History of Biodynamic Craniosacral Pt. 1
Dr. Still, Dr. Sutherland, and Osteopathy in the Cranial Field
If you’ve been perusing my website, you probably already have some idea of what BCST is. But you may be wondering, “Where did this stuff come from, anyway?”
One of the things I like about BCST is that it is rooted in the science of osteopathy. Osteopathic physicians (DOs) have the same medical training as MDs, with additional education regarding the musculoskeletal system (our muscles, bones, and nerves) and training in using hands-on methods of treatment.
The father of BCST was William Garner Sutherland (1873-1954), who studied under Dr. Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917). Dr. Still started out practicing the conventional medicine of his day, including bleeding and purging. When he lost three of his children to meningitis, he wondered whether they had died of the disease or the treatment: a mercury chloride compound (mercury is extravagantly toxic) called calomel, then prescribed for many ailments. His helplessness to prevent the devastating loss of his family, together with the horrors he had seen as a Civil War doctor, led him to search for a better way to practice medicine. Over time, he developed a hands-on method of medicine that relied on musculoskeletal realignment to tap into the body’s ability to heal itself. This approach came to be called osteopathy.
While studying with Dr. Still, Dr. Sutherland discovered that the cranial bones in adults are not fused, as physicians were then taught; instead, each bone has motion, both of its own and in relation to other cranial bones. The idea was beyond the pale, but he couldn’t let it go. In a fearless display of true scientific spirit, Dr. Sutherland experimented on himself by using a leather helmet to immobilize his own cranial bones in different configurations. These experiments worried his wife, Adah, who catalogued the headaches, changes in personality, digestive problems, and coordination difficulties her husband suffered — simply from immobilizing different bones in his skull. (Adah documented these experiments in her remarkable book, With Thinking Fingers.) Dr. Sutherland learned from his experiences, eventually codifying his method as “osteopathy in the cranial field.”
How did all this eventually evolve into biodynamic craniosacral therapy? Watch for subsequent installments in this series to find out.