Osteopathic Cranial Treatments
Catherine Henderson offers holistic osteopathic cranial treatments for adults and children of all ages, promoting self-regulation, recovery, and optimal health by addressing the interconnectedness of the body’s structures and functions.
Osteopathic Cranial Treatment for Adults
Catherine uses her hands to evaluate and treat a wide range of conditions, using gentle techniques that that cooperate with the body’s own self-healing mechanism.
Osteopathic skills apply detailed anatomical knowledge, gently sensing through layers of tissue to uncover and release strain patterns that have developed in response to an original injury, accident, surgery or birth trauma. The symptom that brings a client for treatment may have a cause from elsewhere in the body, and discovering this is the detective work of the practitioner.
Osteopathic treatment may resemble craniosacral therapy, however osteopathic training is much more extensive.
What Does an Osteopathic Cranial Session for Adults Involve?
After a detailed history and physical assessment, the client lies down on the treatment table. Loose comfortable clothes are recommended, not jeans. Evaluation and treatment often proceed simultaneously with the practitioner using gentle touch to assess tissue function and structural dynamics. The feet, pelvis, spine, ribcage, and head may be held during a typical session.
Clients may feel deeply relaxed and even fall asleep. Sensations may be felt moving around the body as releases take place. There may be tiredness following the session as the nervous system releases deeply, or there may be temporary discomfortas the body readjusts. As symptoms clear, there is often a sense of improved well-being and health.
What Conditions Can Benefit from Osteopathic Cranial Treatment
Pain . Injury and Accidents . Post-surgical recovery and rehabilitation . Brain Injury . Digestive complaints . Dental/Orthodontic problems . Neurological conditions . Recurrent illness and infection . Pregnancy: to treat and prevent complications including musculoskeletal pain, nausea and reflux, and to promote normal labor and delivery . Postpartum recovery . Scoliosis . Insomnia . Menstrual and menopausal issues
Osteopathic Cranial Treatment for Children
Children’s bodies are very malleable, and they recover quickly from injury and illness. However, the body can often compensate for a restriction, and pediatric check ups can prevent issues from manifesting when older. Effects of a difficult birth, or falls and accidents, or surgery can be held long after the event.
Challenges from birth can manifest as colic (often a headache) or inconsolable crying. Strain during birth on the sucking and swallowing muscles can cause feeding challenges. Treatment of falls, accidents, and surgery is recommended soon after the event, as the effects of these often cause later compensations which manifest in other ways.
What Does an Osteopathic Cranial Session for Children Involve?
This treatment involves very gentle touch. There are no manipulations or strong maneuvers. Babies may be treated across the parents’ lap or on a pillow, so they maintain contact. Toddlers may be treated on the floor, with interesting toys to distract them. They are only required to lie down for a short period, and usually enjoy the relaxing sensations of a session. Once old enough, children lie on a treatment table and play or read with their parents’ help.
What Childhood Conditions Can Benefit from Osteopathic Cranial Treatment
Injury and Accidents . Birth Trauma . Recurrent infection . Learning and behavioral difficulties . Developmental Delay . Headaches . Dental/ Orthodontic problems . Sleep issues, including nightmares and night terrors . Anxiety . Scoliosis . Recurrent infections including ear infections
Session fees
New clients
Initial adult visit: $205
Initial child (under 14): $130
Follow-up sessions
Adults: $145
Child (under 14): $90
($5 discount on follow-up sessions with cash or check)
New client forms
History
Osteopathy is the original integrated medicine in the US. Dr. Andrew Taylor Still was a surgeon, whose insights into the role of the spinal nerves and blood vessels as a communication system with the whole body became Osteopathy.He postulated that injuries to the spine and associated muscles could affect organs and limbs as well as local tissues. and thus cause dysfunction and pain. He developed a form of manual medicine ,and opened the American School of Osteopathy, in Missouri in 1871.Dr J.Martin Littlejohn, a student of Dr Still,founded the British School of Osteopathy in 1918.
Many lineages of manipulative medicine developed from Still’s pioneering work. Chiropractic, rolfing, myofascial release, many physical therapy methods, visceral treatment and craniosacral therapy all derive from osteopathy.
Cranial Osteopathy
Another student of Still’s, Dr William Sutherland ,had an insight that the temporal bones of the skull were ‘bevelled like the gills of a fish”. He postulated they responded to an inherent whole body rhythm and named it the Primary Respiratory Mechanism. This mechanism is fundamental in the physiology of growth and healing.Sutherland described a number of different aspects of this mechanism,including the motility of the central nervous system,the mobility of the cranial membranes and bones (connected through the all-enveloping fascia) and a core link between the cranium and sacrum that coordinated their motion. He found that the fluctuation of the cerebrospinal fluid was an underlying aspect of this mechanism.
Practitioners are trained by many hours of sensing these subtle rhythms, with supervision and feedback.They assess the different motion patterns of all these aspects of the Primary Respiratory mechanism, and treatment is aimed at restoring healthy motion and function.
The Biodynamic Approach
.Dr James Jealous developed the Biodynamic Approach in the 1980s.In the last 10 years of Sutherland’s life, he studied intrinsic healing , referred to as the “Inherent Therapeutic Process”.
Dr Jealous was inspired by this and his other later teachings ,and his own observation of the natural world and of motion patterns he saw in his patients.Dr Erich Blechschmidt ,an embryologist,observed the cells of the developing embryo as they migrated and differentiated before they became the structures of the adult.He used the term “Biodynamics” to describe these metabolic fields.Dr Jealous discovered they exactly mirrored the motion patterns Sutherland described during an osteopathic treatment. In describing the embryonic developmental movements,Dr Jealous was able to elucidate structure (anatomy)in a bioenergetic way. The embryonic blueprint is the highest healing force known in the body.Thus connecting an arthritic hip with its memory as a developing limb bud, gives it access to that force.
Dr Still had taught “To find the health is the object of the Doctor, anyone can find disease” .However the medical model of focus on finding the cause of disease or somatic dysfunction had become prevalent in osteopathy.Dr Jealous taught the importance of the Health , and how palpating and supporting the movement of the Health in a person was key to their recovery.(The Health , or Life Force, or Chi is continuous in all forms of life).
In the 1980s James Jealous and Susan Turner (a renowned cranial osteopath from the UK) founded the Old England-New England study group :a pioneering collaboration of teachers from both sides of the Atlantic, who were a group of physician and non-physician osteopaths.Following this, Dr Jealous was involved with the Osteopathic Centre for Children,in London.This was a non-profit clinic founded by osteopath Stuart Korth, to treat children with cranial osteopathy.His Biodynamic Courses welcomed osteopaths of all backgrounds.See traditionalosteopathyedu.com/directory for a list of US and International practitioners.
Osteopathic training in the UK and Europe is based on a 4 year course, using 100%manual methods to treat outpatients, without drugs.
In the US, Osteopathic Physicians train in osteopathic medical school and practice primary care. A small percentage of their time is spent learning manual methods, and DOs (Doctors of Osteopathy) who use these methods in full-time practice have spent many additional hours in post-graduate training.
Catherine uses her extensive osteopathic training , both in a four year course in the UK, and many courses with Dr Jealous over 35 years. Her primary approach is Biodynamics, weaving in other methods as needed.
A lifelong interest in birth also underpins her work. She has trained in pre- and perinatal psychology with Dr William Emerson and Dr Ray Castellino, and worked as a doula in the Bay Area. She believes untreated birth patterns underlie many adult issues, both physical and emotional.
She has studied Voice Dialogue, Jungian psychology, the movement practice of Continuum and Sufi and Celtic meditation practices, and incorporates these into her work.