauma through facilitating healthy movement of the cerebrospinal fluid. The literature on craniosacral therapy describes this as "sites of inertia" that "hinder the ability of our essential blueprint for health to manifest at a cellular level."
So what happens on the cellular level? What holds the pain? In what form? How does this affect cerebrospinal fluid?
Heidi said, "We don't know why trauma is stored in these places - some call these 'energy cysts', they're archaic wounds. We help resolve this, not by encouraging a re-experiencing of the trauma, but by creating a situation in which somato-emotional healing takes place. We use various techniques to open the meninges [layers of tissue surrounding the brain] and improve circulation of cerebrospinal fluid. When I come to the body it's with the intention of engaging the mind/body axis to effect healing."
The salutary effects probably result from a combination of elements that has yet to be fully identified. "I can't explain it, but I have felt it over and over again," said Heidi, speaking of one such effect. "Sometimes the rhythm will stop, everything goes very quiet... I'm seen it over and over. Something significant is happening, the whole body gets very quiet. I just wait, I stay quiet. Often the patient doesn't seem to be aware of anything unusual going on. The body is working independently of conscious thought."
How people interpret the work is their own concern. "Whatever belief system a person walks in with - I work with it. If someone wants to talk about past lives, I use that vocabulary. Whether I believe or not isn't important."
She said she is not religious, but she believes in the inclination of all organisms toward life. "There's an impulse towards health and expansion in each of us. Often when there's conflict, it means something new emerging. Early on [in the practice] I felt I needed to understand everything. Now I'm able to let it happen. I don't worry about the meaning. That's something to discuss later."
My confusion, my frustration in the absence of concrete evidence, notwithstanding, Heidi didn't know about my tinnitus or osteopenia. My body told her.
However, this wasn't a typical mental snap-shot with the point-of-view being that of observer. It was a sensation of the water's resistance and temperature, my limbs moving, medallions of light moving on the surface at eye level, and my father's hands holding me up. It took a moment, once all the pieces had assembled, to understand what I was recalling. There were many others, all similarly visceral - my body's recollections not yet translated into language by my brain - and evoked by Heidi moving her hands on my body. A reminder of that mind and body are interdependent parts of the self - an idea that allopathic medicine has chosen to ignore or denigrate since the early 20th century. Western science has preferred to consider them separate universes since Descartes.
I hadn't known what to expect from craniosacral work, I'd never tried it and hadn't had time to research it before visiting Heidi. Consequently, I was the perfect subject: innocent of the controversies, generally skeptical, as always, but willing to give myself over to something new. What helped immeasurably was having met Heidi some weeks earlier. I had liked her immediately and trusted her, critical elements in the success of any interaction between a practitioner and a consumer of the medical arts.
Among the many interesting aspects of the experience, I was very surprised by two events in particular. Before the session, Heidi had asked me about my medical history, current health issues, both physical and psychological, and I gave her a quick rundown. As she was working on me, I noticed she gave particular attention to the area of my left ear. After the session, I told her I had forgotten to mention I have tinnitus and am losing hearing in my left ear. I found this very interesting but Heidi was nonplussed. She said she'd also felt "something going on around my left hip." That remained a mystery until later that night when I remembered that I have osteopenia in the head of my left femur.
In the light, light touch - and sometimes non-touch, when her hands hovered a few centimeters over a part of my body - what was Heidi feeling? What was my body telling her? How was it doing the telling?
It's not easy to explain, apparently. The craniosacral (from cranium, or skull, and sacrum, the lower part of the backbone, ending in the coccyx) therapy practitioner uses a highly developed sense of touch (in addition to extensive training in anatomy and physiology) to "tune in" to the "rhythm" of the cerebrospinal fluid. This clear, watery substance surrounds the brain and the spinal cord, providing a buffer from trauma, circulating, constantly being absorbed and replenished, created from arterial blood, absorbed into venous blood. Proponents of the discipline hold that obstructions somewhere in the system, the result of physical or psychological trauma, result in dis-ease of various sorts. The trained and talented practitioner will detect irregularities in the tidal movement of the cerebrospinal fluid and make adjustments through subtle manipulation.
"The quality of this movement tells a lot," said Heidi, "its symmetry, vitality." In explaining what drew her to my left ear, she said, "I felt that side was 'thicker', not moving as much. It's as if it were drawing my attention."
Descriptions of the practice - an outgrowth of osteopathy - cover a spectrum from rhetoric that sounds like religious cultism (there's nothing it can't cure, except perhaps a cranial aneurism) to charges of quackery. An example of the latter: In 2002, two basic science professors at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine wrote: "Our own and previously published findings suggest that the proposed mechanism for cranial osteopathy is invalid and that interexaminer (and, therefore, diagnostic) reliability is approximately zero. Since no properly randomized, blinded, and placebo-controlled outcome studies have been published, we conclude that cranial osteopathy should be removed from curricula of colleges of osteopathic medicine and from osteopathic licensing examinations."
