Do you ever feel too “buzzy or jiggly”, maybe on edge? Maybe you feel like there is a pressure build up in your jaw or skull that you can’t seem to escape from.
For others it’s like a pressure headache or a stuck sense of pain that just wont budge. That NQR feeling that you can’t put your finger on.
Craniosacral therapy is a unique way to tap into the central nervous system and work on re-setting and re-balancing your overall body. It opens up channels that are difficult to access in other therapies and has a way to have you feeling a sense of lightness and control.
There are many “feelings” that indicate craniosacral therapy may be a beneficial option for treatment for you or someone in your family. Just think of it as unsettled in some way, shape or form, a place where the nervous system is being impacted in a way that results in chaotic patterns, distress, anxiety, upset, a state of imbalance.
Cranial osteopathy (aka craniosacral osteopathy) is a specific treatment style that is appropriate to treat people of all ages, including babies and children. It requires further training in addition to our 5-year osteopathic degree. We have a wholistic understanding of the connections and adaptive patterns the body creates in response to injury & trauma, both emotional and physical, and are highly experienced in applying this therapy for a range of conditions.
This form of treatment involves our osteopaths using a very light pressure touch to induce relaxation and rebalance the movement in not only your skull (cranium) as the name suggests, but also to apply specific adjustments to the movements of other body tissue. The focus is to reduce the stresses and tensions throughout the body, including the head.
Due to the light pressure style of cranial osteopathy it can be used for a wide range of conditions in adults and children, and also used to address the compressive forces in babies brought about by pregnancy and labour.
It usually feels like a gentle touch of the osteopath’s hands, and can have varying experiences for clients from feeling a deep meditative state, to feeling a sense of lovely relaxation in the body.
Other sensations may also be felt (and this can be anywhere in the body):
It’s the type of therapy you understand more when you have felt it for yourself as everyone’s system will respond in it’s own unique way.
Although your body is capable of adapting and compensating to different types of trauma (physical, emotional, psychological), the body’s tolerance can become overwhelmed and consequently disrupt the PRM (primary respiratory mechanism). Restoring the movement potential and reducing strain patterns is the goal in helping your body feel better again.
When the balance in your body is feeling out of synch, we often describe it as cluttered, emotional, heavy or even just feeling down or flat. Headaches may also appear or you may experience pressure or tension through your skull and jaw. Craniosacral therapy may help to improve your body’s natural rhythm.
There are a multitude of reason clients seek our craniosacral treatment. The most obvious is anything to do with the head such as headache and migraine, dizziness, sinus trouble and also jaw imbalances such as click, locking or pain. Trauma is another reason we resort to craniosacral treatment especially for old facial fractures or blows to the head. Clients have also asked for therapy for anxiety and low mood, often becasue other avenues have not provided the answers or results they were hoping for.
By treating the joins between the skull bones, known as sutures, we assess and mobilise these bones in distinct patterns that are obvious to a trained craniosacral osteopath.
Headaches are one of the most common reasons people seek out a craniosacral osteopath in Melbourne. It seems obvious becasue of the pain being inside the skull but there is far more to osteopathy in terms of ascertaining what other structures may be affecting the skull and vice versa. The history of the headache is extremely important to work out in a time-line fashion when the headache began and in what other areas of the body it affects ie. neck stiffness. The craniosacral approach is a great place to start looking especially if it hasn’t been investigated before.
The cranial system is of potential significance with gut health and digestion. The nerve that supplies the gut itself is known as the vagus nerve. It is classified as a cranial nerve which simply means it is a nerve that forms directly from the brain tissue itself. There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves and the vagus nerve is number 10. The cranial nerves are of particular significance as they are responsible for our special senses including smell, sight, hearing & taste, and also have such a profound connection to the health of our gut tissue. The vagus nerve makes its way to the gut by exiting the skull from the base through what is known as the jugular foramen (foramen = hole). Issue in the skull and neck at this point may in fact cause an irritation or disturbance to the vague nerve that in turn may affect digestive health.
Our Osteopaths commonly treat babies with craniosacral therapy for a number of signs noticed by the parents. Birthing can be stressful for the baby in terms of the pressure imposed on the skull as well as the positions that baby needs to move through in the birth canal. Added to this is the use of forceps or ventouse (vacuum) aiding the birth. Parents seek treatment for babies when they feel something is not quite right. This can look like colic symptoms of crying, unsettled behaviour, feeding difficulty in terms of tongue and jaw mobility, head-turning preferences and uneven use of the limbs or twisting of the body at rest. Our cranio-sacral osteopaths in Balwyn North can assess your baby and provide treatment in the same consultation.
Craniosacral therapy has been a treatment approach with infants with a flat spot on their skull. In some more extensive cases and paediatrician can assess the baby for potential intervention devices such as helmets. Craniosacral therapy may also be sought to work through the mobility patterns of the skull and release tension areas noted by the osteopath. This is a common treatment approach for flat spots on the skull, also called plagiocephaly.
Colic is distressing experience not only for the baby but also the parents. When a baby has colic symptoms it can feel relentless. Looking at what is irritating the baby from a body system approach may provide some answers and therapy to ease the tension. The skull is often a good place to start due to the stresses imposed upon it during birth. Our craniosacral service in Melbourne is available to assess your baby and explain the potential patterns that may be a contributing factor to the infant colic symptoms.
Being a clinic that has operated since 2004, our services are highly developed by experienced practitioners. Our care involves musculoskeletal medicine looking for joint restriction and muscular imbalance to work through restoring movement and freedom to the body.
Our techniques include a varied approach depending on the issues the client is attending for sports injuries, pregnancy-related pain, headaches, back and neck issues whether acute or chronic in nature, knee and ankle injuries as well as any upper limb problems that are causing issues.
Our service also extends to gait (walking) analysis and reworking movement patterns to ease the pressure of the body using gait. This form of therapy has been established as our Anatomy in Motion approach. Combined with osteopathic manual therapy, it is our in depth approach to looking into more complex and wide spread movement issues. Craniosacral therapy is also a part of this approach.
Please CONTACT us if you have any questions regarding any treatment we provide.
At Boroondara Osteopathy, we love to treat and find the long-term solution for residents in Balwyn, Balwyn North and surrounding suburbs.