"You will just have to live with it? - Take these drugs and the problem will go away. - There is nothing wrong with your child. - We have done everything we can. - That is normal for babies. - Your child will be like that for the rest of their lives. - Surgery is your only option."

From John Dalton                                                   
October 1, 2008
2:30pm

                               

   Hello there,
   If you've had your faith in doctors shattered. If you've had your wallet emptied by over confident therapists. If you've been on the emotional roller coaster, rising in hope that each new approach is going to work, then crushed when it doesn't. If you've tried everything and you still haven't got the results you wanted.
You're not alone.

  In fact you're like so many of the people who have come to me for help and got it.

'Dear John,
This is a letter to say thank you. When I came to see you I can't say I had any great trust in you or cranio sacral therapy either. But I knew that my bi-polar disorder was quite literally threatening my life and I needed help. You gave me that help and I can only say how grateful I am to you.
I never thought I could ever live a 'normal' life, but now I do, and it's thanks to you. (Hey, that's poetry!)
Thanks, John.'
Carla Read

    When I first started learning cranio sacral therapy I really hadn't a clue what I was getting myself involved in. My background was in Film and TV and I had no good reason to make the change.
But once I heard about it, there was something about this cranio thing that wouldn't let me go.

   Then there was the first autistic child I treated. This was back in Ireland. Ruth was her name. I still remember her clearly and how she improved. That was 13 years ago. There have been hundreds of people since. People like Carla (above) who keep me to it.

   Cranio sacral therapy is not a 'cure all' and no it doesn't work for everyone but it could work for you.

'I first came across John's healing sessions while recovering from major brain surgery. Thankfully I am now fully recovered and I know that John was a key in that recovery providing a fundamental building block of support and healing strength. The beauty of John's healing is that it encompasses the whole person, not just the physical and he works with an amazing sense of humour, lightness and love.'
C. Delaney - Risk analyst.

   I'm going to explain a bit about cranio sacral therapy but before I do I want to give you a bit of info about myself so you can put what I say in context.

• I've been practicing cranio sacral therapy for the last 15 years.
• I've treated over 1000 people.
• My success rate averages 85-90%. Meaning 85-90% of the people who come to see me get the result they were looking for.
• I developed the only Australian Government accredited diploma of cranio sacral therapy.
• I was a founder of The Australian Institute of Cranio Sacral Therapy.
• I wrote the book Why Do We Get Sick? Why Do We Get Better? A Wellness Detective Manual
• I write a newsletter for cranio sacral therapists and students that is read in 15 countries.
• I lecture internationally on cranio sacral therapy.

   I'll start off by telling you what I'm NOT going to do. .
I'm not going to make any claims that cranio sacral therapy is going to work for you.

   You see here's the thing.
   If a therapist tells you they can guarantee that you're going to get better or that they are going to heal you, well . . they're kidding you.
And probably themselves too.

   We would all like guarantees but when it comes to health, there are none. When you come right down to it, what we look for is an approach that has the most likely possibility of working.

‘I wouldn’t say that most drugs don’t work,’ an executive from pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith told Britain’s ‘The Independent’ newspaper in 2003.
‘I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people.’

   30 to 50%!!

   My success rate averages 85-90%

How do I arrive at that figure?
   Very technical.
   I go through my patient records and add up all the successes.

What constitutes a success?
   When someone first comes to see me I ask them what they want me to help them with.

‘I want to stop having chronic back pain. I want to stop being depressed. I want my child to improve at school to the point where they don’t need special assistance. I want to stop feeling so anxious. I want to get off my anti-depressants.’ and so on.

   If at the end of their treatment program they have what they wanted at the beginning, I consider that a success.

That’s not very scientific.
   I'm not going to try and convince you of the scientific validity of cranio sacral therapy. Let's face it, if a scientific approach was going to help you it would have done so by now and . . . well, you wouldn't be reading this.

   At best cranio sacral therapy is acknowledged scientifically as having, 'A substantial amount of anecdotal evidence in its favour.' Which is an academic way of saying, 'Lots of people are saying this thing is really good.'

'The quality of my life in many areas has improved immensely and the layers of healing that John helped me through continue to have a beneficial effect on my health and my life.'
D. Crowley. - Pharmacist.

   Cranio sacral is not much to look at and when you're having it done it doesn't feel like much is happening but it gets results and that's what people talk about.

   It takes the wacky approach that your body knows how to fix itself better than the therapist does.

