Even with a natural, problem free labour, a baby can get stuck and distressed during delivery. If this happens, even briefly, it can put substantial restrictions into the baby’s system that may not show up for years.

Modern birth is often mismanaged from the outset. Mothers are brought into hospital at the appointed time rather than when the baby is ready. Waters are broken. Babies are induced. Labour is hurried. Mother can’t dilate fast enough. Babies get stuck.

Suddenly labour becomes a frenzy of ‘emergency procedures,’ which never needed to happen in the first place. Violent extractions with forceps or ventouse (suction) are used and if they don’t work it’s off to surgery for an ‘emergency’ caesarian.

Because of the seriousness of the situation, and make no mistake by this stage it is serious, the baby is literally yanked out of the mother. Even with a planned caesarean the incision alone can often cause trauma because of the sudden change in pressure in the womb. This is a very different experience for the baby from the waters breaking naturally.

Once the incision has been made the baby has to be extracted from the womb. This means the baby has to be grabbed . . .somewhere . . . usually by the back of the neck to get it out.

More trauma follows. . .
As soon as a baby is born it needs to stay close to mother so it can get used to the new environment while still remaining close to something familiar. Bonding with Mum should be paramount, but is usually low on the list of priorities because of surgery.

All the above leads to many patterns of restriction within the babies system which in turn can lead to symptoms.
These symptoms may not show up for years.

To understand the cranio sacral rhythm I need to explain about cerebro spinal fluid and the meninges. Cerebrospinal fluid is clear colourless fluid which surrounds and bathes the brain and spinal cord.

It is a filtrate of blood and is produced in hollow spaces at the centre of the brain called ventricles. Containing the cerebrospinal fluid is a tough waterproof sack made up of three membranous layers called the meninges which surround the brain and spinal cord.

Now, back to the cranial sacral rhythm. The production and absorption of cerebrospinal fluid makes the membrane system continuously expand and contract in a regular rhythmic motion. This rhythmic motion is known as the Cranial Rhythm or Cranial Rhythmic Impulse.

The Cranial Rhythm can be divided into two phases. The expansion phase occurs when the whole membrane system is filling with cerebrospinal fluid.
The contraction phase occurs when the whole system is absorbing the cerebrospinal fluid and contracting.

In cranial terminology these two phases are known as Flexion and Extension. The cranial rhythm has been measured as occurring normally at a rate of between 4 and 14 complete cycles of expansion and contraction per minute.

If someone throws a ball and it hits you in the head, the impact will put a sort of imprint in your body. Luckily your body is designed to release any of these normal, day to day imprints that you receive. This is like owning a car that has the ability to ‘pop out’ dents it picks up along the way. The dents our bodies pick up are the bumps, bangs, trips and falls of life, and most of the time our body can ‘pop’ them out or release them successfully.

Problems only occur when this self-repairing release mechanism is overwhelmed. This can happen if the physical or emotional trauma is too great for our body to cope with.
[The point at which this self repair mechanism gets overwhelmed is different for each person.]

Our body never stops trying to release a traumatic imprint. Sometimes it is eventually successful and completes the release, if not ,our system becomes depleated from the continual efforts of trying to achieve a release.

When our body is trying to release a restriction it has a particular movement to it. This is similar to the movement of our body when we breath or of the blood pumping around our body. The difference with the movement our body makes when it is repairing itself is that it is very subtle.

As cranio sacral therapists we have learned to feel this movement. We can also feel where it is getting stuck in the process of releasing. This is crucial because once we can feel where it is getting stuck we then know where to support it.

It is like watching someone try to roll a big ball up a hill. Every time they get about half way up, they collapse and the ball rolls back down again.

What a cranio sacral therapist does is walk along beside the person as they roll the ball up the hill then just at the point where they are about to collapse the cranio sacral therapist puts their hand out and holds the ball.

The cranio sacral therapist continues to hold the ball until the person has gathered their strength and can roll the ball a little further up the hill.
Then when the person is about to collapse again the cranio sacral therapist supports the ball once more until the person has gathered their resources and roll the ball to the top of the hill, which in this case would be a release.

Cerebro spinal fluid is clear colourless fluid which surrounds and bathes the brain and spinal cord.

It is a filtrate of blood and is produced in hollow spaces at the centre of the brain called ventricles.

Containing the cerebrospinal fluid is a tough waterproof sack made up of three membranous layers called the meninges which surround the brain and spinal cord.

Cerebrospinal fluid acts as a “cushion” or buffer for the brain. It providing also a basic mechanical and immunological protection to the brain inside the skull.

Every structure in your body is covered in a thin membrane called Fascia. The diagram below is a cross section of a nerve. As you can see a nerve is comprised of threadlike structures called axons.

Each axon is wrapped in fascia and then groups of axons are wrapped together in fascia and so on. It is the same with every other structure in your body, big or small, it is wrapped in fascia. Fascia forms a connective covering that encapsulates your whole body.

