CranioSacral Therapy

Serving the Ventura, Santa Barbara, Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Bel Air, Beverly Hills CA areas

For more information or to book a session please contact
Corey Buck, LMT at 805-200-7282.

1 hour session $50

In addition to incorporating CranioSacral Therapy into his structural body work, Corey also offers CranioSacral sessions as a separate service.

CranioSacral Therapy is a gentle, non-invasive, hands-on therapy. During the session, the client is completely clothed while the practitioner performs a variety of gentle holds . The practitioner's role is to remain centered and still while sensing and "listening" to the client's craniosacral rhythm and providing support for that rhythm to move into a deep sense of inner stillness and balance.

Although it is a gently therapy, CranioSacral work can facilitate profoundly deep release on physical, emotional and even spiritual levels. The basic principle of CranioSacral therapy is to honor the client as they are in the moment and trust that the return of balance to the CranioSacral flow will create a holistic and synergistic healing. Rather than to attempt to "fix" problems, CranioSacral Therapy allows space for issues to simply be and have room to reorganize and shift naturally.

History of CranioSacral Therapy

Around the start of the 20th century, a final-year student of osteopathy, William Garner Sutherland, was examining a set of disarticulated bones of a human skull in his college laboratory. Like other students of his time, Sutherland had been taught that adult cranial bones do not move because their sutures (joints) become fused. However, he noted that he was holding in his hands adult bones which had become easily separated from each other.

Like the gills of a fish.
While examining the bevel-shaped sutures of a sphenoid and temporal bone, Sutherland had an insight which changed the course of his life. He described how a remarkable thought had struck him like a blinding flash of light. He realized that the sutures of the bones he was holding resembled the gills of a fish and were designed for a respiratory motion. He didn’t understand where this idea came from, nor its true significance, but it echoed through his mind.

William Sutherland set out to try prove to himself that cranial bones do not move, just as he had been taught. As a true experimental scientist, he reasoned that if cranial bones did move and that if this movement could be prevented, it should be possible to experience the effect. So he designed a kind of helmet made of linen bandages and leather straps which could be tightened in various positions, thus preventing any potential cranial motion from occurring.

Cranial movement.
Experimenting on his own head, he tightened the straps, first in one direction and then in another. Within a short period of time he started to experience headaches and digestive upsets. This response was not what he was expecting, so he decided to continue his research to find out more. Some of his experiments with the "helmet" led to quite severe symptoms of cranial tightness, headaches, sickness and disorientation. Of particular interest was that when the helmet straps were tightened in certain other positions, it produced a sense of great relief and an improvement in cranial circulation.

After many months of pulling and restricting his cranial bones in different positions with these varying results, Dr Sutherland eventually stopped this research, having convinced himself that adult cranial bones do, in fact, move. Furthermore, the surprising responses that he felt in his own body had shown him that cranial movement must have some important physiological function. Sutherland spent the remaining 50 years of his life exploring the significance of this motion.

Historical acceptance.
Although most Western countries did not recognize cranial motion, this possibility was not new to other cultures. There are various Oriental systems of medicine such as acupuncture and Ayurveda which have long appreciated the subtle movements which occur throughout the body, caused by the flow of vital force or life-energy. This has also been traditionally taught in Russian physiology. Interestingly, anatomists in Italy in the early 1900s were already teaching that adult cranial sutures do not fully fuse, but continue to permit small degrees of motion throughout life.

Cranial manipulation has been practised in India for centuries, and was also developed by the ancient Egyptians and members of the Paracus culture in Peru (2000 BC to 200 AD). Furthermore, in the 18th century, the philosopher and scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg described a rhythmic motion of the brain, stating that it moves with regular cycles of expansion and contraction.

