Craniosacral Therapy is much more than just a body therapy. In each session, it turns into the art of listening to the tissue of both the body as well as the soul.
My name is Michael Laloux Kodaewa and this article discusses how Craniosacral Therapy has formed a part of my life since the time I began to study it until the time I began to incorporate it into my practice.
My decision to practice manual therapy is vocational, as human contact teaches me something new every day in addition to the fact that I enjoy its practice. I am aware of how amazing it is to be able to say this and that is why I give thanks on a daily basis that I am able to earn a living doing something that I love. My profession integrates Osteopathy, Therapeutic Message, Naturopathic Medicine and New Medicine.
Of all the training that I have received, I am especially drawn to Craniosacral Therapy as it has the distinctive feature of being applicable to people’s everyday lives. This distinctive feature can be attributed to the respectful approach of listening that is used to connect with people.
Learning to listen to tissue before intervening with therapeutic techniques and maneuvers has proven to be essential in achieving results that have proved to be increasingly satisfactory over time.
Listening respectfully provides both the tissue and the person the time to express them self and consequently opens the door to more trust. This trust is necessary for both our cells as well as our emotional tissue to relax. As a therapist, and human being that shares the world with others, it is important to evaluate the space that I dedicate to listening without judgement and with patience on a daily basis. This daily evaluation allows us to realize that the larger the space we dedicate to listening, the larger the flow of information we receive.
It has been proven that when we listen with interest and without interruption, the level of trust with which a person speaks to us is proportional to the level of attention that we pay to them. This situation facilitates the flow of communication between two people and occurs in all therapies. Nonetheless, it is especially noticeable in manual therapies such as Craniosacral Therapy.
When a patient arrives at our practice to ask for help and lies down on the treatment table, we can carry out diagnostic tests using all of the specialties that we have knowledge of. According to the results that we achieve, we can then apply correction techniques or the corresponding manipulation. We can also choose to simply explore the patient using gentle, respectful and profound palpation (using listening techniques such as facial pulling), which will allow the body itself to guide us through the fasciae to reach the areas of greatest tension.
Fasciae are wrapped around the connective tissue that line the organs, muscles, bones, blood vessels and nerves. In the case of injury, the fasciae serve as transmitters of the tension in all directions within the body. They transmit the tension in a radial direction, just as when we pinch a piece of cloth and it becomes wrinkled.
When the human being, like all other living creatures, experiences some type of disruption, whether physical, chemical or emotional, the fasciae retract, causing wrinkles that can be detected using the gentle palpation technique of Craniosacral Therapy. This will surprisingly guide us to the exact location of the origin of the injury. This manner of listening to the body, when trusted, is very accurate and helps us differentiate between what patients and the results of traditional tests tell us and what the body itself tells us (fasciae do not lie). It is a well-known fact that the origin of the lesion is not typically located where the symptoms appear. An example of this situation is when one loses their voice, which has very little to do with a throat cold and everything to do with communication problems (like not saying what one wants to say in the moment). This is similar in the case of osteoporosis, which biologically has little to do with genetic factors or age and is instead related to biological conflicts of devaluation. In the case of stomach ulcers, their origin has to do with territorial opposition that is difficult to digest and does not have to do with a bacterial presence. The long list of examples that we could go on with continues to confuse both those who suffer from these symptoms as well as those that treat them as neither of the two take the time to stop and listen to what the body is saying from a physical, mental and energetic point of view.
What is most surprising about this type of listening is that it begins with superficial palpation on a cutaneous level and eventually reaches profound levels of contact with the muscles, viscera and nervous system. This type of listening allows for such profound levels to be reached without causing pain because the tissue in the body permit us to reach these areas through a type of communication that is called therapeutic dialogue. This dialogue steers the hands toward the areas of the body that are in most need through gentle facial pulling and mechanisms of suction and repulsion.
Once the therapist is able to connect with the patient, the door to communication between the two opens and the flow of information that the therapist, or the facilitator, receives goes well beyond physical limits. We are before a type of therapy that treats the human being as much more than a combination of bones, meat and skin.
From the beginning of existence the human species has been characterized by its creativity, curiosity and sensibility. This is why respect is required in all situations and, of course, especially in a therapeutic environment.
We are currently living in an era in which we do not want to mask our pain with medication. We want to know why things happen to us and, more importantly, for what purpose. Becoming aware of the meaning behind illness is a great step forward in our evolution. It is up to us to decide whether we want to believe in coincidence or causality.
Happy New Year and Happy Life! We will be in contact again throughout the year.
Michael Laloux Kodaewa is a graduate and professor of Osteopathy, Naturopathic Medicine, German New Medicine, Brain Release Technique (BRT), Hormonal Osteopathy (HO) and Animal Brain Release Technique (ABRT). He is the Director of the INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF CRANIAL LISTENING located in Madrid on Calle Abada, 2 – 2º 8 izda. Telephone: +34 636 405 128.
Published in January of 2010 in the magazine Espacio Humano.