CranioSacral Therapy
CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY
CranioSacral Therapy (CST) is a gentle hands-on therapy that engages the body in such a way that it does not invoke a defense response, but instead invites the body to soften under the hands.
Sessions begin with you reclined on a comfortable treatment table while your therapist performs a whole body evaluation. With skilled and gentle touch, the therapist feels for areas of restrictions, or blocks within the body. This short evaluation gives us a road map and helps guide the therapist to the best place to begin.
CST supports your body’s natural wisdom and healing processes by blending skilled therapeutic touch and profound healing presence. Trusting in your body’s wisdom to set the pace, your therapist carefully listens and responds to your body’s cues as it unwinds and releases, offering the appropriate amount of support and pressure your body is asking to receive.
What I Love about CranioSacral Therapy:
I first became interested in CranioSacral Therapy after I had been doing massage therapy for many years and saw client after client with reoccurring pain. I became curious about what else might be happening that is keeping the pain from fully resolving and wondered if there was more I could do to help. With massage and other manual therapies, we address the muscles and and other physical tension but seldom do we take into account the very real impact our emotional and mental holding have on our physical selves. I have found over and over through my years of practice as a bodyworker that some, if not most, of our physical pain has a very real emotional component and that the physical pain does not fully resolve until we also address the emotional piece that comes with it.
I love that CranioSacral Therapy works with the whole person, body-mind-spirit. CST absolutely works with with the physical structures in the body, the nervous system, skeletal-muscular system, fascia and other soft tissue, etc. but it doesn't ignore the significant impact our emotional and mental state have on our physical body. CST honors the whole person. The complexity of the physical body and all of it’s systems weaving together interdependently. Housing our emotional selves and expressing our thoughts, and spirituality. When we touch the body we touch all that it contains and expresses. We work with the tissue and complex systems while holding, in our awareness, all the layers and fullness of the being we are touching. CST offers specific techniques to seek out and facilitate release of emotional and energetic holding in our physical bodies.
Since doing this work I, and my clients, have been amazed when the layers of what has been contributing to there physical pain has been revealed and released. We have seen longstanding, chronic pain and other physical symptoms relieved and not return. Sometimes it takes just one or two sessions!
Preparing for your session:
CST table sessions take place at my office in Studio City, within Studio Wellness Centre. Your first session will be an hour and fifteen minutes. We will go over your intake form and therapy goals and you will receive a full hour of treatment time. Each session after that is an hour of treatment time.
You should come wearing comfortable clothes, similar to workout wear. I like to recommend that clients spend a few minutes taking a short walk after their session before getting in the car.
Aquatic CST sessions:
Bringing CranioSacral Therapy into the water is a special experience where, with the aid of the warm water, more can be accomplished in a shorter period of time. The comforting warm water helps bring you into a deeply relaxed, some say meditative, state and acts as an excellent conduit for energy exchange and release while offering space for greater freedom for movement as your tissue releases and unwinds. For more information on water sessions see our Aquatic Bodywork page.