In 1939 William Sutherland, a practicing Doctor of Osteopathy, announced his discovery that the structures of the central nervous system, like the heart or like the way we breathe, expand and contract in rhythmic motion. He called it “primary respiration” and claimed that the proper functioning of this pulsation was essential to life and health. If the primary respiration got out of kilter, resulting in disease, health could be restored by a process of manipulation and adjustment that came to be known as craniosacral therapy.
This practice flourished for a time but was largely overshadowed by allopathic medicine. With some few exceptions, DOs now follow virtually the same path of medical training and practice as MDs.
Andrew Weil describes how, under the guidance of Dr. Robert Fulford, he began feeling heads to see if he could detect cranial impulses:
“At first I felt mainly my own pulse, but as I practiced I began to feel the subtle breathlike motion that Dr. Fulford considers the most vital expression of life. At least I felt it in people who had well-running primary respiratory mechanisms. Once he asked me to feel the head of a woman who, he said, had no detectable cranial impulses. She had been in several bad accidents, one twenty years before, and now suffered extreme fatigue, insomnia, migraine headaches, weak vision, poor digestion, and increased susceptibility to infection. Her head felt like a bag of cement, a dead weight, the rhythm of life not present. After several sessions of treatment, her cranial motions began to return, and as they did, her health began to improve.”1
Dr. Fulford had so trained his sensitivity of touch that he could feel a human hair under seventeen sheets of paper!
If this is news to you, and you would like to enjoy the thrill of experiencing this primary rhythm for the first time, follow the instructions below by Gay Hendricks:
“Lie down on the floor or on a comfortable and firm surface. Stretch your legs out, and rest your arms at your sides.
“While you are resting, touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Feel with your tongue that the roof of your mouth is shaped like a dome. Place your tongue in the center of the dome. Use a very light pressure with your tongue—as if you were ‘listening’ with it.
“In a moment you may notice that the dome of the roof of your mouth is in motion! It flattens slightly every three to four seconds, then rounds upward again every three to four seconds.
“What is causing this movement is our new-found friend, the cranio-sacral rhythm.”2
Notes
1. Andrew Weil, Spontaneous Healing, p. 31.
2. Gay Hendricks, Conscious Breathing, p. 96.
HyC