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Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive
- Technique
+ Why do we need to learn anatomy and technique
if the work is fundamentally energetic? - February 07
+ Why hold into extension during the parietal
lift? - October 05
+ Which technique should I use? - September
05
Dear John,
I am a year into my cranial studies and very excited and captivated by
the beauty of this work. I avidly consume everything I can about cranio
sacral and have read most of the major works.
In Hugh Milne's books he talks about this work being fundamentally energetic
yet goes into great detail about anatomy and technique.
John Upledger's earlier books are very technical and mechanical but his
later books are more spiritual.
Franklyn Sills books are mostly spiritual and philosophical with some
mechanical stuff and William Sutherland's writing is very spiritual.
You haven't written a book but the topics you cover in your newsletters
(Thanks by the way, they're great.) range form very specific and
technical to very 'out there.'
What I am trying to understand is if this work is fundamentally energetic
then why do we need to learn all this anatomy and technique? If
it is all so fluid why so much structure?
Looking forward to your answer and your book if you ever write one.
Joe
Sydney.
>>>MY COMMENTS:
Well Joe, I HAVE written a book (sniff, sniff, pout,
pout) it's just not about cranio sacral per se.
Anyway I'll pull in my bottom lip for a minute and answer
your question.
Yes, this work is fundamentally energetic but it doesn't
follow that we don't need to learn technique or to know about anatomy
and physiology.
That would be like saying that playing a musical instrument
is basically about passion and expression so why do we need to practice
the scales or learn how to read music.
Learning technique is like learning the scales on a musical
instrument or the mastering brush strokes in painting. Learning
physiology and anatomy is like learning to read music or the rules of
perspective in drawing.
Once these skills are mastered and the knowledge becomes
part of you then you are into the expression and passion side of things.
At that point your craniosacral work will be very energetic.
Got it?
Not really.
Okay, here are a couple of stories to illustrate the point.
I have been roller blading for about 7 years now. In
the beginning I just got it into my head that I wanted to learn so I bought
myself some
skates and went to the nearest bike track and just . . started.
I fell over a lot but with practice got the hang of it.
Within a couple of weeks I was able to go forward without falling over
and was very pleased with myself.
If you had asked me back then if I could roller blade I would
have said yes and I would have been right, to a point.
I skated like that for 4 years. Then I befriended someone
who was roller blading instructor. I thought the idea of having
lessons was a bit below me, I was self taught after all, but I gave it
a go.
The difference was remarkable. With a few simple lessons
and practicing some simple drills I was skating better, faster, for far
greater distances, with greater ease and confidence going up and down
hills I would never have dreamed of and all with a lot more safety.
4 years of skating hadn't actually improved my skating.
I discovered that practice doesn't make perfect it just makes permanent.
It wasn't until
I had those lessons and practiced the right things and yes, some of the
drills I had to practice were boring, that I really began to skate.
When I am out skating now, I sometimes pass someone
who reminds me of what I must have looked like before I had those lessons.
Sweating a lot, working very hard but inefficiently and with very little
grace or control.
Here's my second story.
One day a Zen master came upon a group of men. A large
boulder had become dislodged in a landslide and the men were trying to
shift it out of the road. They had obviously been at it for a while
because they were covered in sweat. It was also obvious that they
weren't having any success because the boulder hadn't moved an inch.
The men recognised the Zen master and asked him if he could
help. He told them to have a rest while he reviewed the situation.
The men sat on the grass and watched the master closely.
He walked around the boulder once and then came to a stop
at a point that seemed significant to him but didn't look any different
to the men.
He placed his two hands on the boulder and began to apply
gentle pressure to the boulder. The men looked at each other thinking
the master had gone a bit soft in the noggin.
Suddenly the boulder began to move and rolled off the road.
The men were astonished. They rushed forward cheering and congratulating
the master.
When they asked him how he did it, he replied that the difficult
part was seeing which way the boulder wanted to go. Once he saw
that he simply
helped it go the way it wanted to go.
I love that story. I read it about 18 years ago and
I've never forgotten it.
