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Pediatric Craniosacral Therapy class, day 2

Powerful class today. Highlights and thoughts include:

• Watching Benjamin Shield work on two babies
• Why do craniosacral therapy on kids?
• Why do pediatric craniosacral therapy on adults?
• In which I receive a new neck!
• Improv rears its head
• Reflections of a bodywork geek

Watching Benjamin Shield work on two babies

Dr. Shield has a voice and demeanor made for this work. He knows how to be soft and quiet, and playful with his work.  The mysteries of life are right there under the surface as parents come in with their children seeking help.

Working with such young children is an adventure. Their ability to communicate is very minimal, and yet they have definite desires and preferences to be respected and worked with.

Benjamin would let the child know at each step of the way what he wanted to do before doing it, often asking permission explicitly. Sometimes he would receive a clear answer, and sometimes it was, "No," as in the child pulling his hand off, or becoming upset. Sometimes the answer was a clear yes, for example the child making noise when he had finally spoken a correct guess.

Why do craniosacral therapy on kids?

I find this work so inspirational because of the possibility of correcting problems before they snowball into larger issues, or simply preventing years or even decades of a lower quality of life. For example, even a completely "successful" and "normal" birthing process involves contortions of the infant's neck and head that can result in subtle neck problems for the rest of life. Such an issue is best corrected before two years of age, when some of the cranial bones involved finish fusing.

Why do pediatric craniosacral therapy on adults?

Unless you received craniosacral therapy as a child, you might want to get around to healing any birth-related issues that could still be hanging around. The good news is that this is often possible.

In which I receive a new neck!

Receiving some of the work today in class, I felt my neck and occiput unwinding insistently. It felt like whatever was releasing had been wanting out for a long time. Some of the unwinding motions looked very much like Dr. Shield's descriptions of the birthing process. When it was over, I felt like I had a new neck. My posture felt much improved, like my neck and shoulders were now more comfortable in a more aligned position than usual.

Improv rears its head

I'm increasingly convinced that improv is a universal organizing principle, and thus deserves serious attention from all of us. I mean, what else are genetic mutations except our DNA "Yes, and"-ing its way forward through the eons? Ok, maybe it's just a really useful tool. Whatever the case, it seems to show up everywhere.

I was talking with Giorgia Milne about an issue I've been having with too much macro-level unwinding happening on my table. One of her suggestions was to expand my awareness to include other levels by saying "Yes, and..." to the unwinding. Allow the unwinding to be there, but don't focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

Reflections of a bodywork geek

I was thinking about interoperator reliability, an area of criticism of craniosacral therapy.

As far as I understand it, "skeptics" (not to be confused with people who are sometimes skeptical) are people who have issues understanding the difference between map and territory, and thus like to spend their time criticizing maps and then declaring the territory non-existent, or the expeditions into that territory somehow invalid. Some skeptics have engaged in their recreation by scrutinizing some aspects of a craniosacral model by asking several craniosacral practitioners to evaluate a receiver independently and comparing the results... which apparently did not match up in the way the skeptics expected.

This may not even matter, considering that even if lack of interoperator reliability invalidated a certain model, or even all of the models, it doesn't invalidate the fact that something good happens when we do this work. My neck feels better than it did before.

I can think of reasons why interoperator reliability may be low. For example, in craniosacral therapy evaluation is a form of treatment. The mere act of observing craniosacral movement is enough to change it. That's the way a lot of this works: watch it until it unwinds itself, then move on.

On the other hand, I have seen examples that convince me. I remember in C1 class with Hugh Milne, I was doing a hold on my partner called temporal palming. I was amazed at the sense of the right side of my partner's head moving far, far up compared to the left side. Hugh was going around the class doing the hold on the folks on the tables, and when he got to us he sat down, placed his hands into position, and began to narrate what he was feeling. Soon enough, he began to describe exactly what I had felt: "Right side moving superior... waaaay superior!" That was exactly what I had felt: moving up, up... woah, ok waaaay up!

Regardless, I come back to the fact that something is going on. Nearly anyone can learn to feel it—I can have you doing basic unwinding in 15 minutes or less. Today I found a useful comparison between levels of unwinding. When one does macro-level unwinding, unwinding the neck or an arm or a leg, sometimes the unwinding is really obvious: that arm is whirlin' around, and you best keep up with it lest it smack you accidentally. Other times, the unwinding is so subtle I might think I was doing the movement if I didn't know better. Micro-level unwinding, unwinding cranial bones, is also like that. And when it's obvious, it's unmistakable and amazing: those temporal bones are twistin' around, and you best keep up lest you miss the magic.

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