Open Source Cranio

Tag: Palpatory Skill

Shortsightedness – Cranio Sacral Wall No.2 and How To Pass Through It.

When a person comes to you for treatment and you are working with them to get a sense of what the cause of their symptoms is, being shortsighted, or not seeing deep enough, is a major wall in cranio sacral work and will result in mediocre, impermanent results.

Fixating on physical causes and what the right technique to use for the physical manifestation might be, often overlooks the deeper causes for symptoms. And I’m not talking about trauma or emotional issues.

No single 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. These problems are characterised by very physical causes and descriptions, “The tentorium cerebelli is pulled inferiorly here, causing pressure there . . .etc.” But that doesn’t mean the CAUSE of those symptoms is exclusively physical.

Often EMOTIONAL issues will express themselves as physical symptoms. Restrictions in the emotional aspect of the person can be caused by old emotional trauma.

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.

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 are 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. 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.

Most core issues circulate the person’s core question and to explain what that is you will need to imagine you are a kid. Not just any kid but a who likes to run and jump. All day long you run and jump around in a big field at the back of your house. Running and jumping, jumping and running. Man, you just love to run and jump.

Then let’s say one evening you’re looking at the telly and you see the 400m hurdles race at the Olympics. You are mesmerised as you watch the race. This is running-and-jumping heaven.

As you look at it you hear a voice in the back of your head saying, “I wonder? I wonder if I could do that? I wonder if I could do that in the same way they’re doing it? I wonder if I could be as good as that?”

So you find your local athletics club and join it and you begin to practice. In time you become good enough to qualify for the state team and eventually you become good enough to make it to the Olympics.

Looked at from another perspective we could say that you have voluntarily taken on a series of constraints to help you answer a question about yourself. When you were running around in the field you had no constraints. In the Olympics you have many, you have to run within the lines of the track, you have to jump over hurdles of a specific height, and you can only start running when the starting gun fires. You accept all these constraints because they help you answer your burning question, “I wonder how good I could be at this?”

The voluntary adoption of constraints for the purpose of finding something out about yourself. Hold on to that idea while I ask you some personal questions. As you think of the answers, I’d like you to discount any answers that come to you that someone else told you or from anything you’ve read.
Ready? Here are the questions.

Why were you born a man or a woman?
Why were you born the race you were born?
Why were you born in the country you were born in?
Why were you born to the parents you were born to?

Remember, leave out any answers you’ve been told or read.

I think if you’re honest, you have to admit that you don’t ‘know’ the answers to these questions. The funny thing is, we all have a sense that there ARE answers to these questions and the answers are NOT random.

I discovered, through working with people with life threatening conditions, that in the same way that the kid who loved to run and jump eventually went to the Olympics to find out something about themselves, our lives are about finding something out about ourselves. What we are trying to find out is an extremely personal question for each of us.

The four constraints I asked you about in my questions, your sex, your race, your nationality and your parents are part of the constraints we voluntarily adopt to help us explore the question we have about ourselves. These four are just the tip of the iceberg of constraints we have voluntarily adopted to help us.

How often have you wondered at the apparent synchronicity of events in your life.
Why that thing happened as against the other thing happening?
Why this person and not that one?
Why was that done and not something else?
The different things that happen to us are tailor made to help us with our question.

The different constraints we adopt are individual to each of us.
All except one.
The one constraint we all share is we don’t know what it is we’re trying to find out. We don’t know what our question is.

As to why that is I can only guess that it’s similar to reason we get upset if someone tells us the end of a movie. Particularly if it’s a movie we really wanted to see. Even if they tell us that the movie has a happy ending. It still feels like it’s ruined.

Let me take a moment here to highlight that point. Even if the ending of the movie is a happy one we still feel like we’ve been gypped in some way. It sort of follows then that we are more interested in the watching of the movie than we are in the happy ending.

I’m stressing this point because it is an analogy for life. I think one of the possible reasons we don’t know what our question is is because we are more interested in the living of our life and the exploration of that question than we are in knowing what the question is.

In my experience, there is a deeper part of ourselves that does know what our question is. It has known from the beginning. It looks out into our lives with what could be described as dispassion, though I don’t think that’s what’s really going on. It has a VERY broad view of our lives. It knows that in 200 years we will be dead and no one will know us. We might be remembered as a two dimensional historic figure but no on will know us in the way we are known by the people in our lives who know and love us now.
I don’t mean to bum you out but it’s true.
We know this too of course but we often live as if we don’t. We live as if we have all the time in the world.

That deeper part of us is a bit like a compassionate Clint Eastwood. Eerily quiet. It never actually speaks directly to us yet it never lets us forget about our question. It doesn’t care about the silly sorts of things we care about, like life and death and food and security. It will break up our marriage. It will have all our money taken from us. It will make us sick if it needs to get our attention.

That’s why I say it can appear ruthless but the reality is it knows that our lives are very transitory and the whole point is to explore this question we have about ourselves. So it forces us to keep facing it, even when we don’t want to.

Whether you are working with an adult or a child makes no difference. This question is something we all work with from the beginning to the end of our lives.

In most cases you won’t have a strong sense of what the person’s question is and that’s okay. Remember this is a very private part of a person and information is given on a need-to-know basis. If you get any insights about it, it will be because you were given or allowed them by that deeper part of the person.

So you remain open to information about what the person’s question might be while being VERY humble and respectful of anything you receive about it.

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!”

I know that contradicts everything I said previously but you should have figured out by now that cranio sacral work is full of paradox. The way to know the difference is to trust the process. Trite, I know, but also true. Some part of the person picked you out and identified you as the one who could help them. Some part of the person brought them to see you, brought them in the door. And it’s the same part that will show you what it needs help with, physical, emotional or deeper

I know. Try not to damage too much of the furniture. It will sound more helpful in a couple of minutes.

January 13, 2014
Cranio Sacral Therapist and Student Newsletter 18

November 14 – 2006

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Where I bang on about Jet Lag and treating yourself.
+ Chronic Fatigue – looking for the meaning of symptoms.
+ Palpation broken down into Symmetry, Amplitude and Quality.
+ Is bone ‘set’?

Hello ,
I have some very important findings to share
with you about jet lag. As you know I’ve just
moved back to Ireland. The night we arrived here,
my wife Mege said she had a backache and asked me
to have a look at it.

Now here’s the interesting bit. When I tuned
into her system, I found that her cerebro spinal
fluid was all over the place.

No, I don’t mean in an ‘Aliens’ sort of way. I
mean her system felt like one of those snow domes
that had been shaken.

What’s a snow dome?

You know, one of those little glass domes
filled with water that you shake and it looks like
snow falling on the inside.

Why was her CSF so disturbed?

Well, as I stayed with her system, it revealed
that the source of the disturbance was, and this
is from her CSF’s perspective, the sudden movement
across a huge distance.

Wha?

I know,
but there was a really strong sense that the
connection between her CSF and it’s external
environment had been disturbed greatly by the
change in location. It was in turmoil because it
had nothing to orient itself with.

Orient itself?

Yes, there was definitely a sense of her CSF
sloshing around trying to find reference points to
attune with.

And in that effort to orient itself, it was
very clear to me how linked our CSF is to it’s
environment on a local and global level.

It reminded me of the way bats use sonar for
navigation in the dark. They emit a high pitched
sound which bounces off the surrounding terrain.
The bat can tell where it is by how long it takes
the sound to bounce back to it.

It doesn’t feel like our CSF emits something,
it feels more like the sort of connection that we
as therapists make when we entrain with a patients
system.

It’s the same with our CSF, it entrains with
the energetic rhythms of it’s environment.

This is probably obvious but I’ll mention it at
this point, the moon stood out as the main point
of triangulation for our systems.

The moon?

Yeah, it felt like the moon was crucial to
orientation. It worked something like this.

The first point of orientation was the system
itself. The second point was the systems position
on earth. These two reference points, while
crucial didn’t seem to provide enough dimension.
It felt like the moon provided a third point of
dimensional reference and so triangulated the
system in space.

The disturbance in Mege’s system felt like it
was caused by the sudden change in two of the
reference points.

So what did I do about it?

Well, like most things, seeing what the problem
is is 90% of the solution.
I acted as a sort of conduit for her system. I
consciously attuned to the locality.
As soon as I started to do this her system
paused. It felt like it was listening to a rhythm
my system was drawing its attention to.

Then I consciously attuned to the location of
the moon. Within minutes her system had settled
into deep harmony with itself, and its current
location. Mege popped off into a deep sleep.

I was able to partially orient my own system
but not completely. As to why that is I can only
include it with all my other experiences of trying
to treat myself. Never with much success.

It could be just me but I suspect it’s the same
for everyone. A classic example is in the release
process, which as you know, involves the
practitioner holding as the patient’s system
encounters its restrictions.

The patient needs to let go, the therapist
needs to hold. It doesn’t make sense to me that
you can do both at the same time. None the less,
never being one to allow good sense to get in the
way of having a go, I tried it anyway, a few
times. Always the same result.

Just when I was about to release, one of two
things would happen. The part of me that was
releasing would take over and my whole system
would go into letting go, including the part that
was supposed to be holding.
End result = No release.

Or the part of me that was holding would stay
in charge so my system would never let go.
End result = No release.

So as I said I didn’t have as much success
attuning myself to the new time zone.

Mege, on the other hand, woke up the next
morning feeling FANTASTIC! Over the next few days
she commented, more than once, on how everyone had
greatly exaggerated the effects of jet lag. She
couldn’t see what the big deal was.

If you get a chance to treat someone who has
moved time zones recently, can you include what I
have described in your treatment and let me know
if you find something similar. I suspect you
will.

There is a great opportunity there for someone
who is interested in pursuing the commercial
applications of treating jet lag. Think of all
the business people who travel through time zones
regularly. You could set up in an airport, nay
airports around the world and help all these
people deal with their jet lag in a more painless
way.

No, don’t thank me, it’s the least I could do,
what are chums for. Royalty cheques accepted
graciously.

Also, I finally got the therapist listing up.
Have a look at it here.
http://www.open-source-cranio.com/therapists/listing.html

If you have sent me your details, have a look at
your listing to make sure I spelled your name
correctly etc. Have a look at some of the other
listings also to see what you could add to yours
to make it more representative of you.

If you haven’t already sent me your details
have a look at the others and see what you are
missing out on.

If I had any doubts about whether it was worth
my while to go to the trouble of creating this
resource, I got an email last week that clinched
it for me.

24/10/06

Hello John,

On Sunday, I spoke to the cranio therapist who is
listed for Ipswich, Queensland. From one
conversation I have regained some hope that my
daughter can be healed. I am a healer, although an
untrained one, but all the symptoms have baffled
me for a long time. I have decided on how to
manage her pains but have had no idea how to
remove them altogether.

