‘You are ‘touching’ the client the moment he walks in the room. Now, give yourself time to make the transition from sitting and talking to visionary touch’ …
’It may take the speech centers months to articulate what happened in an hour of transformative visionary touch’.
Hugh Milne, The Heart of Listening
Cranio-Sacral therapy (CST) is a very gentle, mostly hands-on type of treatment which evolved from the work of osteopaths such as W. Sutherland in the early 20th century. Although some of the palpation or other techniques used by Cranio-Sacral therapists were first developed by osteopaths, particularly John Upledger, CST is separate from osteopathy. Some CS therapists are not osteopaths. Using a very light touch with a sensing, non-judgemental, compassionate and grounded therapeutic presence, CS therapists are trained to identify some very subtle rhythms in our bodies, to tune into their Craniosacral system and feel the dance of the bones and tissues, tensions in the dural membranes and activation in the nervous system. They can feel distortions in the tissues and energy field of the patient. This sensing and acknowledgement by the therapist, and their specific presence, seems to be facilitating the body’s ability to correct and heal itself and release whatever patterns, trauma or blockages were held in the tissues or wider field.
During CST sessions, the therapist first helps your body to resource in stillness and in that process, you may reconnect to your inner health potential. This is why CS sessions are mostly very relaxing. The whole process, the pace of progress, remains very individual and depends a lot on your own life story. It is patient led, no matter what ailments you are suffering from: your body knows what needs to happen, in what order and shows the way to those who listen to its wisdom.
Here is how patient BB describes and experiences her own process after a few sessions of CST:
“Having suffered from severe allergies and asthma since early childhood, battling for a bit of breath that people take for granted, on steroids just about all my life and on biological medicines during the last few years that partially helped but not cured, meeting Florence has brought a new dimension, a pleasant light into my life. Initially, her gentle touch during CST helped release huge grief from a childhood trauma bottled up inside. It was a feeling like a ball of fire leaving my heart, leaving all my tissues, replacing the emptiness with peace, joy and equanimity, Now, we are working on the physical dimension, inflammation in my head and lungs caused by allergies and I can already observe improvement. I am grateful that I met her. Thank you Florence.“
What to expect:
During a typical session, after discussing your symptoms, you will lie on a couch with your clothes on. It is also possible to treat in any other position: sitting or lying on the floor while a child patient is playing, or sitting on a chair. At the beginning of a CST session, the body is first given a safe space to settle in stillness. The first place of contact with the patient may be where the therapist feels is most appropriate to settle the patient or where the patient feels is the safest place for them. Some patients do not feel much more than relaxed at first, or just some tingling or warmth and start experiencing deeper benefits a bit later. Others do get a sense of what is happening, such as tissues releasing tensions or traumas.
The sessions are very much patient-led, the practitioner is facilitating the self-healing mechanism in the patient at the pace and place where he is guided to do so from what he senses. So if you come for treatment due to chronic headaches, I may not at first work on your head. My attention may be guided elsewhere, for example physically to your legs: an old fall when you broke your ankle could have triggered a chain of changes in your body, from overusing the other leg, then affecting the balance in your hips and pulling on your back muscles which creates tension in your neck and now triggers headaches!! All our structures are linked via fascia, a cling-film like tissue so I look at and treat the whole person, not parts in isolation.
Here is a youtube video by the CSTA, showing what a session might look like and what patients said: