We use two approaches
✬ Indirect technique
✬ Direct technique
It is through a combination of indirect and direct technique that
restrictions can be assisted to release.
INDIRECT TECHNIQUE
Indirect technique requires the skill of being able to follow the body
to the point of restriction.
FOLLOWING
Following the Body is a skill that takes a lot of practice to get
proficient at. Without getting too flowery about it, it’s a bit like
singing along to a song. It requires you to keep in time and in
tune so that your singing harmonises with the music.
The combination of the music and your singing produces
something more than the individual components.
If you put your body in a flotation tank it will generally start to
move because when your body has a gravity free environment
it begins to unravel.
Like a piece of cellophane that has been you crinkled up in
your hands. When you let it go it begins to unravel.
Following the body means providing this gravity free environment
in which the body begins to move. The skill comes in following the dance.
Indirect technique is a process of Unlatching.
You are at a door that is locked. There is a key in the lock but
when you try to turn it the key is stuck. You lean your weight
against the door, pushing it even further closed knowing this
will give the barrel of the lock the space it needs to turn.
While pushing the door in, you try the key again and it turns freely.
You release the door and it springs open.
Indirect technique works in a similar way. It is one of the gems of
the cranio sacral approach. It takes the view that substantial permanent
release can be achieved by following the body into the pattern of restriction.
If one of my vertebrae has been displaced to the left by a trauma,
a whole pattern will have been established around the vertebrae
that will keep it displaced to the left.
No amount of pushing to the right is going to keep the vertebrae
in line permanently. If that approach is taken the vertebrae will
keep ‘popping out’ and will need to be ‘put back in’ with increasing regularity.
A permanent release and subsequent realignment can be achieved
by following the vertebrae into the pattern of restriction, that is to the left.
At the point of the trauma the restriction will release and the vertebrae
will return to alignment naturally.
Indirect technique, going with the restriction pattern.
DIRECT TECHNIQUE
Direct technique is used when indirect technique fails to achieve a
release. The restriction pattern has been felt and the therapist
knows the structure needs to release in a certain direction.
Direct technique is moving in that direction against the restriction.
Direct technique works because of another gem of the cranio sacral
approach; a little pressure over a long period of time can move mountains.
You have just made a peanut butter sandwich. You suddenly decide
you want to put jam in your sandwich too. If you pull the pieces of
bread apart too quickly you will tear them. But if you apply a small
amount of pressure and wait, the two pieces of bread will come apart in time.
You are in a lake. In front of you is a huge yacht. You have to
move it 200m from one jetty to another. You run at the boat and
push it with all your strength. (Not easy when you are waist deep
in water holding a peanut butter sandwich.) The boat hardly moves.
Luckily you are a trained cranio sacral therapist and you apply direct
technique. You place your index finger against the boat, applying a
small amount of pressure and you wait. In time you will see that this
huge boat has moved and if you continue you will cover the 200m in no time.
Direct technique, going against the restriction pattern.
There are two aspects to the process of cranio sacral treatment.
The first is to locate the primary restriction causing the problem.
The second is to encourage this restriction to release.
We use highly refined palpatory skills to perceive areas of restriction.
Palpation is defined as ‘examining by touch’ or ‘listening with the hands’.
It relates to how things feel with your hands.
Rather than pushing or manipulating the body into a set or ‘correct’
position, we use techniques to assist the body to release its own restrictions.
When restrictions are released in this way they are gone for good.
Once a treatment program is complete there are no follow up or maintenance programs.
Every interaction that occurs between a patient and a cranio sacral
therapist follows the same general outline.
❍ Tuning in to yourself and then the patient
Tuning in means being open to receive whatever the patient’s
system wants to reveal to you. Tuning in is making yourself
available for communication.
It is important to approach the patient with as little going on inside
yourself as possible. Our thinking is often unconscious to us. We need
to tune into ourselves (make it conscious) to see what is going on in
there before we approach another.
