CranioSacral Therapy

It is perhaps the oldest form of massage therapy known to the human race. CranioSacral Therapy has been used in china for literally thousands of years to adjust a person’s body in order to “bring quiet to the heart” and improve their life and mental clarity. Throughout history, healers of all types noticed the way that the body moved, and was moved, greatly affected the health and well being of the patient. Medieval healers, for instance, used the same therapies and techniques outlined in the ancient Chinese texts to set broken bones and relieve discomfort on patients long before there was standardized medicine to treat these afflictions. Indeed, the techniques that comprise CranioSacral Therapy was considered to be a vital part of the treatment of many ailments and afflictions affecting the human body throughout most of human history in all corners of the world.

In the early 20th century, an osteopathic physician named Dr. William Sutherland stunned the medical community when he proved that, contrary to what Western medicine believed, the cranium was not a solid, immovable mass of bone. His research, which he called cranial osteopathy, showed that the cranium was not only composed of 22 separate bone plates, but that manipulation of those plates brought relief to patients.

A contemporary of Dr. Southerland, a chiropractor named Nephi Cotton, reached a similar conclusion and called his method craniology. These two similar but distinct methods acquired many disciples and practitioners who operated independently of each other for decades until an Osteopathic physician at Michigan State University’s Department of Biomechanics named Dr. John Upledger noticed the similarities between the two and fused their styles into a single practice he dubbed CranioSacral Therapy.

CranioSacral Therapy is a holistic approach to wellbeing that is different from other massage therapy techniques in that it uses very light touch along the cranium and spinal column in order to produce its effects. This light touch balances the body’s bones, fluids, nerves and connective tissues in order to relieve a variety of symptoms. Many Osteopathic physicians, including Dr. Upledger attest that CranioSacral Therapy is able to relieve a wide variety of seemingly-disparate conditions and afflictions. Some of the physical manifestations of imbalance along the CranioSacral line include headaches, chronic middle ear infections, back aches, rheumatoid arthritis, and menstrual cramping and other side effects of menstruation. What was surprising was that Dr. Upledger and other physicians’ and clinician’s research revealed that many disorders previously thought to e mental or chemically-produced were treatable using CranioSacral Therapy.

Autism, fibromyalgia, Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, dyslexia, and gastroenteritis were also seen to improve, or be at least temporarily alleviated, by CranioSacral Therapy. This therapy has even been applied to infants and babies that have colic, “floppy baby syndrome,” and certain birth defects as well, proving that the techniques taught by CranioSacral Therapy theories are applicable to a patient of any age and with a broad range of afflictions and disorders. Ancient wisdom, it seems, is finding a new place in modern health care.

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