What is CST and what are the benefits?
CranioSacral Therapy focuses on profound listening to the body and then working to alleviate core restrictions.  It will enhance your general health, improve your spinal cord function, reduce accumulated stress, and work with your own natural mechanisms to enhance effectiveness. The therapy works by identifying the areas of the body that are holding stress and/or trauma, and through a process of gentle hands on manipulations, relieves the restrictions and rebalances the system. It involves all of the bones of the skull, face and mouth which make up the cranium and extends to the sacrum. The positive effect of the therapy relies to a large extent upon the client's openness to receive the healing and to their body's ability to self-correct.  In a therapy session, Virginia works with her clients through a  process of listening and honoring the body's innate ability to heal itself.  When called for she uses a process of therapeutic dialogue to assist her clients get to the core cause of a distress or disfunction in the body / mind/ spirit.  The benefits of the treatment range from total release of long held patterns and restrictions resulting in a return to normal function to an overall  feeling of balance and alignment. 

Because of Virginia's 20 years of experience as a channel for healing, she is able to combine her other therapies within a healing session as needed to help her clients in profound ways.

How is CranioSacral Therapy performed?
CranioSacral Therapy is performed on a person fully clothed. Using light touch - generally no more than the weight of a nickel - the practitioner monitors the rhythm of the Cranio-Sacral system to detect potential restrictions and imbalances. The therapist then uses delicate manual techniques to release those problem areas and relieve undue pressure on the brain and spinal cord.

A CranioSacral therapy session can last from about 30 minutes to 1 1/2 hours or more, however the typical session is performed in a one hour session.  First time clients are always scheduled for 1 1/2 hours. Sometimes the initial session is enough to correct a problem, or a series of sessions are arranged once an evaluation is made.

What is SomatoEmotional Release?

Have you ever had a physical injury that seemed to plague you long after the injury had healed? This is a very common problem with many people. Even when CranioSacral Therapy releases restrictions in body tissues, sometimes a release of emotional energy is necessary to fully discharge a trauma. In those cases, the CranioSacral Therapist may gently encourage a Somato-Emotional release.

Research conducted in the late 70's by Dr. John Upledger and biophysicist  Zui Kami led to the discovery that the body often retains the emotional imprint of physical trauma. The imprints, especially of intense feelings that may have occurred at the time of injury anger, fear, resentment leave residue in the body in areas called "energy cysts".

Although you can adapt to energy cycsts, over time your body needs extra energy to continue performing the day-to-day functions.  Then as years pass, the body becomes more stressed and it can lose the ability to adapt. That is when symptoms and dysfunctions begin to appear and become difficult to suppress or ignore.

Through SomatoEmotional Release, Virginia engages in imaging and dialoguing techniques that can guide her clients through an otherwise challenging encounter with long held emotions. The patient does not need to analyze the problem to release it. Often the body will spontaneously return to the same position it was in when the injury was first encountered. As this occurs the therapist can feel the tissues of the body relax as the energy cyst is released. Then the body is free to return to the optimal levels of functioning. This is a transformational process that leaves the patient feeling renewed and in a more balanced state emotionally and physically.

CranioSacral Therapy strengthens your body's ability to take better care of you. It helps alleviate a range of illnesses, pain and dysfunction, including:

                   ~ migraines and headaches
                      ~ chronic neck and back pain
                      ~ motor-coordination impairments
                      ~ stress and tension-related problem
                      ~ infantile disorders
                      ~ traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries
                      ~ chronic fatigue
                      ~ scoliosis
                      ~ central nervous system disorder
                      ~ emotional difficulties
                      ~ orthopedic problems
                      ~ and many other conditions