dr. lisa upledger: cranial sacral therapy working in ... · day 2: techniques – ancient arts and...

Day 2: Techniques – Ancient Arts and Emerging Trends

Dr. Lisa Upledger: Cranial Sacral Therapy Working In Concert With Nature This class is NCBTMB approved for one continuing education credit

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World Massage Conference 2008 | Dr. Lisa Upledger: Cranial Sacral Therapy

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Thank you to our Daily Sponsor The Upledger Institute World wide leader in continuing education for healthcare professionals. Sign up for an Upledger workshop and learn how four days of training can transform your career. Register today at www.upledger.com It is through the generous support of our sponsors and the presenters themselves who have given so generously of their time, that we are able to bring you this conference with presenters from around the globe at such an affordable price. I would like thank all of our tradeshow sponsors and invite you to check out the virtual tradeshow where you will find lots of great product and service providers to help you grow your business. For those of you who are attending the re-broadcast of this presentation, all presentations, the tradeshow, sponsor information and links for World Massage Conference 2008 will be available until May 31st 2009. We invite all full access pass members to download all of the presentations to create a resource library of over 50 hours of training and to take the quizzes to download your CE certificates. For those of you in the United States who require NCBTMB Continuing Education credits please follow the link on the landing page for instructions on how to access your certificate. In this presentation we are featuring the husband and wife team of Dr.’s John and Lisa Upledger discussing CraioSacral Therapy – working in concert with nature Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC) once declared that the “natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” In the centuries since then, medical science has undergone incomprehensible advances. Yet for all of our technological wizardry, it is more apparent every day that nothing dreamed up in a laboratory has more power to facilitate true healing than the essence of Nature itself. When we refine our ability to channel that power through our bodies and minds, then we become the living medical instruments we were meant to be. Join Drs. John and Lisa Upledger to learn how you can strengthen your ability to work in concert with Nature to tap those natural forces. By learning more about the miraculous capabilities of the energy flowing through you every moment, you can perfect your own ability to direct your intention for the greatest good of all concerned. *** Dr. John Upledger was not able to be with us live in person today due to a recent conflict, so he has pre-recorded a message for this presentation, fortunately Dr. Lisa Upldeger is able to make the presentation in person I would like to introduce both of our presenters, Dr. John and Dr. Lisa Upledger



Dr. John E. Upledger, is president and founder of The Upledger Institute. Throughout his career as an osteopathic physician, he has been recognized as a leading proponent in the investigation of new therapies. His development of CranioSacral Therapy has earned him an international reputation. TIME magazine named him one of the world’s next wave of innovators in 2001. He has also served on the Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council for the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C. Dr. Upledger is a Certified Specialist of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine, an Academic Fellow of the British Society of Osteopathy, and a Doctor of Science in alternative medicine. He has written numerous textbooks, study guides and research articles, and is a regular contributor and columnist for national publications dedicated to manual therapy. Lisa Upledger, received her doctor of chiropractic degree from the Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. She practiced privately in Colorado and Florida before joining The Upledger Clinic in 1991. In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Upledger teaches a series of intensive courses on CranioSacral Therapy (CST) and SomatoEmotional Release® for The Upledger Institute. She is also an examiner for The Upledger Institute’s CST Certification Program. Dr. Upledger is a fellow of the International Academy of Medical Acupuncture (FIAMA). She complements her CST practice with chiropractic, acupuncture and isopathic therapy. Dr. John Upledger’s Pre-recorded Story: I put this together when I was at Michigan State University and I had three really good PhDs working with me. We did all kinds of strange things that prove this system that we've found, when the head is moving, and all that kind of stuff. And that's really what set it up. The reason I even found out about this system, the craniosacral system [was because] there was a guy named Dalbert Smith and he was the father-in-law of a good friend of mine. And his daughter called when I had my office over at Clearwater Beach. And I was quite busy. I was seeing maybe--oh, on the average--45-50 patients a day and I would 10 in the hospital. So, I was pretty busy, but I enjoyed it. And I could throw rocks out the front door of my office into the Gulf of Mexico. And the people that were there from Boston or everywhere and they were getting all kinds of problems with sunstroke, and things like that. Anyway, Dalbert they called about and said that he was lying on the floor in the living room of their little house (They had a nice, little frame house. They were rather poor.) and he was vomiting blood, and they can't get him to stop, and so on, so forth. So, I made a house call over there and it looked to me like his liver