When my daughter colours in those body pictures
doctors have that let them know where pain is
located, she colours in every little bit then
darkens the areas that hurt most. It often brings
a smile or chuckle to the doctor but it always
brings such sadness to me. None of them believe
she could possibly be in that much pain.

Since speaking to this practitioner I am daring to
hope that we may be on to something that will
work. My daughter is afraid to hope; there’s just
been one too many times of trying. But we will
start treatments next week. I am reassured after
reading your website. I like how you think and I
like that it matches my philosophies about health
and wellness. Thankyou J

Warmest regards,

Denice.

Get your listing up now and get it as good as
you can. It WILL make a difference.

Alright, on with the mailbag.

***QUESTION***

Hi John,
I have a question for your newsletter: Chronic
Fatigue. Do you have any pointers for what to
check or work on with patients with this syndrome?

Best regards,

Eva Kuhl Bornefelt
Central Coast

MY COMMENTS:

That’s a great question as always Eva and
thanks for asking it.

Talking about chronic fatigue gives me an
opportunity to go into the sort of process I go
through when I look at any set of symptoms.

I ask myself what is this condition trying to
communicate to the person. What is it saying?

Why this condition and not another? Why
chronic fatigue and not fibromyalgia or arthritis
or irritable bowel?

Of all the conditions this person could have,
why do they have this one?

Each set of symptoms add up to a very specific
communication.

So don’t worry about the physical
manifestations?

Not at all. It’s very important to deal with
them but dealing with them alone won’t necessarily
solve the problem. Looking at the condition in
this way points you towards the deepest reason for
the condition.

You may not know what the deepest reason is but
at least you will be looking in the right
direction.

Then getting a sense of what the deepest cause
of the condition is will inform you how to deal
with the physical manifestations.

So let’s put it into practice. What is chronic
fatigue communicating?

It’s a syndrome so it contains lots of
different symptoms and few people exhibit all the
symptoms all the time.

The main symptom is in the name – fatigue. The
person has no energy to do anything. Sometimes
they will need to sleep a lot, other people are
tried but can’t sleep.

Generally they will have to stop working, stop
their hobbies, significantly reduce their social
life.

So what does this all add up to?
In short the person’s life grinds to a halt.

What is this aspect of the condition
communicating?

Stop.

Stop what?

Stop everything.

Why do we communicate, ‘stop’ to someone?

Generally it’s because there is something about
what the person is doing that we don’t like and we
want them to stop doing it.

No kidding Sherlock. Is this what chronic
fatigue is communicating?

Generally speaking I’ve found that it’s a main
part of the communication.

For example, if a person has a condition that
is annoying but doesn’t give them too much
discomfort, the communication is generally about
getting their own attention.

‘This is bothering us and we
need our attention about it.’

But it has a, ‘When you can get to it.’ sort of
vibe.

Whereas Chronic fatigue has a, ‘Stop everything
and deal with this NOW!’ sort of vibe.

So look for what is so important to the person,
that when it is in disharmony, they will put their
whole lives on hold until it is resolved.

Another thing to consider when treating someone
with chronic fatigue is their capacity to stay
sick.

Let me explain. The amount of energy required
to create chronic fatigue is huge. The people I
have treated for chronic fatigue have usually worn
out about 5 or 6 therapists by the time they get
to me.

If you are very attached to quick results then
maybe you shouldn’t take them on because these
people have huge endurance. It’s a little
paradoxical. Someone with chronic fatigue having
huge endurance. But don’t be fooled by the lack
of energy issues. I have found they have lots of
energy for keeping their lives on hold.

I have found it most helpful to see my role as
facilitating them to discover what the disharmony
that is causing them to press the ‘Pause’ button
on their life is. And no I don’t necessarily mean
having long, probing, regressive, conversations
with them about it.

The other useful thing when actually working
with their systems is to sit very comfortably in
the timeless aspect of our work.
By that I mean, the depth at which we work.
All going well when you work with someone you will
be in a very meditative state and in that state,
time pauses. We descend into the moment and in
that, it is eternal.

This is a very handy space to be in with a
condition that has therapists for breakfast. As
you sit with the person and your system entrains
with theirs. Your system conveys a quality of
timelessness. The subtle communication from your
system is, ‘I could stay here forever.’

You can’t fake this. It has to be real for
you. If it’s not you need to meditate more until
it is.

I have found that when someone with chronic
fatigue comes to see me and our systems entrain and
their system gets this, ‘I can wait forever.’
Quality from mine it gives up on the endurance
test and starts to avail of the support to deal
with the underlying disharmony.

***QUESTION***

Dear John,
Thanks for your great newsletters. I really
appreciate the different areas you talk about.

I’m still struggling with the nuts and bolts of
palpation.

Can you give me some pointers on how to filter out
all the different things I feel when I try to tune
into someone.

Thanks
Pete
Brisbane.

MY COMMENTS:

No worries Pete and thanks for the feedback.

Placing your hands on another person’s body for
the purpose of assisting in their healing process
is a privilege. Approach each person as if they
were a baby. In many ways our bodies relate to
touch as babies.

The majority of people you treat will have had
at least one traumatic medical experience. The
memory of that trauma is locked in their body.

The person may be your best friend or lover but
once they lie down their body will become
cautious, running a dialogue something along the
lines of,

“Hang on a minute. The last time I lay down on
a bench like this and there was another person in
the room who was standing up, IT HURT! WARNING!
WARNING! ALERT! ALERT!”

It’s not like the person is going to jump off
the table and run away, but they will be
defensive. Don’t take it personally.

From the time you opened the door of your
treatment room, the patient’s body has been
checking you out to see if you are safe. That
scanning process continues throughout treatment.

The patient’s body will test you to see if you
are there to ‘DO’ something or to be available to
assist it in what it is trying to do.

When you contact a patient’s body it is good to
hold the following intention in your communication
to their body.

‘What are you trying to do?
How can I help you?’

As you know, the contact of the hands on the
body in cranio sacral therapy is exceptionally
light, often described as a Butterfly Touch. Like
the touch of a butterfly alighting upon the body.

A butterfly is not a moth. A moth has an
agitated almost frantic quality. In trying to get
the Butterfly touch happening it is easy to
develop the touch of the moth which is as bad as a
heavy touch.

Now lets break up what you are feeling when you
tune in. Think of it like this. As you listen to
a piece of music, many different dimensions of the
music are conveyed to you. Volume, stereo
balance, tempo, mood etc. Describing the music in
words won’t duplicate the music; it will merely be
words following an experience.

Tuning in to a person’s cranio sacral system is
like listening to music, something is conveyed in
the contact with their body. In refining your
cranio sacral palpation it’s necessary to identify
each aspect of what you’re feeling with your
hands. This serves the purpose of highlighting
aspects of the communication that you may not have
noticed.

Sounds hard. Why bother? Why not just go with
the feeling?

Well, the more you can interpret the rhythm the
more you will get a sense of the whole Cranio
Sacral System and where the restrictions are.

It also helps you note subtle changes in the
patient’s body.

It also helps you communicate your palpation to
other Cranio Sacral therapists.

One way to help refine cranio sacral palpation
is to divide it into three aspects; Symmetry,
Amplitude and Quality.

SYMMETRY

Symmetry relates to whether the rhythm is
stronger on one side than the other. Like the
stereo balance of the music. With your hands on
the person’s feet you may feel the rhythm stronger
in one foot than the other. That is called an
asymmetry. Taking note of symmetry can help you
build a total picture of the whole Cranio Sacral
system.

AMPLITUDE

Amplitude refers to the power and frequency of
the Cranial rhythm. It is described with words
like
* Strong or weak
* Powerful or faint
* Steady or erratic
* Fast or slow

Amplitude can indicate the location of a
restriction in localised areas. If the general
amplitude in the body is strong yet very weak in
one leg, palpation of that leg will reveal a point
at which the amplitude will change from weak to
strong. This can indicate the site of
restriction.

Amplitude also includes how the power and speed
of the rhythm relate to each other. A very slow
rhythm in the whole body can indicate a weak
system. A very fast local rhythm can indicate a
restriction in the system in this area. A fast
rhythm manifests in areas that are cut off from
the rest of the Cranio Sacral rhythm through
direct injury or restriction. A very fast and
powerful amplitude will be more ready to release
than a faint slow rhythm.

QUALITY

Quality refers to the mood, atmosphere or
feeling of the rhythm. Like music, this aspect of
palpation is quite subjective. One person’s
passionate song of freedom is another’s anarchic
scream from hell. When you first palpate for
quality it may present itself to you as having a
predominant attribute like :

* tight or loose
* active or passive
* tense or relaxed
* hard or soft
* solid or fluid
* warm or cool
* agitated or calm
* dynamic or lethargic
* powerful or weak

Usually a cranio sacral system will have a
combination of attributes. For example it may be
like a dense, liquid softness.

How poetic.

Start waxing lyrical because your job is then
to refine these attributes making them as specific
as possible. A way of doing this is to relate the
attributes to something that is in your
experience. You do this by asking yourself the
question, ‘Like what?’ In the above example you
would be asking yourself
‘A dense, liquid softness like what?’

The answer to the question ‘Like what?’ can
take many forms.

* Objects – chair, engine, cage, sponge,
* Elements – fire, earth, air, water
* Substances – wood, metal, wool, lava
* Sound – bells, boom, lullaby, scream
* Fragrance – mildewed, putrid, flowery, fresh
* Light – bright, dark, mottled, pulsating
* Taste – bitter, sweet, sour, tangy

Keep refining the quality until it is as
specific as possible. Using the same example your
conversation with yourself should go something
like,

‘A dense, liquid softness like what?’
‘Honey.’
‘What kind of honey?’
‘Honey that has been mixed with milk, but not
watery milk.’
‘What kind of milk?’
‘Condensed milk.’
‘How has it mixed with the honey?’
‘With a barmix.’

This may seem pedantic but it’s important to be
this specific so that you will be able to sense
the beginning of a release. This may be signaled
by something as subtle as a feeling that the
condensed milk is becoming more viscous as it then
transforms into fresh milk.

GENERAL QUALITY AND LOCAL QUALITY

Each Cranio Sacral System will have an overall
or general quality but within that bigger picture
there will be local areas of different quality.

In a strong solid system, one leg may feel weak
and fragile. This inconsistency highlights a
possible restriction. The difference between
general and local quality can take the form of a
general quality of, for example wood and a local
quality in the neck of metal. This communicates a
disharmony to you.