As we tune into ourselves we can drop as much tension in our
bodies and unnecessary thinking as possible. Once we have made
a ‘blank slate’ of ourselves we can then approach the patient
and tune in to them.
❍ Following the body
This is giving the body the space in which to move and the
sensitivity to follow it.
❍ Holding against Restrictions
Following is important but it will be pointless if the therapist doesn’t
identify the restriction and hold against them at the right time.
❍ Waiting for Release
It is vital to allow the body time to release in. You may find yourself
in an awkward position or just get bored, but you must wait on the body,
trusting that it will release.
❍ Following through
Following through is continuing to follow the dance once the release
has occurred. It means avoiding just plonking the limb or whatever
part of the body you are working on, back on the table when you are finished.
❍ Reassessing
This means standing back and looking at the bigger picture in the
light of the new release you have helped to achieve. What difference
has it made? What does that difference prompt you to do next?
The above goes on in the larger scale of the whole treatment program,
in each session, in each technique and in each release within each technique.
So the fundamental cranio sacral treatment approach is
❍ Tuning in to yourself and then the patient
❍ Following the body
❍ Holding against Restrictions
❍ Waiting for Release
❍ Following through
❍ Reassessing
The reciprocal nature of the cranio sacral system means that tensions within any part of the system are liable to influence all
other parts of the system.
A pain in the head could be caused by a restriction in the sacrum.
We can use this knowledge to focus on the release of the primary
restriction knowing that when it is released, the symptoms arising
from it will dissipate.
We use intention to help restrictions release. Intention has the
potential to sound almost mystical. Particularly when the therapist
works on the head from the feet, which can happen from time to
time. Intention is similar to attention but includes intent.
You are in a forest. A young boy is hiding behind a tree about 1m
away from you. 10m in front of him you can see a young girl whom
you suspect is his sister. She is hiding behind another tree. In the
distance you can see their father looking for them. You are enjoying
the reactions of the children in their game of hide and seek.
What you are using in the forest is your attention. You look at the
boy close to you, then the girl in the middle distance and then the
father in the distance. When you are looking at the girl you are aware
of the boy and his father, because they are all in your line of sight,
but your attention is on the girl. The same when you look at the boy
or his father.
Attention has no intent in it. It is simply the focus of your observation.
With intention we are talking about the focus of our palpation. What
level or depth you are working in the person’s body. Like the princess
and the pea, we feel through all the mattresses (layers of fascia) to
the pea (restriction) at the bottom.
You are six years old. Your grandmother has sent you a Christmas
gift in the mail. You parents place it under the Christmas tree and
say you can’t open it until Christmas morning. As soon as you are
alone you pick up the package and start to feel it. It feels like it
might be a doll. But Granny has wrapped the doll in something
before she put the wrapping paper on. It feels like bubble wrap.
It is kind of squeaky and plasticy.
You are palpating through two layers now, the wrapping paper
and the bubble wrap.
Opps! You have popped the dolls leg out accidentally. You can
feel it through the dolls clothing. (That’s three layers you are
palpating through.)
After some wriggling and squiggling you manage to get the dolls
leg back in its socket. You have done this without ever contacting
the dolls leg directly. You have used a form of intention to put the
dolls leg back in place.
In Cranio Sacral Therapy we use our intention in a similar way to
help structures to release, that are impossible to contact directly.
You are in the fruit and veg department of the supermarket.
You pull a bag from the roll provided. You are talking to your
friend as you try to open the bag. You rub the end of the bag
between your thumb and finger. After a couple of attempts you
realise that you are trying to open the wrong end of the bag.
If you look closely at where you have been trying to open the bag,
you will see that your thumb and finger have left an imprint in the
bag. You could say there is a pattern of restriction in the bag.
If you smoothed out the imprint as best you could, you would
still not be able to get the fine creases out of the plastic.
This is similar to the way restriction patterns are formed.
