Tissues, Fluids, and the Long Tide: Cranial Cliff Notes for Yogis
Last week I spoke about the Kosha’s, a framework in yoga for self development that starts with the body and ends with states of bliss. (if you missed last week’s letter, you can read it here.) This week, I want to make the link between yoga and craniosacral therapy and how the two practices are mutually supportive.
Craniosacral Therapy has its roots in Osteopathy developed by the physician Andrew Taylor Still. At the turn of the 20th century, medical interventions were primitive and the act of holding someone’s hand as they passed was a final gesture of care. In the midst of these deeply personal moments, Still started to witness the human energy system. He began to do more than comfort: he woke up to the motilities and vibrations of health and healing.
As interest in Osteopathy grew, the discipline branched from Still’s biomechanical model to what is now Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST). BCST focuses on the underlying movement of forces, fluids, and energies of innate healing in the 3 primary aspects of the human system.
The Tissues
The Fluids which occupy roughly 60% of the human body
The Long Tide, which is an expression of respiration and the energetic field
The physical body is organic material enlivened by breath and inner intelligence. Most of us come to craniosacral therapy because we are experiencing physical or mental pain or we’ve received a diagnosis. (for more on conditions we treat, click here.) The practitioner's role in the cranial process is to help the system settle and identify its own unique healing path.
The fluid system includes blood, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, inter and intra cellular fluid, digestive, glandular, ocular, excretory, and reproductive fluids. The tidal nature of these inner oceans produces motilities that practitioners are trained to feel. When the body recognizes inertial forces in the fluids, it directs the immune system to clear them.
The Long Tide is an expression of the creative energies that unites us with all that is. When the system presents these energies, the body becomes luminous. There is a sense of harmonic progression as the rhythms of the body synchronize with a universal flow. Sometimes the Long Tide dominates the session and other times the system drops into ever deeper layers of stillness. At this level of perception, healing energies and creative energies are the same producing profound relaxation.
In both Craniosacral work and yoga the relationship between the physical body, breath, mental and emotional health, intuition, wisdom, and bliss are cultivated to produce health. Craniosacral work is particularly helpful when the injury or illness we’ve sustained is lingering, where there are chronic conditions that no one has been able to shift, where the mental/emotional load is trapped in the body, or when we need to relieve overwhelming stress. Once healing has begun, yoga provides an excellent structure to continue to develop and enjoy our beingness.