What is Craniosacral Therapy?

What is Cranial-Sacral Therapy (C.S.T.)?

The cranial-sacral system addresses bones and membranes that surround the central nervous system.  Restrictions here can pull on and strain neural tissues and affect correspondingly innervated somatic areas, organs, or tissues.  Craniosacral Therapy or CST uses very light manual techniques. These are often meant to induce responses that decrease, unwind, or remove neural tissue strain. CST, while particularly effective for treatment-resistant headaches, also has positive bearing on varied cases of unresolved chronic muscle and joint pain. Case studies have shown usefulness in helping resolve some digestive and neuro-endocrine disorders. Learning curves, attention spans, and memory retention are often reported improved. 

The cranial-sacral (craniosacral) system addresses bones and membranes that surround the central nervous system. Restrictions here can pull on and strain neural tissues, and affect correspondingly innervated somatic areas, organs, or tissues.  Craniosacral Therapy or CST uses very light hands-on techniques. These techniques deal with pressures and movements of and between brain structures. Hands-on application of CST resistance to certain tissue pressures or movements are often meant to induce responses that decrease, unwind, or remove neural tissue strain. CST Induction techniques are meant to propagate proper movements between brain structures. 

CST, while particularly effective for treatment-resistant headaches, also has positive bearing on varied cases of unresolved chronic muscle and joint pain. Case studies have shown usefulness in helping resolve some digestive and neuro-endocrine disorders. Learning curves, attention spans, and memory retention are often reported improved.

An urgent call exists for strong Randomized-controlled-blinded studies on both the mechanism of action and effectiveness of CST. While ardent practitioners and patients attest to its wondrous effects, strong scientific validation is still lacking.

In the very least, a profound relaxation response is almost always possible with CST. For those for whom "nothing else has worked," CST may be of some help. My biggest concern with CST is the large inter-practitioner discrepancy in in both the rhythm and amplitude of the movements they say they notice in patients. Two different practitioners may read the number of "cycles of flexion-extension" very differently -- even when "readings" are taken a few seconds apart.

My personal advice: find a CST practitioner you are truly comfortable with. Hopefully that practitioner has also had at least a year of successful interventions. As with surgical interventions, the more experience, the better. 

Personal caveat: If you find a practitioner who says they always have a 100% success rate with CST, i would suggest you run away, very quickly, in the opposite direction. That doctor is either extremely gifted or downright scary. (On the off chance that they've developed a system that absolutely always works, for any indication, please send me their contact numbers. I need to learn what they are doing. My magic isn't that good yet.  So i'm sticking to my science, and letting God do the rest.)

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