   I'll explain . .

   If you fall and bruise your elbow, do you have to think about how to fix it?

   Me neither.

   Some part of us just knows how to do it.
   It knows because your body is designed to fix itself. And it manages to do this very well most of the time.

   It's part of the balancing act your body is continually engaged in.
The technical name for it is homeostasis.
A bit like cycling a bike, your body is continually adjusting itself to the external changes it finds itself in.
   You run up a hill, you're heart rate increases and you start to sweat. You have a big meal and your body put all its resources into digesting the food and you feel sleepy.

'I had Cranio Sacral Therapy for severe pain in my neck and shoulders. During the treatment I experienced a state of deep relaxation and wonderful healing. My neck and shoulder pain is gone and many other little complaints disappeared. My health has improved greatly, I am feeling more secure and my energy level has increased beyond my wildest dreams.'
M.T. Marsh. - Secretary.

   When you look at it like this 'healing' is part of the same balancing act. You bruise your elbow, you're body fixes it. And as such there is nothing special about it. 'Healing' is just another part of the balancing act that is going on all the time.

   You only run into a problem when, for some reason, this self-repairing mechanism has to over-compensate to maintain balance, like if a rhino was hanging off the side of the bike.

    Odd mental image, no?

   You may be able to keep going but the effort, over time would be draining and eventually you would crash.

   The movement of repair.
   Your body is moving right now, you just don't notice it because you 'tune it out'. For example the movement of your breathing as you breathe in and out.
More subtly, there is the movement of blood pumping around your body and so on. . .

'When I first attended John Dalton I was suffering from high blood pressure, irregular heart beat and had not slept properly for approximately two months. Although initially sceptical, after the first session I was quite convinced that it was effective. My sleep pattern immediately improved and my chest pressures eased. The power of this treatment has been that it did not just cure the physical and most obvious symptoms but continued on to help me cure the emotional and more subtle problems which lay at the core of everything.'
Tony Gallery. - Computer Analyst.

   The significant thing is that when your body is fixing itself it too has a particular movement to it.

   It takes years of practice to be able to feel this movement, particularly all the subtle nuances which are crucial to knowing where a body is getting stuck in the process.

   Why does a body get stuck? Well, let's think about trauma for a minute. So far we've talked about how your body fixes itself on a daily basis from things like bruises etc.

   But let's say a person is in a car crash and they hit the steering wheel at 70kph. That will put an imprint of trauma in their body far more devastating than a bruised elbow.

   Their body will do its best to deal with it. The broken bones and lacerations caused by the accident will heal within a matter of months, but the physical after-effects can go on for years - causing anything from headaches to depression or worse.

'I was in a car accident, receiving serious head injuries and was in a coma for three days. When I first saw John I couldn't co-ordinate my eyes and had double vision. I had memory loss and poor concentration. I was amazed by John's sensitivity. A few days after my first treatment my eyes came back into line and have been perfect ever since, my mental abilities and my energy steadily improved.'
Kathy Kennedy. - Acupuncturist.

   Our bodies never stop trying to release the deeper residual patterns of trauma, but if the imprint is too intense it overwhelms our body's repair mechanism and it just won't be able to release the trauma.

   The effort of trying to release something that is stuck is exhausting and after years of trying your body can feel very low in energy.

   Trauma can stay locked in our body for years. Take birth for example. If a baby gets stuck and distressed during delivery it can put substantial restrictions into the baby's system that may not show up for years.

   78 years is the longest I have seen.
That's right - 78 YEAR OLD MAN RELEASES TRAUMA FROM BIRTH.

   And I've just been talking about physical trauma; emotional trauma is just as devastating in your body.

'I experienced Cranio Sacral Therapy as a powerful way of accessing the wisdom of the body. It brought me in touch with areas of myself that analytical work could not reach.'
B. Moylan. - Psychotherapist.

Let me ask you a question. How much would you pay to get better?
While you’re thinking about that here are some things to consider.

• Visit the last resort first . . .and save money.
It became a joke among my students and graduates that we were actually in the resort business because for most of the people who came to see us, we were the last resort.

It doesn’t need to be like that.

Most people are floored when they add up how much they’ve spent so far trying to get better.
Don’t waste any more of your money.

• Benefit from no returns.
When you understand that cranio sacral therapy helps trauma release from your body, then it makes sense that once restrictions are released in this way, they are gone for good.
So when you’re done, you’re done.

