Craniosacral Therapy: Where Did it Come From? Part One
Dr. A. T. Still’s journey to know the body
Craniosacral Therapy: Where did it come from? (Part 1 of 2)
Craniosacral Therapy is a deep and powerful hands-on healing modality that uses gentle touch or pressure to evaluate, invigorate and stimulate an individual's system to correct structural, and sometimes energetic, anomalies that can cause disease, pain, or dampen Life Force.
The roots of Craniosacral Therapy begin in the mid-1800s when Frontier physician, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, sought a different way of healing after traditional medicine failed to save the life of his four children and wife, and after witnessing medical barbarism as a surgeon in the Civil War. You’ve heard the expression of the “cure being worse than the ailment?” In the 1800s, it was standard practice for doctors to prescribe deadly medications like mercury, arsenic or cyanide or even addictive drugs like opium or cocaine. Medical treatments included practices like Bleeding, which consisted of cutting the person until they had lost up to two liters of blood, and Hydrotherapy, which involved pouring water into a patients opened mouth (not always voluntarily) or holding the patient under water until they passed out. Those who were able to be revived were proclaimed cured.
Physicians administer Hydrotherapy “Cure”
Dr. Still believed there had to be another way. After spending years intensely studying the human body and various healing methodologies, including time spent with the Shawnee, Kiowa and Osage Native American tribes, he concluded that, when properly maintained and aligned, the human body was created with everything it needed to heal. In his studies, he learned to manipulate bones and tissue to restore proper alignment and stimulate the body’s natural immune system in ways that were (and are) far more gentle and effective than anything being practiced by any other physician at the time. His methods were so effective that word spread and people traveled from far and wide to seek his help. There were so many patients that he had to train others to help him with the crowds of sick and wounded. When the numbers kept climbing, he decided to create a university to teach this new branch of medicine (a field of medicine that continues to grow, with 35,000 students matriculating in the US in 2022-23). The first school of Osteopathy opened its doors in 1892.
In 1895, William Garner Sutherland (a former printing apprentice and news reporter) started his education at the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri. As a printing apprentice, one of his duties had been maintaining the intricate printing machines of a newsroom. This training may have helped him make one of his major discoveries: movement between the bones of the cranium. As he was staring at a Beauchene skull on display in the hall outside of one of his classrooms (see below), his attention was drawn to the shape of the edges of each bone and how they seemed to be designed for movement. This recognition would lead to the discovery that the bones of the cranium have very subtle movement and that the cerebral spinal fluid fluctuates. It would also eventually lead to the origination of Craniosacral Therapy. But not at the time. At the time, Dr. Sutherland’s revelation was not only dismissed and ridiculed by allopathic medicine (conventional medicine) but by his peers and colleagues.
A Beauchene Skull, also called an Exploded Skull, gives students an opportunity to learn not only about the placement of each of the 22 bones of the skull, but to see the way the edges were made and meant to move together. You can see a video demonstration here.
At first, he tried to dismiss the idea himself, but he just couldn’t shake it. He began quietly researching and experimenting (primarily on himself) in earnest around 1910. His wife wrote a book about watching her husband return from the hardware store, ladened with various objects he would then construct into devices to compress different parts of his skull to see the effect. Slowly, the ridicule gave way to logic and in the 1940s, the American School of Osteopathy began teaching courses on Sutherland’s Osteopathy in the Cranial Field.
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Osteopathy in the Cranial Field was strictly taught within schools of Osteopathic Medicine. Many Osteopaths took the courses but since the theories and techniques remained unaccepted by allopathic medicine—who offered (and still do) the majority of employment opportunities for physicians—they let this aspect of their training slip away in favor of gainful employment.
One day, Dr. John Upledger, a graduate of the American College of Osteopathy at Kirksville, was assisting in a surgery to remove plaque from the dural membrane, an extremely tough membrane which surrounds the brain and spinal cord. Keeping the membrane in place was crucial to prevent the other surgeon from slipping with the scalpel and paralyzing the patient, but try as he might, Upledger couldn’t hold the membrane completely steady. All would be well, but then all of a sudden, the membrane moved on its own. After encountering this several times, it occurred to him that there was a consistency to this movement. Like Still and Sutherland, he couldn’t stop thinking about this phenomenon.
In 1968, he attended a course at The Cranial Academy, rekindling and amplifying what he’d originally learned in medical school. What happened next? Craniosacral Therapy emerged from the field of Osteopathy. To learn more about this next phase, see Part 2 of Craniosacral Therapy: Where Did It Come From?
This article was proudly written by a PERSON, not ChatGPT or any other algorithmically motivated entity.
