Cranial osteopathy is a manual medical treatment administered by doctors with a medical degree and extensive training in anatomy and physiology. This training makes it possible for them to identify the root cause of a structural problem and treat that, which is often an entirely separate area of the body than the problem spot.
One example is carpal tunnel syndrome, where structural strain in the abdomen can literally pull all the interconnected fascia inwards, so that just like the sleeves of a long sleeved shirt getting pulled up the fascia enveloping the nerves on your wrists becomes stretched very thin. Our wrists are designed to withstand overuse, but when the fascia is extremely tight, they cannot function the way they should.
Perhaps a more relevant example to this thread is my osteo tells me his most common patient is those who have already seen chiropractors for neck pain. He says often times they get mad at him afterwards, because he spent the entire treatment working on their back. "You didn't even touch my neck!" But he tells them do the "homework" he prescribed (super gentle exercises, like certain breathing stuff) and call him in 2 weeks. Sure enough, their neck pain is gone and they never need another treatment.
Now, our cases are inevitably more complex. But those examples give you a bit of an idea.
Cranial osteopathy differs vastly from chiropractic medicine. First of all, chiropractic medicine sees a bone out of place, and the instinct is to "fix" it. In osteopathy, if a bone is out of place and it is causing the body problems, that's because it is being pulled out of place, or if it is wobbly it's because a structural issue elsewhere is making the tissues surrounding that bone too flabby to hold it in place like they're supposed to. Everything on the body is interconnected. Chiropractic medicine forces the bones back into place, but without fixing the extensive interconnected web of what pulled it out of place to begin with, it will continue to revert back.
Another key difference is that cranial osteopathy is a more energy-based approach. Practitioners learn to feel what's called the "cranial rhythm", also known as the primary respiratory mechanism. It's basically a "pulse" originating in your spine and cranium that slowly expands and contracts independent of your heartbeat and breathing rhythms. This pulse can be felt throughout a healthy person's body, reverberating through all the tissues head to toe. It keeps every single cell it reaches in gentle constant motion, like the waves on a seashore.
You know how if you immobilize a joint for a long while, then try to move it, that joint will have difficulty moving or might be entirely immobile? A similar thing happens to tissues when a strain, tension, trauma, or structural issue blocks the primary respiratory mechanism from reaching that area. Lacking this continuous gentle movement, it becomes hardened and "cranky", impeding lymph and bloodflow, aggravating the nerves, and then causing issues for everything connected to it, and everything connected to THAT....and so on and so forth. A cranial osteopath will notice where they can no longer feel the pulse of the primary respiratory mechanism, and then trace it back to where they can feel it, and then address only the obstacle to that flow.
Once the body's own primary respiratory mechanism can reach those areas again, then you start healing yourself. As an example, my osteopath said my legs were "dead" in his words, when I first started seeing him. I was almost completely bedridden. Strains in my hips and scarum area prevented the primary respiratory mechanism from reaching my legs at all.
Trauma plays a very large role in structural problems. This is both emotional and physical. The best way I can describe this is how my ribcage was developed too far inwards, preventing me from taking deep breaths. It had been that way my entire life, but never diagnosed. I had a lot of anxiety during the years my ribcage was developing, so the deep, relaxed breaths that would normally push a ribcage to devolop the bones outwards so I had enough room for my lungs simply didn't happen. An emotional problem, causing a very obviously physical issue. Now cranial osteopathy could address the problem, but the treatment could only work if I was willing to also learn how to take deep breaths and to do so regularly. To this day, if I have several weeks of anxiety that results in me not breathing properly, my ribcage begins going haywire again because it's starting to revert back. Thus, cranial osteopathy is a treatment that can only work if you also address emotional stuff that contributed to the structural issues in the first place.
I had a lot of issues at the base of my skull area where the nerves and everything pass through to the neck. Cranial osteopathy has been my answer there. The relief was indescribable. When I was severe, I was experiencing times where I was almost completely paralyzed, and also times when the only time I could breathe was if my chin was all the way down to my chest. Something inside my neck was literally blocking my airways unless I was in that position, during these episodes. I was reading Jen's story and it sounds like there are a lot of parallels.
I apologize for the length. It's hard to know what to share, as it's such an extensive topic. I saw another osteo recently who said that she always knows when a patient has seen a chiropracter because she can feel the shock in the bones; it actually introduces further trauma to the body, ad she has to help the body unwind that before she can even begin to address the original structural issue the chiropracter was working on.
Final note: I never saw cranial osteopathy as "the" answer or "the" cure. When I began getting treatments it was for symptom relief only--cranaial osteopathy relieved pain and made it possible for me to rest deeply for the first time in many years. I was dying on multiple fronts, and had decided to stop pursuing treatment altogether. I only wanted to be made comfortable until I passed.
Cranial osteopathy resulted in me feeling my body beginning to heal from the inside out on a really core level. And even though I am now working a highly physical job part time, financially supporting my new husband and our dog, and virtually symptom free most days, I still do not tout it as the total cure. All I know is that it facilitated massive recovery for my own body to address a lot of its own stuff.
I hope that helps; let me know if you have more questions I can help with. I found this treatment from a friend here on PR I'd never met who flat out offered to pay for my first 2 treatments, that's how convinced he was it would help me. I try to pass on the knowledge whenever I can because it truly changed my life around from dying to getting my life back.
Wishing you the very best in your journey.
