CranioSacral Therapy is light touch manual therapy, a gentle way of facilitating profound transformation. SomatoEmotional Release is a therapeutic process used in CranioSacral Therapy that promotes release of the residual effects of past physical and emotional injuries.

We have retained tensions from every stressful or traumatic event we have ever experienced. Your fascia (connective tissue) is a web that covers every cell and organ in your body in a continual matrix. The fascia can react to assaults on the system (physical or emotional stressors or injuries) like a sea anemone shrinking back from touch. Over time this creates patterns of restriction, immobility, and diverted circulation, like leaves or rocks interfering with a river’s flow, and assaults start building up, creating areas of dysfunction (pain, digestive issues, disease, etc.).

Your fascia is a tissue that can hold and release energy. See this video with fascia magnified 25x for an astounding view of this incredible matrix within us and how it releases. Also see this video simulating fascia and how a perturbation (from injury or treatment!) can alter the patterns in the whole body.

Bodywork can help the areas of restriction in your body move from a freeze state into mobility. Movement and integration elicit your body’s innate tendency toward healing. Movement is life and stasis is death.

Your body shows me what it needs in order to integrate areas of restriction and create movement. By gently touching your feet, knees, hips, ribs, shoulders, and head, as well as the energy field off your body, I can sense where there is movement in the cranial rhythm and where there is not.

I can facilitate the release of protective patterns in the fascia as well as energy cysts: pockets of stuck energy that form when the impact of physical or emotional energy is too much for your body to allow it to pass through. I do this by following what your body shows me: my hands get pulled in magnetically, and I follow with gentle pressure until I sense signs of release.

When your fascia releases stuck energy, I might feel heat and an energetic letting go. You can feel lighter and able to breathe more easily. This work can bring up sensations, emotions, and memories, and there can also be more noticeable release signs such as trembling, shaking, and crying. Emotional release is cathartic. If things come up, they are coming out. Your body will let go only what it is ready to let go of.

Dialoguing can be used in assistance, but nonverbal processing is also important. Sleep is common as it elicits the parasympathetic nervous system response (the “rest, digest, and heal” phase).

This form of bodywork is implicitly relaxing and healing. It is incredibly gentle and subtle but can result in profound change. It assists in personal growth and is “an ingenious tool for sorting out our lives and redesigning our futures,” said John Upledger, the founder.

Click here for more information about CranioSacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release.