The thing about it is that if you took the master
aside and asked
him how he 'saw' which way the boulder wanted to go he would have told
you that it took him years to get to the point where he could see it.
He would tell you that when he started out years beforehand
he was just like the men struggling. He would then tell you how
he had gone through a series of learning steps to get to the point where
he could see.
But you never get that kind of 'behind the scenes'
with those Zen stories you just get the wisdom. Which is great but
it can make you feel
like you will never be as cool and have 'moving really big boulders' as
your party trick.
Cranio sacral teachers are faced with a dilemma. They
have had the dazzling insight that it is, as you say, all energetic but
they also know that they did a lot of ground work to get to the insight.
Good teachers manage to convey both aspects. The need
to learn good techniques so it can lead to the fluidity of expression.
My experience of teaching students who had been through trainings
that focused on the end result and left out the steps to get there was
that they were very broad spectrum in their approach.
Lots of very colourful descriptions about how they and the
patients body were feeling but very little specific information about
what the root cause was physically and mechanically. And when questioned
more closely, had a very shaky grasp on the anatomy of the region they
were describing.
Here's another reason to know the anatomy and physiology.
Once you start to become competent in cranio sacral work the word of mouth
builds
quickly. But the word of mouth won't be about how cranio sacral
therapy works, it will be just that you were able to help someone.
When people come to see you they will often be doing so against the consensus
of their friends and family.
The fact that you can understand the language their doctor
uses and can explain the physical aspect of their symptoms to them in
language that is familiar and similar to the language their doctor uses,
goes a long way to soothing their concerns.
Which explanation do you think sounds most reassuring?
'Your head feels very tight and heavy and I'm sensing a lot
of tension on the left side. It feels very red and angry.'
or
'Your head feels to me like it is overfull with cerebrospinal
fluid. The reason for this is that one of the bones that forms the
floor of your skull on the left hand side, the particular bone is called
your temporal bone, is being pulled inwards by the membrane that attaches
to it.
This has the effect of pinching your jugular vein because
the hole that your jugular vein goes through is actually formed in the
junction of your
temporal bone and another bone called your occipital bone.
Blood is pumped into your head by your heart but there is
nothing in your head pumping the blood back out again. So it's really
important that the channels of drainage out of your head are clear
and unrestricted.
One of those channels of drainage is your jugular vein.
So you can see that if it is pinched then the blood being pumped into
your head can't drain out as quickly as it needs to. So you get
the sort of pressure build up that can cause the sorts of headaches you
are getting.'
Learn the physiology and anatomy Joe and master all
the techniques. They will lead you to mastery of the energetic work
at the heart of cranio sacral.
Top
***QUESTION***
Dear Mr Dalton,
I enjoy your newsletters very much and find your answers to the questions
very insightful. They have given me much food for thought.
My question is very basic.
I have been told to apply medial compression when doing the parietal lift.
This feels wrong to me as I feel like I am crushing the patient's head.
Is medial compression necessary or can I just get straight on with lifting
the parietals?
Kind regards.
J.S.
Austria.
>>>MY COMMENTS:
I am big, big, BIG on accurate technique so I don't
think your question is basic at all.
It's too easy to get all flowy with cranio sacral
and neglect to give the persons body the sort of expert assistance that
comes from having really good technique.
You will read in some cranio sacral books where they
simply tell you to apply medial compression during the parietal lift.
It's right, sort of, the point being to disengage
the squamous sutures, which has to happen before you can begin any kind
of superior lifting. But you will get a better lift if you enlist the
help of the rhythm.
The parietal lift is, after all, a direct technique
so if you can include any indirect technique in it, all the better.
You can do this by following the parietals into extension
and then holding them there. As you continue to hold them, the rest of
the cranium will go into flexion and the building pressure will disengage
the squamous sutures for you.
Nifty no?
You are disengaging the sutures, you are probably still pointing the patient,
you are including indirect within direct, it's got it all.
Once the squamous sutures are disengaged you can start
the superior tractioning intention.
