health & wellbeing
Craniosacral Tapping into the body’s healing ability
therapy
Craniosacral therapy or CST is an offshoot of Osteopathy, sometimes called cranial osteopathy, that’s growing in popularity. Dr William Garner Sutherland (1873-1954) an American Osteopathic physician, first identified and started to develop cranial osteopathy as a way to assess and improve well-being and the health of the whole body. Dr. Sutherland became fascinated with anatomy of the skull, spending many hours dissecting and examining the human head. Noticing the unusual way in which the skull bones connected with one another, he was struck by the phrase ‘Bevelled like the gills of a fish, indicating …mobility for a respiratory mechanism’. He considered if the edges of the bones were jagged and bevelled, there must be a reason for it. Dr. Sutherland’s Eureka moment came one 50
day in the early 1900’s, when he realised that he’d only ever examined the skulls of cadavers - what if the connective tissue between the bones remained elastic throughout life and the bones were moveable until death? To test this theory, he wore adjustable leather straps to prevent movement of his skull bones and discovered that the resulting pressure on his head created physical symptoms and personality changes. This led him to understand that if a human skull was rigid, then the various pressures of the helmet shouldn’t have affected him. The term Craniosacral therapy was coined by John E Upledger who took on and developed Dr Sutherlands ideas and techniques to create a powerful yet simplified system of treatment, capable of being learned by those outside of the medical and osteopathic professions.
