History of Cranio Sacral Therapy
CranioSacral Therapy, or CST for short, traces its roots back to the 19th century. This therapy method, which first emerged from Andrew Taylow Still's osteopathic treatment system, owes much to the later pioneers of the technique.
Stills's system was developed into cranial osteopathy by William G. Sutherland. John E. Upledger took these techniques and developed them into what he called 'CranioSacral Therapy', a powerful and simplified system of treatment that can be learned by anyone who wishes to be trained in the system. The unique feature of the system is that it does not require extensive medical training to be effective. The system that Upledger developed during his lifetime has evolved into a holistic therapy that aims to help patients utilize the healing capacities of their own bodies and believes that our bodies have an innate intelligence to keep us in balance.
Early Stages
DR. ANDREW TAYLOR STILL (1828-1917)
“... cerebrospinal fluid is one of the richest substances known to be present in the body, and if it is not produced sufficiently by the brain, it is not possible to relieve ailments in the body.”
Dr. Still decided to follow in his father's footsteps as a doctor. After completing his medical training and apprenticing with his father, he became a licensed medical doctor in the state of Missouri. During the American Civil War in 1861-1865, he served as a doctor in the Army Corps and experienced firsthand the horrors and suffering caused by the war.
In 1864, following the deaths of three of his children from cerebrospinal meningitis and shortly after losing his wife in childbirth, Still concluded that the traditional medical treatments practiced at the time were often ineffective and sometimes even harmful. In addition to bleeding the body, standard treatments at the time included medication with arsenic, mercury and addictive drugs, and amputation. Still devoted the rest of his life to studying the human body to find more effective ways to treat diseases.
His clinical research and observations convinced him that the musculoskeletal system was vital for maintaining the health of the body. He believed that the human body, if treated correctly, contained everything needed to maintain good health. He devised a system, which he would later call osteopathy, based on manual movement of the bones of the spine to correct misalignments or misalignments, which he called “dislocations”. He saw these dislocations as barriers or obstacles that interfered with the body's innate ability to heal; once they were removed, he believed, the body could heal many things on its own.
According to him, dislocation correction allowed the release of nerve impulses that had become trapped as a result of injury or disease. It also had the added benefit of improving blood and lymph flow.
He also explored preventive medical practices, believing that doctors should not just focus on one disease but should treat the patient holistically.
Dr. Still's approach was based on four basic principles:
1. The body functions as a holistic biological unit.
2. The body has self-healing and self-regulating mechanisms.
3. Structure and function are interrelated.
4. Abnormal stress in one part of the body causes abnormal stresses and tensions in other parts of the body.
Dr. Still, who thought that drugs were harmful, achieved remarkable success by treating only by hand. He was the first to advocate treating patients as a whole being, not just as a disease. He believed that a disease affected the patient's whole body, not just a specific area. He argued that the most superior mechanism in the body was fluid movement.
However, as with many new ideas and approaches, his colleagues in conventional (allopathic) medicine thought the current system worked well and did not understand why he rejected it. They denigrated his methods, where he used only manual techniques. There was also a growing outcry from religious circles who felt that his manual method of treatment was sacrilegious. On one occasion, a local church even suggested that he was curing diseases in collaboration with the devil.
Constantly defamed by medical and religious associations, Dr. Still had to move out many times. Even his own brothers, who were doctors, declared him insane. When he moved to Kirksville, Missouri, and succeeded in restoring the daughter of the Secretary of State to health, he was finally widely accepted as a doctor and teacher.
As his reputation spread, patients began to come to him from other lands, increasing the business of inns and guesthouses. It was a new experience for the Still family as the people of Kirksville embraced them. Through observation and practice, the success of his methods grew steadily, and he developed a following of patients and doctors who wanted to learn his methodology. His success grew to such an extent that he could no longer cope with all the patients waiting in line for treatment.
In 1892 he founded the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri, later called the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, now known as A.T. Still University. The first graduating class included five women, which was unheard of at the time, and sixteen men, including three of Still's own children.
Throughout his life as an osteopath, he fought to keep the field of osteopathy free from pharmaceuticals, but shortly after his death in 1917, drugs were introduced and within a few years osteopaths were required to take the same examinations as medical doctors. While Dr. Still's osteopathic practice was radically transformed in the United States, in Europe it retained some of its originality.
A conceptual prologue to movement in the bones of the skull
DR. WILLIAM GARNER SUTHERLAND (1873-1954)
“Inside that cerebrospinal fluid is an invisible element that I call the 'Breath of Life'. I want you to imagine the Breath of Life as a fluid that is in the fluid, but does not mix with it and has the power to move itself. Is it really important to know what makes the fluid move? Visualize a force that is intelligent, even more intelligent than your own human way of thinking.”
