This book was just released on April 29, 2008 … so it’s hot off the presses. I have not received my copy yet, but when I do I will read it and post some of my thoughts.
If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts ….
The body is the shore on the ocean of being
-Sufi (anonymous)
A wonderful story of how Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey helped their son, Evan ‘recover’ from Autism. Here’s a few quotes I find interesting in the article:
After we implemented these therapies for one year, the state re-evaluated Evan for further services. They spent five minutes with Evan and said, “What happened? We’ve never seen a recovery like this.”
When Evan meets doctors and neurologists, to this day they tell us he was misdiagnosed — that he never had autism to begin with. It’s as if they are wired to believe that children can’t recover from autism.
Many people aren’t aware that in the 1980s our children received only 10 vaccines by age 5, whereas today they are given 36 immunizations, most of them by age 2
The big problem that I have with the 8×8 recommendation is that it is WAY to general of a guideline to cover everyone. This guideline is supposed to work for the 125lb person as well as the 250lb person. That just doesn’t make sense. We talked about this a bit when I was in massage school. I found and presented this report to the class:
‘Drink at least 8 glass of water a day’ — Really?
I prefer that people use their own body weight, activity levels, and geographical climate to figure out how much they need to drink. I also like ‘teaching’ people to look at the color of their urine. It is a great indicator of body hydration/dehydration. Urine output should be anywhere from pale yellow to mostly clear (unless you take a multi-vitamin).
Here are a few more recent reports that have been in the news:
ABC News: Advice on Water Doesn’t Hold Water
Yahoo News: Research debunks health value of guzzling water
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Eight Glasses (one of my favorites)
We should be teaching people to listen to their bodies. We should not be giving such specific information as 8×8 because as we all know, people take things way to literally. They look for someone else to ‘fix’ their problem and when someone says to them ‘You need to drink at least 8 - 8 ounce glasses of water per day’ they listen and go for it … even if they only weigh 100 pounds.
When are we going to stop giving ‘guidelines’ and teach people how to actually listen to their own bodies?
Add on to that the problems with people consuming more unfiltered water and water that has been sitting in plastic bottles leeching chemicals into the water. Not only are these plastic bottles bad for us, they are horrible for the environment.
How much water do you drink? Do you actually achieve the 8, 8 ounce glasses recommended? Have you tried to achieve that? How did it make you feel?
Many small businesses are leaning towards blogging as their online presence. This may not be the best approach for their business. There are many factors to consider when you are debating about a static website versus a blog. In my opinion, blogging is almost certainly not the right approach for most small businesses. But combining the two (blogging and building) could be the answer …
My birthday is coming up in a couple of days. To help me celebrate my birthday, I want you to send a free card to friend, family member, loved one, business partner, employee, etc, etc; whoever you want to send a free card to, for whatever reason you want to send a card. There are hundreds of reasons to send someone a card, here are just a few to get you thinking:
That’s right! I want you to send someone else a free card for my birthday! Why would I do this? Because nothing would make me happier than to know that I had a positive effect on brightening up the day of hundreds of people I don’t even know. When was the last time you sent someone a card out of the blue? It is such a wonderful feeling to get something other than junk mail! And for that something to be a card from a friend with a heartfelt message inside can absolutely change someone’s day.
This is a real card that will be printed out, put in a real envelope with a real stamp and dropped in the U.S. mail. This is not an e-card!
So, how is this going to work? Let me be totally honest here …
The website I am going to direct you to is for an online company that offers this service of sending cards. I have used this system for over a year in my business and personal life. Yes, it is like network marketing. But that is not what I am doing here right now! I honestly just want you to send a card to someone in honor of my birthday. Any information you input goes to me and only me. There is no cost (I pay for the cards) and there is absolutely no obligation to do anything other than send someone you love a greeting card. Basically this allows you to log in and use my account to send a card. You don’t have to watch any of the videos to do this. Here’s how it will work:
You will click on the link below. This will take you to the main page where you will be asked to input your name, phone number and e-mail. (Again, this info is only going to me.) Then click on ‘Take the Free Tour Now’. On the next screen you can simply click on the ‘Get Started’ button. This will walk you through step by step what you need to do to send your card. There are thousands of cards to choose from. Follow the instructions, send a card and you are done. The card will be mailed the next day. You never have to visit the site again!