APROPRIATNESS

It is rare that a patient will be aware of
their own quality. Regardless of how dramatically
it presents itself to you, do not describe it to
them in the terms above. We use this form of
description to help us focus our attention and in
that it has purpose. But it won’t mean the same
to a patient and is likely to disturb them.

Telling your patient that their brain feels
like a fungus covered soft cheese is not going to
go down well. Trust me.

Symmetry, amplitude and quality inter-relate to
give you a comprehensive sense of the cranio
sacral system under your hands.

***QUESTION***

Hello John,
I got your book last week and found it incredible!
What a velvet hammer. Those innocent little
questions at the end of each chapter really got
me.
Very well done.
I am recommending it to all my patients.

Now here is my question. If a pattern of
restriction has ossified in the cranium, is that
it? Is it set for good or is it worth treating?

Best wishes.
SP
Arizona.

MY COMMENTS:

Most of our experience of bone is of dead bone.
The sort of stuff that looks like bone china –
dry, brittle, fragile. As cranio sacral
therapists we are involved in communication with
the body. It’s therefore most effective to
communicate with bone as it is, which is alive.
Live bone has some qualities which are not
immediately apparent.

For example, live bone is WET. It’s full of
blood.

Also, it behaves like PLASTIC. Meaning it
responds to the pressure put upon it. Wolf’s law
and all that. Consider the mastoid processes of
your temporal bones. You didn’t have them when
you were born. They were pulled out by the
sternocleidomastoid muscle as you were learning to
hold your head erect.

Bone is not stone; it is renewing itself all
the time. You can use this knowledge to help it
renew itself in a new direction.

There’s a good example of this in one of the
case histories here.

Here’s another thing, bone doesn’t become
restricted in isolation. This is particularly
relevant in the cranium. If a bone is restricted,
99 times out of 100, it’s because there is
something pulling it into a restricted state,
often membrane. The bone doesn’t become
restricted in isolation. Always look for the
pattern of restriction.

That’s all for now Kate,

If you still haven’t got your copy of my book,
‘Why Do We Get Sick? Why Do We Get Better? – A
Wellness Detective Manual.’ then do yourself a big
favour and get it. It’s taken me years to learn
and refine the material in that book.
It will help you become a better therapist and
it will make your job easier when your patients
read it.
Read about it here.

You can be reading it in just a few minutes and
discovering the sorts of conversations I have with
patients everyday.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

September 2, 2009
Cranio Sacral Therapist and Student Newsletter 25

July 17 – 2007

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Parkinson’s Disease
+ What kind of conditions don’t respond to cranio sacral therapy?
+ How often do you see people?
+ What does a shudder in the cranio sacral rhythm mean?

Hello,

Quite a bit of news to pass on today so do pay
attention as I will be asking questions later.

Harvard medical school’s department of
continuing education will be running three classes
on complementary medicine in psychiatry over the
next year, which is up from one a year since the
class was introduced in 2003. Cranio sacral
therapy is one of the modalities that will be
included in these classes.

The increase is due to the publics growing
disenchantment with antidepressants. David
Mischoulon, an assistant professor of psychiatry
at Harvard, says doctors who have attended the
class report that more patients are asking for
alternative treatments — due to the side effects
of antidepressants, as well as a lack of response
to the medication. “It is time to broaden the
horizons,” he says.

Always one for broader horizons myself, I say
hats off to Harvard medical school’s department of
continuing education.   Let’s give them 3 hearty
cheers. Hip hip!

???

Suit yourself.

A while ago I told you about Michael Moore’s
new movie ‘Sicko’. Well it’s out now and causing
the expected stir in America. Standing ovation at
the Cannes film festival and all that. You can
read a review of it by Patch Adams here
http://www.patchadams.org/sicko.html

Yes, Patch Adams is the guy from the movie
‘Patch Adams’.
Well actually the guy from the movie was Robin
Williams but the review is by the guy the movie
was about.
Patch Adams. . . which is what I said in the
first place.
Never mind.

Let’s move on. I received this letter from a
woman of very discerning taste in New Zealand.

‘Hi John,
A friend of mine recently sent me the link to your
site. We did a training together in New Zealand
in cranio. I wrote an article about the training
and my experience with the training.
I have posted the article at:

Home

I really like your site. I have searched the web
all over for sites on cranio and most of the ones
I have found just seem to repeat the same
information over and over in them and don’t really
tell you much about cranio, therefore I am very
glad to see your informative and humorous site.

Thanks so much,
Sincerely,
Renee’

The article she refers to is very good and if
you are into cooking, Renee has some readily
accessible videos of her cooking on her site.

And since she brought up how fantastic my web
sites are . . . work with me . . . I have just
listed what I think are the top ten causes of
trauma. Have a look and tell me what you think.
Did I miss anything?
http://www.cranio.ie/

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

An finally, let me draw your attention to that
pleasant feeling you are experiencing in your body
right now. I know it is there because it comes
about as a result of reading something that didn’t
make one mention of, or reference to,
Harry Bloody Potter.

On-with-the-mailbag-ious.
(That’s a mailbag spell.)

***QUESTION***

Hi John

Am loving the newsletter and really appreciate all
the good work and the manner in which it is done.

I am a Chiropractor & Cranio student in South
Africa and have recently started working with a 70
year old man with Parkinsons disease. He seems to
respond positively to the gentle work I am doing
but the shifts are short lived. I would love to
hear if you have worked with people with PD and
hear any insights you wish to share?
Thanks again
JN

MY COMMENTS:

My experience of treating people specifically
for Parkinson’s, is limited so I can’t be of much
help.
If someone else, who gets this newsletter, has
some experience or insights I am sure they will
pass them on to me and I will include them in a
future issue.

I have found that generally as people get older
the treatment program takes longer. Meaning they
take longer to get better.

So the short-lived effects could be simply
because of that. You may just need to see this
person for longer or you may need to see them more
frequently in the beginning to help their system
get some momentum.

***QUESTION***

Hi John,
Just been checking out your website. I am a RCST
having trained with Paul Vick. I live in Perth WA.
I have had a practise for 3 years now.

I was interested in

1. The information that people would give to you,
to make you decide that you wouldn’t be able to
help them with cst – this has always been a tricky
one for me?

2. You talk about clients coming to see you for
so many weeks- how often would someone see you in
that period? weekly, fortnightly ?

3. I was also wondering if it would be possible
to get my details added to your website ?

Thanks for the time you took in reading this

Regards
S.M.
Perth
Australia.

MY COMMENTS:

1. Who I would, or wouldn’t, treat?
As a general rule – If someone thought I could
help them and wanted to have treatment with me, I
would see them.
Having said that, I would explain to them how
much I thought they were asking of their body.
So if someone was blind from birth and wanted to
see again, well that obviously is a big ask.

I have found that if someone is in the middle
of fighting off an infection it is better to wait
until they have recovered so they can have more
resources to deal with the underlying cause of
their illness.
Yes, Cranio sacral is good for breaking fevers
and helping to get over infections generally, what
I am talking about are the more virulent
infections like meningitis.
There is also the logistics of treating someone
in the middle of an infection which would depend
on whether you do house calls or not.

I have found certain kinds of nerve damage
unresponsive to treatment. For example damage to
the auditory nerve itself or a 20 year old spinal
cord break.

I have found genetic conditions don’t respond
very well either.

2. How often do I see people?
I find seeing people weekly works best. I would
only see them more often if their system was very
stuck in a pattern and they had a very
short relief from their symptoms after treatment,
like a couple of hours but this, more intensive
treatment would only last for a couple of weeks at
most.

3. How do you get listed on my site?
It couldn’t be simpler. I send you an email.
You fill in the blanks and send it back to me.

***QUESTION***

Hi John,
Thanks again to you for your always welcome
newsletter with pertinent and humorous comment.

I’ve just started treating a two and a half year
old girl (caesarian birth) for chronic ear
infections. While assessing her cranially I picked
up a ‘shudder’ when her CS rhythm was in extreme
extension; that is, a shudder in the rhythm as
opposed to the body shuddering. I assumed it was
connected to CNS trauma (possibly from drugs
administered, or shock …??). I would be grateful
for any light on the subject.

Regards,
Harold Epstein.
Cape Town.

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Harold,
It sounds like your palpatory skills are
deepening, which is great.

To quote Sammy Davis Junior, ‘The cranio sacral
rhythm is like the great rhythm of life.’ That’s
not an exact quote obviously, I’ve shortened it a
bit because Sammy had a habit of waffling on about
flexion and extension and the reciprocal nature of
the system at the drop of a hat.
And people used to wear a lot more hats back
then so it happened much more frequently.
Hat dropping that is.
Hat-Tricks were popular too but I haven’t got
time to go into that now.

The cranio sacral rhythm is present in all the
people we treat and the more you go into it the
more you begin to pick up the subtle differences
in expression of this rhythm between one person
and the next.

This shudder that you describe is one of those
differences. It is an expression of how this
girls system interacted with her birth and her
life to date. The great thing is that you can
feel it. Remember when feeling extension was
hard? Let me illustrate.

Let’s say that you and I are sitting in the
ballroom of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1966
and we are waiting for the Sammy Davis Junior show
to begin. You haven’t done too well at the gaming
tables and I am feeling sorry for you. The fact
that all the showgirls are hitting on me is not
helping your mood either, but I digress.

I try to change the mood by talking about
Sammy’s music. I say how much I like, ‘The rhythm
of life.’ and particularly how the use of the hi-
hat causes anticipation in the verses and build up
the chorus.

You don’t know what a hi-hat is so I explain
that it is part of the drum kit and consists of 2
cymbals. The lower cymbal remains stationary while
the upper cymbal can be lifted up and down via a
foot pedal.

You’re not really getting it and I’m getting a
bit tired of you ruining the party . . . and this
always happens with you . . . and what did I
invite you for anyway . . . Luckily Sammy takes
the stage and conveniently launches into a
stirring rendition of ‘The Rhythm of life.’

I point out the hi-hat to you. You see it and
you can hear what it sounds like. Great. After
the first chorus the booming sound reduces to the
simplicity of just the hi-hat and Sammy’s voice.
You look at me and smile knowingly. You wouldn’t
have noticed it if you weren’t listening for it
but now you can hear it very clearly. The effect
the hi-hat has in the song.

The cranio sacral rhythm is like the hi-hat and
the shudder is like the effect it has in the song.

Now don’t get the idea that there is only one
abnormality to the rhythm, ‘the shudder’. There
are millions of variations.

Right about now I expect you are saying, ‘Well
that’s all great John and thanks for the trip to
Vages but what does the shudder MEAN?’

I could give you a mechanical semi enclosed
hydraulic system kind of answer including cross
currents etc but I don’t think it will help you
much.

