What is Craniosacral Therapy?
Craniosacral Therapy is a gentle way of working with the body using light touch, working on both a physical and emotional level to support an overall sense of balance, safety and wellbeing.
Unlike massage or therapies that use pressure to get your body to click and crack, craniosacral therapy is not about the therapist doing anything to you. Rather, therapists are trained in the art of gentle touch, calmly listening to your body and the subtle movements within it. The therapist makes light contact with different parts of the body, gently providing the environment of safety that the body needs in order to relax and reorient itself towards health.
“The body is the ground of our being, the spirit’s dance partner. When we feel safe enough to move, to touch, and to be touched, we begin to remember our wholeness.”
Gabrielle Roth
Neuroscientific view
The science on the importance of safe touch for both physical and mental health is well-established - from the moment we’re born right the way through to old age.
Craniosacral therapy uses our capacity for co-regulation - this is where our nervous system starts to shift out of overactive stress states (fight, flight or freeze) into greater calm and balance through contact with someone we feel safe with.
As our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems re-balance and we become comfortable with our physical sensations rather than afraid of them, this has a cascade of effects on the rest of the body - including pain perception, muscle tone, immune function, sleep, blood flow, digestive health, stress, mood, energy levels and more.
Psychological view
We know that there is tremendous psychological benefit in being truly listened to and heard. But talking is just one level of the human experience. We are embodied beings. Our flesh and blood and beautifully complex nervous systems are just as crucial to the way we feel as the thoughts in our head.
Craniosacral therapy is a deep listening to the stories the body holds. In being safely held and listened to in this way, we slowly learn both consciously and subconsciously that we can trust others to see, hear and touch us.
Learning to trust in this way invariably leads to profound changes in the way we feel in ourselves and in the world.
How does it work?
Part of the beauty and potency of craniosacral therapy is its holistic nature, and it can be understood through a variety of frameworks. Whether you more naturally understand things through the lens of neuroscience, anatomy, psychology, or spirituality - I encourage clients to make sense of their experience on their own terms.
Spiritual view
Being held and touched by someone we feel truly safe with allows not only the body but also the overactive, stressed and anxious mind to begin to relax and let go. In doing so, we can slowly start to feel a relaxation of the rigid boundaries around our sense of self.
We can gently shift from feeling like an individual, separate being in a busy, often overwhelming world, to experiencing a sense of deep interconnectedness with the people, nature and space around us. For many, this can be felt as a spiritual experience that encompasses a subtle but profound shift in one’s way of existing in the world - feeling a sense of ease and wholeness that comes naturally from an expanded sense of self.
