Healing Trauma and Stress: How Craniosacral Therapy Can Support Your Nervous System?

Did you know that our nervous system constantly scans for safety six times per second? Our nervous system acts like an amazing antenna that's designed to keep us safe. When we walk along a path and step near a snake, we jump away before even realizing it consciously. A whole array of hormones rushes through our bodies, ready to mobilize against the threat. This is how our nervous system works to keep us safe from perceived threats. When we face stress or overwhelm, these very old parts of the brain work to keep us safe beyond our conscious control.

This is why feeling overwhelmed or shut down is often beyond our ability to reason out of it. It's a nervous system thing, not a cognitive thing. Therefore, if we want to heal from trauma, anxiety, or overwhelm, we need to focus on the nervous system. Talking therapy has its benefits, but working at the body level is how we can rewire and build the nervous system's capacity for safety.

Our nervous systems can get stuck in protective mechanisms such as fight, flight, and freeze. It takes a lot of energy to stay in these modes of being, and it can take a toll on our mental and emotional well-being. Body-based therapies such as Craniosacral Therapy can help the nervous system downregulate out of these protective mechanisms and back into balance.

With Craniosacral Therapy, the therapist co-regulates with the client, recognizing cues of safety and well-being. The client is encouraged to build the skill of building their felt sense of their bodies and being able to map sensations. As this develops, they can be with difficult and overwhelming sensations in a grounded way, becoming more resilient.

Through regular sessions of Craniosacral Therapy, the client's nervous system learns what it's like to be grounded, peaceful, and self-regulated. This starts to be the default mode rather than being mobilized, running quick, dissociated, or shut down. As a result of experiencing this in the therapy space, being more peaceful, open, grounded, and social becomes more prevalent in their lives.