was going bananas and his stomach was bleeding. So, I called the ambulance and I had my own of concepts at that time about ambulances and not being at all excited. So, I just told the ambulance driver, "Drive 35 miles an hour." "Start this IV,” and I started an IV, when I saw what he had, and started the IV, let it go slowly and keep it very quiet. And when he gets in the hospital, I want him in a dual room (you know, two people in a room). And that's how it turned out. Well, I worked with him and he had a viral infection of the liver. And that's what had occurred. He had viral hepatitis, and then, of course, the stomach did some bleeding for him, but so did the liver. And I got him straightened out and got him back home, and he was doing fine. And about ten days later, his son-in-law called me and he said, "He can't walk." I said, "What do you mean he can't walk?" He said, "His feet hurt so bad!" And I said, "What are you talking about." [He said,] "His feet hurt; he can't put any pressure on them, he can't stand on them, he can't walk on them, he can't even hold them up against anything." So, I thought, "Well, I'll be over there." So, I made a house call over there and he didn't have his shoes on. I went in there. And the bottoms of his feet were all black and the skin was hard as a rock, and cracking, and it was peeling off, and underneath was just a bloody, raw tissue. I thought, "What the h*** happened here?!" And we had a new guy come in that joined us at Sun Coast Hospital and I'd liked them very well and we were getting along good because he played the trumpet. And we had a little [Lisa laughs in the background] jazz band coming out of the hospital staff. [Lisa says, "The Musical Connection," and laughs.] Yeah. And every Sunday afternoon we'd have a hookup at the trombone player's house. He was the chief surgeon [Snicker]. [Lisa laughs.] And we'd have about three hours of that stuff. And it was a lot of fun. So we played for dances for the hospital staff. It was fun. Anyway, I got him in there and there's Jim Tyler. He was the new guy and was the brain surgeon. And I said, "Jimmy, would you see if you can figure out what is causing the feet to peel like that?" And he said, "Well, sure,” and he came back to me in a little bit. He'd only been on the staff maybe, oh, three or four months. And he came back and he said, "I think I need to do some X-rays on his neck." I said, "What for?" He said, "Well, you'll find out." And he had come back from and he had done his brain-surgery studies in Japan. He didn't go through it in this country. He did it in Japan for that. And so he did a very delicate X-ray and we saw plaque of something-or-other on the back of his spinal cord, about halfway down his neck. And I said, "What the h*** has that got to do with the bottom of the feet?" He said, "You'll see." He said, "In Japan they know about this." I said,"What?" He said, "I don't know, but they know that anywhere along this tube you can have a problem you can have anywhere else in the body. It doesn't have to be close to each other." So, we took the X-rays and he said, "We have to get that plaque off of there, otherwise



he won't walk anymore." (I'm with you babe [in talking to Lisa. Laughs.].) So, we took him into surgery and he was laid down on his face, on his belly, and his face was in a [14:00]-mask kind of thing. And I was assisting. So, he slit open the neck and pulled aside his part and got a nice place. Here was this white thing about the size of my thumb nail and it was all white and plaque-ish. And he said, "Okay, John, you take two forceps here and you hold that tissue so that I can remove it without having it run up and down or damage the membrane that underneath it." So, I'm hold there and I'm going like this, and he's getting on my case. He said, "Can't you hold your d*** hands still?!" I said, "No, my it keeps moving." And he didn't know about this either. And we kept on going like that, and I said, "What's the rhythm in here? Where's it coming from?" He says, "I don't know." And the intern was there. They're supposed to know everything--they just got out of school. He didn't know anything about it. [Lisa laughs.] The anesthesia guy says, "I don't know what the h**** that is." And so it went on for that for about, oh, half an hour, I guess, and finally he managed to get little pieces off until he got it all clean. But I could never hold it still. And when the plaque was gone, the membrane was going like this. And that was my seeing and nobody else in the operating room seeing it and nobody else I ever talked to saw it. But that was the beginning of cranial sacral rhythm. Eric Brown: There we go. That's Dr. John Upledger. Uh-huh. Well, just to finish the story, Dalbert's feet came back to normal. And what he had was a systemic [15:52], which is a small tapeworm, what they had found, and that had formed cysts all throughout the body. And that was John's beginning of seeing the craniosacral system. And what he said--because obviously the people he was talking to, he demonstrated something with his hands.... But what he was saying is that he was kind of seeing the dural membrane, the outer layer, and the meningeal membranes kind of coming in and out of the surgical area. And that's what was happening. And one of the things that got John so interested in this would simply be because he was not able to do his job in surgery and the surgeon kept saying, "Hold that still. Hold that still," and he couldn't do that. And he doesn't like to not to be able to do things perfectly, so when he realized he couldn't, he became curious as to what was moving it and what was going on there. So, that is the story of Dalbert. And that's kind of how he got started, very interested in craniosacral rhythm and [the] system. He had had a cranial class in osteopathic school but was not very impressed with it at the time, interestingly enough, until this surgery, and saw this, and then he tried to put it together with what he had felt in that cranial class, and wondered if this is what he was feeling. So, he's a real researcher and has a strong curiosity and just started going from there.



