Strange Therapy

The great thing about writing a beauty column is that I get to sample all kinds of things I ordinarily would be too afraid to try.

Like Cranial-Sacral Therapy, for example.

“What the hell is Cranial-Sacral Therapy,” you ask?

Well, I’ll tell you this: It’s offered now in quite a few spas and physical therapy offices. Also? It’s very, very, very strange.

I wrote about my Cranial Sacral Therapy experience in this week’s issue of Her Nashville.

The full text of the column is below.

Beauty, Uncensored: Cranial Sacral Therapy

It’s not easy to feel good about yourself when your massage therapist tells you you’re the most knotted-up client she’s ever had.

“I was working on your back,” she said in befuddlement, “and I was feeling what felt like bones, in places where bones couldn’t be!”

Oh, God.

I had imagined I would float out of that appointment, blissed out and peaceful. Instead, I felt more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I was a walking freak show, so full of kinks that even a trained physical therapist was powerless against the gnarled deformity I called my back. Clearly, I needed relief.

In desperation, I searched the Internet for a way to ease my pain that didn’t involve multiple bottles of wine or recreational drugs. And that’s how I learned about something called Cranial-Sacral Therapy, or CST, a practice available at several locations in and around Nashville.

I’ll spare you the florid details of how CST works, because I’ve read multiple explanations, all of which are contested, and none of which really make any sense to the average Josephine. Suffice it to say that it’s based on the principles of the body’s ability to heal itself, and has something to do with unblocking the cerebrospinal fluid that supposedly flows through the body. The CST practitioner uses light touch, gentle movement, and often, some New Age-y mojo to allow the body to unclog these obstructions and get back into alignment.

What really got my attention was the promised return:  better energy, relief from migraines and tension headaches (which have plagued me since I was a teenager), and relief from neck, back and shoulder pain. Several locations in Nashville offer CST; I made an appointment at Cosmic Connections, the location closest to me, and went in to get my um, fluid unblocked.

First, Brooke, my “Healer,” as she calls herself, asked me to lie down on a massage table, fully clothed. She put her hands on the tops of my feet and stood that way for a long moment.

“I’m sensing a lot of trouble in your lower body,” she said finally. “Do you often feel like you’re disconnected from your legs and feet?”

What? I had a lot of problems, but that wasn’t one of them. “No,” I said.

“Your spine forms an s-curve that starts at your knees and goes up to your neck,” she said. And she got all of that from touching my feet? I wanted to believe, but doubt began creeping into my brain.

After that, Brooke spent the hour basically holding her hands on different parts of my body and breathing deeply. From time to time, she’d take an arm or leg and move it around a little. And while she did it, she talked.

“Does your right knee ever bother you? Did you have an old knee injury?”

“No.”

“Were you in a car accident at one point?”

“No.”

“When did your migraines start?”

“In college.”

“Did you suffer some sort of trauma then?”

“No.”

“Did you break your foot once?” Ding ding ding! Finally, she had gotten something right.

“Yes, I did, about two years ago.”

“Was it this one?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t actually remember, but admitting that seemed lame, if you’ll pardon the pun.

She nodded. “Right now, I can feel your foot reliving the trauma, as it goes back to heal itself. I can actually feel the fall.”

At that moment, it occurred to me that I hadn’t been able to drive when I broke my foot. Which meant that I had broken my other foot, not the one she was holding.

“Oh,” I said. “Wow.”

My stomach gurgled. “Always a good sign when your tummy gurgles like that,” she said. “That’s a sign that your body is responding.”

“Actually,” I said, “It’s a sign that I forgot to eat breakfast.” OK, I didn’t really say that. But the snickering kid of my subconscious sort of wanted to.

As you can probably imagine, the whole thing was so odd that I had trouble relaxing at first. Lying on a bed with Tibetan chants playing in the background, though, I began to drift. By the end of the hour, I felt peaceful and blissed out — just as I had wanted to feel when I left my massage. Interesting.

When it was all over, I paid Brooke, got in my car and called my husband.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Oh. My. God,” I said. “It was totally not what I had expected.” I tried to explain what had happened. “I want to believe in it,” I said, “but I’m having trouble. How on earth could someone just touching me in different places do anything? How?”

“Yeah,” Hubs agreed.

“However,” I continued, “I can’t explain it, but right now, I’m in a really, really good mood.”

“But that’s probably because you got to relax for an hour,” Hubs said.

“Yeah, probably,” I said. And that’s where this story ends. Or does it?

The next day, my son’s cries dragged me out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:50 a.m. Operating on less than six hours of sleep ordinarily would have meant a low-energy, cranky sort of day. But surprisingly, I felt OK. Taking advantage of the situation, I made pumpkin bread for breakfast. I cleaned the kitchen. I played with the kids. I did some writing. I made an elaborate chicken lasagna and put it in the refrigerator for dinner that night. I wrote out a grocery list. I did the laundry. I looked at the clock. Only three hours had passed. Whoa.

All day long and into the night, I got things done. I took my daughter to a birthday party. I had guests for dinner. I put the kids to bed afterward and watched a movie with my husband. And rather than feeling harried and exhausted, I felt … great. That was yesterday. Today has been much the same way.

At some point, I realized that, given the circumstances, this kind of prolonged energy boost was highly unusual. And then it hit me that I had been feeling this way ever since my appointment with Brooke.

And so while I can’t see how Cranial-Sacral Therapy could possibly, possibly work, I’m curious to see how long I’ll continue feeling this way. And I sort of want to go back for another appointment in a few months (if Brooke will even agree to see me again after reading this story!) to find out if I feel this way again. Because I have to admit that it’s … nice.

If you’re curious about Cranial-Sacral Therapy, you can make an appointment with Brooke by contacting her through the Cosmic Connections website. A 30-minute appointment is $40, and a 60-minute appointment is $80, but she’s offering an hour for $60 through the month of November.

CST also is offered at Blue River Canyon Day Spa in Brentwood and the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative Health, (where I imagine the experience is considerably less New Age than was mine), among other places.

And that’s Cranial-Sacral Therapy, uncensored.