Q: It doesn’t look like you’re doing much of anything when you treat my baby and children. What is it that you actually are doing?
A: In short, I am gently manipulating tissues of the body and, in so doing, releasing tension and torsion of these tissues that can inhibit optimal functioning.
Q: What tissues are you referring to and how does this help their bodies work better?
A: The short answer really is ALL tissues and that the way this helps by allowing better flow. Flow of blood, lymph and nerve energy. The long answer probably requires a little anatomy to answer these important questions!!
Cells make up tissues and that’s part of answering both these questions. When tissues release, cells can function even better throughout the whole body and tissues are collections of cells that form ALL the structures in our bodies, really. The tougher the tissue, the more important it is to make sure it’s not tougher than it needs to be. Also, the sooner we can treat a person…like your newborn…the better opportunity they have to grow straighter, with less torsion and with less pulling on surrounding structures. Tissue pull actually helps shape our bones (Wolff’s Law) and can pull some of us so very much that it starts affecting functions of the body.
Specifically, the toughest tissue is bone. After that it’s teeth. Then the dura mater (that means durable or tough mother) and that is a VERY important tissue in the cranial work. It’s attached, mostly, to the inside skull (cranial) bones, even with layers that separate the 2 halves of the brain (cerebrum) and another layer that separates this large part of the brain (cerebrum) from the smaller, lower part in back (cerebellum). It has some other interesting attachments inside and outside of the skull, like the 2nd neck (cervical) vertebra (C2 or Axis), some upper neck muscles and there’s a string of it that comes off of the bottom of the spinal cord in the low back and then goes down to anchor into the tailbone (sacrum).
A most important aspect of this dura mater is that all our nerves run right through it!! Can you imagine that if you have a tissue that’s second only to bone and teeth in it’s toughness of tissue in the body and it’s very tight and twisted, that it could very well affect the working of the nerves?!…the nerves that go to everything in the body…to allow functioning of everything!!
After the dura mater, the next toughest tissues are the ligaments. Ligaments are like the strapping around the joints. There are also some inside the body, as with some uterine ligaments. These ligaments also get twisted and are tighter than muscle, so contribute more than even muscle to holding our body srtucture in tight and twisted fashion. After ligaments comes the fascia that surrounds the muscle bundles, then the tendons of the muscles (the ends of muscles turn into tendons and it’s the tendons that actually insert into bone to allow joint motion during the muscle contraction), then the muscles.
So, maybe you can see how important it becomes to address the dura mater and ligaments in the body if we want to untwist and unwind structural distortional patterns.
The reason unwinding these tissues is important and allows for optimizing functioning of the body is that not only do our nerves run through the dura (as mentioned above), but all of these tissues have nerves and other vital channels running right through them, including the arteries and veins (taking blood out to the body from the heart and then back, respectively), and lymph channels (cellular debris removal system).
Q: Why do you advocate for babies to have these treatments?
A: I advocate for newborns, infants and toddlers to receive these treatments to prevent a lifetime of ‘pulling’ and distortional patterns that can cause decreased functioning throughout the many bodily functions AND to optimize babies’ growth and development.
My vast, hands-on experience in the Amish community in Iowa has enabled me to deeply understand that the distortional patterns I see in children and adults are seen first in the newborn. The distortional patterns actually begin with intrauterine constraints and birth trauma and persist if not released.
Knowing the anatomy and physiology (the way the body works) along with years of hands-on experience and the feedback of results are what has convinced me of the profound and important benefits of this type of care.
Day after day, year after year, I get to see seemingly miraculous benefits…in newborns as well as children and adults. I wish everyone knew about this work!!
Q: My child is so colicky and had several bouts of earache. Is this something that cranial work can help?
A: Absolutely! These are two very common problems that can be alleviated, often quickly.
Again, if one knows the anatomy and physiology, them it’s really easy to understand how this can be.
The bones that make up the skull or cranium are moveable (if you read or hear otherwise, “forgive them they know not what they do”, aren’t keeping up with research and/or don’t have the skill and experience to feel the movement). Each bone or pair of bones has predictible motion, yet because no one is perfectly symmetrical (again, starting in utero), if we can get movement optimized with this gentle care, we can release tension of the tissue, then the nerves and even the blood and lymph flow.
There are 12 pairs of nerves which exit off of the brainstem, right through that tough, tight and twisted dura mater (called cranial nerves because they originate in the cranium), then exit through hole is bones at the base of the cranium in an area that is always tight in a newborn (some much more than others depending on how much room they had to move inside of mom and their birth situation). The cranial nerves control the function of the eyes, ears, nose, throat, swallowing, suckling, latching and much more. Even one pair goes down to heart, lungs and stomach…symptoms that may not be as obviously apparent in a baby, yet even so may not be sending signals optimally and we may not know anything about this decreased functioning for month, years or…well, I think you get the point here! For the earache, the cranial nerves may be contributing as well as the decreased cranial motion which can cause twisting in the eustacian tubes which then can retain fluid which, of course, may harbor bacteria.
My experience is that most children have both the decreased motion and the possible decreased nerve input. If they are pulling at their ears, you can bet they’re feeling some discomfort that cranial work can help.
In fact, if a baby is pulling or pushing anywhere they can reach, especially repeatedly, these are discomforts that can easily be alleviated with gentle cranial care!! We put our hands on our head or other places when we have pain. Well, believe me, so do they. I’ve seen this for years, over and over again.
Also, regarding the colick, or what the Amish refer to as a fussy baby, I have learned and tell parents all the time that if you can’t calm and comfort a baby in the usual means…by feeding, changing, holding and/or rocking them…they are somewhere ‘uncomfortable in their body’ and these Cranial Methods will help.
Q: My older child can’t be comforted often times, either. They squirm and fuss and rarely seem to be able to settle down or concentrate. I don’t even want to hear the diagnosis of ADD or ADHD because I know that’s what he’ll get and I don’t want to go down that medical path with him yet. School starts next Fall for him, though, and I’m getting so nervous about what’ll happen once he’s there. Can your Cranial Methods help calm and comfort him, too?
A: Yes! I’m so glad you asked that! Yes, I’ve seen this helped time and time again. In fact, when an older child gets on the table, the treatment will initially cause them to get squirmy as it begins to trigger their nervous system. I’ve found that it’s good to tell them ahead of time that this might happen and that they are to lie still and just deal with it for 30-40 minutes. This way we can, literally, get it out of their nervous system. It works very well!
There are a few other simple things that you can have him do at home, too, to help…like sit him on a knee-height ball at the computer or TV or table instead of a chair. This helps stimulate proprioceptors in the joints which helps, studies have shown.
Every person is different, so it’s hard to know exactly how many treatments he might need or how long it might take, especially if he’ll sit on a ball and, perhaps, change his diet a bit. Usually, we get a good idea after 2-3 treatments how it’s going, having some comparison over this short amount of time.
