by Michael Kern
Pressure on the cranial nerves often results from compression of the small openings through which they gain exit from the skull. For example, if the suture between the occiput and temporal bones is compressed, the vagus nerve may become irritated—colic is commonly the result. It is often fairly simple to aid the decompression of this region and remove the cause of irritation. This is one of the situations where a quick relief of symptoms can frequently occur with craniosacral treatment.
Heartbeat irregularities, respiratory or other digestive upsets also commonly result if the vagus nerve is compressed. Furthermore, the same opening in the suture, the jugular foramen, contains the glossopharyngeal nerve which supplies some of the muscles of the throat and the largest salivary gland. If it becomes irritated, difficulties with swallowing and feeding can result.
Similarly, problems with suckling may occur if the nearby hypoglossal nerve becomes irritated, commonly due to inertial patterns that affect the small opening in the occiput through which it passes. If the baby’s suckling is weak, more air tends to be drawn in, which can further contribute to wind and colicky pains.
Pressure on other cranial nerves may cause eye problems such as involuntary movements or a squint. Ear infections, hearing difficulties and “glue ear” can all result from inertia involving the temporal bone and resultant irritation of the vestibular nerve. The eustachian tube, largely contained within the temporal bone, can also become blocked. This passageway regulates pressure in the ear and, if blocked, may lead to a build-up of pressure and a tendency to ear infections. All of these are detectable by palpation and can be amenable to treatment.
Cranial compression
Any excessive cranial molding retained from childbirth may pressurize or even damage underlying nerve tissue. Cerebral palsy may have a number of causes. According to Dr. John Upledger, included in these are “abnormal tensions of the dura mater membrane and/or jamming of some of the sutures of the skull vault.”56 This jamming frequently involves the coronal suture located at the top of the head between the frontal bone and the parietal bones, and is often the consequence of a traumatic birth. Some of these cases can show improvement with the use of craniosacral treatment.57 Dr. Upledger also describes a “severe membranous (dural) restriction of the craniosacral system” commonly found in autistic children.58
Sleep disturbances, headaches or even head banging may result from pressure affecting the baby’s head. Thumb-sucking is often an unconscious attempt to try to free restrictions that involve the hard palate. Inertia held in the jaw and hard palate will often be the cause of an overcrowding of teeth and the development of dental problems. Sinus problems can result from compressions that involve the bones at the front of the head. The sphenopalatine ganglion is a nerve bundle located between the sphenoid bone and the hard palate. A runny nose, problems with the tear ducts, hay fever or facial pain may result if this ganglion is irritated.
Problems with coordination
Other signs of traumatization include jerky and uncoordinated movements, or if the baby doesn’t like to have its legs raised, for example when its diaper (nappy) is changed. Sometimes babies develop a lack of orientation, which is shown if they are unable to focus their attention towards one side.
Trauma may also be indicated if the baby’s normal milestones of development are not being met. For example, the baby may be late in its ability to sit, crawl, walk or talk. Or, later on, other symptoms such as learning difficulties, dyslexia or hyperactivity may develop.
Body patterns
Spinal curvatures may result from compressions that occurred as the baby twisted through the birth canal to gain exit. Inertia affecting the chest and ribs can restrict the drainage of lymphatic fluid and the functioning of the thymus gland, important parts of the immune system. This can predispose the baby to recurrent infections. Asthmatic babies and children often show signs of birth trauma that involved compression of the chest or a loss of oxygen during childbirth. The nerve centers controlling the lungs are located towards the back of the brain and can also be affected by compression. Tension held in the abdomen and diaphragm is another cause of colic in babies. Craniosacral treatment often helps to restore order and balance by facilitating primary respiration in these areas. This can improve the circulation of lymphatic fluids through the chest, encourage more flexibility in the muscles, bones and internal organs, and remove the causes of nerve irritation.
Toxicity
The effects of parents’ smoking or the use of drugs are often palpable in the baby’s rhythms of primary respiration. These babies will often have a sluggishness of movement, a lack of fluid drive and their tissues may have an uneasy feel. However, the restoration of a full and balanced expression of the Breath of Life can be encouraged, helping the circulatory systems to dispose of any toxins. As an old Chinese saying states, “Running water clears itself.”
James’s story
James was nearly a year old when his mother brought him for craniosacral treatment. He was still not sitting up, his movements were wobbly and he had recently been diagnosed by his pediatrician with floppy muscle tone. His right eyelid drooped and his head was lumpy and uneven. He was also very irritable, with long periods of crying and frequent tantrums. The first sign I had of his arrival was a loud and constant screaming coming from the waiting room.
James had been born five days overdue, after being induced. In addition, his mother had been given Pethidine to ease the pain. Although there were no major problems during the pregnancy, his mother had experienced a lot of anxiety because of her own mother’s illness. While I was examining him, James entered a screaming tantrum that continued until he went blue in the face despite all efforts to comfort him. Although I was hardly able to make physical contact before he became disturbed, it was clear that his whole head felt very tight, his nervous system was in a state of shock and that the bones and membranes at the base of his skull had become distorted.
