Craniosacral Therapy is a therapeutic modality that I integrate into my body therapy sessions. The difficult thing about explaining craniosacral therapy, is that it’s so deeply implicit to individual experience. Yet thanks to a growing body of research in fields such as interoception psychology, bio-medicine, neuroimaging and neuropsychology; science is beginning to unveil and confirm at a biological level the processes that contribute to making this therapy so deeply profound and powerful.

Craniosacral therapy is a form of bodywork that uses light, therapeutic touch to support physiological processing, and body-mind integration. When my hands are positioned on the client’s body (typically at the cranium, spine, shoulders and feet) I enter a dialogue with the whole of that person - this includes their entire soft tissue-fluid-sensory architecture, as well as their stories, emotional and cognitive awareness of their embodied experience as it unfolds moment to moment.

The body and mind are always processing, but sometimes we can get stuck in unhelpful patterns where positive feedback loops continue to reinforce limiting behaviours, thoughts, structural and postural patterns. Craniosacral therapy works by developing very subtle body awareness, and the deep capacity to sense and feel your body in the present moment. This is a therapeutic key to supporting the processing, integration and transcendence of mental, emotional and physical patterns from a body-centred approach; to enable greater agency, embodiment and self-regulation.

Touch is an extremely powerful therapeutic tool, and one that is much underestimated and underused in traditional approaches to working with mental health. Fundamental to our health and wellbeing; touch is our primary sense that developed in utero and continues to shape our sense of selves and relationship to the world throughout our lifespan. In the context of craniosacral therapy, touch communicates listening and compassion, and provides feedback to the client, helping to amplify awareness of subtle sensations. The quality of touch that is used in a session interacts with a distinct class of nerve fibres that respond specifically to gentle touch. These nerve fibres (CT afferents) serve body awareness and carry the vast majority of signals to the brain from the periphery of the body; they are essential to feeling and consciousness.

Inversely as the therapist, I recieve subtle information through my touch in the form of rhythms, textures and movement within the fluids and soft tissue matrix; which I can ‘dialogue’ with via my hands, and feedback verbally with the client. Craniosacral therapy is a reverberative process, both mine and the client’s nervous systems enter a relationship, subtely regulating and communicating with one another inside of an intentional field where the primary goal is to connect to health. f

There is a growing body of scientific research that unveils and supports the power of touch as explained in this short BBC video “What happens to humans when we can’t touch”