Dr. Sutherland was twenty seven years old when he graduated with honors from the American College of Osteopathy in 1990. Osteopathy was not his first choice. He was born March 27, 1873, the first child of Robert and Dorinda Sutherland. Robert worked as an iron and woodworker. When William was fourteen, he left school to support the family financially and started working for the local newspaper, “The Blunt Advertiser”. Soon after, the publisher of the newspaper William worked for left to work for another newspaper and asked William to come with him. He changed jobs several times until 1895 when he went to Austin, Minnesota to work for “The Austin Daily Herald”. It was here that he first heard about Dr. Still and his new treatment method called Osteopathy.
William's younger brother Guy's health problem had improved after receiving osteopathic treatment. William was so impressed that in 1898 he enrolled on a two-year course in Osteopathy. When he was examining bone fragments of the skull and found that the ends of the sphenoid bone were curved, he was struck for the first time by the idea that they were “curved like the gills of a fish to allow breathing”. Although this idea was not something he focused on much at first, it came up again and again, compelling him to do further research.
After graduation, Dr. Sutherland began using a room in his parents' house as his office. Within a very short time, Sutherland found success in his practice and was able to rent his own office. After becoming president of the Minnesota State Osteopathic Association in 1907, Sutherland began lecturing on health problems. Some of his lectures were published. At the same time, he continued to study the skull. However, these studies lasted until 1924, when Sutherland began to obtain some evidence for his theory. Sutherland subsequently married for the second time and attended the annual conference of the American Osteopathic Association on his honeymoon. It was probably this conference that encouraged him to buy the equipment he needed to conduct experiments on his theory.
At the time, all physicians, including William (except those in Italy and Israel), had been taught that the joints in the bones of the skull fused together at puberty, so that they lost their mobility. William's examination of the twenty-two bones that make up the human skull revealed that these joints were designed to be in constant motion. Believing that nothing in nature is without cause, Sutherland decided to test his theory and reconcile it with his education. He needed to conduct experiments in a way that he could observe directly. So who better suited to do the experiment than himself?
He prepared a head assembly that could control each skull bone individually. Thinking that if the bones were already compressed by fusion, he would not feel any difference, he began to experiment on himself. He always kept a notebook with him to record possible symptoms. He also enlisted the help of his wife to note any changes in his mood that might have escaped his attention. In his first experiment, he almost lost consciousness, so he reduced the pressure. As soon as he reduced the pressure, in addition to a feeling of warmth and fluid movement in his spine, he also felt movement in his sacrum, the large triangular bone at the bottom of the spine. He repeated the experiment over and over again, always with the same result. This supported the conclusion that not only the skull bones but also the sacrum moved through the membranes connecting the two structures. He continued his experiments for some time and developed new methods in clinical practice based on his results. As a result of his work, he achieved considerable clinical success with his patients.
He expanded his research to include children, especially newborn babies and the compression they are subjected to at birth. In the following years, he continued to write and explain the cranial concept, but failed to attract the attention of his traditional colleagues. In 1939 Sutherland published “The Cranial Bowl”, the only reference he had written outside of his articles published in various journals. It was a short book designed to attract the attention of conventional medical doctors rather than a textbook explaining his methods.
“As a result of your experience as a patient, you will realize that just like the tide in the sea, the current fluctuates, ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows, pulls inward and outward. You will see the power and more importantly the intelligence of this current. You can trust this current to do what needs to be done for you. In other words, you should not try to set this mechanism in motion by any external force, but simply trust the current.”
With this statement Sutherland gives us the principle that underlies CranioSacral Therapy: little or no use of force.
In the 1940s, the American School of Osteopathy opened a course called 'Osteopathy in the Cranial Field' under the direction of Dr. Sutherland. His clinical successes in treating the bones of the skull attracted the attention of some of the members of the traditional medicine room who wanted to learn his methods. As awareness of the course grew, Dr. Sutherland had to train more teachers to cope with the demand. The first of these teachers, Viola Fryman, Rollin Becker, Anne Wales, Howard Lippincot and many others continued to promote and teach Sutherland's work.
Period of active development
DR. JOHN E. UPLEDGER (1932-2012)
Dr. Upledger's contribution is distinguished by his ability to research into complex details and at the same time reduce the techniques to a level simple enough for anyone to learn. His emphasis was on the function of the connective tissue called the axillary membrane and the need to keep the touch light for guidance and to follow the body's self-regulating mechanisms.
Dr. Upledger “discovered” the CranioSacral system when he assisted in an operation to remove a calcium plaque from the membrane surrounding the spinal cord of one of his patients. As a doctor of osteopathy, his job was to use two pairs of forceps to hold the spinal cord still while the surgeon removed the plaque. However, despite his embarrassment and his best efforts, the spinal cord moved. Even the slightest slip of the surgeon's hand could have paralyzed the patient from the neck down. The membrane continued to move in a regular circular loop throughout the operation. No one could explain the movement and everyone was very curious. None of the standard textbooks he consulted had any information on the subject.
