Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy (CST) is the most gen­tle form of hands-on heal­ing. It uses a light touch – some­times an extremely light touch – to bal­ance the flow of move­ment and infor­ma­tion in your body.

The tech­niques of Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy can be traced back to the 1920’s when manip­u­la­tive prac­ti­tion­ers (osteopaths and doc­tors of chi­ro­prac­tic) began to apply the prin­ci­ples of man­ual ther­apy to treat­ment of the bones of the skull.

More recently, John Upledger, D.O. has been a major pop­u­lar­izer of Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy. The man­ual treat­ment tech­niques of CST are now used to address imbal­ances not only of the skull but through­out the body.

Despite the many clin­i­cal suc­cess sto­ries attrib­uted to Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy, it has yet to acquire a solid enough research foot­ing to estab­lish it as an “accepted” med­ical procedure.

Even among prac­ti­tion­ers who use it, there isn’t a con­sen­sus about the mech­a­nisms through which CST has its effect.

In my efforts to under­stand the work­ings Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy, I’ve evolved a sci­en­tific model of its effec­tive­ness that makes sense to me. That’s what I’d like to share with you in this article.

Eight Steps to Under­stand­ing Cran­ioSacral Therapy

1. Your body is mostly water.
2. The flu­ids of your body are divided in sep­a­rate com­part­ments bound by con­nec­tive tis­sue membranes.

A stiff con­nec­tive tis­sue wrap­ping – the sub­cu­ta­neous fas­cia – holds your whole body together so that water doesn’t gush out.

Inside of your body, con­nec­tive tis­sue mem­branes divide you into fluid-filled sub-compartments – the abdom­i­nal cav­ity, the tho­racic cav­ity, the skull, the right arm, left arm, right leg, etc.

Then, within each sub-compartment there are sub-sub-compartments. In the abdom­i­nal region, for instance, there are con­nec­tive tis­sue wrap­pings that keep the flu­ids of the liver sep­a­rate from those of the stom­ach, spleen, pan­creas, etc.

Within the liver there are smaller com­part­ments still – the sep­a­rate lobes of the liver. And within each lobe, smaller group­ings of cells, and within them, smaller sub-sub-compartments still, and so forth, until you get down to the fluid of each indi­vid­ual cell, and even within the cell, the sub-cellular organelles, and so forth.

Some of Your Body’s Fluid Compartments

3. The waters of your body are con­stantly rock­ing or undu­lat­ing, like waves in the ocean.

When your heart beats, it sends a pulse of undu­la­tions through­out your flu­ids, just like the rip­ples that spread through a pond when you drop in a stone.

Move­ment of your arms or legs, and the rhythm of your breath also ini­ti­ate rock­ing of your fluid compartments.

4. Because of all the sub-compartments, the fluid undu­la­tion can be choppy and noisy.

5. There are nerve end­ings in your con­nec­tive tis­sues con­stantly being stim­u­lated by the fluid movement.

6. If the fluid undu­la­tions are choppy or noisy, the feed­back to your brain will also be choppy and noisy, and your brain will have a harder time stay­ing focused and centered.

7. Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy works to dampen the noisy undu­la­tions in your con­nec­tive tissues.

8. The result is better-integrated nerve feed­back and a calmer, more cen­tered brain.

Deepen Your Body of Knowledge

Another blog post about the brain effects of Cran­ioSacral Therapy

Arti­cle on Dr. Lavine’s web­site about Cran­ioSacral Therapy

Wikipedia entry on Cran­ioSacral Therapy

Home page of the Upledger Insti­tute