But I'd like to kind of back up a little bit, if I can. And if we could have that first slide. And you'll see Andrew Taylor Still who was a Civil-War surgeon. We consider him the father of osteopathy. He kind of has an interesting story himself, a sad one, where his family .... He believed in these four key concepts and that last one, is that drugs are harmful. And part of that, the main reason for that, is because several members of his family died of meningitis because they were treated with arsenic. And that's what started him on his quest. And he was a grave robber, and started digging up bodies, opening them up, and taking a look at what was there, and just started seeing that there was poor circulation from the vertebral area out to the organs, out to the end organs. So, as I was saying, he started digging up bodies from graves and what he saw was poor circulation from the vertebral area going out to the end organs. And this piqued his interest. And he started seeing that organs were deteriorating because it didn't have the blood flow coming from the artery that was coming out of the vertebral area. So, he started osteopathy and he believed in these four key concepts, and that is that the body is a unit; structure and function are interrelated (and that's so very true); the body is a self-correcting mechanism; and that drugs are harmful. So, from here he started osteopathy. Apparently, he presented all of this to the AMA and they told him to stop or to leave. So, he left and he started the first osteopathic college in Kirksvilles, Missouri. (And John went through there, in Kirksville.) So, the next slide is William Sutherland, who was one of Still's star students; and he was very interested in the cranial bones and he actually devised a football helmet, and he put thumbscrews, and he would crank them down, and it would shift his cranium, and then his wife would kind of register his behavioral changes and whatever she might have observed going on with him by having pressures on the cranium. And so, now, he was kind of the father, beginning really with cranial osteopathy. And then the next slide, if you would. It's about John. As you see, there, he went to Kirksville, and then he had a fellowship in biochemistry, practiced for a while in Florida, and then he was invited up to Michigan State University, where he was working with a research team of about 27 different researchers. And he was one of five doctors on this team. But he was very interested in wanting to find out, now, what made this cranial rhythm happen. He had had the surgery with Dalbert and his team, and so now he was interested in studying it, and he had the research team. And very, very long story short, but one of the things they ended up doing, as you can see there, is they put a radio antennae. They surgically inserted radio antennae in the temporal parietal suture and then they'd broadcast radio waves between the two antennae, and the radio wave would change when you had the cranial motion going on. And then John said he would



go down and he'd kind of move the coccyx a little bit and that would change the radio waves, also. So, it was just to show that, actually, cranial bones moved, because at that time, and probably still quite a bit in this country, it's thought that, of course, around age 25, or whatever, the cranial bones fuse, there's no motion of them and that's just how it is. Those of us who work with craniums and feel these bones move know for sure they are not fused. And if they are, then it is pathological. And apparently we get our anatomy from Grey's Anatomy (from the British Anatomy). And in the British Anatomy it talks about the cranial bones are fused, but if you have your Anatomy from Mediterranean--from the [sic] Greeks, from Italy--in their anatomy books, it says cranial bones do not fuse. [Chuckle.] So, it's kind of interesting. But those of us that can feel it, as I said, know for sure that cranial bones certainly move. And I think that's becoming less and less of an issue. So, if we can get a change in the books, we'll be good. So, let's just talk a little bit about the craniosacral system, just a little bit of an understanding about it. So, if you'll go to slide five [Eric complies.], what you'll see here kind of a very simple sketch of the craniosacral system and its points of attachment. And it's a very interesting system. If you stood this person up, you would see that the system kind of looks like a tadpole. And, no, you are not looking at the spinal cord, but you are looking at the dura that covers the spinal cord. That's what we want you to see there, anyway, and how it is continuous with the meninges up in the head. So, what you have is this outer-membrane system, the dura matter, which is the outermost container of the cerebral spinal fluid, and it houses the brain and the spinal cord. Again, structure function going back to Still. In having proper function of the central nervous system, its housing, the craniosacral system, needs to be in order, because any time you have any kind of problem in this structure, then you will have problems with the function, with the physiology, very much here with the craniosacral system; and when it's not functioning well, you have problems with the brain and spinal cord, you have problems with the central nervous system. So, craniosacral therapy, it's very good for any and all kinds of treatment, simply because you're alleviating and removing stress from the central nervous system. And one of things that John researched (again, it's a bit of a long story, which I won't get into, but ....) .... He was looking at "How does this craniosacral system work?" And he came up with something that we call the pressurestat model. But I just want to go over a little over the anatomy just a little more before I talk about that. The dura mater. You have three layers: the dura, the arachnoid, and the pia--the dura being the outermost. And the dura mater surrounds and covers completely the inside of the skull. And that's the endosteal layer, because it covers the bone and that endosteal layer then blends with the vertebral column and then exits at the sacral hiatus and blends with the coccyx, with the [25:50] coccyx. But what it



does, is it doubles in on itself and it then the dura creates a meningeal layer of the craniosacral system. And the meningeal layer is two layers of dura that come together and it creates the falx cerebri. So, if we go to slide six, that kind of shows that a little bit better. Okay, this is dura coming from the layer that's surrounding that whole entire side of the skull, kind of breaks free, comes through, creates the falx cerebri, and divides the right and the left halves of the brain, of the cerebrum. And then, let's even move forward to slide seven, that shows it a little bit better. You see, there, the falx cerebelli. And the falx cerebelli .... Again, the dura there divides the left and right sides of the cerebellum. And then it's off to a division between the cerebrum and the cerebellum. And in between there you see the straight sinus. Okay? That's where venous drainage happens, because in between these two layers of dura you have venuous drainage going on. The next slide, slide eight, if you please. The dura, here, performs the tentorium cerebelli, and that's the layer that covers and divides, again, the cerebellum and the cerebrum, and kind of sits (and they call it as a tent) as kind of a tent over the cerebellum itself. As you see there, the inferior leaf [27:49] attaches to the posterior clinoid processes of the sphenoid, and the superior leaf[Inaudible, 27:56] attaches to the anterior clinoid processes of the sphenoid. And right there, is the sella turcica, and right there, it's the pituitary. So, you can see [how] any kind of pulls, or contractures, in this membrane particularly, can offset here at the pituitary and the sella turcica. So, if we go to slide ten, if you would, we have a picture, more, of the craniosacral system itself. (And, again, not the spinal cord, but it is the dura overlaying the spinal cord.) So, you have this meningeal layer, then, that creates the falx, the tentorium (the two falxes and the tentorium), and it adheres at the foramen magnum, and it actually attaches to the posterior bodies of C2 and C3, and then it goes all the way down and it attaches down at the sacral area, S2, exits the sacral hiatus and completely blends with the ... of the [Inaudible, 29:14] coccyx. So, the attachment there at the other end is the coccyx. So, if you can look at this as one whole continuous membrane unit, you start to understand that you can have a fall on your tailbone, and if that tailbone gets turned under, in some really good, severe falls, it'll just traction right through the whole dural tube, right up into the meninges . And I have corrected headaches and migraines by taking care of coccyxes and getting the slack back on the meninges and pulling everything up and taking the pressure off the brain. And, also, in the cranium, it is the meninges and the blood vessels that are pain sensitive. And, as I said, in between the two layers of the falxes there are the venuous sinuses where the blood then drains back out of the cranial system, out of the brain, down the jugular foramen and into the body. So, one of the main things that John did, when he was at Michigan State is to try



