Modern day CranioSacral Therapy was developed by osteopath Dr. John Upledger, building upon earlier work by Dr. William Sutherland.
Rhythmic changes in pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid (surrounding the brain and spinal cord) are transmitted through the enveloping membrane (dura mater) to the bones of the skull (cranium) and pelvis (sacrum) and then throughout the connective tissue web of the body. This rhythm may be palpated (felt) throughout the body, and assessed as to symmetry, quality, amplitude, and rate, informing the practitioner as to restrictions or imbalances. Techniques for releasing and balancing are applied to the head, pelvis or other areas of the body as treatment. It is worth noting that the pressures applied for treatment and assessment are in the order of 5 grams, i.e. very, very gentle. There are a multitude of conditions that have been reported to have responded beneficially to CranioSacral Therapy. Our practice has primarily been concerned with pain and mechanical dysfunction, so our application of CranioSacral Therapy has been primarily in this context. We have often found it to be useful for headache, head and face, neck and spinal pain, and occasionally for other more distal complaints like knee pain and dysfunction. Please follow the link to read more, find a practitioner in your area, or to discover how to add this modality to your practice.
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Arne Heayn
Arne Heayn has included CranioSacral Therapy in his practice since 1985.
He has served as a teaching assistant for many CST 1 and CST 2 courses in Edmonton, Calgary, and Saskatoon.
He is an authorized presenter of the one-day CranioSacral program, "ShareCare", intended to be an introduction for practitioners, and to provide simple self-care for the personal and family use of non-practitioners.
He sees CranioSacral Therapy as being biomechanically much like other manual therapies, i.e. some sort of mechanical / movement dysfunction is found and then corrected with the appropriate technique.
CranioSacral techniques then are usually simply integrated into whatever is happening within the treatment program for an individual, rather than being a stand-alone modality.
He has presented an "Introduction to CranioSacral Therapy" to the Holistic Health Program students at GMCC for several years.
He is available for conference and workshop presentations.