Not all effects are quantifiable by that gold standard clinical study, especially those achieved by methods that don't lend themselves to measurement and comparison using tools familiar to Western science.
Heidi described a highly individualized process that she frankly termed "mysterious." She said that often while working on a patient, she'd ask herself, "Can this possibly be helping?" Yet people report successful outcomes. She cited a patient who suffered from severe tinnitus that improved dramatically when Heidi made adjustments to the bones at the base of her skull in the vicinity of her carotid artery.
Heidi said she has studied two different craniosacral methods and tends toward what's known as the biodynamic school. As described by the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association, "The practitioner listens deeply to the fluctuations of the cerebrospinal fluid within the craniosacral system. The fluctuation of the cerebrospinal fluid creates a variety of tides within the system. As the practitioner from a place of stillness listens to these internal tides, the client's system begins to access its own inner resources... " This approach tends to be relatively mechanical.
Promoters claim it relieves headaches, neck and back pain, temporomandibular joint pain (TMJ, the hinge of the jaw), vision problems, chronic fatigue, poor coordination, depression, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, problems with the central nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, and many other conditions that I won't list here.
Heidi said her patients who have had the greatest success with craniosacral therapy have also been engaged in other modes, alternative and traditional, indicating a determination to improve their health.
Heidi came to craniosacral therapy via psychotherapy and her work as a licensed massage therapist. In about 16 years of practicing craniosacral therapy (and teaching massage therapy and pathology as well as continuing her own studies, she had just completed a course in neurology when I met her) she has evolved her own synthesis of approaches. While she presents a pragmatic, straightforward attitude regarding healthcare, she displays no defensiveness when questioned regarding the work and acknowledges its mysterious aspects. An appealing combination of attitudes. "It's like a non-verbal conversation with that body. When I feel something happening, I still ask, is this me? Is it them? It [the practice] is so much more than I know."
Though, without equivocation, she said, "I have faith in the body's ability to heal itself and I'm a facilitator of that process."
She creates an atmosphere that could not be more conducive to relaxation, a helpful element in any diagnostic or healing situation. The room was dimly lit, all the edges were soft. Heidi offered a blanket, but the air was warm. She is attentive and soft-spoken, calm, compassionate. She's got a fine sense of humor. She's candid. (A variety of studies have indicated that compassion and other elements of "good bedside manner" contribute significantly to good outcomes.) But while she can control the atmosphere, Heidi said she never knows how the session will go, there are too many variables.
"I can be thinking entirely mechanically [during a session], and the person might be having a more metaphysical experience."
I tried to pin her down regarding the mechanism. How does the movement of her hands affect these cerebrospinal fluid tides? "There's a synergistic element at work," she said. "At one point I had my hands close to your head, but it felt as if I was in actual contact with your head. There is an energy field that extends beyond our bodies. It feels magnetic."
I asked her to explain what's meant by obstructions in this movement.
"When animals suffer trauma, they freeze and when the danger has passed, they get up, shake off the fear or impact, and go on," she said, "People also freeze. But possibly because humans attach much emotional/psychological freight to the event, some part stays 'frozen'." She said the trauma "gets stuck and is expressed in some specific place in the body." The craniosacral therapist relieves this trauma through facilitating healthy movement of the cerebrospinal fluid. The literature on craniosacral therapy describes this as "sites of inertia" that "hinder the ability of our essential blueprint for health to manifest at a cellular level."
So what happens on the cellular level? What holds the pain? In what form? How does this affect cerebrospinal fluid?
Heidi said, "We don't know why trauma is stored in these places - some call these 'energy cysts', they're archaic wounds. We help resolve this, not by encouraging a re-experiencing of the trauma, but by creating a situation in which somato-emotional healing takes place. We use various techniques to open the meninges [layers of tissue surrounding the brain] and improve circulation of cerebrospinal fluid. When I come to the body it's with the intention of engaging the mind/body axis to effect healing."
The salutary effects probably result from a combination of elements that has yet to be fully identified. "I can't explain it, but I have felt it over and over again," said Heidi, speaking of one such effect. "Sometimes the rhythm will stop, everything goes very quiet... I'm seen it over and over. Something significant is happening, the whole body gets very quiet. I just wait, I stay quiet. Often the patient doesn't seem to be aware of anything unusual going on. The body is working independently of conscious thought."
How people interpret the work is their own concern. "Whatever belief system a person walks in with - I work with it. If someone wants to talk about past lives, I use that vocabulary. Whether I believe or not isn't important."
She said she is not religious, but she believes in the inclination of all organisms toward life. "There's an impulse towards health and expansion in each of us. Often when there's conflict, it means something new emerging. Early on [in the practice] I felt I needed to understand everything. Now I'm able to let it happen. I don't worry about the meaning. That's something to discuss later."
My confusion, my frustration in the absence of concrete evidence, notwithstanding, Heidi didn't know about my tinnitus or osteopenia. My body told her.