What Is CranioSacral Therapy?
CranioSacral Therapy is a powerful yet gentle form of bodywork focused on restoring balance and healthy movement within the craniosacral system and the fascia throughout the body.
How Is CranioSacral Therapy Helpful for a Newborn?
During birth, a baby’s head molds to fit through the mother’s pelvis, and it’s normal and necessary for the cranial bones to override each other during labor. After birth, these overrides and other accommodations in the skull should resolve on their own. When they don’t, they can interfere with proper cranial nerve function, potentially contributing to colic, or breathing, swallowing, digestive, or sensory-motor difficulties. Birth itself can be physically and emotionally stressful for a baby, and CST can address that tension, along with the effects of a precipitous or prolonged labor, vacuum extraction, forceps delivery, or cesarean birth.
Colic alone affects a meaningful share of babies — estimates range from about 10 to 40 percent of infants worldwide, typically peaking around six weeks of age, and it accounts for a notable share of pediatric visits in a baby’s first few months. If you’re in the thick of it, you’re far from alone.
What Are the Benefits of Treating Children?
Children’s bodies are remarkably resilient. They tend to correct quickly and easily, since they haven’t spent years organizing themselves around physical or emotional restrictions the way adults have. Left untreated, those same restrictions often take more time and effort to resolve later in life, causing pain and dysfunction in the meantime.
CranioSacral Therapy may be helpful for a range of childhood conditions, including chronic middle ear infections, infant colic, headaches, learning disabilities, sensory integration issues, breastfeeding difficulties, autism, developmental delays, chronic pain, mobility difficulties, ADD/ADHD, cerebral palsy, genetic disorders, neurological conditions, and reflux, among others.
A quick, honest note on the research: a handful of small randomized trials have found CST helpful for infant colic specifically, showing reductions in crying time and improved sleep. That said, the overall body of research here is still limited, and a broader review of the evidence found the results more mixed than those individual trials suggest. I view CST as one supportive tool among several, not a guaranteed fix, and I’m always happy to talk through realistic expectations for your child’s specific situation.
What Should My Child Expect in a Treatment?
Children rest fully clothed on a massage table, or in a parent’s lap for infants. I assess the subtle patterns of tension in your child’s body and gently guide it toward release using light manual techniques. Some children release emotion or cry during a session, but the techniques themselves don’t hurt babies or children — the pressure used rarely exceeds about five grams, roughly the weight of a nickel.
Most children find sessions relaxing, and babies and kids often sleep longer than usual afterward. Sessions typically run 15 to 30 minutes, depending on your child’s tolerance and needs. It’s worth knowing that the work doesn’t stop when the session ends — the body often continues releasing restrictions over the following days.
Who Performs CranioSacral Therapy?
CranioSacral Therapists are usually healthcare professionals — MDs, NDs, PTs, LMTs, LMs, LNPs, and RNs — who’ve completed additional training in CST. It’s worth asking your provider specifically about their pediatric CST training, since the techniques used on children differ subtly from those used on adults, given that a child’s cranial bones are still developing.
I offer this work in my office and would love to answer any questions you have. Contact me today.
— Dr. Faith Christensen
Sources: Treatment of Infant Colic with Craniosacral Therapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Is Craniosacral Therapy Effective? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Infant Colic — PMC