During his second visit, I again negotiated contact with James and was able to sense a little more. I noticed a particular strain pattern involving the frontal bone, which was locked in a position of torsion. I again had to stop treatment when he started another episode of screaming. As James found it so difficult to tolerate contact, I knew that we would have to work slowly and sensitively.
We met again the following week and this time I was able to make contact for a little longer and encourage a little more space at his frontal bone. Subsequently, his mother remarked that there was an improvement in his temperament and his drooping eyelid was less pronounced on some days. Meanwhile, a report from the neurologist stated that no abnormalities could be detected for James’s condition and gave him the all-clear. This allowed us free reign to explore the craniosacral causes of his distress.
The following treatment was again largely spent at James’s frontal bone, and some further decompression of this area was facilitated. His mother then reported that he was starting to sit up and was putting on weight. During the next treatment I started to work at James’s sphenoid bone and the orbit of his right eye. However, within a few minutes he again started screaming until he was blue in the face, so I decided to just play with him until he settled. Nevertheless, after this the drooping of his eyelid further improved.
Two weeks later I worked with a strong pattern of inertia that showed itself in James’s membrane system. His falx cerebri (vertical partition of the head) had become twisted and this was interfering with the ability of the bones at the base of his skull to express their motion. During treatment James gave a little shudder and these tissues started to open up. Following this, he seemed a lot happier. Not only were his legs straightening, but he was also starting to take his weight on them. One month later James was taking his first steps and beginning to play with other children.
Treatment of babies and children
The primary respiratory system of a baby or child is very finely balanced and delicate, as well as deeply intelligent. Therefore, treatment needs to b
e applied with plenty of care and sensitivity. Babies and children tend to respond quickly to craniosacral treatment, perhaps because they have accumulated fewer layers of conditioning which can get in the way. However, they may also have difficulty in keeping still for any length of time, and so treatments tend to be applied in small doses. Trust with a therapist often needs to be developed, so a sympathetic negotiation of contact is important. It is also useful to have a few toys that can be used for play. Sometimes it is necessary to follow a young child around the room while playing and giving a treatment at the same time. Infants can often more easily be treated while they are nursing.
Only direct methods of treatment, facilitating motion in the opposite direction of the strain pattern, are generally used when working with the cranial bones of babies or young children (see Chapter 7, “Direct approaches” section). This is because their sutures have not yet properly formed. As sutures help to determine the allowable motion of a cranial bone, the boundary to how far it can move is often unclear before sutures have formed. Therefore, with an indirect approach, such as following a strain pattern into its preferred direction, tissues may just keep moving into their trauma pattern with no clear boundary to this motion. This can more easily cause retraumatization of the baby. Therefore, working with potency, fluids and encouraging space and disengagement of compressed tissues are the most effective treatment approaches for babies and young children. In this way, distortions within cranial bones can be gently remolded and their contours gradually normalized.59
Treatment for mothers
Mothers too can enormously benefit from craniosacral work to support rebalancing after childbirth. Treatment can help strains in the pelvis or sacrum return to a normal position and ease any residual lower backache. Furthermore, pulls or strains that affect the mother’s nervous system can contribute to feelings of tiredness and post-natal depression.
Sometimes the uterus becomes malpositioned from giving birth; a situation that may cause dragging pains in the pelvis. These patterns are often helped by craniosacral treatment.
Transforming repetitive cycles
Working with mothers, babies and children is perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of craniosacral practice. It’s a particular joy to see the progress of infants as they find increased levels of integration, presence and aliveness. As a culture it seems that we often become trapped in repetitive cycles of conditioning and suffering that have their origins in the unresolved experiences of pregnancy and birth. This is perhaps the same process that our parents, and their parents before them also underwent. As Dr. Leboyer perceives,
… How naive, how innocent to imagine no trace will remain; that one could emerge unscathed from such an experience. The scars are everywhere: in our flesh, our bones, our backs, our nightmares, our madness, and all the insanity, the folly of this world—its tortures, its wars, its prisons.60
While we may have made huge progressions technologically and materially, a fragmentation in the way we function and consequent ill-health is still very much a part of our lives. However, a great deal of conflict, disease and suffering may be prevented by transforming cycles of stress and trauma at an early point in life. What then would be the kind of world in which we live?
APPENDIX
SO YOU WANT TO BE A CRANIOSACRAL THERAPIST?
BY CANDICE MARRO R.C.S.T.
First tell me, do you have a quest?
Do you want to explore the moving waters of your existence? Do you like to dive deep into the unknown? Do you have in your heart nostalgia for something that you can’t name?