The body undergoes a trauma of some kind. Let us say a car
accident. The impact of the steering wheel on the body puts a
large pattern of trauma in the body. Broken bones, lacerations etc.
The 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).
The residual pattern of restriction is what causes the symptoms
that the person comes to you for help with.
You might wonder why these patterns of restriction are not
detected and treated with expensive machinery, like MRI machines.
Also how could such small residual patterns of restriction be so
devastating?
To get an idea of what goes on in the body think of fascia as being
like 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 over the next. If you poked your finger into the
middle of those layers the imprint left by your finger would totally
compromise the glad wrap’s ability to move one layer over the other.
Take the above small analogy and multiply it by 1,000 and you will
begin to get an idea of the effect patterns of restriction can have
in the body. The machines are good but they are not looking for
widespread minute restrictions.
Patterns of restriction are often wide spread but like anything that
is creased, some parts are more creased than others. They are called
focal points, trauma focuses or energy cysts.
Patterns of trauma are usually complex because the body moves
as it is impacted. So in the example above the person would not
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 will
know that they move around a lot during the impact.
Also to be considered is the depth the pattern is imprinted in the body.
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 it is imprinted.
EMOTIONS
Emotional trauma also lodges in the body and can cause restrictions
equal in severity to patterns of restriction formed in a purely physical way.
You are six years old. You are walking past a building site. A brick
falls off the scaffold and hits you on the shoulder breaking your clavicle.
40 years later you have frozen shoulder.
You are six years old. Your father is angrily telling you that you are stupid.
As he does this he taps you on the shoulder with his finger to make the point.
40 years later you have frozen shoulder.
The memory of these events may not be in the conscious mind, but
stored in the cells of our bodies. In the course of a Cranio Sacral
session these memories can spring into the conscious mind as
patterns of restriction are releasing.
TISSUE MEMORY
If you find the notion of ‘Tissue Memory’ difficult to accept, think
of it this way; videotape is made of plastic with iron filings stuck
on its surface. There is nothing too amazing about that, yet when
the videotape is played through the VCR and we watch the film,
we laugh and cry and become emotionally engaged. The cells in
our bodies are a lot more complex than videotape. They store an
incredible amount of information and perform a mind boggling
number of tasks every second, it is very plausible that they can
also store individual memory.
TRAUMA RELEASE
Patterns of restriction release when the body returns to the position
it was in when the trauma was imprinted. For example if a person’s
frozen shoulder was caused years before by their arm being
violently. Then the pattern of restriction resulting from that trauma
will release when the arm is in the exact position it was in when the
trauma occurred, in this case bent backwards.
When the body returns to the exact position that the trauma occurred
in, a spontaneous release occurs.
It would be practically impossible for the therapist to find the exact
body position a particular trauma occurred in based on the person’s
memory and external guesswork. Luckily for us we don’t need to
work it out because the body remembers. The cranio sacral therapist
tunes into the body and allows it to move. With skillful following the
body will lead the therapist to the point where the trauma occurred.
The cranio sacral therapist uses the body’s memory of the trauma and
follows it knowing that with timely and appropriate assistance it will
release it’s own restrictions.
We will go into patterns of restriction in great depth as your training
progresses. For now, knowledge of patterns of restriction will give an
appreciation of what you have at your fingertips as you practice.
*As with all anatomy I suggest you search for each new term on google then click on the ‘Images’ tab at the top of the page. Look at as many different pictures of each structure, from as many different angles as you can. Then look at it on the Visible Body. This will help you get a 3 dimensional image of the structure in your head.
The cranio sacral system is a physiological system within the body.
Along with the Respiratory and Cardio-Vascular systems, it forms
one of the three primary life systems.
The Cranio Sacral System consists of -
❍ Fluids
❍ Membranes
❍ Fascia
❍ Bones
Each is a recognised anatomical structure but outside Cranio Sacral
Therapy they are not treated as one integrated system.