Here is the useful thing to know. . . The very
thing that allowed you to feel this shudder will
also allow you to know what it means.   It won’t
stop with the shudder.

Next time you are treating this little girl and
you feel the shudder, allow yourself to feel what
it means in the context of her whole system
system.

I would pay close attention to how the shudder
is expressed in her neck and here’s why. . .
With chronic ear infections it is important to
check the integrity of the Eustachian tube, as it
is the main drain for the middle ear.

The Eustachian tube is an unusual shape. In
cross section it’s not circular like a pipe but is
more of an elongated circle shape like a lozenge
or capsule.

As the tube travels up the neck it twists. The
twist acts as a valve to keep foreign bodies from
travelling up the tube into the middle ear. If
there are restrictions in the neck it will have
the effect of inhibiting the tube and so drainage
will be compromised.

Drainage may be very important if the child has
had repeated antibiotics as they kill all the
bacteria in the middle ear and leave a kind of
sludge.   It is difficult enough for the body to
drain this sludge, a restriction inhibiting the
Eustachian tube will make it even harder.

So that’s it for this issue.

Cheerio for now.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

August 21, 2009
Cranio Sacral Therapist and Student Newsletter 31

January 27 – 2008

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Follow on from Jean in Ireland.
+ Blueprint follow on from Gayle in Cape Town.
+ Shingles follow on from Donovan in Durban.
+ Can you treat people with active Cancer?
+ CST and people recovering from Stroke?
+ Shingles follow on from Eva in Australia.
+ Treatment for Focal Dystonia.

Hello,

Another brand spanking New Year fresh from its
wrapping is off and running. You know in olden
days Kings were very careful about what they did
on the first 12 days of each New Year. They
believed each day represented its equivalent month
in the year.

So if they wanted January to be peaceful they
would spend the first day of the New Year in
contemplation. If they wanted August to be joyous
they would have a party on the eight day of the
New Year and so on.   They were careful to not
have anything happen in those first 12 days that
would affect them negatively in the coming year.

Considering it is now the 27th I suppose I am a
little late in telling you all this. Depending on
how wild and crazy your New Years Eve celebrations
were, January may be finding you with a continually
sore head and a feeling of remorse.

I’ll type softly.

For myself, the coming year will bring the
expansion of my Open Source Cranio project.   This
is about making cranio sacral training information
available to people in developing countries
through my websites. For me this is a no brainer
as cranio sacral therapy doesn’t require any
technology to practice. Just a pair of hands. But
then you knew that already.

The idea is that if someone in a remote village
has internet access, which is not as unlikely as
it sounds, they can begin to learn the basics and
start practicing.

Would you like to help? Register
yourself as a mentor or contribute an article or
suggestions or perspective that you think might
help that person. If you can’t think of anything
else just let me know you want to help.

Anyhu John, on with this, bursting at
the seams, mailbag.

***FOLLOW ON FROM JEAN MCDONALD***

Hi John,
good on you for your description of
cerebral palsy – can’t really add to that!

Thanks for the listing. The practice is general
and of course working with the children is
particularly interesting.

In the Novara Centre some multidisciplinary work
is happening and this is working well. A boy of
four at present is being cared for from an acute
episode when starting big school- my colleague is
a Kinesiology’s suggested we work together.
Progress is apparent – from a craniofacial
viewpoint second trimester showed as problematic
and the child had suffered some bullying at
playschool.

Stillpoints are amazing for this child, he becomes
so insightful of his own place in the
difficulties. He has returned to his birth and re-
entered many times over, a much calmer child!

Little Jodie (the case study I sent you a while
ago) is doing well. The treatment involves
palpating the parietals and now that she is older
some more on her cranial base which has
dysfunction with the left side. Drawing the
sacrum to lengthen the dural tube is always
necessary and the respiratory diaphragm with a
tonic liver for the last number of months has been
less so on the last visit.

Jodie is receiving remedies for her vaccines and
at present the polio one is being addressed. She
is much more affectionate to Mum and to her little
sister and initiates hugs and kisses with both,
this is separate form the craniosacral treatments
which would frequently end with a move to Mum’s
knee.
She has overcome her great difficulty with Music
class – she tolerates it now if it is not in the
big hall and can articulate that they don’t give
her the guitar or whistle.
Best wishes,
Jean

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Jean. From the feedback I get
from other therapists and students who subscribe
to this newsletter, getting a glimpse into someone
else’s practice is very helpful.

***BLUEPRINT FOLLOW ON FROM GAYLE IN CAPE TOWN***

Hi John

I don’t know if they were in your part of the
world, but a few years back there were these 3D
pictures around. They basically look like a whole
lot of messy dots, and then when you relax your
eyes, you suddenly see the picture.

And you can always see that picture every time you
look at it. The more of these 3D images you look
at, the better you get at seeing the image.

Ok so I know that was using an image- like
description, but it might make sense to some
people. The blueprint – to me at least- is as
solid and as apparent as the image that you would
see.

If I had to compare “seeing the blueprint” with
any other of the more common 5 senses, I would say
that it is like your sense of smell. Perhaps the
‘whispy and mist-like’ can be described as an
aroma. It is tangible, it is stronger from the
direction of the source. It has an associated
memory or emotion. It also has a “rabbit-hole”
effect. The more you try to analyse the smell, the
more you can describe the components that make up
that scent.

Hope I made some sort of sense? 🙂

Gayle (Cape Town, SA)

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Gayle. It is always good to
get another perspective on how different people
relate to different structures. I’m not a
‘smeller’ myself but I really like it when someone
can involve their sense of smell in their
palpation, it must add a whole other dimension.

Try as I might, I could never do those ‘magic
eye’ things. In the end I decided that there was
no image there really and it was all an elaborate
conspiracy to make me look stupid.

What?

It might be . .

***SHINGLES FOLLOW ON FROM DONOVAN IN DURBAN VIA
HIS WIFE – HE HAS HIS HANDS FULL AT THE BARBEQUE –
GIVE HIM A BREAK***

Dear John

Thanks so much for your lovely newsletters (this
is Dee, Donovan’s wife and mother of his adored
2.5 year old daughter Naomi!!!!).

I have to confess that I read your newsletters
with great enjoyment, especially as I am handling
the advertising and promotion of cranio here in SA
and I eagerly absorb all information about the
various conditions and problems it can treat, and
as you are a guru in this therapy, I hope you
don’t mind me sneaking a peak at the info you send
to Donovan.

Yes, Donovan has treated a woman who had shingles.
She was brought to him by a student practitioner
who was feeling overwhelmed and asked for his
support. The whole top half of her body was
covered in the sores and she also had HIV AIDS.
She believed she was cursed by the local
witchdoctor and she was going to die if the
shingles spread and joined at the midline of her
body (she was told this by an “Inyanga”/aka
Traditional Healer).

Yes, we live in a very interesting culturally
diverse country with many of our inhabitants being
governed by very strong cultural beliefs. He has
asked me to tell you this on his behalf (he is
braaining [barbequing] our meal and his hands are
filthy) that during the 4 sessions he had with
her, he worked on boosting her immune system and
holding into, and working with these deep seated
fears. When this began shifting, her healing
accelerated dramatically. Unfortunately, she was
very unreliable in keeping her appointments and
only came for the 4 sessions – even though she was
being sponsored to come.

I trust that you were suitably rewarded by Santa
for being a good boy this year, and I look forward
to more of your newsletters in 2008.

Warmest regards from Sunny South Africa and
wishing you a fabulous 2008.

Dee, Donovan, Naomi, Hamish and Angus (our 2
scottish terriers)

MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for that Dee and Donovan. It conjured
up a very cute mental image of Donovan up to his
armpits in barbeque sauce, roaring cranio sacral
descriptions to Dee.

‘I said holding into her deep seated fears,
not folding into her cheap pleated smears. What
does that mean anyway??’

It sounds like you helped the woman in question
a lot Donovan. It was also another glimpse into
the different sorts of issues that practitioners
in different parts of the world are dealing with.

***QUESTION***

Hi John,

I look forward to putting my details on your site
when I finish my course and get some more
practical hours up!

I am interested in your theories on treating
cancer patients? My Cranio teacher says it is a
contraindication if any cancer active is in the
body?

I have tried looking it up in Cranio books but
have not found any information, if you do treat
cancer patients what are you treating them for,
the cancer, the pain, the side effects? I read
somewhere (it may even have been on your site) of
people having chemo being treated but it did not
say why or how?

Luv your work!

Karen
Australia

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Karen,
The main thing to get about contraindications
is they are for YOUR protection as much as the
patient.

The chances of you doing any harm to the
patient are slim to nonexistent. On the other
hand, the chances of you giving yourself a major
fright and setting you palpatory skills back years
is very high.

For example, let’s say you go against your
teachers/mentors recommendation and start treating
someone who is in the middle of dealing with
cancer.
And let’s say they have a major episode the day
after you treat them and end up in hospital.

Take a minute and think about how you would
feel. Can you imagine how difficult it would be
to stay objective about your contribution to their
being in hospital. Can you imagine how hard it
would be to avoid putting yourself through the
wringer wondering if your intention was too heavy
or too light, how you could have missed what was
coming and so on.

I am not saying don’t treat people with cancer
or who are having chemotherapy. I am saying that
you need to nurture and protect your growing
palpatory skill. It is hard enough to develop
without unnecessarily putting it in the way of
potential body blows.

To answer your question, I have treated people
with most stages of cancer, benign, malignant,
aggressive, in remission and I have treated people
who are having chemotherapy and radiation
treatment too.

Here are some things to consider . .

When someone has a life threatening condition
you need to take a very long perspective on their
situation. We need to stand back from our
conditioned response that the happy ending is
where the patient ‘beats the big C’ and lives
happily ever after.

When working with people with life threatening
illnesses, more than anything else you need
humility and respect for their process.

Bearing in mind that you don’t know what their
process is about.

I have found it helpful to adopt the
perspective that the circumstances of a patient’s
life are not random but are very significant to
them. This includes the way they will die. I
take it that the way they choose to die is as
significant as the way they choose to be born.

This makes it is easier for me to stand back
and not try to ‘fix’ them.

I have talked about this in other newsletters
so won’t go on about it too much now.
http://www.open-source-cranio.com/sacral-training/cancer/

Treating someone who is having chemotherapy or
radiation treatment can be very helpful for them.
I have found it is similar to treating someone who
has had a pin or plate put in their body to help
with a compound fracture.

Their body will be freaking out and trying to
dispel the foreign object. Treatment usually
involves helping their body to integrate or make
peace with the foreign object.

