Cranial Sacral Therapy
Cranial Sacral Therapy (CST) is a light-touch approach that can create dramatic improvements in your life. It releases tensions deep in the body to relieve pain and dysfunction and improve whole-body health and performance.
Why is CranioSacral Therapy so Important?
Few body structures have more influence over your health and well-being than your central nervous system. And few body systems have more impact on your central nervous system than the craniosacral system – the soft tissues and fluid that protect your brain and spinal cord.
Every day you endure stresses and strains and your body absorbs them. But your body can only handle so much tension before the tissues begin to tighten and potentially affect the brain and spinal cord.
Unfortunately, this can compromise the function of the central nervous system – and the performance of nearly every other system in your body.
CranioSacral Therapy releases those tensions to allow the entire body to relax and self-correct. Using a gentle touch – starting with about the weight of a nickel – practitioners evaluate your internal environment. Then they use distinctive light-touch techniques to release any restrictions they find.
By freeing the central nervous system to perform at its best, CranioSacral Therapy naturally eliminates pain and stress, and strengthens your resistance to disease, and enhances your health and well-being.
And because it’s so gentle, CranioSacral Therapy can be effective for all ages, from newborns to elders.
What Conditions Does CST Address?
CranioSacral Therapy improves your body’s ability to take better care of yourself. It helps relieve a full spectrum of pain, illness, and dysfunction, including:
- Migraines and Headaches
- Chronic Neck and Back Pain
- Stress and Tension-Related Disorders
- Motor-Coordination Impairments
- Infant and Childhood Disorders
- Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries
- Chronic Fatigue
- Fibromyalgia
- TMJ Syndrome
- Scoliosis
- Central Nervous System Disorders
- Learning Disabilities
- ADD / ADHD
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Orthopedic Problems
- And Many Other Conditions
What Can I Expect From A Session?
A typical CranioSacral Therapy session takes place in a quiet, private setting. You remain fully clothed as you relax on a comfortable, padded table.
Your therapist begins by gently touching various parts of your body to monitor the rhythm of the fluid that is flowing around your central nervous system.
By carefully listening with the hands to locate areas of weak fluid flow or tissue motion, your practitioner can trace those areas of weakness through the body to the original source of dysfunction.
Delicate manual techniques are then used to release those problem areas and improve the form and function of your central nervous system.
A CranioSacral Therapy session can last approximately 45 minutes. It can be used alone or integrated with other therapies to create powerful effects.
What you experience from your own session is highly individual. The sessions are generally deeply relaxing, creating feelings of warmth or gentle pulsing in the areas the therapist is working on.
How Was This Gentle Therapy Developed?
CranioSacral Therapy was developed by Dr. John E. Upledger, an osteopathic physician featured in TIME magazine as one of America’s next wave of innovators.
From 1975 to 1983, Dr. Upledger was a professor of biomechanics at the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University.
While he was there he led a team of anatomists, physiologists, biophysicists, and bioengineers who performed and published the clinical research that formed the basis for the approach he named CranioSacral Therapy.
In 1985, Dr. Upledger founded The Upledger Institute to teach people worldwide about the value of this effective approach. Nearly 1000,000 therapists have since been trained in CranioSacral Therapy, including therapists here at Muscle Therapy & Acupuncture in White Pigeon, MI.