to come up with "What are the mechanics?" "How does this system work?" because obviously it's moving and it's in a motion. So, he came up with something that he called--and we still call, I should say--the pressurestat model. And the pressurestat model goes something like this. Again, it's a long story [Laughter], but he found at one point a nerve track (and nerve tracks) going from the sagittal suture, down through the brain, and into the third ventricle. And the ventricular system of the brain is where cerebral spinal fluid is made. You the [31:15]. And as blood comes into the brain, it is extracted from that area (the nutrients and things are extracted from that area) to create cerebral spinal fluid. So, as the ventricles start create creating the cerebral spinal fluid, what it does, is it starts creating pressure, and so the cranial bone starts to expand. And we call that flexion, when they expand. And when it expands, you get to a point where the sagittal suture gets stressed. Now, one of the things they did in researching the systems is .... Actually, the surgeon who operated on Dalbert used to scape a little bit of the suture itself from live samples of people he was operating on, and he would prepare those, and he'd send them up to John at Michigan State. And he had somebody histologically take a look at them. And what they found in the suture, interestingly enough, were pressure and stress receptors. So, they found nerve tissue, they found blood vessels, they found elastic tissue, they found collagen fibers, also. So, it was live tissue. It's not just .... I mean, of course it's live when it's in the body, but I mean it had its functional tissue, its physiological functional tissue. So, as you have the cerebral spinal fluid being created in the ventricles, and it creates pressure, and "fills up," so to say, and the body expands in flexion, the parietal bones--all the bones--start expanding. But when there's too much stress .... And the stress receptors then get set off at the sagittal suture, and it sends a message down through that nervosa [33:20] into the third ventricle, and says, "Stop. Stop making cerebral spine fluid." And when it stops making it, what happens is that whole ... now narrowing phase, the cranial bones come back together. And in that narrowing phase, which we call "extension," the suture, when it narrows, now it starts compressing itself. And so you have the pressure receptors now setting off and it sends that message down the nerve, through the third ventricle. And so then the ventricle starts making it again and it starts expanding. And this thing just keeps going on and on. But in order for this pressurestat model to "work," so to say, it has to be that the absorption of cerebral spinal fluid is happening all the time. So that means that the inflow rate of production is twice the outflow rate of reabsorption. And so this is how they put it together, which supports kind of baseline, that there are, like, six to twelve cycles per minute that feel on palpation. And those six to twelve cycles is what expansion (or flexion), and one extension, one narrowing. So, why have this system? Why do we even need something like this to happen? And, of course, the reason for that is because we have to circulate the



cerebral spinal fluid. And this all-important fluid that's exchanged about four times a day until our forties, then it gets exchanged about three times, we think, until our sixties, and then maybe approximately twice a day. So, the CSF, also (the cerebral spinal fluid), we know it floats the brain and it decreases the gravity's effects on the brain. It's that "shock absorber," so our brain is not being smashed up against the cranium. Of course, it provides nutrients to the brain and the spinal cord and all the areas (structures) of the brains, and it washes away the metabolic processes, and it also has keylators [35:36] in it to remove toxic substances. And cerebral spinal fluid invaginates the brain and it lubricates all the cells of the central nervous system, because you certainly don't want cellular friction or improper contact that could short-circuit neuronal conduction or cell damage. And it also will act as a conductor for neuronal impulses. So, it's a really important fluid and it needs to be circulated and it needs to be reabsorbed. And one of the important things that, again, structure-wise, that we talk about and what we work with in craniosacral therapy is the dural tube and the meningeal layers. The difference in osteopathy and craniosacral therapy is that osteopathy is looking at the bone, they're looking to release bony jamming at the sutures; and in craniosacral therapy we are looking to use the bones as the handles to get to the meninges, because, as we know, soft tissue, if it contracts, it's going to hold the bone. So, we use the bones, just as handles, to get down into the meninges, because you can get contracture of the meningeal tissue, which is this kind of crosshatch fibers, and the dural layer, very tough fibers at that. And particularly when you play with dura .... We do it in a dissection class to look at the system. And it's interesting to kind of pull at the dura. It's very tough. I had a small section of it sitting on a tray one day and I kind of picked it up and I pulled it and pulled back against me, like a Chinese finger puzzle--which was really interesting. And I held it up to the light and I could see these crosshatch patterns within the tissue. And as I gently pulled, as we do in craniosacral therapy, it just started realigning these crosshatch fibers. And it felt just like when we traction and we use the bones to get to the meninges and work out those patterns so they don't pull back again and you can get the release throughout the cranial system that you need. We look at very strongly, all the time at the dura (at the dural membrane.) As you can see there, it covers the nerve roots. So if you have a contracture from a head injury, say up in the falx cerebri, and that will pull the tentoria, through the falx cerebelli, down through the dura--you can get to about the level of T-10--and it pulls all the way down there, it'll cause an impingement on the nerves through the dural sleeve, there. I'm not sure if I've got a good enough picture of the dural sleeve. I don't believe I included one. Sorry about that. But you can go to slide 11 at this point, too. You might be able to see a little bit better the dural sleeve, what I'm talking about, covering the nerves. And what happens when you have a pull in that area, you have something called facilitation. And that's when you get a hypersensitivity of the spinal cord in that