Please, help me with this! I would really love for hundreds of people to get a card in the mail over the next week or two; and to know in some way it was because of my birthday … it’s a pretty great feeling.
If you send a card, I would love for you to leave a brief comment about who’s day you are effecting and why you sent the card. This is obviously optional, but would love to hear about some of the love being spread about.
Thank you so much!
It often amazes me how long it takes researchers to figure out that everything in the body is connected. It now appears that when Botox is injected into your forehead, it can travel along the nerve pathways and end up in the brainstem.
Neurons at the injection site—the whisker muscles—absorbed some of the toxin and passed it along to other neurons they connected to, the researchers report this month in The Journal of Neuroscience. Within three days, the toxin had migrated from the whisker muscles to the brainstem, where it disrupted neuronal activity.
Super! Not to mention the unapproved (but legal?!?!?) use of Botox injections for children with cerebral palsy to decrease muscle spasms.
An analysis of the FDA’s database by the advocacy group Public Citizen found 16 deaths from Botox or Myobloc. Most involved children with serious diseases like cerebral palsy, who got the injections for muscle spasms (an unapproved, though legal, use).
As stated in one of my all time favorite (and most watched) movies, Connie and Carla:
Let your eyes crinkle, let your skin wrinkle. Our lines show that we’ve lived.
If he doesn’t love you when you look like a map, tell him to hit the road.
Here is my second post on the subject of Infant CST from the BodyworkOnline.com forum:
I have a couple points to discuss.
First, yes extra training is recommended. In Upledger CST training, we spend a morning in CSTII talking about working with newborns and children. At this stage we do not recommend that therapists start working with newborns and children, but we give it as a guide in case they may be the only person in the area practicing this type of work and a newborn shows up in his/he office.
We recommend that a therapist not work on children or newborns until he/she can comfortably and confidently feel and assess the craniosacral rhythm (CSR) anywhere at any time on the body within a second or two. We suggest that therapists start working with adults and then begin working down in age: From adults to teenagers to pre-teens, to toddlers, to infants, to newborns. It gets more challenging as the ‘patient’ gets younger as the rhythm gets faster and has less amplitude; plus the therapist is working with a moving target. Also, the therapist must be confident in know what tissue release feels like, and how to work with as little as 1 gram of pressure.
Upledger does have a class specifically for Pediatrics as well as an obstetrics class. For both of these classes, one has to have taken the first three levels of CST training to be accepted into these classes. It is done this way because the therapist really needs to be at a certain level of competency to work on children and infants.
The second issue I would like to address is the use of CST in a hospital setting. Yes, it would be absolutely wonderful if CST was used more in deliveries. Our research has shown that CST during delivery can help reduce labor pain, make the mom more ‘comfortable’, help the baby to position how she/he needs to be born, and CST can help progress stalled labor and speed up second stage labor. Why wouldn’t we want to try CST in all births?
(side question: isn’t it up to the mom who is in the room with her?)
Without CST being in the hospital, how about the next best thing: Receiving CST work throughout pregnancy. Getting CranioSacral Therapy sessions throughout the nine months of gestation can be just as effective (if not more so) in a successful delivery as being in the room for the delivery. If mom and baby can have all the right conditions throughout the nine months, then both will be prepared when the time comes for delivery. Mom and baby will know this has been coming and what they each need to do for a successful, easy birth.
Yes, complications still arise and it would be great for a therapist to be in the room to help them through those issues. But at least if mom and baby get nine months of great work, the chances of complication decrease.
