I am on the program advisory committee for the massage program I attended. At our meeting yesterday, there were 7 of us in attendance. I can bring up CranioSacral Therapy in just about any topic being discussed. I love talking about it and educating people about this amazing work. (Hence, the blog you are visiting.)  So, of course I mentioned something about it during the meeting.  One of my colleagues made a statement that went something like: ‘well how is lightly holding my head in your hands going to fix the herniated discs in my low back?’ In that moment I was reminded how little people know of CranioSacral work.

CranioSacral Therapy is full body work. While the core focus of the work is the health of the craniosacral system, not all of the session is spent working on the system. Rather, during a session the therapist may be in and out of the craniosacral system several times. To understand why, I must first talk briefly about fascia. And trust me, this is a very, very brief overview of the fascial system.

Fascia is everywhere in the body. It covers every structure of the body from muscle to bone to organ and surrounds cells within those muscles and organs. It is a vast connective web that runs everywhere in the body, uninterrupted from head to toe, front to back, side to side, and deep to superficial. You could literally start at the big toe and travel to and from anywhere within the body and never leave the fascial system. In fact, if we could remove everything from the body but leave every fiber of fascia intact, the body would still maintain the shape of the human body.

Fascia is very adaptable tissue. It has collagen and elastin fibers to make it both elastic and stretchable.  When fascia is healthy, it allows for ease of movement of the body. It can expand during pregnancy, it can stretch during yoga, and it can then return to its resting position without pain. It can glide easily over muscle fibers and over itself. It is when fascia is unhealthy or becomes damaged that problems occur.

Unhealthy fascia can come from a variety of internal factors such as nutrition, hydration, hormone levels, supplements, and medications. Damaged fascia might be from any accident, injury, or traumatic insult to the body’s tissues. Fascia can become knotted up, it can stick to muscle, bone or organ, and it can lose its elasticity or its ability to return to a neutral position. It is because of any of these mentioned factors that we might experience pain, tightness, stiffness, ‘knots’ in our body, or a variety of other symptoms.

From a CranioSacral perspective, we need to address these fascial concerns no matter where they are in the body: Even if they are outside of the craniosacral system. Why? Because as I stated previously fascia is a continuous, uninterrupted web of tissue throughout the entire body. This means that if someone has hurt a knee and the fascia gets injured, this injury could create tension within the fascial system. This tension could put a slight pull on the fascia that then begins to ‘tug’ on the fascia of the low back. Suddenly this person is having low back problems. Then the pull begins to travel up the person’s back and into his/her neck. Now, he/she is getting headaches. Yes, this can all happen from an injury that occurred at the knee.

These pulls can then create abnormal tension in the fascia of the craniosacral system. We could work just on the craniosacral system to release the tension within the system, but it wouldn’t get to the core of the problem. Until we work the knee to release the fascial restriction that started it all, the problems or symptoms will continue to return.

In CranioSacral Therapy we learn to evaluate the body in a way that helps to locate fascial restrictions outside of the craniosacral system that may be having a direct effect on the system itself. It is often these fascial restrictions throughout the body that are the ‘core’ of the person’s neck pain, shoulder pain, migraines, fibromyalgia, etc, etc, etc.

So while it may sound like CranioSacral Therapy works only on the head and tailbone, I can assure you that it is a full body therapy.