area. And if you took a transverse section of the spinal cord--in other words, where two dorsal nerve roots (sensory) and the two ventral nerve roots exit (and you take a transverse section), and if that becomes hyper-irritated (or hypersensitive), it's called facilitation. And what happens is that you end up with a lesser threshold of stimulus going through that area to stimulate it. So it's constantly firing, and, therefore, whatever it's firing to the end-organ, now that end-organ becomes affected, and, of course, it sends impulses back into the nerve, and then it just fires back again, and, of course, you've got all the little nerves there that go to the muscles there--which you guys know real-well, this pair of spinal muscles--the paraspinal muscles, the inter-transfer [40:11], between the sinuses--all of that--and they can tract down and then you get all of that tightness and fibrosity in the paraspinal muscle; and for me, as a chiropractor, it just creates impingement and becomes a vicious cycle. So if you can get down and release the dural tube in the area and get rid of the facilitation, then you start taking all of that--of the musculature and the end organ--and you start getting the pressure off of it. So, that's one of the things that we work with on a lot in the body with the facilitation. So, I just will go to up here, just to one of the last slides, and that would be slide four. I always like to talk, just a moment or two, about this, the patient-therapist facilitator connection, because in craniosacral therapy, we kind of like to think of ourselves as facilitators. One of the amazing things that happen with the craniosacral system is that the system .... The craniosacral system we call this motion of flexion and extension, of expansion and contraction .... It creates the craniosacral rhythm. And this rhythm can be felt everywhere on the body and head. And that's what we evaluate as craniosacral therapists. We want to feel this rhythm. And if for some reason if you have a weakened rhythm in an area or you don't have any or you have a large rhythm, it gives a lot of information about what's going on. But we're looking for those areas of restriction of the rhythm, and that let's us know for some reason the body is not able good flexion and extension there, so there's a restrictions somewhere in the tissues and our job is to follow that and find that. And, again, it's just kind of a hypothesis, but it's felt that, possibly, the reason that the cranial motion can be felt outside of this system is due to a subtle tonifying and relaxation of the motor cortex and the motor nerves of the cortex that's due to the cranial rhythm, that causes the motor cortex to send subtle contraction/relaxation signals to the myofascial system. So, again, this rhythm can be felt everywhere. And if you look at this diagram, we, as therapists, or facilitators, the way we work in craniosacral therapy is with a very light touch--with, like, five grams it takes just to palpate rhythm. (And if we were live, we would palpate. [Laughter.]) And we like to be in touch with our conscious awareness and feeling into our non-conscious [43:25] , and you can connect through the cranial rhythm with the non-conscience of the patient and come up and find where restrictions are. And the only reason I like to put this up in classes and talk about it is, if you look at Number Two, "Intention Touch," [that] everything happens at this level with intention touch. And when you are touching



your patient, they are touching you. Okay? And never forget that [Laughter]. So, they're picking up on us the same way you're picking up on them. And our goal here is to release something within them so their non-conscience can get up there and awaken and talk to their conscious awareness. You know, that's the reason that your client is there on your table. So, I think I've been through all these diagrams here. And, again, if you go to Number 11, if you can put that one back. [Eric says, "Okay."] Thank you. And just to finish to say .... And, there, you're looking more at this craniosacral system and all of that being connected. So, when you think about it all being connected and then going out into the fascia outside of the craniosacral system, you can understand why someone would stub a toe and end up with a headache. I think I've covered, kind of quickly there, pretty much what I'd like to. And I guess I'm ready for questions. Eric: Okay. That's great. It's a fabulous overview. I always find this fascinating. Lisa Upledger: It is. Eric: It is fascinating. I know people that have been joining us throughout your broadcast. People that have joined us, you have been listening to Dr. Lisa Upledger talk about craniosacral therapy and the craniosacral system. And it was a great story [Chuckle] that Dr. John recorded for us, too, about how he discovered it. He's a great storyteller. Lisa: He is. Eric: And next time you talk with Dr. John, please thank him for taking the time out to prepare that for us. Lisa: Will do. Eric: Now, I know Scott is probably inundated with questions. We had dozens of questions even before we started the broadcast. Are you there Scott? Scott Dartnall: That's right, Eric. [Laughter] I'm trying to go through all the questions. I actually have so many questions that I'm putting them into categories. [Eric and Lisa



laugh.] Eric: On the fly. Lisa: Well, we could just do questions one-at-a-time. Scott: Okay. Eric: And I'm going to ask you to speak a little bit louder, Scott. Scott: Okay. Sorry. I'm going to step closer to the phone, Eric. Eric: Great. Scott: Wonderful. Dr. Lisa, there are so many questions. I'm going to ask some questions from individual listeners. A very popular question came up:

What is the best position and environment for doing craniosacral therapy? Lisa: Hmmm. "The positions," did you say? Scott: Yes. Is it for the patient being in a lying position on the table? Lisa: Yes. Yeah. We have everybody lying down on their back. That's how we start. And long ago, they used to do things more with people standing up or doing things. But when you do craniosacral therapy, we rely on the body to just kind of move itself into the position that it needs to. But, yes, we start on the back (with the patient lying on their back). ' Scott: Now, does this also need to be done, also, in a quiet environment for the therapist and the patient? Lisa:



Yeah. And pretty much any massage environment is great for [craniosacral therapy]. Massage profession lends itself so beautifully to craniosacral therapy, simply because the hour (time) is set up--because you need time (Okay?)--because when you're working with bodies and the body you're trying to follow, the body doing the self-correction, you can't put it on a time schedule, say, "Come on, body!" So, you've got the time; you've got the nice, quiet setting that you usually have when you're having a massage. And you can go from massage into craniosacral therapy and the techniques, and then you can go back into massage, you know, depending upon what you would find would work best for you client at the time. So, you can weave beautifully in between the two. Scott: Wonderful. I don't want to take up too much of your time. This is my one little craniosacral therapy story. Lisa: Uh-huh. Scott: I was running a very large clinic 15/16 years ago, multidisciplinary physiotherapy chiropractic massage. I had this woman introduced to me by my physiotherapist. My physio says, "You've got to hire her, bring her on." And I said , "Well, what do you do?" She said, "Well, I do craniosacral therapy." And I said, "Well, I'm not really familiar with that. But I trust Colleen. She's a great therapist. When do you want to start?" "I'm ready to start right away?" What she did, was she took a client (or the patients) everybody else had finished with, and they just weren't progressing, and these people had gone to a very chronic level. And this therapist's name was "Fran." And that was how I became familiar with craniosacral therapy and its effectiveness. And it fit perfectly in this multidisciplinary environment, because it was effective and the feedback was so positive from the clients. Lisa: Wonderful, great. Yeah, and that's the thing about CST, because you are affecting the central nervous system, and at its core. When you get into the dura, you're right there. I mean, it covers the spinal cord, it covers the brain. So, you're right on it. So you affect it from the inside out. And that's why you can .... We have a lot of end-of-the-line patients. Well, first of all, not everybody knows about CST, so we're usually end-of-the-line when they hear about it; but we're end-of-the-line because nothing else can get in there the way that this can. Scott: We have a question from Darlene. Lisa: Uh-huh.



Scott: This is a very common question that came in. And it said:

Do you think some people are just more intuitive than others and are able to do a better job at craniosacral therapy, or does it just take more time?

Lisa: That's a good question, and that one comes up often. And I have a tendency to say, "Yeah, probably." Probably some people are more in tune, as we are all suited to doing things that we're better at--it's just our nature. But one of the things, too, that I have found over the years is people will stick with doing craniosacral therapy. One of the barriers that you come up against is your own "stuff," so to say. One of the ways to become a better craniosacral therapist is to actually get down on the table and get treated, because, as you saw in that diagram, one of the ways that we work with people is being able to access the information that comes through us when we touch somebody. And, as you know, when you lay your hand on somebody, lots of information comes in. So, part of the treatment part, about craniosacral therapy, is trusting what you get (the information that you get) in your hands. And if you have a lot of, so to say, "inner noise" going on, it's hard to access that information. So, I teach a small class intensively and that question often comes up, and the answer is: If you're stuck and you're not progressing, or you're not feeling well, the cranial system would have you get treated, get treated and have some of that noise out of there and gone, and then go back. And the experience of it, too, will help, also, because we have craniosacral systems, and so we know what it feels [like] innately from the inside and then we also know how it feels like when we put our hands on. So, I have found people over the years who I didn't think would be very good at this and then they just kept working at it over the years and got treated a lot and they just kept clicking and clicking and became really good therapists. Scott: So, it's almost like you said earlier: You really have to be a conscious healer; you have to be in the present to be an effective therapist at any time. [And] it certainly sounds very apparent with craniosacral therapy. Lisa: Right. And intention touch is amazing. I don't know what intention is. All I know is that it's amazing. You can have your hands on somebody even doing massage for, you know, 20 minutes, and you're just rubbing this muscle, and mentally you're thinking about what you're going to do tonight and what you're making for dinner, and what have you; and all of a sudden you go, "Why can't this quadratus lumborum work itself out?" and, "Where is that?" and you get it and then, boom! It just let's go. All of sudden, the intention comes through and



the body that you're on knows it and recognizes it, and then it goes, "Okay." And that happens all the time. It's about intention touch. You can lay your hand on somebody and nothing happens; but when you put intention in there, then you're into a whole other, I don't know .... Carlos Castaneda, you know, from long ago said, "Intention was another dimension." I [Chuckle] don't know . But a lot can happen when you add the intention [Chuckle] in there. Scott: Well, I have another good question. Actually, I love this person's name. It's from Knox and he's from Philadelphia. And the question says:

How does the craniosacral rhythm resonate with other natural rhythms in the body?