With chemo or radiation treatment the person’s
body will be freaking out in a similar way because
it is in essence being poisoned or attacked. Your
job will be to help their body deal with the shock
of attack. To find some kind of equilibrium in
the situation.

Treating people with life threatening illness
is not for the faint hearted. It forces you to
look at very fundamental questions about what you
are really doing. Once you embrace the inherent
challenges it can be very rewarding.

***QUESTION***

Hi, John

Your Q&A’s thus far have tremendously contributed
to my knowledge as a cranio sacral practitioner.
It is now my turn to ask a question.

My mother is 76yrs old and has had a stroke due to
her tissue (mechanical) valve being in for too
long without replacing it. She had a clot in her
frontal area, which was dissolved with medication.
She is back to normal and does not have any after
effects. How can I help her in a cranio way?

All the best for the New Year.

Regards,
Shahnaaz
Cape Town, South Africa

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Shahnaaz,
I am glad you find my newsletters helpful.

As you know, most strokes are caused by a blood
clot forming in some part of the body and then
travelling to the brain and causing a blockage to
the blood supply and then permanent neurological
damage to the effected area.

Recovery from stroke is the transferring of
function from the damaged area to another part of
the brain.

If someone comes to me for treatment and they
are recovering from a stroke, the first thing I
would do is check if they still had a tendency for
clotting. If I got a sense that they did, I would
withdraw gently and not continue treatment.

Not because I could cause another stroke but
because of the effect it would have on me if they
had a stroke while I was treating them or even the
day after treatment.

Also the family of the person involved may not
understand that I couldn’t have caused a stroke
and that could cause a lot of complications and
ultimately interfere with me treating the other
people I treat now and in the future.

For me it’s not worth the risk.

So if you feel that the clotting is over. .

‘How will I know?’

If you are asking this question then you
haven’t had enough experience yet and you need to
get a second opinion from a more experienced
practitioner.

Assuming you are not asking that question I
would focus on assisting the transfer of function
process that will be going on in the brain from
the area that was damaged to the new areas.

Based on what you have written it sounds like
your Mother has recovered well.   Has she asked
you to treat her?

If not, you have a very weak contract with her.
By contract I mean the framework within which you
work with a person.   It is set by what they ask
you to help them with.

So if someone asks you to help them with their
painful knee then that is the contract.

Regardless of whatever other issues you may
feel in the persons system, if these issues don’t
affect the knee problem directly then you will be
going outside the bounds of the contract if you
start trying to treat these issues.

Just because you can feel it doesn’t mean you
have been asked to ‘fix’ it.

I have found the loosest contracts are nearly
always with family members. This happens because
of the history between you and the fact that they
knew you before you were a cranio sacral
therapist.

There is no tricky way around this. It’s not
like you can go to your Mother and ask her, ‘Would
you like me to help you recover from your stroke?’

The strongest contracts come from a request
that has originated from the person unassisted,
un-enticed.

What to do?

If your Mother hasn’t asked you to help her
then I suggest you wait until the next time she is
talking about her health. When she states a
concern that you feel you may be able to help with
then say it.

‘What?’

“I could help with that Mum.”

Then, and this is important, keep quiet. If
she doesn’t respond, leave it. You don’t have a
contract.   If you respect the fact that she
hasn’t asked you it will make it easier for her to
ask when she is ready.

***SHINGLES FOLLOW ON FROM EVA IN AUSTRALIA***

Merry Christmas John!

I have two responses to your newsletter below:

I would be happy to be a mentor. I’m at Lisarow on
the Central Coast, just north of Sydney,
Australia. Contact phone no 0410234490.

I have had shingles myself, or at least that is
what it was diagnosed as when I was 25. Situated
in a particular place between two ribs on the left
side. Had pain off and on during childhood, then
a lot of pain and much longer periods during the 4
years I worked in Nigeria, which was a very high
stress time, emotionally.

What sent it on high alert was that I got mould
allergy and sneezed a couple hundred times a day
for a few months, and that’s when it was
diagnosed. It calmed down with nose spray to stop
the sneezing, but was still very much there in the
rib cage, just not rampant. I never have had any
blisters from it, though. Since I started having
and doing CranioSacral Therapy I haven’t had any
relapses.

I have also treated someone with an acute shingles
outbreak on her arm. The lady had already been for
treatment a few times for a lot of other problems
a few months earlier. This time she came for
treatment the shingles had come out in blisters on
her arm just 2 days before the session. I treated
her as usual but also did Photonic Therapy
(acupuncture with a red light instead of needles)
on the specific points for shingles as well as
around the blisters.
2 days later when she saw the doctor the sores
were nearly gone. The doctor had never heard of
such a rapid retreat of shingles without
medication.

Best regards,

Eva Kuhl Bornefelt
Central Coast, Australia.

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Eva,
I will add you to the Mentor list.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience
of shingles.

It sounds like you did a great job with the
woman you were treating too.

***QUESTION***

Hi John, Hope all goes well in the wider world
beyond our shores. . .

A quicky that may be a useful topic for the next
newsletter. . .

I’m currently treating a fellow who has presented
with Focal Dystonia. Being a writer, and avid
keyboardist, he is experiencing a gradual increase
in tonic spasm mostly within carpal/wrist flexors.

He is a man who lives life on his own terms, his
own agenda, despite the fact he has a couple of
very young children and a loving wife. Driven,
ambitious, capable.

Any resource/ideas/anecdotes . . . politically
incorrect focal dysplasia jokes???

PS Happy X-mas to you and yours.

Greg Robson
Brisbane.

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Greg,

I don’t make jokes about conditions.

I am far too wonderful and holy for that.

From what you have written it sounds like your
patient has focal dystonia only and not focal
dysplasia, which is more on the epilepsy side of
things.   Let me know if I got that wrong.

The thing that stands out to me about focal
dystonia is that it mainly occurs when the person
is focused on a particular task. Classic cases
being the concert pianist or surgeon who only get
the spasms when they are about to perform or
operate.

It always feels to me like the bodily version
of stuttering.

And in terms of root cause, this is where I
would be looking.   What is going on for the
person in relation to their expression or their
work?

Are they happy/frustrated in their work?
Do they feel the work is a good vehicle of
expression for them?
Do they feel like they are bursting with
expression and their work holds them back?
Are they frustrated?

Are the spasms symmetrical? If they are
predominantly in his left hand/wrist it could be
to do with receiving. If on the other hand . . .

‘Hang on, that’s a joke!’

No it’s not. I actually meant his other hand.
His other hand is his right hand . .

‘Oh. . . ‘

If his spasms are predominantly in his right
hand it could be to do with expression or power or
expressing his power.

The medical model for what is going on
mechanically describes the brain as being a bit
like a cartoon character that has been given too
many instructions to carry out at once.
Eventually they shake their head vigorously, with
an accompanying sound effect, which I can’t spell
and shake the confusion away.

I know you have probably looked this up Greg
but bear with me while I explain it for the other
readers who may not have.

You know the way the left side of your brain
controls the right side of your body and visa
versa.

Just nod.

Well it gets more specific. There is a sort of
map called your somatosensory cortex that deals
with each part individually. So each finger, for
example, has a specific region.

This is different from you tomato-sensory
cortex which is the part of your brain that helps
you find tomatoes in the dark.

‘Really?’

No, not really. That was a joke.

‘But you said . . .’

It wasn’t about a condition.

‘Oh . . ‘

Can we get on?
If you have ever watched a musician in full
flight you will notice that their fingers move so
fast they are almost a blur.

The medical explanation for focal dystonia is
that with repeated practice of the same movements,
the brain gets confused and the regions of the
somatosensory cortex for the fingers involved get
kind of mashed up. But unlike the cartoon
character the brain is unable to shake the
confusion away.

While it is a good explanation I don’t think it is
the full story. To fill out the picture a little
more let me include a little quote from an
interview with John Upledger that adds another
perspective to the smearing of the somatosensory
cortex theory.

Here’s Johnny . . .

‘I just wanna share a little study that I came
across.
In February 1988, ‘Brain Mind Bulletin’
published in the abstract some work that was done
at UC San Diego. They were trying to understand
how somebody like a professional pianist or a
professional violin player could move so fast,
with the messages going up to the brain, decision
made, and back down again. So they used
electrodes, and they used an EEG.

What they found was that the electrical
impulses that control finger movement were not
going up the arm! The decisions were being made
right there in the hand! You could use electrical
measurement of neuron impulse conduction as a
reasonable indicator. So what that says is, you
have decision making ability in your hands!’

You can read the full article here
http://www.open-source-cranio.com/resources/articles/Intelligence.pdf

Now that’s jolly interesting isn’t it.

So another way of looking at it might be that
the people who don’t get focal dystonia could be
more surrendered to the intelligence of the hands
that John Upledger is talking about. While people
who do get focal dystonia could keep engaging
their brain and so confuse it.

This would lead me to ask the questions I
always ask about anyone with any condition.

Why did they get it? Lots of people don’t.
Why them and not someone else?
What does it mean?

While you are thinking about that here are some
of the mechanical places you can look because
regardless of the deeper issues everything prints
out mechanically.

As you know, nerve impulses are conducted by a
mixture of chemical and electrical means. The
chemicals are conveyed in fluid and the electrical
impulses are . . . well . . energy . . . and
guess what we work with fluids and energy!!

Alright!!

I would check the nerve supply from the brain
to the area involved, in this case his hand. I
would also be taking a close look at the brain and
in particular the cortex around the posterior
aspect of the parietal lobes, around where they
meet the occipital lobes.

This is generally where the somatosensory
cortex is considered to be located. I would be
checking the cerebro spinal fluid in this area and
the meninges. The lambdoid sutures might give you
an indication for what is going on beneath.

That’s it for this issue. I know,
hard to believe but don’t fret there will be more
next month.

Cheerio for now.

Your Mate,

John D.

July 28, 2009
Cranio Sacral Therapist and Student Newsletter 33

April 5 – 2008

Questions and comments for this issue:

+ Report from Al Pelowski about the role cranio is playing in the Boikarabelo Orphans Eco-Village Cranio Project in South Africa.
+ CST and orthodontic work?

Hello,

I was sent a very interesting video recently.
It is of a talk given by neuroanatomist, Jill
Bolte Tatlor. In the video she describes her
experience of having a stroke and how it changed
the way she viewed the brain, how it works and who
we are.

It was obviously a powerful experience for her
and at times she is quite emotional. You can see
it here. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229
I am very interested to know what you think of it.

I also want to let you know about an update
over at the Wellness Detective Agency, about money and going broke doing
what you love. It’s not like there are any cranio
sacral therapists going broke . . . but I thought
you might be interested.
http://www.wellness-da.com/detective/do-what-you-love-and-go-broke/

If you’re not subscribed to the Updates already
you can subscribe on that page too. Audio updates
are in the works and should be out within the next
week.

