February 20th, 2023
Your skull is not just an immobile shell protecting your brain. Each bone of the skull actually moves–minimally–as it perfectly embraces your inner world of membranes, cerebrospinal fluid, brain tissue, glands, sinus passages, and more. Touching and helping the skull bones in their subtle movements is delightful for a Craniosacral therapist and amazing to receive as a client. By giving more freedom to the skull, Craniosacral touch connects you more to your unique intelligence. The truth is: you are a genius!
Imagine that the skull bones are like tectonic plates that snugly interlink at their suture lines. Instead of being supported by lava flows underneath, it is cerebrospinal fluid rhythms that give many of these bones their gentle expansion and contraction. This movement is possible because of slightly flexible nature of the cranial sutures, which are the cracklike and often jagged-looking joints between the cranial bones.
The motion of the skull bones is not perceptible to the human eye or untrained hands. Craniosacral techniques require deep listening and sensitivity. While a treatment is happening, to an outside observer it may appear that the practitioner’s hands are not moving at all! Meanwhile, a client might be feeling that their inner world, physical and beyond, is expanding into new realms of possibility.
In human development, the skull bones begin to form at about 3 months in the womb. As they do, they remain slightly softer than other bones and do not fuse. This is so that during a vaginal birth the skull bones can slide over each other while being compressed in the birth canal. Vaginal birth thereby activates the entire cranial system as nature intended. At birth, the cranial bones are linked together with soft fibers; at about age one, the fibers disappear as the cranial bones begin to grow together. While the majority of skull growth will occur by age 5, the skull and its sutures will not mature fully until about age 20. Even after this, the skull will continue to change slightly for a lifetime, especially the facial bones.
As a Craniosacral therapist, I am truly delighted to feel the skull’s motions in every treatment that I give–it is a wondrous electromagnetic feeling in my hands. I often discover many areas of restriction due to injury, stress, orthodontics, emotional patterns, traumatic birth, and so on. It feels like a huge relief to loosen these stuck areas, and everything inside of the skull also releases tension in the process. The transformations that I witness while these cranial tensions release are beautiful.
With all the challenges that a human can experience in life, one can begin to wonder, “Is it all in my head?” Quite possibly, some of it is! Joking aside, I have witnessed awesome changes in clients after gently moving their skulls around. Your genius always deserves the nurture of conscious touch to blossom more and more.
