he basic idea is that the bones of the head can move.” That’s how I usually begin, and that’s news to people who have heard that the bones fuse together after birth. “Not much, maybe the thickness of a sheet of paper, but that’s enough to feel if you know what you’re looking for, and enough that the body notices if they don’t move.” I’m talking with Jesse, a client here for her first craniosacral therapy session.

“You mean joints, like in my knees?” she asks.

“Maybe ribs would be a better example,” I say. “The ribs move with the breath, and the cranial bones move with their own rhythm at about six to ten times a minute. It’s a natural, involuntary rhythm, like your breath when you sleep, but it is different from either your breath or your pulse. Instead of a rhythm in the air you breathe or in your blood, it’s a rhythm in the cerebrospinal fluid that nourishes and protects the brain and spinal cord.”

“And if one of my ribs were stuck, it would hurt when I breathe.”

“It very well might,” I reply, “but what if it got hurt so long ago that you got used to it? It would still restrict your breathing …”

“… and I’d feel better when it moved, even if I didn’t notice it before.”

“Exactly.”

When there's a problem ....

“But how do you know if it’s stuck?” Jesse asks. “I mean, if the rib doesn’t hurt, how do you know what to do?”

“I might feel that the left side of your rib cage moves more than the right. And, when I tune into the cranial rhythm, I might feel more movement on the left side of your body than on the right.”

“You mean the head, right?” she asks. “You mean you feel one side of my head move more than the other. That’s the ‘cranio’ part of ‘craniosacral’ isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say, “and the ‘sacral’ part is your sacrum, the wedge shaped bone at the end of your spine, just above your tailbone. Movement … and restrictions … in the head can be felt in the sacrum, and vice versa. The two are connected by the tough outer covering of the spinal cord, which is normally free to move as your spine twists and bends.

“So, when you’re laying still on the table, I can get a sense of the movement in your head … in the whole system, actually … by sliding my hand under your bottom and ‘listening’ to the sacrum.”

Jesse is thinking back to the traffic accident she had three years ago. “So if I hit my head in the accident, you could feel that in my sacrum?”

... find the source.

“If the quality of movement of the bones changed … think of a door that’s stuck or on a bad hinge … yes I could. And, if you jumped off the swing as a kid and fell hard on your bottom, that could jam your sacrum, which today might show up in restricted movement of the bones in your head.”

She laughed. “So, you start at the bottom to fix my headache?”

“Maybe! The point here is that the symptom and the cause can be far removed. Your neck hurts after the accident, right …?”

She nods, not too happy about it.

“… but maybe that’s because your shoulder or back got wrenched by the seatbelt. I might end up working on your tummy before I ever get to your neck.”

“Cranio-tummy work? How did we get here?” She smiles, and I do too.

“If you cut an orange crosswise, you can see how the little compartments of pulp are given shape by a thin membrane. Thicker membranes group lots of little compartments into wedges, and so on. In the body, the fascia works in a similar way to group individual fibers into muscles, and muscles and organs into groups.”

“I know,” says Jean, “the icky translucent sheets I pull off the meat when I clean a chicken.”

“Same stuff,” I say. “The fascia also helps parts of the body to move together, and that’s part of what I tune into during a session … small, subtle movements throughout the body. But if one part of the body is restricted in movement, that restriction can be sensed elsewhere in the body. So an old pulled muscle in your lower abdomen might indirectly cause restricted movement in the sacrum …”

“… and give me a headache.”

I nod.

The body knows

“OK, so how do you fix this?” She’s moving us to the next level. “How do you know what to do?”

“Fortunately,” I begin, “the body is very good about showing me where to start, and what to do. Imagine that you were blindfolded and I led you up to a seesaw. You could find the center, the axis of the seesaw, right?”

“Oh, sure,” she says. “I just slide my hand in the direction of smaller movement of the seesaw. If I go too far and overshoot, the movement will get bigger again. I can zero right in on it.”

“That’s pretty much the idea, except that I get to work in three dimensions in the body, not just one or two. So if I’m drawn to your tummy, I can even get an idea if the restriction is closer to your back or closer to the front.”

“Does it work the same for the cranio part of cranio-tummy work?” she smiles.

“The head gets very interesting because of all the bones. Each bone has its own typical movement as part of the craniosacral rhythm: the frontal bone or forehead nods up and down, ever so slightly, and the temporal bones housing the ear move in and out something like gills on a fish. The anatomy makes the interactions of the bones more complex, but also provides more clues to what is going on.”

“OK, but I still don’t know how you loosen things up without digging at me or twisting something.”

“A very good question.” Jesse already has a good chiropractor and sees a colleague of mine for deep tissue work, so she’s probably wondering how our time together will be different.

“Let’s stay with the seesaw image. Often the body, the seesaw, will move easily in one direction and not so easily in another. One way is smooth and easy, like going with the grain, and another way is gummy or gooey and it may feel like there’s a barrier. So I follow the body in the direction of ease, and hold it there as it tries to go back into the gooey part, into the barrier.”

The body heals itself

“Isn’t that backwards?” Jesse wanted to know. “If there’s a barrier, don’t we want to get through it?”

“Well, that’s one approach, but it isn’t the one I try first. I first encourage what the body does best, and after a while you can feel a soft release, a melting, as though we had gone around the barrier rather than through it.”

“So no pops or cracks in the neck, huh?”

“Nope,” I smile. “It isn’t unusual to get a big sigh, or gurgling in the stomach, though. After trying the easy way, I often go back and test the hard way again, to see if there’s any more freedom to be gained in that direction. But it’s done more with the intention of helping the body finish what it started than imposing my agenda on it from the outside.”

“Well” she says, “it would sure be nice to be finished with this neck pain … even if you start with my tummy!”

“Let’s see where we go, and how far we get. The session is where we start the work together; you’ll finish it on your own over the next day or two.”

“I get homework?”

“Probably not today,” I grin, though sometimes I do suggest exercises. “But your body may continue to explore whatever additional freedom it finds here, especially if we loosen up something that hasn’t moved in some time. Some people notice mood shifts, some feel changes in tension or ease of movement the day after, and some feel nothing at all.”

“I’d settle for a good night’s sleep!” she says.

“That’s a real possibility,” I reply. I’ve seen blood pressure go down, as well, but I’m not making promises, just best efforts. “Make yourself comfy on the table, and we’ll get started.”