And finally, I was heartened to see that Dr.
Darlene Ertha gave a talk last month to The
American Holistic Nurses Association. The title
of her talk was, ‘Exploring Nature’s Blueprint:
Fractals, Pathways, Meridians, and the Collective
Unconscious. Bringing It All Together In Hands-On
Healing.’

Quite a lot to fit on a poster, I know. In her
talk she described how cranio sacral therapy,
among others, made use of universal patterns to
alleviate intractable pain and heal body, mind,
and spirit.

Now that we’re feeling all warm and fuzzy,
let’s get on with the mailbag.

*** BOIKARABELO ORPHANS ECO-VILLAGE ***

Hello John,
An idea for linking the Boikarabelo Orphans Eco-
Village Cranio Project
http://www.boikarabelo.org/

The Boikarabelo orphans village is located about
100km NW of Joburg in the Magaliesburg. I was
wondering if it might be a good test site for your
idea of getting cranio into the world’s villages.
Just thinking really…

There are 90+ children in a surrounding
‘informal village’ of some 1000 people (refugees,
the displaced and isolated). All of them are
orphaned or abandoned, most are severely
truamatised (e.g., nearly all the girls have been
raped; maybe half the kids are or were
malnourished; many are burdened with HIV and other
opportunists; and most carry unresolved alarm or
shock survival behaviours–ADHD, anorexia,
learning disorders, autisms–compounded by
toxicity from vaccinations and pollution).

We are fortunate to have 3 student practitioners
living there, and cranio is a crucial part of a
therapeutic mix including homeopathy, nutrition &
chelation, counselling and lots of patience &
love.

Today, Sunday 30 March, there were 8 of us
practitioners working, and we saw about 30 of the
kids, most of whom have had several sessions and
settle into it quickly. Quite a few end up in
deep sleep so we leave them on the table at one
end and bring on the next at the other end. The
kids literally queue up for treatment, even if
they are not scheduled for it.

Being held cranially is a big hit out there,
thanks to the regular sessions they get with our
resident practitioners. When a child is lost in
shock or fighting all the time in alarm we find
that cranio holding works best to re-establish a
secure bond and thus initiate their healing,
gradually bringing in the other modalities.

Some time ago a visiting woman from Europe went
away inspired and then sent the community 20 new
desktop computers. They are ready to be linked
into a server and used in the school they run on
the premises.

In SA far more people live in ‘informal
settlements’ on the fringe of cities than in
traditional countryside villages. The challenge
here as well as in Africa as a whole is to make
entirely new homes/communities for millions of
kids with nowhere else to grow.

The Malawi Children’s Village (with which I am
also involved) is one way this is being
approached, and Boikarabelo is another. I plan to
visit Malawi in the dry, July perhaps. I’ll
report on MCV after that visit.

Boikarabelo does have more problems but also
more going for it than almost any other village I
can think of in all Africa. So much goes on
there, births, deaths, new arrivals all the time,
crisis after crisis as you can imagine. But
despite all the challenges, the aim is not only to
provide a basic home and identity for the kids,
but to give them the very best in life skills and
turn the situation into an educational advantage..

I could go on..and on..what do you think?

Al.

MY COMMENTS:

What do I think?

I think you’re a bloody legend!

I think the therapists working with you are
bloody legends!

I think the people who run the place are bloody
legends!

If ever somewhere needed more cranio sacral
therapists it would be there. It’s the sort of
place my Open Source Cranio idea is all about.
Getting cranio sacral training information to
where it is desperately needed.

***QUESTION***

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply to my letter regarding
cancer in the New Years Newsletter.
As to what to call you how about the “enlightened
one”?
Your reply to my question made me laugh but if I
had received it a few weeks earlier I would have
cried, can I remind you of your words

“the chances of you giving yourself a major
fright and setting you palpatory skills back years
is very high.

For example, let’s say you go against your
teachers/mentors recommendation and start treating
someone who is in the middle of dealing with
cancer.
And let’s say they have a major episode the day
after you treat them and end up in hospital.

Take a minute and think about how you would
feel. Can you imagine how difficult it would be
to stay objective about your contribution to their
being in hospital. Can you imagine how hard it
would be to avoid putting yourself through the
wringer wondering if your intention was too heavy
or too light, how you could have missed what was
coming and so on.”

Well I can tell you how I felt !!, my Aunt had
been given the all clear following Non hodgkinson
and all the horror that the treatments entailed,
bald and full of life she stayed with us for a
week over xmas on the day she was leaving I asked
if she would like to try some cranio (are you
wincing?) her system did not react and as I had
not practiced for some weeks thought it was me so
pushed the intention a bit harder but all she got
was a nice still point and a vision of a being in
a crater looking at the blue sky (that made me
wince!). She phoned me 3 days later to say she had
not been out of bed since she got home she could
not stay awake (but she felt good) I told her to
go to the Drs asap! she had no white cells and was
very close to dying.

So how did I feel! all of the above! my teacher
was on holidays but when I finally contacted her
she believed the cranio probably brought it to the
surface alot faster. My Aunt is doing alot better
they think she is one of the rare ones that get a
reaction to some injection they give post Chemo,
but they also discovered her heart and lungs are
stuffed from the Chemo! I offered her Cranio and
we both laughed (but I don’t think either of us
will go there!)

I have been going through all your archives a
couple at a time as it makes my head hurt! so many
questions!

So I will start with; I read about your case
study, the girl you helped with facial disorders,
my 18yr old son has a protruding lower Jaw they
have done one lot of orthodontic work and are now
waiting until he stops growing to operate on the
lower jaw to pull it back ( a nasty sounding
operation) and then a couple more years of braces
to correct the bite. Do you believe that cranio
could stop the jaw coming forward anymore and even
better bring it back slightly? and my daughter 15
has had two years of braces but because she had to
a have a baby tooth removed that had no adult
tooth to replace it they expect she will have
braces for two more years! Do you believe cranio
can really help in these situations, I have read
in some of the Cranio books to seek out a
orthodontist that works with Cranio but I don’t
think there is such a person in Australia? I asked
my orthodontist and he was very “polite” “what
the?!!!”

Many thanks
God opps John
Karen
Australian

MY COMMENTS:

Hello Karen,
Thanks for sharing your experience about your
Aunt. It must have been awful for you. Our
palpatory skill is a wonderful but fragile thing.

I’ve had a few emails from different people
asking about orthodontic work and cranio sacral
therapy and since both your questions are about
that too, I’ll kill the few birds, humanely of
course, with one stone and answer them all
together.

Can cranio sacral therapy really help in these
situations?

Hell, yes.

Let’s start with the basics. Teeth are
basically bone and contrary to common perception,
bones ain’t bone china. Bone is plastic and wet
and it grows and most importantly responds to the
pressure it is placed under and adapts.

Wolf’s law and all that, don’t you know.

What’s Wolf’s law?

Wolf’s law states that the son of two wolves is
equal to the son of the bears on the other two
hides. . . or . . something . . like . .that.

It basically means that bone will adapt to the
loads it is placed under.

That is how they can dig up someone from a
thousand years ago and from a careful study of the
shape of the bones of their forearm, work out that
the person used to be a charioteer.

The fact they were buried in a chariot helped
but it was the bones, Jim, the bones.

So just because our teeth are sitting in bone
and our bite is essentially made of bone that
doesn’t mean that it is fixed for all eternity.

When you think about, that’s what Orthodontists
are kind of banking on.

From our perspective, you could think of braces
as being like a form of direct technique, carried
out over a numbers months or years.

When I think of our ‘bite’, and this is
probably because I used to be a carpenter, I
always think of the mandible as being like a door
and the temporo mandibular joints as being like
the hinges of the door, with the temporals and the
maxillae making up the doorframe.

Thinking of it like this helps keep all the
different parts in their rightful place.

The mandible is roughly solid. Yes, I know it
used to be in two parts and in some ways still
behaves as if it is but compared to everything
else involved that still ARE in separate parts, it
helps to think of it as solid. . . like a door.

So if a person’s bite is off it is probably not
the mandible itself but the temporals or the
maxillae.

Because if the doorframe is not straight the
door will keep banging on the frame and never
close properly.

Now let’s look at the two examples you gave.

You write that your son’s lower jaw is
protruding. The first thing I would ask myself is
why is it doing that? Is the mandible sticking out
or is the face pushed in? or is a bit of both.

I would palpate his whole face and try and get
a sense of what the overall pattern was.

Once you do that you can begin to look at the
hinges and the doorframe. For example: There
could be a pattern where his temporals are
torsioned anteriorly and inferiorly in a kind of
temporal nose dive and this in turn could have the
knock-on effect of pushing his mandible
anteriorly.

Or both his maxillae could be driven
posteriorly.

If it is in the temporals I would treat it with
indirect technique.

If it is his maxillae I would treat it with a
combination of indirect and then direct technique.
Indirect to follow into the pattern and help it
release then direct because the influence of the
cranial rhythm is weaker in the maxillae and they
can need a little help getting where they want to
go.

If the maxillae are driven posteriorly you will
need to assess the palatines and help them release
too if the pattern goes back that far. You will
also need to look at how the sphenoid is affected
by this pattern, particularly the pterygoid
plates.

With your daughter, it sounds like they are
trying to even out the gap left by the extraction.

Again, I would palpate her whole face and try
and get a sense of an underlying pattern that
might have caused the situation.

If nothing major presents itself, it may be a
case that her body doesn’t register the situation
in her mouth as being a problem. This would make
you work a lot more difficult and require a lot
more direct technique.

Assuming that your daughter’s braces are not
fixed, you can work on the teeth individually.
You can take each tooth and ‘unwind’ it. That in
itself may begin to even out the gaps.

And finally, as a general note about working
with the mouth, the bite and teeth, it’s important
to rely on the fact that our body is NOT
predisposed to have a banging, jarring,
disharmonious bite. It wants to bite right.

All you have to do is help it. Having said that
I have found as a general rule that while bone is
responsive it can take a while for it to grow in
new directions and by a while I mean 2 to 4
months.

So that’s it for this issue.

Cheerio for now.

Till the next time.

Your Mate,

John D.

July 28, 2009
B1.3.0 – Cranio Sacral Treatment.

<< Back to Basics 1 syllabus

Fundamentally Cranio Sacral Therapy helps remove trauma from the body. This can be physical trauma, like a car accident, a fall on the back steps or a difficult birth.

Trauma can also be emotional like a deep shock, prolonged unhappiness or witnessing violence. Trauma leaves an imprint in the body, which over time can inhibit normal function and cause pain.