Then open your eyes, take a deep breath, widen your attention, listen, feel, sense, taste, smell and prepare yourself. A mystery is waiting for you; something is waiting to engage with you, something that you can’t imagine, you can’t create, that you can only discover. You may be afraid to answer this call. You may prefer to skim the surface of the water, its uncomfortable but familiar fluctuations and its predictability. You may prefer to stick to your symptoms, resistance, identification and complexity—at least you are used to them. You may argue that this is as good as you can do anyway. It is as far as you can go—because you are not equipped for deep exploration. And what lies beneath? Is it worth the diving, the risk and the letting go? You’re attracted to this unknown, this darkness, but you keep coming back to your familiar surroundings.
It is familiar, but you feel lonely, isolated, fragmented and tired to be pushed from one wave to another, to go from one experience to another without finding the sense of it all. When you think you’ve managed to get some stability, when you think you are in control of your life, when you think you can explain and fix things, a force and the play of its groundswell takes it all away from you. So you get more and more tired of fighting, losing, gaining and losing again as you try to grasp … emptiness. You keep a smile on your face, but despair and fear are ruling in your heart. You wouldn’t admit it, but you’re lost. Can’t you see that this world of shapes you cherished and believed in is ruled by impermanence only?
So start your quest. Use your grief and anger to find the strength to explore new layers. Deepen your breath, slow down your pace, get grounded and start your journey with a fellow explorer who is also dissatisfied with the answers given and who wants to go deeper.
From the sea of impermanence to the still heart of the ocean
How to give it a try? You are going to use your hands as the servants of your heart. Your hands will be the eyes, ears and medium of your heart; not your confused and emotional heart but the heart of your heart, your Still Heart, your all-knowing and all-encompassing Heart. What is the gateway to this place within yourself? Find a neutral place; a place within you where there is balance, calmness, availability. There is always such a place but not always the same one. Search for that place and settle into it. Let this neutral gradually spread to your whole system. Then open to your friend on this journey, this friend who is going to be both your client and your teacher. You have found a sense of stability and you have established your fulcrum, casting the anchor that will provide safety on your journey. Now open your perceptual field to the third presence that will be with you both, that is generated by your coming together—the relationship. Then start your exploration.
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Leave your fears and uncertainty behind, focus on your breath until you meet or are being met by The Breath, a deeper and slower inhalation and exhalation. The Breath breaths through you—actually it is breathing you. Can you feel it?
Stay with it. You are now invited to follow the cycles of primary or universal respiration. You are invited to trust the Breath of Life. Yes, the breath that carries life expressed to you as motion. This primary respiration leads you into the realm of life forces and principles. Let yourself be rocked by the long immutable rhythm of primary respiration. It is your fundamental support, a living presence that has always been there and will never cease.
Can you feel a shift happening? Can you feel your confusion, your noise and your fears now floating into the distance? Can you feel that the relationship is orienting you both towards a place of resource, a place where the different layers of function work as a unit and are interdependent? However, this is not yet the place where you are One. But here, at least, you are not fragmented anymore. You are still in contact with tissue memory, symptoms and shapes, but something more is there: organizing forces.
In this realm you have allies—fluids and the potency within. Yes, you can start to sense potency within the fluids, the ocean. Fluids that pass everywhere, go around any obstacles and patiently try to erode the barriers. And there is the fluid at the core of all fluid—a golden, subtle, potentized fluid that will teach you to be an alchemist. Can you now feel that your hands have become like antennae, more receptive, more empowered and potentized? Do you notice that one part echoes the whole, that the smallest fragment in the system is vital to the whole and plays a key role in maintaining balance?
But beware, for these
fluids are being moved and crossed by deep forces at work that you now start to feel; deep forces of creation, forces of health and forces of inertia. The fluid may be your ally provided that you learn its language, know how to work with it and know the nature of these forces that move it.
Because stillness attracts stillness
There is another discovery for you to make: this is the place where you can observe the ballet between biodynamics and biokinetics out of which symptoms and shapes are organized. Simultaneously, you can now collaborate with and rely on your inner physician and that of your friend; your intrinsic intelligence that is constantly looking for the best possible dynamic equilibrium.
If you find congestion or a place of lesion, don’t try to fix it. Try to see, feel, question the inner intelligence and its medium the fluid, so that they can show you what causes the strain. If you hold your inquiry with spaciousness and without expectation, if you work as a humble but active servant of the Breath of Life, then fluids (or something else) will take you to the center of inertia. This may frighten you, for the area can seem dense, dark, locked and almost without any life or light, but as you approach you may feel deep forces at play expressing a certain pattern. This is when you can work with the fluids, gently supporting or encouraging their lateral fluctuation. You can also learn the art of generating space. But the critical thing is to deepen into your own stillness. Why? Because stillness attracts stillness and at the heart of this fulcrum, stillness and health are waiting to be liberated. So, don’t fight inertia, for you would only reinforce it. Rather, increase stillness and resources. Again, find a neutral, suggest balance between the forces until you feel an opening and a way through. Deepen into this neutral and this dynamic equilibrium and wait to see how far these forces want to reorganize. If it’s too early, just establish more peaceful conditions in the area and come back later.