Headaches, Migraines, and Concussions

Chronic headaches can occur when neck muscles that connect to the base of the head are overextended. The neck muscles that attach to the skull pull on the fascia in the head causing headaches.  Unfortunately, the prevalence of cell phones, tablets, computers, and other gadgets greatly exacerbates the wear on our bodies.   

Concussions are no joke. If your child is in a sport that has the risk of repeated concussions know there are potential long term effects from even the mildest of head injuries.  Craniosacral therapy can support the glial cells of the brain which clean up and guide new growth of the neurons. The brain doesn’t have the pain sensors the rest of the body has. Concussions can have 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

Young athletes rarely talk about what they are feeling in their bodies. Often times, a child will brush off an injury and get back into the game, or take another run down the slope. Play through the pain as it were. Resilience forces the body to re-organize to work around a limitation. Over time these adjustments to injury accumulate as strain patterns in the fascia. As we grow and age it often shows up as pain with limited range of motion and function.  

Every injury has inflammation which slows down healing.   Fascia work can be very gentle and can open up the area of injury in its 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. 

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.