by Michael Kern
In the original cranial concept, the primary respiratory mechanism is outlined as a grouping of anatomical and physiological functions and parts, which express a primary and subtle respiratory motion. It is composed of:
the inherent fluctuation of cerebrospinal fluid
the inherent motility of the brain and spinal cord
the mobility of reciprocal tension membranes
the articular mobility of the cranial bones and
the involuntary mobility of the sacrum between the iliac bones of the pelvis.
The perceptual shift to the primacy of the Breath of Life as our motivating and organizing factor is the foundation of a biodynamic understanding of the human system. Within this viewpoint, the human system is seen to organize as a unified field around the imperative of the Breath of Life. Thus the concept of a primary respiratory mechanism, composed of tissue and fluid elements, shifts in emphasis to a wider system that expresses the primary respiratory function of the Breath of Life. Hence, the primary respiratory mechanism (P.R.M.) becomes the primary respiratory system (P.R.S.). This includes:
the Dynamic Stillness at the heart of all motion;
the potency of the Breath of Life per se, which is called the Long Tide. This is a bioelectrical matrix organized around the primal midline of the body;
the organizing and integrating function of the potency of the Breath of Life within the fluids of the body;
the organization of the fluid and tissue systems to the imperative of the Breath of Life and its blueprint;
the expression of primary respiration, in cycles of inhalation and exhalation, involving tissues, fluids and potency as a unit of function.
I have known Michael for many years now and know him to be a consummate clinician and experienced teacher. He is well placed to attempt to introduce concepts which are not easy to describe to a wider public. In the chapters that follow, Michael unfolds these concepts in a clear way from his own understanding and clinical practice. Again, this is not an easy task, as the observations we make are always filtered through our personal perceptual processes and current use of words and terminology. I feel that Michael has done an admirable job here. In the end, the journey is to experience and explore these phenomena for ourselves, both inwardly and in relationship. This book is an important contribution to the field, and I hope it will be widely read.
Franklyn Sills, Devon, England, January 2001
INTRODUCTION
My own story with craniosacral work began over twenty years ago when as a disaffected college drop-out I first went for treatment. I was at a crossroads that seemed so big that I froze with fear. What was I going to do with my life? A tiredness had come over me that carried on for months. I felt a constant tightness in my head and struggled to drag myself out of bed each day. My family doctor told me I had probably picked up a bug, but I left his office feeling that he really didn’t know what was happening. Around the same time some close friends were enthusiastically singing the praises of a nearby craniosacral practitioner, so in despair I called for an appointment. I turned up for treatment with no idea of what to expect.
The thing that I most remember about those first appointments was how I felt heard. This was not because of any verbal reassurance or a sympathetic ear—although I’m sure that helped—but because I had never been touched in that way before. My therapist put his hands on my head, hardly making contact, and waited there in silence. I had never experienced such a light and yet penetrating touch, or been in such close and yet spacious contact with another person. Within that contact it was as if the whole of me was being held—mind, body and heart.
Furthermore, this was not just a passive or static process, as I could sense a powerful reorganization taking place inside me. There was a clear and dynamic communication going on between the practitioner’s hands and my body. His hand contacts had a precision and appropriateness, as if some primal part of me was being acknowledged. Slowly, I began to notice that there was something else, apart from my own confusion and the tightness my body had been carrying. I began to be aware of a depth of presence and healing and started to let go.
With the help of craniosacral treatments, the pressure in my head lifted, my energy returned and step by step I began to find my feet. I wanted to understand what had happened and how it worked, so I started to take various holistic medicine courses and seminars—and got hooked! After apprenticing with some wonderful and supportive teachers, I set up in practice. However, I soon reached another point when I didn’t know my next step. Should I enroll on in a lengthy osteopathic training and make a full commitment to this work? I decided to take some thinking time and travel along the West Coast of the United States. One evening, with my money running out and the heaviness of indecision looming, I went to a Chinese restaurant just south of San Francisco. At the end of the meal the waiter brought some tea and a fortune cookie. When I opened the cookie, the enclosed words leaped out at me: “You will best succeed in a profession dedicated to the service of humanity!” Prophetic intervention or not, it seemed enough to confirm my wish to study osteopathy, so I returned to England to start the process of enrollment.