CEREBRO SPINAL FLUID
A clear colourless fluid which surrounds and bathes the central
nervous system, creating the environment within which the brain
and spinal cord grow, develop and function. It provides nutrition
and drainage for the brain and spinal Cord also. It is in continuous
motion, as any stagnation would undermine the brain and nervous
system.
Cerebro spinal Fluid is produced in hollow spaces at the centre of
the brain called ventricles and circulates throughout the
membrane system.
THE MEMBRANE SYSTEM
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. The meninges have horizontal
infoldings in the cranium which separate the cerebrum from the
cerebellum called the Tentorium Cerebelli and a vertical infolding
called the Falx Cerebri and Falx Cerebelli which divide the right
and left hemispheres of the Cerebrum and cerebellum respectively.
THE FASCIA
Fascia is a connective tissue which forms a continuous sheath
throughout the body from the top of the head to the soles of the feet.
It envelops every organ, nerve, blood vessel, muscle and indeed every
structure throughout the body.
This continuous fascial sheath forms a close connection to the
meninges at the point where each peripheral nerve emanates from
the spinal cord. As the spinal nerves penetrate the Dura they pull
some of the Dura with them and this blends into the fascial sheath
which covers the spinal nerve on its journey. This transition point
from membrane to fascia is called the epineurium. It is one of the
ways the Cranio Sacral Rhythm is translated to the rest of the body
BONES
The meninges are closely attached to the bones of the Cranium
and also to the 2nd and 3rd Cervical Vertebrae (C2 and C3) and
to the Sacrum and Coccyx. The outer layer of the Dura is so
closely attached to the bones of the Cranium that it forms a
periosteum or inner lining to these bones.
Consequently, all the bones to which the membranes attach must
inevitably 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.
Below is the course syllabus from the Diploma of Cranio Sacral
Therapy that I developed and taught at the Australian Institute
of Cranio Sacral Therapy when it was in existence.
The diploma was accredited with the government and was
recognized as a tertiary level qualification. It will give you an
idea of the areas covered and the level of training that therapists
who have graduated from the institute achieved.
It took 2 years to complete the diploma and it was divided
into 6 trimesters. Because it was a vocational qualification
it used what is called competency based learning. Which means
that ever technique and theory that was taught was assessed.
TRIMESTER ONE The cranio sacral system & treatment cst 001
Flexion and extension
The ventricular system
Fascia
The Membrane system
Bones of the cranio sacral system
Venous sinuses
Principle of still point induction
Direct and indirect technique
Contraindications
Palpation 1 cst 002
Tuning into patients body
Assessment of Symmetry
Amplitude and Quality
Using the listening posts of the body in treatment
Directional terminology
Restriction release (limbs) cst 003
Tissue memory and its role in Cranio Sacral Therapy
Principles of release
Limb articulation
Limb release
Releasing the sacroiliac joint
Transverse sites and their release
Emotional factors in the releasing process
Cranial mobility techniques 1 cst 004
Frontal bone release
Parietal bones release
Temporal bones release
Spheno basilar synchrondrosis compression and decompression
The Sacrum
Releasing the atlanto-occipital joint
Still point induction from the occiput
Dural tube release from the occiput
TRIMESTER TWO
Vertical membrane techniques cst 005
Anatomy of the vertebral column
Dural tube release from the sacrum
Enhancing the cranio sacral rhythm from the sacrum
Falx release
Releasing the dural tube using double contacts
Nervous system 1 cst 006
Structure of a neuron
Basic divisions within the nervous system
Somatic nerve supply
Location and clinical significance of somatic nerve plexi
Palpation 2 cst 008
Identifying the primary lesion
Assessing the pelvic girdle
The therapeutic nature and use of energy
Cranial mobility techniques 2 cst 009
Accessing and treating the sphenobasilar synchrondrosis for flexion/extension - side bending - torsion - lateral sheer - vertical sheer and compression lesions
Mastoid tip compression
Case history management cst 010
Recording information for case histories
Using a diagnostic body map