Lisa: How does it resonate with other natural rhythms in the body? Well, I couldn't begin to tell you how. I wouldn't even know how to explain that. But we have so much language-ing going on in our body. We have cells talking to cells. And all the time we have such communication going on throughout our body. And how does that all happen? I don't know. I don't think anybody can really tell you exactly. But the craniosacral rhythm is like this .... It doesn't have a heart which is pounding, which can move blood; and you don't lungs to really breathe and move air. I liken it in the body as that crazy kind of stream; that soft, gentle stream that just kind of flows through the forest (You know?); and it's got this nice, gentle rhythm that just kind of moves. It's a very-low-horsepower system, but it moves all the fluids in the body. And, of course, if the fluids aren't moving, you get stagnation, you get trouble; you know, that's when you have breeding grounds for bacteria, and viruses, and this kind of thing. And we're a fluid and we're changing and we need that to be happening and moving all the time. So, it's just part of the whole. (You know?) And it's an important part because we are electrical; we have to conduct; we have to conduct through fluid. And the problem is [that] when we don't have the fluid in any area and we don't have motion in an area, then, you don't get as good a cellular communication and language-ing between the body parts going on. And sometimes when you talk to body parts, as you go on in this work and get into some of the somatoemotional-release work, you find one body part not happy with another body part and you need to get them in harmony with each other so that they can work together as a whole. Scott: [Lisa concurrently says, "I hope that kind of answers it."] I have a lot of questions on this topic. But we're going to take Meryl from Massachusettes. She says:

Hello, Lisa. How much training would one need to be able to help autistic children?



Lisa: You know, true autistic children are a little tough. You know, they're hard to hold on a table, Number One. And they can be tough. You can take the first cranial class and get so much information on how to do this work in just one class that you don't even have to take another one. I mean, you kind of want to because you just keep wanting more, but you can just learn so much in the first cranial class and you can help autistic children with that. But autistic children are difficult. And John did a lot of work with autistic kids way back in Michigan. He worked in Michigan in an autistic center weekly for, like, three years. And what he came around to his definition of austism was that something has denatured the meningeal system; something has gotten into the meninges and irritated them [in such a way] that they are no longer of the nice elastic quality of meninges that they used to be; they are now more fibrotic and fibroused. And that could be a virus, that could be heavy metals. that could be a bacterium, that could be who-knows-what, it could be a chemical, and it irritates the meninges so it becomes harder and tougher (tougher material). So then when you try to traction on the head and you try to traction and get those meninges to release, it's amazing what'll happen with a kid when you can get that to happen. But they're tough and it just pulls back, because now it's more fibrotic; the material of the meninges, it just keeps pulling back. So, we, very often, when we have autistic kids, we have parents take the cranial class, because you want this done on a daily basis so hopefully you can stretch it out and that will contract back. Now, that's a true autistic kid. And I think truly one of the biggest problems, of course, is just getting them to lie on the table. But there are all ranges of autism, and some of that is just because you don't have the whole meningeal system that's gotten fibrosed, you just might have an area, or a little place, that now puts extra pressure on the brain, so you get some kind of behavior manifestation, because, again, you're not getting good bloodflow through the spinal fluid flow, and all that kind of thing. So, you can just take even just one class and start helping. Scott: Fantastic. Are you good for more questions, Doctor? Lisa: Oh, I'm great. I'm great for more questions. Scott: Thank you. I know that people really appreciate it. This is a really common question. And I'm sure you deal with this a lot. This comes from Stephanie Kraus. And she says:



How do you avoid taking in client's stress while treating?

Lisa: [Laughter.] Well, first of all you just acknowledge you don't want it. You know? I think what's important in the work that we do when we touch bodies, whether you do this work or whatever kind of work you do, you've got your boundaries. And people who are not feeling well and they've had a lot of pain in their life, they get a nice sympathetic ear, or somebody who will listen to them, they're going to run with that. So, you need to know where to set your boundaries. And once you do that, the way you talk, your behavior, how you are with that person let's them know you have boundaries. And I think that's the important thing. And if by chance somebody gets to you, the more you can acknowledge that, or just after a session with somebody, say, "Okay, did I get anything here?" and if you did, just kind of ask it to let go and come out and get out of you. At times, that's enough. Or if it's triggered something in you--that's the other thing. If they said something to you or done or picked up from them triggers something in you, then you need to take a look at it, and that's when it's time to maybe get on that table and get a session. And if you can recognize that "Well, that's still their stuff, but it triggers something in me that I need to take a look at," then you put that in the back of your brain and go, "Okay, I'll get to you later, when I can, but not now while I'm working on somebody." But it's really more about acknowledging your own boundaries. And when you have them then you can set them. And Suzanne Scurlock-Durana has that class, "Healthy Boundaries," and it's all about that, it's all about setting up the boundaries and replenishing. Scott: Absolutely. And she was part of the World Massage Conference, so .... Lisa: I would think so. Right, right. Scott: Yes. Lisa: Yeah. Scott: Another question (this is a happy question) [Lisa says, "Okay."]:

How does craniosacral therapy work with pregnant women or women working with babies (with craniosacral therapy)?



