Headaches, Migraines, and Concussions

Chronic headaches can occur when there is overdue stress on the muscles that attach to the base of the head.  Lots of kids lie in bed and use technology with no awareness of their head position.  People often tilt their head, raise their arms and fold in when they are on their technology.  In this position the chin is constantly tilted down and the neck muscles that attach to the skull pull on the bones of the skull.  This extended activity creates tension in the fascia of the head and can cause headaches. 

The skull has 22 bones.  The relationship of these bones can sheer, or get stuck and over time limit the natural movement within the cranial sacral system creating migraines. The origin of the tension or the strain can come from a physical trauma, or even from how bones of the skull adjusted after child birth. Craniosacral therapy has gentle techniques to identify and resolve these restrictions.    

Concussions can create additional challenges.  In addition to checking the freedom of movement of of the bones of the skull, there are often areas of the brain that need support as well. There can be individualized complications in addition to headaches such as difficulty with vision, balance, or cognitive dysfunction. An experienced therapist with good listening skills can assist the healing process.

Sports

Kids active in sports have an amazing knowledge of how to control their body, and often no awareness of what a pain free relaxed body feels like.  All the kids I work on, whether they ride horses or down hill ski, have incredibly tight back muscles and the bottoms of their feet feel more like bone than muscle.  These tension problems can show up later in the mid twenties often as chronic pain.   

These kids are also driven and don’t want to rest when they have an injury.  Every injury has inflammation which slows down healing.   Fascia work can be very gentle and can open up the area of injury in it’s acute phase to quicken the healing process.  The work is very effective getting blood to flow through knee and ankle injuries.  Often injuries are happening because other parts of the body are so tight that the place that is still flexible takes on more than what is natural for it to accomplish.  Opening up the muscles spasms away from the injury site will decrease the potential of a re-occurring injury. 

Child Development

BIRTH TO THREE
Craniosacral therapy is valuable contribution to the birth to three program.  It’s primary focus is to support the natural development nervous system.  I get excited when an infant who has a tight neck that connects all the way down to his foot gets the release I am looking for because I know the ease he will now have learning to roll over and crawl. 

Childhood is an amazing time filled with continuous opportunities for change, but so much in development is automatic.  Wouldn’t it be great if someone could meet your child exactly where he or she is and find the opportunity to facilitate what naturally occurs next?

STRABISMUS AKA EYE TURNS

Craniosacral techniques have been shown to correct this problem. Often it includes mouth work to address the sphenoid-palatine complex.

This work has helped children with the simplest challenges of ball catching to the more difficult challenges that occur with developmental delay. If your child has a specific problem with walking on toes, tripping, crawling, eye-hand coordination, penmanship, visual processing, posture, body awareness, is injury prone, or having a unique learning challenge, this work can be a valuable step in his or her development.  

Our Foundation for How We Perceive and Organize Our Actions is Established in Early Childhood 
We each learn our own unique subset of ways to organize our movements. The foundation for how we organize our movements follows how we develop as babies and toddlers. In child development there are milestones that measure the onset and repression of reflexes that effect how we perceive and know the world. How we transition through these milestones creates a strong or a weak foundation. The goal of my work is to strengthen the foundation.

Why my Techniques are Different From Other Therapists. I spent 10+ years in graduate research building a unique understanding of the common denominators for sensory-motor integration. The framing of my work is holistic. The framing of the questions were different from the medical based disciplines of Occupational or Physical Therapy. It was in a branch of psychology called Ecological Psychology. In this disciple an individual develops in her environment as one system. Her movements create her perceptions and her perceptions direct her movements. In a medical based model each system (vision, hearing, balance, proprioception) is studied separately, each generate separate data and then rely on complex computations by the brain to interpret and coordinate a response which is another set of computations. There are no common denominators across systems. I have a completely different awareness of human design. From this, I have developed a unique set of variables that I work with that are different from and a valuable asset to facilitating and supporting the goals of other therapists. When your child reaches a plateau with his or her therapist I may have a fresh insight into the problem.

RESULTS
Recently I worked with a fourteen month old who was having difficulties turning his head to the left, his hands and arms were often eliciting the startle reflex, one eye lid was partially closed, and he was not walking. Over a series of sessions we were able to resolve all of these issues.

I work with kids of all ages. Lots of small issues. I had a 10 year old child who was miserable going to gym class. When I watched him walk he always started with his left leg. His right leg followed him. It never crossed midline. We worked together for a short series of sessions, he gained the control of his right leg and was able to pass his gym class.

Follow the series of images below that capture the change in a 6 year old's pencil grip.  He began with a fist grip, then moved to good finger control but continued to use large gross motor movements.  Notice his hand is off the table anchored by his elbow.                     

The biggest challenge was to get his hand to rest on the table.  It took some thinking but we figured it out!  It was all about the wrist.  I ended up using a large crayon with broad wrist movements to color in a section gently grounding the wrist to the table.   He got it instantly!  The last picture is of a circle within a circle demonstrating his newfound control.

A ten year old came in with ADD.  During sessions he would talk and I would hear how brilliant and amazing his mind was.  During one session he went silent for 10 minutes.  At the end of the ten minutes he immediately asked, "How long was that?".  I said 10 minutes, to which he immediately responded, "I was sleeping".  To which I responded that his eyes were open.  He followed up with "I can do that".  He had the experience and it is now part of him.  

One of my first clients was a fourteen year old severely autistic child who would bang his knee into his head. I worked with him and his aid in short 5 minute blocks of time. I was able to separate out a relationship between his upper and lower body. What changed is that he began banging his elbow against his side. He now has the choice of creating the stimulus he is desiring without hurting his head. The set of variables I work with have been effective, and once experienced there is nothing to practice or learn.

I believe that the nervous system will self correct when the opportunity arises, and I know how to create opportunities.

How is Pediatric CranioSacral Therapy Performed?
The primary focus of CranioSacral Therapy is on the central nervous system. As the control center of the body, the central nervous system influences every other major body system and function. A typical session takes place in a quiet setting with a child resting, being read to, or playing on a massage table.

The therapist hands rest lightly in different places on the body evaluating the CranioSacral rhythm. This is followed by a gentle placement of the hands on the body to elicit a release of any restrictions felt. The hands stay in this position over a period of time until the release is complete.

Parents read or play with the child as he or she lays or sits on the massage table.