It's as simple as getting a big piece of cellophane and scrunching it into a ball and then assisting it to unravel itself.
Once it has unraveled itself, there's no need to 'maintain' its state of unraveled-ness.
So you don’t need any ‘maintenance’ treatments to keep your health. What you spend having treatment is finite and has a very definite end.

• Gentle on you.
Cranio sacral therapy is a very gentle approach. There is no pushing, adjusting or manipulating your body into a set or 'correct' position. There is no intrusive probing into your past. The contact is very gentle and people often fall asleep during treatment. Because of this gentleness it can be used on old people and children and people in a lot of pain.

• Gets to the root of the problem.
There are many approaches that will give you complete reduction of your symptoms. The trouble is the reduction only lasts for a short period of time and then you have to return from more treatment. Eventually this kind of approach makes your body dependant on the treatment.

Cranio sacral therapy works with the root cause of the problems. This has the effect of causing lasting relief of symptoms. In 13 years I have never had anyone return for treatment for the original problem they came to me with. Not one.

• You will feel the benefits within 4 weeks.
Most people feel the benefits immediately. If it takes longer you will generally see enough improvement after 4 weeks to know that it's going to work.

   Kerry O’Brien of ABC’s 7:30 Report recently did a story on the growing number of Australians who are traveling overseas to third world countries in what has become known as ‘Medical tourism.’

   Rather than waiting for over a year to have elective surgery people are finding that they can go to a third world country, pay a lot less for surgery they can have immediately and have a bit of a holiday while they’re there.

   The story was about an Australian man who went to India for a knee reconstruction which cost him roughly $8000 including flights and hospital stay. He was quoted $7000 for the implant alone in Australia.

   Unfortunately there were complications and the implant had to be removed when he returned to Australia. So he is pretty much back where he started minus $8000.

   Cranio sacral therapists charge $100 per treatment, on average, less for children and babies.

   We see people every week for somewhere between 10 and 20 weeks. So at most you could spend $2000 to get better.

   To get better.

   Just to put that in context, a common procedure like back surgery will cost about $26,000. That's not counting time off work etc. How much of that you will have to pay will depend on your health cover. I have helped lots of people avoid major procedures like surgery of one kind or another.    

   As I said at the beginning, I had a feeling when I first heard about cranio sacral therapy. There was something about it that made me want to find out more.
   If you’re having that feeling right now and you think cranio sacral therapy can help you then I encourage you to find a cranio sacral therapist near you now. (I am currently based in Ireland.)

   We can usually tell from a description of your situation whether we think we can help or not. If we think we can we’ll put you on the waiting list for an assessment.

   While I obviously think cranio sacral therapy is fantastic, it can’t help with everything.

   I vividly remember a woman who came to see me for an assessment. She was in a wheel chair and had a severe palsy which was slowly spreading throughout her whole body.

   She had been seeing a ‘cranial’ therapist twice a week for the previous eight weeks, who told her that her skull bones were very tight. The woman’s symptoms weren’t changing. She was desperate and I really wanted to help her.

   But . .

   When I assessed her I could find nothing wrong with her cranio sacral system. Yes, her cranial bones were a little tight but nothing that would cause the kind of severe symptoms she was manifesting.

   Sadly, for us both, I had to tell her that I didn’t feel that cranio sacral therapy could help her.

   If you come for an assessment and we don’t think we can help you, most cranio sacral therapists won't charge you for the session. (Check with the therapist when you are making your appointment.) If we do think we can help, we begin treatment in that first session.

   I really hope you find what you are looking for, regardless of whether it's with cranio sacral therapy. Feel free to email me with questions or comments, I'd like to hear from you.

   All the best.

P.S. When it comes to your health and getting better there are no guarantees. Anyone who tells you different is kidding you.
Once you accept that, you realise that what you are trying to decide on is what approach has the best possibility of working.
As I said, my success rate is 85-90%. When you are finished treatment you never have to come back for follow up treatments for your original complaint.
We can tell you over the phone whether we think we can help you or not.
When you come in for an assessment we can definitely tell you whether we think we can help you or not.
If we don’t think we can, we won’t charge you. (Check with the therapist.)

P.P.S. I have seen too many people come for treatment after they have spent lots of money and time on treatments that didn't work. They have come to cranio sacral therpay as a last resort.
I encourage you to save time and money and most importantly heartache and come to the last resort first.