Palpation Technique: The Key Factor
In "Brain Therapy"
This section is
adapted from the 159-page workbook "Brain Therapy
For Children And Adults"
By Dr. Barry R.
Gillespie
My first craniosacral course as a student lasted five
days. By the afternoon of the third day, I was terribly
frustrated because I did not think that I had felt cranial
motion, and pathetically had no idea what I was doing.
I humbly went over to an instructor and desperately
asked for help. He came over to my station and put his
hands over mine on the patient's head.
"Do you feel that motion?" he said. I did
and was off to the races.
The brilliance of this work depends on your palpation
skills as a brain therapist. That is why this section
is explained in fine detail; this is the key aspect
of assessment and therapy.
Your job is to be a living CAT scan or MRI machine searching
for restriction:
You need to be as clear as you can, keeping all of
your "stuff" out of the equation.
You also need to be totally detached from what the
patient is showing.
I do not know any other type of manual therapy in the
world that has such a direct impact on the function
of the brain. Always remember that the brain
is a sensitive organ and needs to be treated with the
greatest respect.
In massage school I had touch sensitivity exercises.
My favorite was feeling for a human hair under a number
of telephone-book pages. Most students could palpate
the hair through eight to ten pages. One person went
over twenty pages. The craniosacral system is more pronounced
than this, moving about a millimeter or so.
Because of your inherent sensitivity, you will be able
to work comfortably in that dimension in a short time.
If you are not in a hands-on profession, do not feel
inadequate.
Remember, the great majority of people with training
and practice can feel craniosacral motion
and facial restriction very readily.
The most important factor is to trust what you are
feeling.
You live in a society that may question you because
you can not easily and scientifically measure brain motion.
If you have any doubt, feel a living, moving cranium
or sacrum and immediately place your hands on an inert
object.
The difference is the motion of life.
If you are not feeling any motion, the patient may have
severe craniosacral restriction. Palpate someone in good
health who has an open craniosacral mechanism.
Almost everyone has the experience of "I think
that I feel something, but it can't be it because
it is so slight." The golden rule is if you
think you feel something move, then it is moving.
We can be thankful that the brain does not expand and
contract an inch because we would look pretty funny in
everyday
life. If you are sensitive enough to feel a hair under
paper, you will have no problem feeling normal craniosacral
motion.
Feeling craniosacral motion is like dialing into a station
on an old radio. Blood and breathing pulses have their
own frequencies and stations. When you are first learning
the work, you may have to spend time fine tuning the
dial to pick up the motion. With experience you can press
the station button on your "radio" immediately
and lock in on the motion.
The two main factors of the craniosacral mechanism are:
- the motion and
- position of the cranium and sacrum.
Because our entire philosophy is based on how well
the brain and spinal cord are moving, the criteria
of motion of the bones is far more important
than their position.
Some craniosacral professionals are primarily concerned
with the position of the bones, if they are in or out
of alignment. Their whole focus is creating an aligned
textbook structure in their mind that may or may not
work for the patient. I could care less about where any
bones are.
My job is to get the brain and spinal cord moving, and
wherever the bones end up is fine. They almost always
end up in better alignment.
As an example, Patient A has perfect cranial and sacral
bone position. His entire head and face feel and look
perfectly balanced. Unfortunately, he is suffering
health problems because the underlying tight dura mater
is creating severe brain pressure.
Patient B has a distorted cranial structure with internally
and externally rotated cranial bones. However, his
cranial motion is good with freer dural motion, and
he is doing better in life.
In assessing your palpation the quality of cranial
motion is much more important in health than cranial
position.
In palpation your job is to evaluate the current status
of your patient; your hands are like a CAT scan telling
you what is happening. You are not going to change the
system, just monitor whatever the central nervous
system is presenting at that moment.
Professionally you are taught to do something but instead,
with craniosacral and fascial therapy, you just
let your right brain listen to the body. Since the brain is a
sensitive organ, you
want to use very light pressure. You do not want to hold
the cranium with a lot of pressure that may add to the
strain and restrict its motion.
At the seminar you will be palpating motion at four
different positions.
- Brain motion along the sides of the head.
- Facial bone motion over the maxillary bones.
- Sacral bone motion
- Brain motion under the occipital bone and dural tube
and sacral bone motion (The entire craniosacral mechanism).
This section of the workbook continues with a discussion
of the four evaluation techniques.
Note: The workbook is given only to students who take
the seminar. It will not be sold separately.
The workbook's Table
of Contents... offers a summary of the craniosacral
and fascial seminar.
"The training from Dr. Gillespie's Brain Therapy
seminar took my work to a new level. Everybody I worked
on noticed the difference in the treatment. It's very
exciting!"
Tatiana Slattery, N.C.M.T.
Philadelphia, PA
