Origins of Craniosacral
Rodin’s Hands by Auguste Rodin
Craniosacral originated from Osteopathy, the study of muscles, tissues, and bones, and the supporting fluids. Osteopathy was informed by the mystery rituals and bone-setting techniques of Eastern traditions and Indigenous Peoples all over the world.
As the first sense to develop, touch provides us with the sensory scaffolding to come to know, feel, and move our bodies, as well as connect with the external world and those around us (Bremmer, 2017). Child Developmental Behaviorists and Pre and Perinatal Psychology advocate for more emphasis on touch as a fundamental importance in social, emotional, and cognitive domains as they relate to early development.
Dr. Andrew Tyler Still, the founder of Osteopathy, discovered that the body functioned as a whole biological unit, possessing self-healing and self-regulatory mechanisms to heal most things by itself- all it needs is space and presence.
Dr. William Garner Sutherland pursued Osteopathy at Dr. Still’s Osteopathic school, and became enchanted with the cranium, sacrum, and membranes connecting the two. One day, he spontaneously observed that the bones of the cranium were “beveled like the gills of a fish”, exemplifying an inherent motility, and that stimuli placed on the cranium affected the sacrum, and thus the entire spinal cord and surrounding fluids, aiding in unwinding and relief of pressure. Sutherland is the first known in the West to discuss Primary Respiration and the Breath of Life, two principles in which the entire Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy field adheres to.
“There is a deeper layer of activity that has barely been touched upon. This deeper layer has to do with the energies that integrate the animated, living, homeostatic body. The day will come when they too will be catalogued and their laws understood.” - Dr. Sutherland
Touch is the primordial sense. Many, if not all, communities, spiritual lineages, ancestors had/have a sacred practice of touch, whether used to initiate, connect, call forth, clear– the ancient art of laying on of hands. A birthright, and sometimes a rebirth. Hands are conduits of love, energy, power, creativity; they are sort of sacred wands, acting as conduits between that which is not yet expressed and longs to be.
Stillness Touch, a lineage of Biodynamic Craniosacral taught by Charles Ridley, is rooted in an orientation to the Divine principle involved in all creation. All expressions of energy, form, life emerge from stillness, which is essentially emptiness. Stillness is the ground of all creation - before creation, there is stillness; before the embryo is implanted, the uterus is empty yet alive space. There is a stillness that is enlivened by a formless, non-linear axis of Being, giving rise for creative tension in total space, in which the Breath of Life expresses itself. The Breath of Life encompasses the forces of embryogenesis that create human beings, the order that designs flowers so perfectly, as well as the nuclei in brains of zebras.
In human beings, the Breath of Life emits a holographic blueprint holding a template of Wholeness which manifests a streak of light, containing the embryological coding needed to give way for protoplasmic development, followed by the subtle body, eventually giving rise to function and anatomical structure (form). This streak of light goes on to develop the notochord, informing the nuclei of each vertebral disk, followed by the development of each vertebrae, and eventually going on to form the central nervous system, spinal cord, and surrounding membranes and systems. This midline is the guiding force in all of human growth, still informing and affecting us to this very day— and holding primordial expressions of love, creation, and healing. While lying on the table, the practice is one of descent; descent into the body, into the midline, into sensations.
“There is an intelligence that is with us from our earliest moments of conception, before even the thought of us is considered. This Intelligence created us and continues to create us throughout every moment of our lives. In Biodynamic Craniosacral, we hold and listen for this Intelligence to express in the human body. Resting deeply, being held safely, in the simplicity of a gentle touch- worlds open up.”