If you look at the back of your hand as you wiggle your fingers, what you are looking at is the outer layer of fascia of your hand. Below it many layers of fascia are gliding over each other as your fingers move.

Oxygenated blood is pumped into the head by the heart. Some of this blood is filtered in the head to form the specialised fluid that bathes and supports the brain and spinal cord. This fluid is called Cerebro Spinal Fluid.

When the blood has been used up and needs to return to the lungs for re-oxygenation it relies on clear channels of drainage to leave the head freely. There is nothing in the head bumping the blood back out.

If the channels of drainage are restricted it can lead to a build up of pressure in the head which, in turn, puts pressure on the brain. This can manifest as a feeling of the head being continually overfull.

Also because the blood is not leaving the head as quickly as it should it can cause feelings of vagueness or a fuzzy quality in the head because of the head being full of slightly stagnant blood all the time.

The channels of drainage from the head are part of the cranio sacral system. Some of these channels are minute. Finding restrictions and assisting them to release can substantially improve the drainage of blood from the head.

See thie case history as an example of the effects of restricted drainage.

Case 1

Surrounding the brain and spinal cord is a tough waterproof balloon made up of three membranous layers called the meninges.

The meninges are closely attached to the bones of the skull. The outer layer of the meninges called the Dura is so closely attached to the bones of the skull that it forms what is called a periosteum or inner lining to these bones.
Consequently, all the bones that attach the membranes follow any motion exhibited by the membrane, expanding and contracting in accordance with the membrane and reflecting every pull or tension within the membrane system.

Every structure in the body is covered in fascia a thin membrane. From the smallest neuron to large structures like your lungs or your liver, they are all covered in fascia.

Fascia is continuous from our head to our feet. The significance of that is that if there is a restriction in one part of the body the effects of it may not show up at the area of restriction but in another part of the body.

It is a bit like slowly pulling the corner of a table cloth. Initially not much would happen but if you kept pulling the cloth the cups and saucers would start to move and eventually collide as they moved in the direction of your pulling.

A cup and saucer clinking together on the far side of the table could be likened to the vertebrae in you neck punching a nerve yet the cause of the problem may be coming from a restriction in the lower spine that is pulling the whole spine down.

See these case histories as an example of the reciprocal nature of the cranio sacral system.

Case 1 Case 2

Every structure in your body is covered in a thin membrane called Fascia. The diagram below is a cross section of a nerve.

As you can see a nerve is comprised of threadlike structures called axons.Each axon is wrapped in fascia and then groups of axons are wrapped together in fascia and so on. It is the same with every other structure in your body, big or small, it is wrapped in fascia.
Fascia forms a connective covering that encapsulates your whole body.

To get an idea of what effect trauma has on all that wrapping, think of 20 layers of Glad Wrap, one on top of another, with a thin layer of fluid between each layer. When your body is functioning normally, each layer glides easily over the next.

But if you poked your finger into the middle of those layers of Glad wrap the imprint left by your finger would totally compromise the Glad Wraps ability to move one layer over the other.

If you look at the back of your hand as you wiggle your fingers, what you are looking at is the outer layer of fascia of your hand.
Below it many layers of fascia are gliding over each other as your fingers move.

To get an idea of what effect physical trauma has on our body, take the above small analogy of poking our finger in the glad wrap and multiply it by 1,000.

I will explain it in another way. Whenever I am in the fruit and veg section of a supermarket I am always reminded of how trauma is imprinted in our bodies.

What generally happens is I will pull one of those plastic bags from the roll. I will be talking to my wife as I try to open the bag. I will rub the end of the bag between my thumb and forefinger.
After a couple of attempts I will realise that I’m trying to open the wrong end of the bag.

If I look closely at where I’ve been trying to open the bag, I will see that my thumb and finger have left an imprint in the bag.

You could say there is a pattern of restriction in the bag. If I smoothed out the imprint as best I could, I still wouldn’t be able to get the fine creases out of the plastic.

This is similar to the way physical trauma affects our bodies. Let’s say someone is in a car accident. The impact of the steering wheel puts a large pattern of trauma in their body. Broken bones, lacerations etc. Their body can release much of the pattern of restriction but it may not be able to release the entire pattern (the fine creases in the plastic).

Patterns of trauma are usually complex because the body moves as it is impacted. So in the example above the person wouldn’t have a steering wheel-shaped pattern of restriction imprinted in the area of their body where they struck the steering wheel. The pattern of restriction will include the way their body moved as it was thrown around in the accident. If you have ever seen crash simulations using dummies you’ll know they move around a lot during the impact.

So rather than one pattern of trauma there are many.

You also need to consider the depth the pattern is imprinted in the body. Picture this. You have a large bowl of jelly and a ball bearing. You hold the ball bearing 5cms above the surface of the jelly and let it fall. It hardly breaks the surface of the jelly. You retrieve the ball bearing and drop it into the jelly from a height of 1 meter. The ball bearing has now embedded itself into the jelly to quite a depth.

With patterns of restriction the greater the force of the trauma the deeper into the body the pattern is imprinted.