Do you do classes with that, or ...? Lisa: Absolutely. We do. We have pediatric classes. We have an OB/GYN class--which is a wonderful class. It just started not too long ago. I haven't even taken it, yet. Carol McClelland is teaching that. She's done a lot with midwifery. And it's a lot about just bringing in the family and working with Mom, and what have you. But it is great to get on women who are pregnant. And the best thing, though, is to get them before they get pregnant, because any of the fascial-kind of restrictions that you can work out and release, particularly in the pelvis, just helps them with the birth. And when they are pregnant, it's such a .... I mean, when you start taking stress of the central nervous system, you relax, you balance the autonomic nervous system, you bring the sympathetics down, you bring the parasympathetics up. Everybody loves that, but mommies and babies, they really love that. So, it's wonderful that way. And, frankly, those of use who do this work and who've worked a lot on kids and seen a lot of problems that come from birth, come from forceps, come from vacuum extraction--come from these violent kinds of births-- .... You want to get on a newborn as soon as you can. We'd love to have newborns in obstetrical suites, and what have you, because you can do so much by freeing up those meninges and that dural tube. I mean, you can help learning disabilities, and spinal curvatures, and any pressures on the central nervous system that'll cause a problem. If you can get them right from the from the core, right from the start at birth, it's great, it's great. So that's why we have so many classes in pediatrics and starting with the OB/GYN. It's wonderful. Scott: It sounds wonderful. And you had that beautiful picture of the little baby in the hands. It's one of my favorite pictures. Lisa: Yeah, and they love it, they love it. Scott: I absolutely love it. I want to switch gears and talk to you about fibromyalgia. It seems to be, probably, the biggest topic facing most therapists treating .... I don't know if you'd call it a chronic disease or how'd you exactly how you describe it. Let's talk about craniosacral and fibromyalgia. Lisa: Okay. True fibromyalgia is real autoimmune disease, of course--when the muscle and the tissue is really starting to fibrose. And so, if that is the case .... And I know long ago they used to ... Not long ago [Laughter]. Way back, or



whatever, they would take, actually, biopsy--and they still do, at times--of the muscle tissue to see whether or not it is fibrosing. And that is an autoimmune disease. And so, then, that goes into a different area. But a lot of the fibromyalgia that people come in with nowadays I really feel has a lot to do with acidic and toxic tissues. And I've had patients come back and say, "Oh! You've fixed my fibromyalgia. It's gone." And I'm like, "I didn't even know you had it." And it's not a real, true fibromyalgia. And, again, what I was saying, is about the craniosacral system, is that it is this low-horsepower system that moves the fluids through the body. So when fluids get stagnate in an area, of course what happens is that the toxic [substances] metabolize and build up, and that is tender--that becomes tender to the touch. You know, when lactic acid remains in an area--it can't get washed away--that muscle is sore. And I feel that that's a lot happening with a lot of the fibromyalgia that a lot of people talk about. So, there's "looking at diet," there's particularly acidity (you know, eating lots of refined and processed foods--that kind of thing). I think there's "looking at making sure people are well-hydrated," "a lot of good green kinds of food." And craniosacral therapy, because once you free the restrictions, particularly when have restrictions deep within the basilar joint and of the meninges that are not allowing good craniosacral motion, then you don't have good generalized body-fluid motion throughout the whole body. And so once you start moving, it's like "Okay, now we can clean the river," now things can get washed away. And even if it is in that autoimmune area of a true fibromyalgia, you still want to do craniosacral therapy because you really want to get, again, good fluid exchange. You want to clear out the extracellular fluid or the interstitial fluid and you want good fluid exchange across the cell membrane, because you want nutrients in those cells and you want nutrients out. And if there's stagnation in an area, you're not going to get that and, again, it just becomes a breeding ground. [Q&A ends 1:06:04] The World Massage Conference is brought to you by Eric Brown, Scott Dartnall, Melanie Hayden and our sponsors. We would like to thank our Global Sponsor Massage Envy: Massage Envy knows that you have the touch that makes a difference. We provide a supportive and healthy working environment. Visit www.massageenvycareers.com to find open positions nationwide in the United States Thank you to our Daily Sponsor The Upledger Institute World wide leader in continuing education for healthcare professionals. Sign up for an Upledger workshop and learn how four days of training can transform your career. Register today at www.upledger.com It is through the generous support of our sponsors and the presenters themselves who have given so generously of their time, that we are able to bring



you this conference with presenters from around the globe at such an affordable price. And just a reminder for those of you who are attending the re-broadcast of this presentation, all presentations, the tradeshow and sponsorship information for the World Massage Conference 2008 will be available until May 31st 2009. We invite all full access pass members to download all of the presentations to create a resource library of over 50 hours of training for yourself and to take the quizzes to download your Continuing Education certificates. For those of you in the United States who require NCBTMB Continuing Education credits please follow the link on the landing page for instructions on how to access your certificate. For our Basic Access Pass members remember that you can upgrade to a full registration pass at any time, during or after the conference to be able to download presentations, apply for CE certificates and more. On behalf of my World Massage Conference partners Melanie Hayden and Scott Dartnall thanks again to our presenter Lisa Upledger. I am Eric Brown thanks for joining us and have a fantastic day.

dr. lisa upledger: cranial sacral therapy working in ... · day 2: techniques – ancient arts and...

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