The Healing Power of a Gentle Touch

CranioSacral Therapy (CST) is a light-touch approach that can create dramatic improvements in your life. It releases tensions deep in the body to relieve pain and dysfunction and improve whole-body health and performance.

Few body structures have more influence over your health and well-being that your central nervous system. And few body systems have more impact on your central nervous system than the craniosacral system – the soft tissues and fluid that protect your brain and spinal cord.

Every day you endure stresses and strains and your body absorbs them. But your body can only handle so much tension before the tissues begin to tighten and potentially affect the brain and spinal cord.

Unfortunately, this can compromise the function of the central nervous system – and the performance of nearly every other system in your body.   Craniosacral Therapy releases those tensions to allow the entire body to relax and self-correct.  By freeing the central nervous system to perform at its best, Craniosacral Therapy naturally eliminates pain and stress, strengthens your resistance to disease, and enhances your health and well being.

CranioSacral Therapy releases those tensions to allow the entire body to relax and self-correct. Using a gentle touch – starting with about the weight of a nickel – practitioners evaluate your internal environment. Then they use distinctive light-touch techniques to release any restrictions they find.

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By freeing the central nervous system to perform at its best, CranioSacral Therapy naturally eliminates pain and stress, strengthens your resistance to disease, and enhances your health and well-being. And because it’s so gentle, CranioSacral Therapy can be effective for all ages, from newborns to elders.

Some Examples of what Craniosacral Therapy can do:

Pain and stress caused by shortened Fascia

Fascia (strong connective tissue) encases all our muscles, organs, brain and spinal cord. Whenever fascia shortens any place in the body, the entire network of fascia creates an increased tension affecting the functioning of our physical body as well as our organs, our brain and spinal cord.

Our body is the history of every major trauma we have experienced physically and emotionally beginning with birth issues, falls, head trauma, car accidents, childhood abuse issues, death, divorce and other emotional issues. Our body tries to minimize each trauma by shortening fascia to isolate the energy coming into the body from that trauma. Shortened fascia results in pain, loss of mobility and range of motion, organs becoming less efficient and with parts of the brain and spinal cord becoming stressed.

As we age, the accumulation of all the tightened fascia, from every major trauma in life, both physical and emotional, begins to restrict every aspect of our body’s functions resulting in pain, loss of mobility, mis-functioning organs, loss of energy, as well as stress our brain.

Short Leg Syndrome

Eighty-five percent of my clients have one of their legs pulled up 1/2 to 1 by shortened fascia. The tension from short leg syndrome on the sacrum (5 fused vertebrae at bottom of the spine) is transferred up the dural tube that encases the spinal cord into the lower and upper back, the neck, the cranium and the brain. Headaches, migraines, TMJ and neck problems can originate from the fascial stress in the sacrum.

The physical stress in bodies caused by shortened fascia (connective tissue) shuts down energy flows to certain organs. Short leg syndrome by 1⁄2 to 1 in (where one leg is pulled up by shortened fascia) shuts down energy flow to the spleen (an important part of your immune system) and the small and large intestine. With the release of that shortened fascia, energy returns to these organs.

Releasing this sacral stress increases energy in the bladder, sex organs, kidneys and the chakras as well as releasing major stress in the upper part of the body.

Cause of Shallow Breathing

A great majority of the clients who come to me for various problems are also shallow breathers. Fascial stress in the diaphragm restricts the depth of breathing by restricting energy flow to the lungs, the pericardium and the heart. With the release of fascial diaphragm restriction, the client immediately starts breathing deeply and energy is restored to the pericardium and the heart.

Shoulder blades that are cemented to the body also restricts how much the rib cage can open and thereby also restricting depth of breath. Without proper breathing, your cells do not get enough oxygen. Everyone, especially people suffering from bronchitis, asthma and COPD as well as shallow breathing can benefit when the fascial stress is released.

Specialized Training to work with Brain Dysfunctions

Just as the body physically gets stressed from physical and emotional trauma, the functioning of the brain is also affected by fascial stress. For our brains to remain healthy, we need dynamic production of craniosacral fluid which performs the important function of bringing nourishment to all the cells in the brain and spinal cord as well as cleansing all the metabolic wastes given off by those same cells.

Once the craniosacral fluid cleanses these metabolic wastes, efficient drainage of these metabolic wastes into the lymph system is absolutely necessary. Research has shown, that at night, craniosacral fluid cleanses amyloid plaques from the brain. If the drainage is inefficient, then the brain is being bathed in a toxic slurry. How does 15 or 20 years of your brain being bathed in a toxic slurry affect you: senile dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other brain dysfunctions?

A Craniosacral Therapist, who has received training in working with the brain, can reverse that stress on the brain that eventually can result in those brain dysfunctions. As we all know, the proper functioning of the body is dependent on a healthy functioning brain.

A typical CranioSacral Therapy session takes place in a quiet, private setting. You remain fully clothed as you relax on a comfortable, padded table. By gently touching various parts of your body Jennifer will monitor the rhythm of the fluid that is flowing around your central nervous system.

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Then carefully listening with the hands to locate areas of weak fluid flow or tissue motion, Jennifer can trace those areas of weakness through the body to the original source of dysfunction. Delicate manual techniques are then used to release those problem areas and improve the form and function of your central nervous system.

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A CranioSacral Therapy session can last up to an hour or more. It can be used alone or integrated with other therapies to create powerful effects. What you experience from your own session is highly individual. The sessions are generally deeply relaxing, creating feelings of warmth or gentle pulsing in the areas Jennifer is working on.