To my relief and surprise, and despite the reams of academic study and rote learning necessary to get through exams, I actually enjoyed going back to college. I became more intrigued by the healing power of nature and the inexorable wisdom of the body. It was in osteopathy school that my explorations into craniosacral work as a practitioner began, and I started to dig deeper. A few years later, as I began teaching craniosacral skills to osteopathic students and other health-care professionals, I found that attempting to communicate this work to others is a great excuse to further my own understanding.
This book has formed out of these years of treatment, learning, practice and teaching. My intention here is to present an outline of the craniosacral approach that is accessible for the layman who wants to dig a little deeper into “how things work.” I hope it will also be a valuable resource for craniosacral therapy students and other practitioners.
I hope to acquaint the reader with the fundamental principles of craniosacral work by looking at its developments, from the initial insights of its founder, Dr. William Garner Sutherland, to the present day. In the process I will consider the layers of physiological functioning that essentially affect our health, in order to appreciate how we can work with ailments at the level of their origins. This book is intended not as an instruction manual but as a guide to natural laws of healing and how they are applied in craniosacral work. Through these pages I hope the reader will grasp the immense potential of this approach to reconnect us to our source of health.
Over recent years craniosacral work has become one of the fastest-growing natural therapies. Increasingly, people have been coming for treatment because of their experiences at a grass-roots level. Patients of all ages and with a wide variety of conditions have been finding improvements in their health. Yet why these results occur has remained very much a point of debate. This is perhaps because, on the surface at least, nothing much seems to happen during the treatment process. Unfortunately, many of the propositions that have been put forward take only a partial view of how we function. Any view that fragments us into our constituent parts, and in the process loses sight of the wider picture, tends to lead to confusion.
This book presents a biodynamic approach to craniosacral work1—that is, one that acknowledges the inherent life-force in the body and our intrinsic wholeness. In our materialistic, mechanistic age, because we often lose sight of the fact that we are more than just a collection of tissues, bones and fluids, we may attempt to seek explanations in physical terms only. Yet the acknowledgment of a vital force is at the heart of the craniosacral concept and was deeply appreciated by Dr. Sutherland. He called it the Breath of Life and considered it to be the fundamental principle that maintains order and balance in the body.
The biodynamic approach has been further developed by practitioners such as Rollin Becker, Ja
mes Jealous and Franklyn Sills. This book also includes insights from practitioners in related fields such as conventional allopathic medicine, physics, the spiritual traditions, psychotherapy and other therapy forms. These can all add to our understanding and perspective about how we function.
I’m aware that a lot of jargon can creep into explanations of craniosacral work and some of the concepts can be difficult to describe in words, as they are largely experiential and subjective. Consequently, I apologize if any ambiguity remains but hope that you, the reader, will feel encouraged to investigate with your own experience what is being described. As the old saying goes, “an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory.”
While the use of some jargon is unavoidable, I’ve tried to stay with the language used by the founders of this approach, with the intention of encouraging consistency. In many cultures it is said that if we call something by its true name, then we can understand its nature.2 Furthermore, craniosacral therapy is an approach that touches many levels of our experience and at the same time is firmly grounded in the anatomy of the body. This is where much of the power and efficacy of the work comes from. Consequently, many anatomical terms are used, but these have been kept to a minimum in order to make this book as accessible to the lay reader as possible.
In this second edition, the text has been revised and updated, with certain sections added and others reorganized. I trust these revisions will help to clarify the biodynamic approach of craniosacral work and that the book may serve as a bridge between this way of working and other approaches.
