Cranio-Sacral Therapyby Jane Turvey of the College of Cranio-Sacral TherapyIMAGINE trying to run your car with a flat battery - the only way to get somewhere would be to push it! Yet in our personal lives, we often end up trying to do the equivalent, busily running around between work, family and social commitments etc., all the while ignoring the fact that our own energy resources are running very low as we crank ourselves up for the next task. And it's often only when we come to a full stop through illness, trauma or injury of any kind that we really start to pay attention to our health. Cranio-sacral therapy is one extremely powerful way that we can get in touch with the energy at the core of our being and allow its potent health-giving and life-enhacing properties to be released - whether we need to tackle old injuries and traumas, current health crises or are looking to safeguard our health for the future. The cranio-sacral therapist is able to tune in to us on a deep level through very gently touching the cranium (head), sacrum (tailbone) or other parts of the body as appropriate. Through this very sensitive and subtle touch, he detects any tensions, pulls and twists within the system which will hamper the free flow of energy. By gently following and releasing any tensions and twists, he facilitates the free flow of energy throughout the body again, restoring health and vitality to all the tissues and organs and to the person as a whole. Because cranio-sacral therapy is essentially concerned with enhancing health and vitality at our core it can help almost any condition including colic and ear infections in babies, behavioural disorders and asthma in children as well as migraine, back pain, menstrual disorders, emotional stresses and the after-effects of major accidents, injuries, meningitis or other serious illnesses. Its gentleness makes it particularly suitable for working with babies and children, and it is particularly effective in treating birth trauma - something that is not generally well addressed by other therapies. Indeed Thomas Attlee, prinicipal of the College of Cranio-Sacral Therapy in north London, believes all babies should automatically receive a course of cranio-sacral therapy, since unresolved birth trauma can play a considerable role in many conditions later in life such as dyslexia and behavioural problems. Thomas recalls one particularly vivid case: "I had a nine year old who was quite severely dyslexic and who had fallen way behind at school, who, on the very first treatment, changed dramatically and went to the top of the class." While such a rapid response is unusual, it nevertheless demonstrates cranio-sacral therapy's power to help conditions which can seem intractable. Another example is a woman in her mid-fifties who came to see Thomas with severe chronic lower back pain which meant she could only walk short distances with the aid of sticks. "She was particularly interesting because she had tried virtually everything", Thomas says. "She had had vertebrae fused together in an operation, she had had the nerve injected to try and deaden the pain, she had been to osteopaths and acupuncturists and all sorts of therapists and had essentially been left in more and more pain. "It wasn't possible to touch her back because the pain was so acute, but she was able to lie down for a few minutes and during that time I was able to tune into her head and to work through the cranio-sacral system and within that very first session was able to relieve the pain that had been with her for years." Thomas has in fact pioneered the development of cranio-sacral therapy in the UK and also in Europe, setting up the very first college in the UK in 1985. He has built upon the work of the originator of cranio-sacral therapy, Dr. William Garner Sutherland, an American osteopath, who in the early years of the 20th century observed that the bones of the cranium appeared to be designed to move. This was contrary to everything he had been taught and prompted him to spend the next 50 years researching the cause of this movement within the body. Failing to find an answer at the bone level, he went deeper into the cerebro-spinal system, next investigating the role of the meninges - the membranes surrounding the brain, spinal cord and central nervous system. He then looked at the function of the cerebro-spinal fluid and ultimately decided that the answer lay not with the fluid itself but with an innate potency or life force that it carried, which he named the 'Breath of Life'. He surmised that this vital energy - known as chi or prana in oriental medicine - was the same universal life-ordering principle that moved the planets, the tides, the seasons etc. and that it contained the blueprint for perfect health. Its free flow was essential for wellbeing on all levels. Although cranio-sacral therapy developed originally as a branch of osteopathy, it has now very much become a therapy in its own right. And while it shares many of the same concepts and methodologies as cranial-osteopathy it tends to be more receptive to the energetic and psycho-emotional factors behind conditions. Physical and psycho-emotional factors are inevitably interlinked,and the release of restrictions within the cranio-sacral system often has far-reaching effects, not only on physical levels but also on the release of deeply-embedded emotional tensions. This can be used in the treatment of physcial conditions which have underlying emotional causes or as direct treatment of the psychological state of the person. For Thomas the great strength of cranio-sacral therapy is that it has a very solid grounding in scientifically and medically validated science, while at the same time embracing the most advanced concepts of energy medicine. "What one can say about cranio-sacral therapy is that we are on the borderline of everything. "It very much works with the combination of the physical and emotional, the physical and metaphysical, the physiological and non-physiological - and that is its great power. It manages to integrate these to a greater extent than any other therapy." "Because of this integrative capacity, it appeals to holistic practitioners and other health professionals from all disciplines. There is no doubt that cranio-sacral therapy is an expanding therapy that is going to take off - both in terms of helping patients and the number of people who train in it." For more information on treatment or training, contact:
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