In the example of a car accident, the broken bones and lacerations caused by the accident will heal within a matter of months, but the physical after-effects can go on for years. This is because the crash leaves a deep but subtle imprint in the body. Over time these imprinted patterns of restriction can inhibit the body’s natural function causing an array of symptoms, which progressively worsen.

The body tries to release these patterns of restriction from the moment they are imprinted. Under the right circumstances it can spontaneously free itself of these restrictive patterns, but if the imprint is too intense it overwhelms the body’s ability to effect a release.
Cranio Sacral therapy works with this naturally occurring release mechanism, inducing the ‘right’ circumstances under which a natural release occurs.

With emotional trauma, the process of imprinting a restriction pattern happens in the same way. An intense emotional trauma can be imprinted in the body leaving restrictions, which can cause significant physical problems.

Treatment

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.

<< Back to Basics 1 syllabus

May 4, 2009
Working with the blueprint.

+ Working with the blueprint. – September 07

Hi John
Thanks so much for your continuing newsletter and the great tipsand humour.
I have a double question.
It’s often a lonely place at the coalface and I seem to have peoplecome to me with “last resort” problems that require much from me – I am doing a lot of anatomy and physiology research these days.

First question. Do you think it’s possible for a young man whose body doesn’t make testosterone to get that working again? He is 23 and came to me essentially for massive headaches and his lack of testosterone problem. It was diagnosed at age 15 when he had major back pain. Bone testing revealed his bone age was that of an 8 year old. He has to inject himself 3 x weekly for the testosterone cycle to happen. This injecting ritual is also affecting his mental health – facing this for the rest of his life is depressing.

So, he has major lesion patterns in his head, esp membranes, akin to birth trauma (although his mother reports a “perfect” birth), and his pelvic girdle/sacrum. Unwinding those complex restriction patterns is top of the list, with my intention also on all sites for the production cycle to work normally (including cerebral cortex, hypothalamus and pituitary and testes). I can’t see any reason it won’t, but there seems to be an issue with the ‘kick starting’ of the process. If he is injecting and producing LSH, then his body may not have the opportunity to take over. He has had all the tests and specialists do not have any idea why this is happening in his body.
They can only offer injections for his lifetime.

Can you give me any clues here?

Second question. I have a lot of people with conditions related to experiencing terror in-utero. So, the main problem seems to lie in the central nervous system, and glitches in its development.

These all have the quality of having to return to the blueprint as the major goal. This requires a lot, from both practitioner and client. (This is also the situation for the young man already mentioned)

Can you give some insight into the process of returning to the blueprint?

Luckily, I have had success already in this area, but the symptoms and conditions I’m treating lately, (as well as the overall goal of returning to the blueprint), are extreme and debilitating for the clients.
Patience seems to be the major virtue. Have you any other insights?
Thanks so much for your continued support.
Cheers,
J
Perth, Australia

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Thanks for the feedback I’m glad you are finding the newsletters useful.

‘Do you think it’s possible for a young man whose body doesn’t make testosterone to get that working again?’

Yes. When it comes to people and their bodies I think anything is possible.

Both of your questions revolve around the blueprint and how to work with it so I will answer them together.

It sounds like your palpatory skills are at the point where you are beginning to feel the blueprint, which is great. The downside is that it sounds like you are finding it a bit daunting.

But daunt not because it doesn’t need to be.

The ironic thing is that you have been working with the blueprint from the very beginning of your cranio sacral training. The difference is that now you have reached a level of refinement where you can differentiate the blueprint from the rest of what you are a feeling.

As you know the blueprint is the energetic framework that underpins our bodies. The cells of our bodies being a bit like iron filings on a piece of paper. When a magnet is brought to the underside of the paper the filings are drawn to form the shape of the magnet.

The magnet is like the blueprint. The difference is that the blueprint is not a static rigid thing but moves and grows. The growing part being particularly relevant for your testosterone light patient.

Like many aspects of cranio sacral work, we feel something and learn to work with it but have very little scientific evidence or terminology to describe it. 10 years ago science was enraptured with the mysteries of genetics, with few voices who were saying anything different, one of which was Rupert Sheldrake and he was labeled a kook.

Then the genome was finally mapped and when the party was over there was a dawning that it didn’t have all the answers. That everything wasn’t determined by our genes. This is reflected in the work of the likes of Bruce Lipton in what is being called the New Biology.

The idea of an energetic field or blueprint underpinning our body has been around for yonks and shows up in different cultures in different ways, meridians, charkas, assemblage point and so on.

As I said, the blueprint unfolds during embryonic development. The timing of this unfoldment directs the pace and progress of our embryonic development and once started moves forward with its own pace and rhythm.

It’s like a piece of music that begins at the moment of conception and continues for the rest of our lives. Within the overall piece of music there are movements, passages that have the general themes of the overall music but have their individual beginnings, middles and ends.

If something happens to interrupt the music or a particular beat is missed, it is very hard for the body to fill in the blanks. No magnet – so the iron filings don’t know where to go.

For example the maxillae meet each other and form the hard palate at about the seventh week of embryonic development. If this doesn’t happen then person will end up with a cleft palate.

It sounds like all went well with your patient during the embryonic phase of his development. He decided he was going to be male and the initial flood of testosterone ensured this. The beat that was missed was in his puberty. The second wave of testosterone never happened. So he never matured into a man. It is this point that I would look at in his blueprint.

So how to work with it?
I have found that knowing about the blueprint is the beginning of being able to work with it. It’s the same as when knowing what flexion and extension were before tried to feel for them was a help in being able to feel them.

A useful initial access to feeling the blueprint is to use the cranio sacral rhythm. Think of it in terms of William Sutherland’s description of it as being the ‘breath of life’. Think of flexion as the in-breath and extension as the out-breath of this breath of life. He also described the movement of this breath of life as adding potency
to the cells of the body.

I find this kind of imagery helpful in getting in touch with the blueprint. It always reminds me of a beach, in particular that part of the beach where the sand meets the water. Where, if you write your name in the sand the water will come in and wipe it away and smooth the sand out.

With my hands in contact with the person’s system and my eyes closed, tuning into the cranio sacral rhythm and feeling it in terms of an in-breath that vitalises and recreates an energetic blueprint, each in-breath washes across the cells of the body and they become luminous. Any anomalies in the blueprint itself begin to reveal themselves.

The daunting thing about working with the blueprint is that is energetic. You don’t feel it in the same way as you feel flexion and extension, for example, which is a physical movement. It is felt in the same way you can feel something between your palms when you hold them close together. It’s the same sort of something.

The good news is that once it is felt the blueprint behaves and responds in the same way the body does. So if you get a sense that there was a disturbance in the unfoldment of the puberty movement of his blueprint ‘music’ then it is the same as it would feel if there was a trauma that had occurred to him during his puberty.

But instead of looking to get a sense of a trauma you are looking to get a sense of what interrupted the unfoldment of his blueprint, which, ironically could have been a trauma.

Once you get a sense of where the gap is then you can use your intention to fill it. But not in a directed forceful, ‘I know what needs to be done here.’ sort of way. More with a sense of providing a bridge with your intention across the gap.

It is a little like direct technique in as much as you are encouraging his system to fill in the gap but you don’t make it happen.

As kooky as the blueprint may sound it is still a mechanical kind of thing to work with. Just because it is energy doesn’t automatically imbue it with mystical dimensions.

If he doesn’t improve through working with the blue print you would have to look deeper. What is deeper than the underpinning energetic blue print that holds the cells of our bodies in place?

Well as I said the blueprint is in essence a mechanical structure. It is used by the part of us that knows the bigger picture of ourselves. What our life is about. Why we are a man or a woman, why we chose the parents we did, the country we were born in and so on.

That is a different part of the questions you would be asking yourself about the bigger picture of what his symptoms might mean in the context of the deeper issues he may be working out in his life.

Is he resisting letting go of being a boy and becoming a man? Or is he resisting growing up? The movie, ‘The Tin Drum‘ comes to mind. Were the headaches just a way to get him to come and see you or are they part of the mechanical aspect of how this disharmony is expressing itself.

September 26, 2008
How does opposed motion relate to flexion/extension?

+ How does opposed motion relate to flexion/extension? – October 05

Hey JD,
Enjoying your Q and A’s.
Here’s my Q.
How does opposed motion relate to
flexion/extension?

Thanks
B.F. London.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Glad you’re enjoying the NL, B.F.
I’m guessing you do a lot of text messaging on
your ph.
Here’s my C’s.

When you first learned cranio sacral, you were
probably told how the cranio sacral system moves
in flexion and extension. ‘In flexion, the
parietals flex and extend around a medial axis
running along the sagittal suture.’ and so on . .

That’s called the similar motion model. The
main characteristic of which is that everything
moves symmetrically around the midline of the
body.

What you will have found in practice is that
some people just don’t flex and extend in
symmetrical way.

The fact is that no person fits into the
theoretical models of flexion and extension all
the time. Some never. No person’s head moves in
the same way from one day to the next.

It is important to learn flexion and extension
in the beginning so that you can refine your
palpatory skills to really be able to perceive
flexion and extension in all its nuances.

With the opposite motion model flexion and
extension are felt asymmetrically. When one
parietal is moving into flexion the other one will
be going into extension. This creates an
asymmetrical peddling motion within the whole
cranium.

The frontal bone will move anterior and
inferior on one side (flexion) while the other
side moves superior and posterior (extension).

The squamous portion of the occiput will flare
and move inferior and slightly posterior as it
tucks under (flexion) on one side while the other
side is narrowing and moving superiorly
(extension).

The sphenoid torsions around its body. One
greater wing will nose dive (flexion) while the
other side will be arching superiorly.

It’s probably easier to get a mental visual of
it all if you think of the membranous balloon
lining the cranium, filling on one side while it
empties on the other. This will help you make
sense of what the bones are doing.

Trying to figure out every bone movement in the
opposed motion model will do your head in.

Not recommended.

Get the idea of the way the membranes move and
the bones will follow.

You’ve probably felt this motion already and
may have put it down to your inability to feel
flexion extension correctly.

Well you were right, there is a motion like
that and it’s called opposed motion.

Some days our system will move in similar
motion flexion and extension and on other days it
will have this opposed motion feeling.

Hope that was of H.

August 11, 2008
‘Am I making it up?’

+ What I feel with my hands, am I making it up? – September 05

Mr Dalton.
I feel I am at a crossroads in my craniosacral
training. I have been studying CST for six months.

I have listened carefully to my trainers.
I have read books on CST. I understand the fluid
mechanics of what is happening, in theory.

When I tune into the system I begin to feel things.

