Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) is one of the least-known therapeutic tools in the alternative medicine world – and one of the best-kept health secrets on earth. That’s a shame, because BCST carries many health-enhancing benefits. In this series of posts, I’ll discuss some of the main reasons you may need BCST.
In my practice, I frequently encounter people who have been traumatized, or even have PTSD, which results when trauma becomes stuck in the nervous system. It isn’t just combat veterans who suffer in this way; common causes include birth trauma, pre-birth trauma, illness, abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, or spiritual), loss of one or both parents, some dental procedures, falls, accidents, surgery, and waking up during surgery, otherwise known as anesthesia awareness. (For a fascinating and thoroughly unsettling look at this last phenomenon, see this Atlantic Monthly article: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/the-distress-of-waking-up-under-anesthesia/380538/)
As Ged Sumner and Steve Haines put it in their book Cranial Intelligence, “Trauma can be defined as anything that overwhelms our resources.” They go on to say that “One of the most basic questions … is ‘Am I safe?’ If the answer is no, our physiology prioritizes its responses to fight or flight or freeze. If the underlying physiology continues to respond as if there is no safety…. This has huge consequences for health and healing.”
BCST addresses these issues through its positive effects on the nervous system. As the biodynamic craniosacral therapist makes light, gentle contact with the client’s body at specific points while maintaining a calmly alert, quiet presence, the client’s body resonates with the inner stillness the therapist has cultivated through years of training and practice, resulting in a feeling of safety. As the process develops, it has a positive effect on the vagus nerve, the huge nerve that is responsible for communication between the gut and the brain, and that is essentially in charge of the rest-and-digest (as opposed to fight-or-flight) response. Typically, even traumatized clients experience deep rest during sessions, and frequently drift into a restorative sleep. BCST is an excellent method of unlearning anxiety and conditioned fear responses and helping clients feel safe, and is an invaluable tool in helping people recover from trauma and PTSD.