By Geraldine Bright
When you have an illness or an injury, you seek help from therapists and doctors. But they don’t actually heal you.
They do assist in your recovery, but your body does the work of healing, just like a cut finger heals itself. No one can heal your finger but you.
When you have aches and pains and injuries or sickness, the best way to get better is to get your body in a state of health so healing can occur. This can be done in many ways by yourself with a nutritious diet, exercise, restful sleep, managing your reaction to stress, etc. But sometimes you need the help of someone trained to help.
Your body and mind need to be in a state of balance, which will allow the blood, lymph and cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) to flow to the tissues that depend on it to function properly. And your nervous system needs to be able to do its job, too.
We are dynamic beings. Movement in our bodies never stops. Blood races through our vessels. CSF is manufactured by the brain and it flows down and around your spinal cord while neurons send messages to each other. When all this activity stops, we are gone, but not before then.
In order to keep fluid moving well so healing cells can reach their target destination, our muscles and joints need to be mobile and functional.
There are lots of joints in the body, even in our skull. The cranium is made up of many large and small bones that need to be mobile, just like other joints. If they are limited in their small range of movement, there will be problems either in the head, such as poor sinus drainage or headaches, or in other parts of the body.
We are linked from head to toe. An ankle sprain can affect our neck, for example, and a hit to the head or restricted cranial bones can affect our body, perhaps causing digestive problems or low back pain.
The therapy that addresses the whole body, including the cranium, is Cranial Sacral Therapy (CST). My work as a cranial sacral therapist has been valuable in helping Olympic athletes by aligning their whole body (muscles, joints, organs, cranium, etc.) and this helps their minds as well so they can compete unimpeded and give their very best performance.
CST has helped musicians by aligning them so their bodies and posture are in prime function and so their central nervous system is relaxed and alert. Then, music is played easily and the performance is the best it can be.
For children and babies, CST treatment is very beneficial. They recover so quickly to things like glue ear, learning difficulties, excessive crying and problems with sleeping and feeding too.
Anyone with neck pain, back pain, headaches, strained muscles or sprained ligaments or joints can be helped. Women with period problems, pregnancy or post-partum aches and pains or menopausal symptoms can get relief.
The cranium houses the brain and the pituitary gland, which links to hormones throughout the body. Balancing the cranium and its contents helps a myriad of tissues and hormones function better, which benefits the whole body and mind.
For head injuries, CST is a “must have” therapy.
There aren’t a lot of conditions that CST won’t help. Old and new injuries are gently and effectively treated. Your whole body will be assessed and treated so balance and healing is achieved very gently and effectively.