Then it's a hop skip and jump to the remaining sutures
disengaging and a continuation of the superior traction until you get
a sense of the falx stretching.
Beauty.
And it all couldn't happen without the squamous sutures
disengaging. So yes it's important and necessary.
Top
***QUESTION***
Hi John,
Found your web site very useful and your URL easy to remember. I
use it as my virtual business card. I have been treating a man in his
late fifties with sciatica. I have had some success but feel I could achieve
more.
Can you recommend any techniques
that you have found particularly useful for sciatica?
Thanks
J.P.
Brisbane.
>>>MY COMMENTS:
Glad you like the site.
I'm going to answer your question in two parts. Let me start
by saying no one technique is 'the' technique for ANYTHING. Techniques
are ways we get a handle on the bigger picture. And the biggest picture
is what you need to be available for.
I am putting it like that because describing it as 'looking'
for the biggest picture is way too active, eager, inefficient and INTURSIVE.
You need to ask yourself, what is really going on here?
Why has this person got these particular symptoms?
Why are the symptoms in this configuration?
What's the root cause of this situation?
Symptoms generally manifest physically, meaning they
show up in the person's body. But that doesn't mean the CAUSE of
those symptoms is exclusively physical.
Often EMOTIONAL issues will express themselves as
physical symptoms. It doesn't just stop there, often the root cause of
what is going on has a physical component, caused by an emotional component
but the root cause is not emotional it is something DEEPER.
That may sound spooky or kooky to you depending on
your slant but I have seen it time and again, where the root cause was
deeper than physical and emotional issues.
How can that be?
Let's go through it one layer at a time.
Physical problems.
These problems are characterised by very physical causes
and descriptions, 'The tentorium cerebelli is pulled inferiorly
here, causing pressure there . . .etc'.
Regardless of the source of a pattern of a restriction, it
will show up physically. Becoming accurate in identifying the extent
and complexity of physical restrictions takes a lot of practice and is
a prerequisite for working with the deeper causes.
Emotional issues/causes.
Restrictions in the emotional aspect of the person can have
causes like, a person may need to leave a partner or job or it may be
an old emotional abuse.
Emotional restrictions are more difficult to identify accurately
because it's very easy to start theorising about the person's problems
instead of simply receiving the information from the person's body in
the same way you do with physical patterns.
Core problems
These relate to how the person sees themselves in their lives,
their relationship with themselves, with God, with their idea of God.
A feeling that they're off track.
And no, you don't need to know what their track is.
Core problems can feel like fundamental disharmonies within
the person. They are the hardest to perceive because they are so
deep in the person.
Your ability to see and work with these core issues comes
with lots of practice and humility.
Their revelation occurs in the dynamic between you and the person and
what you have to offer each other.
Are you with me?
It generally works its way through the layers something
like this.
A disharmony in a person's core will affect them emotionally
and in turn affect them physically.
For example someone might think they are fundamentally bad.
This could manifest emotionally as anxiety and paranoia, which could manifest
physically as headaches and chronic fatigue.
The skill comes in being able to assess where the root cause
of the problem is.
Before you go charging off into the great mystery, let me
add this. It can be as easy to go the other way and start looking for
deep emotional and core issues as the root cause of a purely physical
problem.
'I just twisted my knee Mate!'
Now the second part of my answer is purely physical.
There are lots of different ways of creating sciatica.
It's a pain, which means there have to be nerves involved.
The pain generally is in the lower back and travels down one leg or the
other, sometimes both.
Have a look at, [in books and with your hands] the lumbar
plexus, the sacral plexus. How are the nerves on both sides of the
spinal column as they leave the vertebral foramina?
Scan the nerves up as far as the thoraco-lumbar junction.
Remember tight membranes can pull vertebrae together and pinch nerves.
Consider how long the person has been getting the pain?
Getting a sense of when and how the pattern of restriction was formed.
So, look particularly at the dural tube.
How are the membranes running?
Most particularly how is the cerebro spinal fluid moving?
Find ways to help it come into a harmonious flow.
It's all about flow.
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