Then I begin to wonder am I feeling the rhythm
because I expect to feel it. I wonder if I am
not imagining the whole thing. What I feel with
my hands is so tenuous that I could very well
be making it up.

My trainers say that the feeling will become
clearer with time and practice.

It has been six months now. While I can feel more
than I could at the beginning it is nowhere
as clear as I expected.

I understand that with your experience and in
your position you have a strong vested interest
in ‘believing’ in what you do.

I would appreciate it if you could answer me as
honestly as possible.

Do we make it up?

Regards.

M.S.

Somerset.

>>>MY COMMENTS

Let me tell you right now, it’s not going
to get any easier.. . .

What you are looking for is a kind of certainty.

Where you put your hands on someone’s body and
it lights up like a Christmas tree and you can
see EVERYTHING, every restriction pattern,
every cause.

And the road to health for that person looking
like a well lit highway.

And all this without that awful squirmy feeling
like you are groping around in the dark not really
sure of anything.

I feel for you, but it’s never going to
happen. There is something about this work that
always keeps you at the limit of yourself.

I’ll explain.

When you started to learn six months ago and you
heard about flexion and extension, it probably
all made sense.

Then you put your hands on someone and you tried
to feel it and all you could feel was NOTHING!

And it felt awful.

You trusted your trainers and you persevered.

As time passed you learned new things like feeling
lesion patterns in the sphenoid or some such
and when you tried to feel them, all you could
feel was NOTHING!

And it felt awful.

You looked forward to the day when you wouldn’t
feel that awful feeling.

You didn’t notice two important things.

1) Your palpatory skill was improving and
changing. You were actually feeling more. When
you were struggling to feel whether the sphenoid
had a flexion or extension lesion, you failed to
notice that you were feeling flexion and extension
with relative ease.

2) The awful feeling wasn’t changing. It was the
same awful feeling six month ago that you are
feeling now.

As good as your palpatory skills get,
as good as your diagnostic skills get,
as good as you perceptive skills get,
you will still have that voice in the back of
your head wondering, ‘Am I making this up?’

Outstanding cranio sacral therapists haven’t
eradicated uncertainty, they have mastered it.

It’s not like you get it sorted and never have
to deal with it again. It’s something that goes
on every time you treat someone. It’s one of the
most difficult aspects of cranio sacral work.

I know all this because I went/go through it myself
and I have seen ALL the people I have trained go
through it in one way or another.

Here’s what I suggest: put the question on hold for
another six months. Make a deal with yourself that
for the next six months you are not going to ask
yourself that question. For the next six months
you are just going to take it that what you are
feeling is true. It’s not forever, its just for six
months.

I’m not talking about kidding yourself.
You need to understand what you are trying to do.
You haven’t been conditioned to think in the way
that you’re trying to think when you do cranial work.

Your neuronal pathways are formed in a different way.

Continually asking yourself if you are making it
up won’t allow new neuronal pathways to form.

We are not MRI machines. This is science, but not as we
know it, Jim.

Asking if we are making it up is a question from
another approach.

Because we are not machines we have the capacity
to go far beyond our own expectations and pull miracles
out of the bag. It also means we have the capacity to
have an off day and get it wrong.

To answer your very specific question.

Do we make it up?

Sometimes.

Mostly in the beginning of training.

With experience, 1-2 years minimum, you can begin to
discern when you are making it up? You can spot it
and in time it too becomes another thing to note,
along with the multitude of other things you are
registering as you work.

‘The rhythm is changing, I wonder what that means?

The patient is feeling sadness, I wonder what that
means? Now they are angry, I wonder what that means?
I just made that bit up, I wonder what that means?
Now they are about to release this bit, I wonder what
that means? The sadness is still there. .’ and so on.

Have a good look at what I’ve written. Talk it out with
people who know you and care about you. Cranio sacral
therapy may not be the thing for you. It doesn’t suit
everyone. There are lots of modalities that offer
much more of the certainty you are looking for.

Having said that, I encourage you to persevere.
The rewards far outweigh the difficulties.

And the weird thing is as you become familiar with
and master uncertainty, it permeates your whole life
and it becomes more . . well . . fluid.

July 2, 2008
Maxillae

+ CST and orthodontic work? – April 08

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply to my letter regarding
cancer in the New Years Newsletter.
As to what to call you how about the “enlightened
one”?
Your reply to my question made me laugh but if I
had received it a few weeks earlier I would have
cried, can I remind you of your words

“the chances of you giving yourself a major
fright and setting you palpatory skills back years
is very high.

For example, let’s say you go against your
teachers/mentors recommendation and start treating
someone who is in the middle of dealing with
cancer.
And let’s say they have a major episode the day
after you treat them and end up in hospital.

“Take a minute and think about how you would
feel. Can you imagine how difficult it would be
to stay objective about your contribution to their
being in hospital. Can you imagine how hard it
would be to avoid putting yourself through the
wringer wondering if your intention was too heavy
or too light, how you could have missed what was
coming and so on.”

Well I can tell you how I felt !!, my Aunt had
been given the all clear following Non hodgkinson
and all the horror that the treatments entailed,
bald and full of life she stayed with us for a
week over xmas on the day she was leaving I asked
if she would like to try some cranio (are you
wincing?) her system did not react and as I had
not practiced for some weeks thought it was me so
pushed the intention a bit harder but all she got
was a nice still point and a vision of a being in
a crater looking at the blue sky (that made me
wince!). She phoned me 3 days later to say she had
not been out of bed since she got home she could
not stay awake (but she felt good) I told her to
go to the Drs asap! she had no white cells and was
very close to dying.

So how did I feel! all of the above! my teacher
was on holidays but when I finally contacted her
she believed the cranio probably brought it to the
surface alot faster. My Aunt is doing alot better
they think she is one of the rare ones that get a
reaction to some injection they give post Chemo,
but they also discovered her heart and lungs are
stuffed from the Chemo! I offered her Cranio and
we both laughed (but I don’t think either of us
will go there!)

I have been going through all your archives a
couple at a time as it makes my head hurt! so many
questions!

So I will start with; I read about your case
study, the girl you helped with facial disorders,
my 18yr old son has a protruding lower Jaw they
have done one lot of orthodontic work and are now
waiting until he stops growing to operate on the
lower jaw to pull it back ( a nasty sounding
operation) and then a couple more years of braces
to correct the bite. Do you believe that cranio
could stop the jaw coming forward anymore and even
better bring it back slightly? and my daughter 15
has had two years of braces but because she had to
a have a baby tooth removed that had no adult
tooth to replace it they expect she will have
braces for two more years! Do you believe cranio
can really help in these situations, I have read
in some of the Cranio books to seek out a
orthodontist that works with Cranio but I don’t
think there is such a person in Australia? I asked
my orthodontist and he was very “polite” “what
the?!!!”

Many thanks
God opps John
Karen
Australian

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Hello Karen,
Thanks for sharing your experience about your
Aunt. It must have been awful for you. Our
palpatory skill is a wonderful but fragile thing.

I’ve had a few emails from different people
asking about orthodontic work and cranio sacral
therapy and since both your questions are about
that too, I’ll kill the few birds, humanely of
course, with one stone and answer them all
together.

Can cranio sacral therapy really help in these
situations?

Hell, yes.

Let’s start with the basics. Teeth are
basically bone and contrary to common perception,
bones ain’t bone china. Bone is plastic and wet
and it grows and most importantly responds to the
pressure it is placed under and adapts.

Wolf’s law and all that, don’t you know.

What’s Wolf’s law?

Wolf’s law states that the son of two wolves is
equal to the son of the bears on the other two
hides. . . or . . something . . like . .that.

It basically means that bone will adapt to the
loads it is placed under.

That is how they can dig up someone from a
thousand years ago and from a careful study of the
shape of the bones of their forearm, work out that
the person used to be a charioteer.

The fact they were buried in a chariot helped
but it was the bones, Jim, the bones.

So just because our teeth are sitting in bone
and our bite is essentially made of bone that
doesn’t mean that it is fixed for all eternity.

When you think about, that’s what Orthodontists
are kind of banking on.

From our perspective, you could think of braces
as being like a form of direct technique, carried
out over a numbers months or years.

When I think of our ‘bite’, and this is
probably because I used to be a carpenter, I
always think of the mandible as being like a door
and the temporo mandibular joints as being like
the hinges of the door, with the temporals and the
maxillae making up the doorframe.

Thinking of it like this helps keep all the
different parts in their rightful place.

The mandible is roughly solid. Yes, I know it
used to be in two parts and in some ways still
behaves as if it is but compared to everything
else involved that still ARE in separate parts, it
helps to think of it as solid. . . like a door.

So if a person’s bite is off it is probably not
the mandible itself but the temporals or the
maxillae.

Because if the doorframe is not straight the
door will keep banging on the frame and never
close properly.

Now let’s look at the two examples you gave.

You write that your son’s lower jaw is
protruding. The first thing I would ask myself is
why is it doing that? Is the mandible sticking out
or is the face pushed in? or is a bit of both.

I would palpate his whole face and try and get
a sense of what the overall pattern was.

Once you do that you can begin to look at the
hinges and the doorframe. For example: There
could be a pattern where his temporals are
torsioned anteriorly and inferiorly in a kind of
temporal nose dive and this in turn could have the
knock-on effect of pushing his mandible
anteriorly.

Or both his maxillae could be driven
posteriorly.

If it is in the temporals I would treat it with
indirect technique.

If it is his maxillae I would treat it with a
combination of indirect and then direct technique.
Indirect to follow into the pattern and help it
release then direct because the influence of the
cranial rhythm is weaker in the maxillae and they
can need a little help getting where they want to
go.

If the maxillae are driven posteriorly you will
need to assess the palatines and help them release
too if the pattern goes back that far. You will
also need to look at how the sphenoid is affected
by this pattern, particularly the pterygoid
plates.

With your daughter, it sounds like they are
trying to even out the gap left by the extraction.

Again, I would palpate her whole face and try
and get a sense of an underlying pattern that
might have caused the situation.

If nothing major presents itself, it may be a
case that her body doesn’t register the situation
in her mouth as being a problem. This would make
you work a lot more difficult and require a lot
more direct technique.

Assuming that your daughter’s braces are not
fixed, you can work on the teeth individually.
You can take each tooth and ‘unwind’ it. That in
itself may begin to even out the gaps.

And finally, as a general note about working
with the mouth, the bite and teeth, it’s important
to rely on the fact that our body is NOT
predisposed to have a banging, jarring,
disharmonious bite. It wants to bite right.

All you have to do is help it. Having said that
I have found as a general rule that while bone is
responsive it can take a while for it to grow in
new directions and by a while I mean 2 to 4
months.

July 2, 2008