Treatment Facts


  • Make sure you are Non-judgmental.
  • Some people believe this type of treatment to be energy work.
  • This extremely gentle therapy uses no manipulation
  • Using a soft touch generally no greater than 5 grams or about the weight of a nickel.
  • Therapists use their hands to "listen" to these tiny movements.
  • The client will usually lie on a table and fully clothed.
  • Therapists try to release any restrictions.
  • CST therapists will also work in the mouth of the client.
  • Small cranial pulsations can be felt with the fingertips.
  • A session can last from 45 to 60 minutes.
  • There are various parts of the body that are called “listening stations and they are at the: ankles, thighs, midriff, shoulders and head.
  • Laying your hands at the base of the client’s skull is usually coincidental with areas of the body that has holding patterns, trauma, or dysfunction.
  • They tend to let their hands tell them what to do.
  • When working with the head, never have both hands on the same side of the head.
  • Light touches to the head, spine, sacrum, ribs, and extremities.
  • The pulse can be felt from side to side or front to back.
  • It takes many times to feel comfortable in feeling the cranial rhythm pulse, people that have more hands on jobs are usually able to feel the pulse.
  • Do not confuse the client’s respirations with the cranial rhythm pulse.

    Technical Facts
  • The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) has an inherent rhythmic motion.
  • The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) fluctuates.
  • There are 26 bones in the head and they are all in slight rhythmic motion along with the CNS, CSF, membranes, and sacrum.
  • The cranium and the sacrum work together as a unit.
  • Documented physiological cranial rhythm pulse occurs in a 6-12 cycle-per-minute pattern and some people say 10 to 14 cycles per minute.
  • Almost every bone in the head has a sutural junction with the sphenoid confirming and the key role that the sphenoid plays in the integrity of the cranium.
  • The cranial rhythm pulse has its own rhythm and it can start and stop on its own (It’s usually not as fluid as our pulse).
  • The theory of CST gets to be very in depth.
  • Cranial Flexion is also known as inhalation phase.
  • Cranial Extension is also known as the exhalation phase.
  • The occipital base is said to move posteriorly/inferiorly.
  • The sacral base is said to move anteriorly/inferiorly.
  • The mandible is the freely moveable joint in the head.
  • The main cranial bones are the frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, sphenoid and the ethmoid.
  • The joints between bones of the skull are immovable and called sutures.
  • The main facial bones are the mandible, maxilla, palatine, zygomatic, nasal, lacrimal and the vomer.
  • The brain produces a fluid which circulates within the head and up and down the spine. This is called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). There is a rhythm, or pulse, created by the pumping of this fluid (like the pulse from our circulatory system, but much fainter).
  • The bones throughout our bodies are in continual motion as the CSF is pumped. The cranial sacral rhythm is detected through the palpation of the bones. Each bone has its own natural movement. When a particular bone has a non-normal movement, it indicates that there is a restriction in the flow of CSF.
  • All the nerves in our body originate somewhere along this path from the brain down the spinal cord.
  • "SomatoEmotional Release" By exploring which movements the body accepts and which it resists and then asking the body to move in the direction of least resistance, we can often induce spontaneous movement. Then, sensing any position in which the cranial rhythm turns off (recall that this will be a "significant position"), we may hold the body in that significant posture and facilitate release of stored traumas. Upledger calls these stored physical and emotional traumas "energy cysts". Release of these locked up energies sometimes brings subtle and sometimes profound change.
  • “Dural Tube” The Dura, one of the membranes of the brain and spinal cord, adheres to the bones of the skull. Gentle traction of the skull can therefore be used to unwind restrictions in the dura and the dural tube that surrounds the spinal cord. This can be of great importance in some conditions.
  • "Fascial unwinding" This is a sort of no-force Rolfing. When we lay our hands on the body we create a slack in the tissue. Any tension or contracture in the tissue will tend to take up, to pull in, that slack. If we follow any movements we feel, and then take over the holding for the body, we give that tension the opportunity of releasing. When we take over this holding function it is as though the body can then say to itself, "I don't have to do this any more," and can let go. So in this manner we can unwind old tensions in the tissues.