He was fascinated by this phenomenon and “didn't have to wait long”, as he put it, before discovering a research sequence. In 1968 John attended a course at the Cranial Academy taught by Dr. Magoun. There he learned to feel the “motion” of the skull bones and sacrum through the dural membrane connection. He first realized that this was the movement he had encountered during surgery when trying to hold the spinal cord still for the surgeon. This course at the Cranial Academy completely changed the course of his life. At that time, he was in contact with Anne Wales and Harold Magoun, who were Sutherland's students. From all the students, especially these two, John learned to use his palpation skills with precision and to trust what his hands were telling him.
From 1975 to 1983, John was a research assistant at the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University (MSU). In addition to being a doctor of osteopathy, he was also a professor of biomechanics. He was asked by MSU to lead a team study to “prove whether skull bones can cause movement in adults”. There was still opposition in the medical community to skull bone movement.
The research team consisted of Anatomists, Physiologists, Biophysicists and Bioengineers. The results of the study confirmed what Sutherland had discovered during his own experiments and clinical practice: the bones of the skull, the membranes attached to them, the membranes surrounding the spinal cord, the sacrum and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) make up what is known as the CranioSacral system, which triggers the movement of the body.
By correcting the dysfunctions in the system, many obscure cases of the brain and spinal cord could be successfully treated. This was the first team to formally present a model explaining the possible mechanism of the CranioSacral system. It was a semi-closed pressurized static hydraulic system that directed the production and circulation of CSF.
While working both at Michigan State University and in private practice, John continued to develop new ways in which the CranioSacral system could be used to solve and relieve health problems. He used soft tissue-oriented, fluid-oriented, membrane-oriented, cell-oriented and energy-oriented techniques, often evoking quantum physics.
One of his most important research projects was his work with children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). During this work, he found that the skull membranes of children with autism were, without exception, tighter than those of children without autism. By relaxing the membranes, he developed techniques to modify the typical self-destructive behaviors of the patient group and improve their emotional responses. His study showed that the techniques were beneficial and that the more severe behaviors seen in the patient group, such as head banging, thumb sucking, toe walking and self-mutilation, were reduced or completely eliminated.
Upledger wanted to ensure that families whose children had more severe ASD could treat their children on a day-to-day basis and with the confidence that they were doing something good for their child. She pioneered a program where caregivers were taught simple but powerful techniques to help release tension in the dural membranes. In this way, she invented CranioSacral Therapy and made it available to people with open hearts and good intentions who wanted to practice it.
This led to the “10-step protocol” training program for parents who wanted to help their children, and opened the way for programs for non-medical professionals. As Upledger realized the value of these techniques, he expanded the training for people without medical training to include support therapy for other healing modalities.
Upledger also began to realize that emotional problems could be 'stored' or recorded in the soft tissues of the body, thus causing physical discomfort and symptoms. According to him, such stored negative or destructive emotions could arise from emotional trauma, whether physical, physiological or otherwise. Upledger developed a system to locate and unlock these blocks to healing. He called this system Somato-Emotional Release.
Upledger, who was a tenured professor at Michigan State University, left his university job to establish his own educational foundation, the Upledger Institute, in order to provide training in “CranioSacral Therapy”, which he named himself to distinguish it from the training previously given only to osteopaths, especially to health professionals who did not have medical training. His techniques were based on the principle of “first do no harm”, the first rule in Hippocrates' oath.
He succeeded in spreading CranioSacral Therapy to the general public, writing and lecturing extensively about it. He had a talent for making complex subjects simple to understand.
To date, more than 100,000 people worldwide have trained at the Upledger Institute.
The Future
Since its introduction by Upledger, the term CranioSacral Therapy (CST) has, over the last two to three decades, fragmented into a number of independent styles that share a common heritage but differ in the clinical application of the work. Now, CST has demonstrated what an effective tool it is for protecting the health of the human race and is truly on its way to becoming the new health technology.
There are now many different approaches to the philosophy of CST: Upledger CST, Franklyn Sills Biodynamic CST, its development Process CST, Hugh Milne's Predictive CranioSacral work and many others have developed schools of philosophy and published books on the subject. There are many independent schools that compare one approach with another, demanding synthesis across the spectrum of teachings. However, they are all essentially based on a common approach: resting the patient's body and applying skillful techniques to trigger radical change.
CranioSacral Therapy stands at a crucial threshold - literally in its infancy - in terms of developing the body's self-healing properties. Many schools reflect the current stage of development of CST with different approaches. Similarly, cranial osteopathy has moved away from a purely mechanistic approach to the human body and has added its own perspective to the concept of CST. There are many modern thinkers in this field who have adapted their techniques to reflect Sutherland's late work and have transformed it into a softer CranioSacral therapeutic approach. The following list reflects the contributions that have emerged from the work of Still and Sutherland.
We believe that the time will come when the general public will seek treatment with the latest technology - a pair of sensitive hands.
this text is translated and used with permission from the website of the Irish Association for CranioSacral Therapy iacst.ae.