Utilising case history data as a diagnostic tool
Maintaining a treatment record system
Employing active listening skills
Observing nonverbal communication
TRIMESTER THREE
Nervous system 2 cst 011
The Autonomic nervous system
The sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system
Location of the major plexi and ganglia of the autonomic nervous system
Using the iris to assist in diagnosis of sympathetic /parasympathetic dominance
Facial and throat treatment cst 012
Anatomy of the face
Treatment of dysfunctions of the face and throat
Palpating the cranial movement in the face
Releasing bones and soft tissues of the face and throat
The significance of the orbit
Advanced diagnostics cst 013
Using the symbology of the body in diagnosis
Recognising the significance of still points
Enhancing perception
Working in conjunction with another cranio sacral therapist
Personal development 1 cst 014
Identifying personal obstacles to compassion
Recognising the significance of personal obstacles to compassion
Personal analysis of internal emotion and reactions
Evaluating personal strengths and weaknesses
TRIMESTER FOUR
Inner stillness cst 015
Using meditation as a vehicle to observe the mind
Developing deeper awareness of the body
Tracking thoughts
Differentiating between assumptions and facts
Maintaining stillness in activity
Dealing with the mechanism of worry
Bringing stillness to the workplace
Therapeutic inquiry cst 016
The principles of therapeutic inquiry
The importance of non-leading questions in therapeutic inquiry
Assisting clients to invoke internal images
Verbal communication with the intelligence of the clients body
Conducting a therapeutic inquiry
The dynamics of resolution
Cranial nerves cst 017
Overview of brain function
The 12 cranial nerves - their pathways, structure, function and possible sites of restriction
The foramina in the cranium that relate to the cranial nerves
Personal development 2 cst 018
Utilising feedback from external sources
Recognising opportunities to give and /or receive
Becoming more authentic
Discerning the value of feedback in relation to its source
TRIMESTER FIVE
Pregnancy and children cst 019
Embryonic development
Stages of labour and the birth process
Treatment of babies and children
General pathologies in children
Reflexes in babies and children
Considerations in treating children
Treatment during pregnancy and post partum for the mother
Viscera and glands cst 020
Overview of the organs and structures of the viscera
Individual attention to each structure in relation to location, function, related structures, nerve supply, energetic tendencies and pathologies
Overview of the endocrine system with attention to each gland in relation to location, function, related structures, nerve supply, energetic tendencies and pathologies
Abdominal release cst 021
Palpation of the abdomen with intention and hands
Umbilical shock
Releasing abdominal restrictions
Contra indications in abdominal release
The emotional factors associated with abdominal release
Multi-practitioner techniques cst 022
Working in a 3-5 person therapeutic team
Using therapeutic inquiry in a multi-person treatment
Leading and following within a therapeutic team
Leadership skills
Synchronising cranio sacral rhythms
Merging intentions
Verbal and non-verbal communication within a therapeutic team
Palpation 3 cst 023
Using therapeutic feedback from fellow practitioners to refine palpation
Including the opposed model of motion in palpation
Methods of expanding palpatory intention
Dynamics of cranial rhythm merging
Personal development 3 cst 024
Recognising personal projections onto clients
Mechanisms of projection
Recognising projection from clients
Analysing optimum personal performance parameters in therapists and clients
TRIMESTER SIX
Full body release cst 025
Establishing a clinical environment for full body release
Dynamics of full body release
Leading a therapeutic team in full body release
Recognition of contra-indications for full body release
Including therapeutic inquiry
Including knowledge of birth process in adult release, personal fitness and strength
Advanced techniques cst 026
Overview of the lymphatic system
Lymphatic pumping from the feet and thorax
Enhancing cerebral drainage
Business practices cst 027
Clarifying success parameters
Marketing and advertising a cranio sacral practice
Insurance
Business registration
Basic accounting
Ethics
Health and safety