Tissue breathing.
From an early stage, Dr Sutherland understood that he was exploring an involuntary system of "breathing" in tissues, important for the maintenance of their health. At a fundamental level, it is this property to express motion that distinguishes living tissues from those which are dead. Dr Sutherland perceived that all cells of the body need to express a rhythmic "breathing" in order for them to function to their optimal ability. Much of his research was carried out by combining a profound knowledge of anatomy along with an acute tactile sense. He started to realize that these subtle respiratory movements can be palpated by sensitive hands. He also discovered that this motion provided a wealth of clinical information

An interconnected system.
Dr Sutherland recognized that the motion of cranial bones is connected to other tissues with which they are closely associated. The membrane system, which is continuous with cranial bones along their inner surfaces, is an integral part of this phenomenon. Significantly, Dr Sutherland also found that the central nervous system, and the cerebrospinal fluid which bathes it, have a rhythmic motion. The sacrum, too, is part of this interdependent system. Thus, there is an important infrastructure of fluids and tissues at the core of the body which express an interrelated subtle rhythmic motion.
As Dr Sutherland dug deeper into the origins of these rhythms, he realized that there are no external muscular agencies which could be responsible. He concluded that this motion is produced by the body's inherent life-force itself, which he called the Breath of Life.

THE BREATH OF LIFE
"Think of yourself as an electric battery. Electricity seems to have the power to explode or distribute oxygen, from which we receive the vitalizing benefits. When it plays freely all through your system, you feel well. Shut it off in one place and congestion results." - Dr A. T. Still.

The inherent life-force of the body, the Breath of Life, was seen by Dr Sutherland to be the animator or spark behind these involuntary rhythms. Alluding to the source of this phenomenon, other practitioners have referred to it as "the soul’s breath in the body". The Breath of Life is considered to carry a subtle yet powerful "potency" or force, which produces subtle rhythms as it is transmitted around the body. Dr Sutherland realized that the cerebrospinal fluid has a significant role in the expressing and distributing the potency of the Breath of Life. As potency is taken up by the cerebrospinal fluid, it generates a tide-like motion which is described as its longitudinal fluctuation. This motion has great importance in carrying the Breath of Life throughout the body and, as long as it is expressed, health will follow.

Expressions of health.
The potency of the Breath of Life has remarkable properties for maintaining health and balance. An essential blueprint for health is carried in this potency, which acts as a basic ordering principle at a cellular level. This integrates the physiological functioning of all the body systems.

Dr Sutherland believed that the potency of the Breath of Life carries a basic Intelligence (which he spelled with a capital "I"), and realized that this intrinsic force could be employed by the practitioner for promoting health. A similar concept is found in many traditional systems of medicine, where the main focus for healing is also placed on encouraging a balanced distribution of the body’s vital force.

The presence of full and balanced rhythms produced by the Breath of Life signifies a healthy system. As long as these rhythms are expressed naturally, the body’s essential ordering principle is harmoniously distributed. Therefore, this rhythmic motion is primarily an expression of health. Its existence ensures the distribution of the ordering principle of the Breath of Life, and its restriction can have far-reaching consequences.

This brings us to two basic tenets of craniosacral work:
1) Life expresses itself as motion.
2) There is a clear relationship between motion and health.

Primary respiratory motion.
Dr. Sutherland named the system of tissues and fluids at the core of the body which express a subtle rhythmic motion, the primary respiratory mechanism . As these tissues are not under voluntary muscular control, they are also sometimes referred to as the involuntary mechanism (or I.V.M.).  Dr. Sutherland used the term "primary" because this motion underlies all others. It is the manifestation of the life-stream itself. Every cell expresses this primary respiratory motion throughout its life. Significantly, many different symptoms and pathologies which involve both body and mind are related to disturbances of primary respiratory motion.

There are, of course, other vital rhythmic motions in the body such as the heartbeat and lung respiratory breathing. Although necessary for the maintenance of life, these are considered "secondary" motions because they are not the root cause of the body"s expression of life. Without the Breath of Life there would be no other motion. Lung respiration or the breathing of air is therefore sometimes called secondary respiration.

This fact was proved to Dr Sutherland early on in his development of this work. During the days of prohibition in America during the 1920s, he was staying at a cottage on the shores of Lake Erie. One day he heard a commotion outside, when a man who had been drinking far too much illegal liquor was being dragged out from the water. By the time Dr Sutherland reached the shore, the man was lying on the ground. His normal life signs (lung function and cardiovascular pulse) had ceased, and all attempts to resuscitate him had failed.

With some quick thinking, Dr Sutherland took hold of the sides of the man’s head and encouraged a rocking motion of his temporal bones, in an attempt to stimulate primary respiratory motion. This worked; within a few seconds the man’s breathing and heartbeat started up again and he regained consciousness. This experience helped to affirm to Dr Sutherland the tremendous power of working directly with the Breath of Life.