C-sections
Sometimes they are necessary and can save the lives of both the mother and the baby. In these cases I applaud the work of the doctors who make educated decisions and work quickly to save lives. It is the doctors who promote c-sections as an easier alternative that I have issue with … but that is really another topic …
From a CranioSacral perspective a c-section baby can have severe trauma from the process for two possible reasons. One, the baby doesn’t get born the way he/she ‘wanted to’ be born. I know this may challenge some of your thinking, but I feel that most babies know on some level what the birthing process should be, what it will feel like, and look forward to coming into this world. A c-section takes that away and can create an emotional trauma that stays with the person for the rest of his/her life.
Two, the c-section process creates an extreme change in the environmental pressure the baby is in. There are many stories of amniotic fluid squirting out up to a foot or more when the incision is made. Think about what that change in pressure does to a newborn’s undeveloped skull. We talk about newborn’s craniums being small islands of bone floating in a sea of membrane. When this type of pressure change occurs there is a sudden expansion of the cranium and then an almost immediate recoil response that contracts all of the membrane. Craniums of c-section newborns can feel very tight and immobile. Imagine what that is doing to his/her little nervous system.
So while I do think it would be great to have CranioSacral Therapy during labor, the next best thing is to have the work prior to delivery and shortly after delivery. It makes a significant change in the lives of the parents and the baby when they all start their new life together from a place of health and well-being.
The quote from the tab on my Yogi tea:
Your destiny is to merge with infinity.
I have been involved in a discussion over at BodyworkOnline.com regarding infant CranioSacral Therapy. (Read full post here.) But I thought I would post my responses here as well. They are fairly detailed and contain quite a bit of information regarding CranioSacral Therapy during gestation, labor and delivery. Here’s my first post on the thread. (My second post will follow shortly.)
CST for newborns is amazing work. Most of us who have had advanced training and work with the craniosacral system on a daily basis, wish that we could get our hands on every newborn coming into this world.
Even the easiest, least complicated gestation, labor and delivery process can be traumatic not only for mom but for baby. (I am not saying this is true for every newborn - some do just fine)
The birth process is kind of like the newborns first craniosacral system ‘adjustment’ as his/her cranium is collapsed down the birth canal and re-expanded coming out into the world. Also, there is a dural twist that happens along the way. If the newborn’s self healing systems are all 100% ok, there’s an excellent chance that all will re-expand in a healthy state.
However, because the delivery process can be long and traumatic, the baby may be stuck in a position for hours. Cranial bones may overlap too much for too long and get stuck. How many of you have seen a newborn that looks like the frontal bone slightly overlaps the parietals giving a little ‘ridge’ across the forehead? Only to find out labor was long and mom pushed hard.
Another concern is when the baby’s head pops out and the person delivering, in an attempt to help the mom, holds on to the baby’s skull to gently pull/guide the baby out. Many times this is done in a way that puts the baby’s cervical spine into extreme extension. We see a lot of O/A compression post delivery. To start off life with this compression effects the baby’s ability to truly get into parasympathetic.
Imagine starting off life with any of these restrictions in your nervous system. From the get go your body is trying to adapt and balance itself with these issues present. The entire rest of this person’s life may be dealing with anxiety issues because of a compressed O/A from birth. Or perhaps some sort of learning concern because of cranial membrane tension or stuck suture … or add/adhd … or unexplained migraines/headaches … the list could go on and on …
My point being, if we can address any restrictions that may be present in the first few days of life, what is the possibility of this person’s body to do its job and maintain homeostasis. How many syndromes/symptoms/conditions might we help children avoid if his/her craniosacral system is as healthy as can be from the beginning.
I have worked on several 1or 2 day old newborns. It is beautiful work and often brings a tear to my eye to think that I may have helped this child to lead the healthiest life possible. It is a great honor.
I have also worked with older newborns to help relieve colic, poor latch, ear infections, nose discharge, and other symptoms.
I hope this helps some to see the possibility that is present.
Do any of you have newborns or children who had CranioSacral Therapy early on in life?
If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint,
—
and that voice will be silenced.
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