I hope that nobody is put off by my use of the male pronoun when referring to a practitioner. This does not imply any sexism, nor that highly skilled female craniosacral practitioners are not in abundance. In fact, women are often more able to develop the palpatory and perceptual skills required for craniosacral work. As the English language doesn’t have any neutral pronouns, it seems more natural to stick to describing things from my own experience. Where the experiences of patients are described, although names have been changed, their true gender has been kept.
For me, this whole arena of work has been a journey of discovery. Each new patient who comes into the clinic is a teacher when I listen to the unique story intelligently manifesting in his or her body. If this innate intelligence is appreciated, living skills rather than theories or techniques can be employed to support it. Biodynamic craniosacral work is basically simple in its application. It is about how we can listen to the wisdom that is at our core, and help it to restore balanced motion and health in our lives.
By contacting the core levels of health, the craniosacral approach is a gentle and powerful tool for the relief of suffering. It is an exploration into the essence of healing, one that has the potential to lead us to the deepest roots of our being.
Michael Kern, January 2005
1
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF CRANIOSACRAL WORK
Worms will not eat living wood where the vital
sap is flowing; rust will not hinder the opening
of a gate when the hinges are used each day.
Movement gives health and life. Stagnation
brings disease and death.
PROVERB IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
BEGINNINGS
My belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos.
D.H. LAWRENCE
Around the start of the twentieth century a final-year student of osteopathy named William Garner Sutherland was examining a set of disarticulated human skull bones in his college laboratory. As with other students of his time, Sutherland had been taught that adult cranial bones do not move because their sutures (joints) become fused. However, he realized that he was holding in his hands adult bones that had become easily separated from each other.
Like the gills of a fish
While examining some of the bevel-shaped sutures of the cranium, including those at the temporal and parietal bones (see Figure 1.1), Sutherland had an insight that changed the course of his life. He described how a remarkable thought struck him like a blinding flash of light.1 He hit upon the idea that the sutures of the bones he was holding were like the gills of a fish and designed for some kind of respiratory motion. He didn’t understand where this thought came from, nor its true significance, but it echoed through his mind.2
William Sutherland set out to try prove to himself that, as he had been taught, cranial bones do not move. 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 that 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.3
Figure 1.1: Bevel-shaped suture between temporal and parietal bones (illustration credit 1.1)
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 fifty 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 Asian systems of medicine such as acupuncture and Ayurveda that 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.4
Cranial manipulation has been practiced in India for centuries, and was also developed by the ancient Egyptians and members of the Paracus culture in Peru (2000 B.C. to 200 A.D.).5 Furthermore, in the eighteenth 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.6
Tissue breathing
From an early stage of his investigations, Dr. Sutherland realized that he was exploring an involuntary system of “breathing” in tissues, important for the maintenance of health. At a fundamental level, it is this property to express motion that distinguishes living tissues from those that 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 finely tuned tactile and perceptual senses. He discovered that these subtle respiratory movements can be palpated by sensitive hands. He also started to realize that this motion provided a wealth of clinical information.
An interdependent 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. Significant
ly, Dr. Sutherland also found that the central nervous system, and the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes it, have a rhythmic motion. The sacrum, through its dural connections to the cranium, also forms part of this interconnected system. Thus, there is an important infrastructure of fluids and tissues at the core of the body that expresses an interdependent subtle rhythmic motion.
As Dr. Sutherland dug deeper into the origins of these rhythms, he realized that there are no external muscular agencies that could be responsible. He concluded that this motion is produced by the body’s inherent life-force, which he referred to as the Breath of Life—taking this name from the Book of Genesis in the Bible.7
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.8
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 the rhythms he discovered.9 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 that generates subtle rhythms as it is transmitted into the body.10 Dr. Sutherland realized the particularly significant role played by cerebrospinal fluid in expressing and distributing the potency of the Breath of Life. As potency is taken up by the cerebrospinal fluid, it produces a tide-like motion that 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.