Prisms: Reflecting On Craniosacral Therapy in the Now

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Prisms: Reflecting On Craniosacral Therapy in the Now

I’ve wanted to share some thoughts in honor of Craniosacral Awareness Week and it’s been a troublesome endeavor for me: partly because the work is important to me and partly because I am conflicted by what I see happening in the field and it makes me sad. It’s also unsettling to share thoughts and feelings that go against the grain.

Medicine, even natural or holistic medicine, is a field that despite what one might think, doesn’t reward unconventional and non-conforming viewpoints. When I began studying craniosacral therapy 25 years ago, I never would have imagined there would be a paradigmatic mainstream in the field but it appears that one has emerged. This fact contradicts my experience practicing, studying, reflecting on and teaching this work over the last 25 years.

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The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Morality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer and Care

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The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Morality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer and Care

This book is on my short list of bests. I think every healthcare provider should read it and disabuse themselves of the nonsense they might be inclined to say to patients dealing with cancer. That sounds harsh, I know. But bear with me, when I was in grad school, relatively recently cancer free, I would listen to people in their 20s and early 30s, having not had cancer, regularly spew utter bullshit that usually began with the vapid generalization; “people with cancer…” fill in the blank of them saying things they had no clue about. And this attitude pervades in natural medicine circles and it's offensive and will, hopefully, run folks right out your clinic door if you speak this way to them about the cancer they are dealing with. 

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Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

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Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde is another writer, like Baldwin, before our current time whose words find deep resonance with the current challenges we face. If one wants to feel the impact of Lorde’s work in the present go to Alexis Pauline Gumbs ig page and watch her video the day after the election. Gumbs takes an Audre Lorde poem, reads it aloud so we can feel the poem’s vibratory energy and breaks it down into a call to action.

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James Baldwin: Living in Fire + Good Made My Face

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James Baldwin: Living in Fire + Good Made My Face

Mullen’s biography centers on Baldwin’s political engagements and their historical contexts throughout his life. In a way it is an intellectual biography that uses Baldwin’s specific political involvement as a lens. Mullen places Baldwin’s reality as Black, gay man growing up in Harlem as the gravitational center of his politics and from there was Baldwin’s commitment to saving himself and preserving his art but knowing that doing so also meant engaging with all those impacted by the persistent racism and homophobia that is a throughline from Baldwin’s time to ours.

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My Bright Abyss + Zero at the Bone

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My Bright Abyss + Zero at the Bone

Both books are similar enough to describe together. Abyss was written in closer proximity to his cancer diagnosis. It is shorter, maybe more concise. Whereas, Zero, written with some distance from initial diagnosis and with some life in between, is a bit further reaching, maybe less immediately dark. 


Both are meditations of sorts confronting difficulty through poetry. Wiman’s cancer diagnosis is in the background, subtext and rarely specifically referenced but knowing it exists adds a grindstone of reality to his inquiry. It’s also a meditation through some (though definitely not all) specifically Christian poetry.

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Conflict is Not Abuse

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Conflict is Not Abuse

I met up with a colleague for a coffee and some catch up time and this book was sitting on the table. Based on the title alone I wanted to read it. It’s a dense book and in some circles has been controversial as it challenges some ideas around abuse and has thus been criticized for enabling abuse itself. However, I think her point is incredibly timely, the book was published in 2016. One of her main premises is that often, discomfort is mischaracterised as “abuse.” This then has the impact of shutting down meaningful dialogue and truncates working towards repair.

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The Expressiveness of the Body + The Way of Water

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The Expressiveness of the Body + The Way of Water

The Expressiveness of the Body had been on my TBR stack for quite some time, like maybe years and The Way of Water I read during my first year of grad school. It was transformative in my understanding of the complexity of thought that undergirds Chinese medicine and my own inability to fully enter into that thought stream - rooted in utterly different epistemologies as we are.

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Under the Skin

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Under the Skin

There is too much to say about the state of healthcare in the U.S. The killing of a healthcare CEO catalyzed a spontaneous and near universal expression of outrage, not at the killer nor the crime, but at the ongoing crimes committed by the healthcare system itself, symbolized by one CEO. Under the Skin explores the specific way that healthcare commits crimes against Black people and Black women specifically.

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Dark Days: Fugitive Essays

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Dark Days: Fugitive Essays

This is in the category of “books that find us.” I had never heard of Roger Reeves before, nor this book. I think it was the “Fugitive” in the subtitle that caught my eye. It found the fugitive scaffolding in my brain from Fred Moten and Stefan Harney’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study and Fugitive Pedagogy; Carter G. Woodson and The Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis R. Givens.  Dark Days is one of the best essay collections I’ve read. His contextual juxtapositions are stunning. They become portals into new ways of thinking about our collective and individual experience.

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Introduction to Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS) and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD) in Our Practices

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Introduction to Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS) and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD) in Our Practices

EDS and HSD are diseases affecting the connective tissues. They are thought to be genetic in origin. They are spectrum disorders and so symptom pictures are highly variable.

