Your Craniosacral Therapy Session: What I'm Feeling When I'm Quiet

Recently a client asked me if it was OK to ask what I was feeling when I was sharing a Craniosacral Therapy session with her. A comment often made by those new to Craniosacral Therapy is that they don’t feel me  doing anything. In the quiet moments of a Craniosacral Therapy session there are so many subtle things going on throughout your being. I become quiet and close my eyes to limit the senses I am engaging, so that I can gain a better sense through touch.

---

Your Cranial Rhythm, as it causes an extension and flexion through your Cranial System, echoes through your entire body. The rhythm may be smooth, but more often it is too fast, uneven, restricted or stuck in places.  For most people, the two places where I feel the rhythm best is at the head and at the feet.

In addition to checking in with your cranial rhythm I check the surface fascia in different areas. Fascial Testing shows me where there may be tightness or restrictions in your fascia. It doesn’t take a deep touch, but instead a light movement, to determine if the fascia is moving well, or not.

---

Gentle joint play or movement such as at the sacrum, spinal segments, collar bone, pelvic bone, rib cage, etc. tell me if both sides of a bone are moving equally in relation to proximal bones. I also check in to see if there is movement or if a joint is stuck, is the joint connecting properly with its surrounding bones and tissues,… This is also a way in which to assess if other joints nearby are affected. For example an issue with the knee joint may also be impacting the hip, sacrum, ankle and foot.

---

In combination, what I am feeling with these gentle assessments are where restrictions and tension are located in the body’s fascia.  These can be due to past injury, illness, surgery, emotional tension, stress, birth trauma, poor posture, concussion, dislocations, breaks or sprains, digestive issues…  

​A restriction in one part of the body will have an impact on other parts of the body. This can include other joints, fascia, circulation, nerve conduction, toxin release, digestion…

Here is where Craniosacral Therapy really differs from your Massage sessions. With Massage, in feeling restriction and tension in soft tissue, I apply force and pressure with techniques to encourage a change. With Craniosacral Therapy I place my hands in the area of the restriction and wait for your body to invite me in to provide space and release. The intelligent body that you have knows what is needed and welcomes a gentle touch as an assist.

---

“There’s also a unique and undeniable spiritual dimension to this practice: “The craniosacral wave isn’t just a physical phenomenon,” says Dr. Milne. “It’s also a field of information and intelligence. In the tiny movements of the system, and in the still points in between, is consciousness.” Dr. Upledger refers to this intelligence as the inner physician, explaining: “The inner wisdom which knows what is wrong, why it’s wrong, and how to correct it. The body tells the therapist what needs to be done.”
There is no need for a client to tell me verbally what’s wrong,” Dr. Upledger says.”

Your body also gives me feedback right away if I have my hands in the wrong place.  The wrong place feels like my hands are coming up against a cement wall, the right place feels like my hands or fingers are slipping into the tissues.

Your skull also has joints that have some very limited movement. These joints can be restricted for the same reasons listed above for tension in the body’s fascia. Restrictions and tension in the joints (or sutures) of your cranium can impact the movement of Cerebral Spinal Fluid around the brain and down the spinal cord, compress nerve and cranial nerve function and glands located in the head (the pineal and pituitary glands), facial appearance,...

---

​In gently releasing any restrictions Cerebral Spinal Fluid flows more freely as it baths the brain and the nerve roots, and cranial function, as well as function throughout the body improves and normalizes to its natural state of well-being.

---

While all of the above is happening you rest, deeply. Your Nervous System shifts from sympathetic to parasympathetic function. In this rest and digest phase the body resets.