CranioSacral Therapy and Birth Issues

If you have ever watched a horse or other animal give birth, it can be suprising how graceful and quick birth can be when compared with our experience comming into the world. The difficulty we experience is a result of the size of our skull. The evolution of our brains has resulted in a tripling in size of the Cranium since our path diverged from our Chimpanzee relatives 6 million years ago. Human birth is literally pushing against the limits of what is physically possible, as any of our mothers will attest to. As the neonate's head is pushed against the pelvis, the skull bones momentarily fold inward to squeeze through the pelvic opening. Once through, the newborn's skull bones should flex back to their proper positions. This compression obviously has no lasting ill effects and may very well initiate reflexes that assist with surviving being born - the experience is part of what makes us human.

Difficulties arise when the cranial bones do not fully return to their prior relationship. It is common to find one bone overlapping another, or two bones jammed tightly together, inhibiting any movement between them. Forceps or suction deliveries often create or compound these types of lesions. Lesions can create problems with vision or auditory processing, headaches, hormone imbalances, spinal alignment, learning difficulties, cholic,  emotional disturbances and a host of other issues.   Children will sometimes try to self correct lesions by head banging or very rough behaviour like running into walls or dropping their entire weight on their knees in an apparent effort to unstick and reset the alignment of the cranial bones.

The younger the child the quicker it usually is to re-align the bones of the skull. Because of the soft spots on the head it is advisable that only practitioners comfortable with infant anatomy and cranial techniques attempt these adjustments. Adjustments can often take just a few minutes, sometimes with obvious changes in the outline of the head. CranioSacral Therapy is a very effective modality for releasing these types of lesions.