The Ehlers-Danlos Society offers this definition of EDS: The Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS) are a group of 13 heritable connective tissue disorders. The conditions are caused by genetic changes that affect connective tissue. Each type of EDS has its own set of features with distinct diagnostic criteria. Some features are seen across all types of EDS, including joint hypermobility, skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility.

Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders can co-occur with EDS or present on their own. There is often overlap in symptoms between the two and differentiating between them can be challenging.

The Ehlers-Danlos Society offers this definition of HSD: Hypermobility spectrum disorders (HSD) are connective tissue disorders that cause joint hypermobility, instability, injury, and pain. Other problems such as fatigue, headaches, GI problems, and autonomic dysfunction are often seen as part of HSD.

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Myofascial Mapping and Techniques

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Myofascial Mapping and Techniques

Myofascia means the fascial system that contains, organizes and connects our muscles with each other across joints; including, tendons, ligaments and their bony attachments. 

The anatomy we learned in school, with its emphasis on origins and insertions leaves us with an incomplete picture of the soft tissue milieu. Our approach emphasizes the relationships between muscles via the fascia. 

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How do we talk about “safety” in our work?

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How do we talk about “safety” in our work?

I have been thinking about “safety” lately. I love the polyvagal theory because it places feelings solidly within the ranges of our physiological felt sense, aka interoception. Many people experience the range of their emotions as physiological sensations (or symptoms depending on perspective/severity). The polyvagal theory offers us a map to help our people interpret what the body is expressing. However, most articulations of the theory use the word “safety” in a way I find troubling.

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What Inspires you?

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What Inspires you?

Our job isn't easy. And the holidays can make everything more intense, highs and lows. This week I have already seen multiple folks in more acute states of struggle than usual. It can sometimes be a challenge to fully show up for our people and make sure we are tending to our own sweet selves. Don't worry, this wont be a treatise on self-care. Rather, I'm thinking about "inspo!" Sometimes inspiration just happens and that's rad but unpredictable and we might need it more frequently than that. I believe we can cultivate that feeling of inspiration in lots of ways.

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Conversation with Shayne Case + Michael McMahon

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Conversation with Shayne Case + Michael McMahon

We think you will enjoy this wide ranging and enlivening conversation between Shayne Case and Michael McMahon. Topics include perspectives on healing in this current time, big ideas, specific love of words and much more!

Shayne Case is a mother, healer, writer, medicine maker, and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. 

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Perspectives on Fascia in the Media

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Perspectives on Fascia in the Media

The New York Times and Medicine Acknowledge Fascia is Important (!)

I always brace myself before reading an article in a mainstream pub about something that our collective fields have been working with and exploring for a very long time and to good effect (see NYT article on the vagus nerve that emphasizes potentials for drugs and inserted gadgets rather than attuned health care and relationships). Such was the case with the recent NYT brief on “New” understandings about fascia. 

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A Guide to Working With Post Spinal Surgery Folks - Spinal Surgeries, Part 1

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A Guide to Working With Post Spinal Surgery Folks - Spinal Surgeries, Part 1

Let’s talk about working with folks after a spinal surgery. This is a follow up to the post about “dose” when it comes to bodywork. We will see that dose, not just in one session but over the arc of treatment is important in these cases. We want to have our eye on the long game for our people.

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Why I’m not that interested in the question “what kind of craniosacral therapy do you do/teach?”

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Why I’m not that interested in the question “what kind of craniosacral therapy do you do/teach?”

I get asked a lot about “my approach” to craniosacral therapy (CST). Of course, I have one. It is always evolving and is rooted in my experience of doing the work with the people I am treating. I am not beholden to anyone else’s ideas about the craniosacral system, I love being with each person’s system and listening to and participating with  how their system presents itself…

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Vagus Nerve, Wellness Culture and Biohack Talk 

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Vagus Nerve, Wellness Culture and Biohack Talk 

Wellness/biohack culture is obsessed with the vagus nerve and yet often misses the point of what can be helpful about understanding the polyvagal theory and the individual dynamism of each of our vagal systems. There isn’t a shortcut for deepening our capacity for both self and co-regulation. 

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What does it mean to live into the principles of our work?

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What does it mean to live into the principles of our work?

I want to highlight a piece of writing  by Susan Raffo on the history of “Osteopathy” and craniosacral therapy (CST). It is an unfortunate history and needs to be addressed in all places that folks are learning and practicing this work. I am grateful to have come upon Susan Raffo’s work, both this piece and her newish book, Liberated to the Bone. 

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An Ode to the Diaphragm

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An Ode to the Diaphragm

The Diaphragm as a (silent) Mediator of Emotional Experience…The diaphragm is a myofascial structure with all of the properties of our myofascial system plus the added link to our autonomic nervous system via our breathing. Because of this connection with breath the diaphragm can act as a below-the-level-of-conscious-awareness mediator of our emotional experiences.

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