Cranial Sacral Therapy for Tinnitus
A Client’s
Report-- Julian Cowan Hill
Winter
2000 Quiet – Journal of the British
Tinnitus Association
Two years ago, having been told there was nothing to be done for his tinnitus, Julian Cowan Hill went for craniosacral therapy. At that time he was unable to distinguish the sound of a phone ringing from the noise in his head. The treatment convinced him to change his profession and train to be a therapist himself.
Can
Craniosacral Therapy help tinnitus?
‘craniosacral therapy has given me an insight into the power of healing and how much you can do to help yourself and others’
Lying back on the couch, I felt the craniosacral therapist rest his hands gently on my feet. Almost immediately I felt something, I didn’t know what exactly, respond. A sensation spread up my legs as if they were somehow expanding or filling up. As this feeling became stronger, I felt myself relax into the couch, as if my body was letting go. This process seemed to happen all by itself, only interrupted by an occasional twitch in the leg. Suddenly a layer of pressure I didn’t know was there, gave way and I heaved a deep sigh.
He put his hands under the base of my spine and I became aware of a kind of floating sensation. To my amazement, I felt my back stretching and stretching, although he wasn’t pulling me. Somehow my back was straightening out of it’s own accord and I felt I was inches taller. With each contact he took up, I felt something moving and freeing up, leaving me with a sense of relief, and sometimes a feeling of warmth. As he started working around my head, I started to drift off to sleep.
Then it happened, my tinnitus changed pitch. The irritating ‘chirping cricket’ noise that had been getting louder and louder over the last year, suddenly changed its tune, as if the therapist had his finger on the tuning button and was trying to get clearer reception on a radio station.
My first reaction was shock. I had to hold onto the couch as I felt the thing I was most used to, the very background of my life, change. I found myself fumbling around to try and adapt to this new sensation. I couldn’t believe that someone had ‘touched’ my tinnitus.
When I left 20 minutes later, the noise was unsettled, floating in and out of different pitches. Suddenly it would stop and then come back at a different pitch, reminding me how it had been years ago. I was amazed.
A couple of months later I went on a week’s introductory course on Craniosacral Therapy, during which we received hours of treatment every day, as we practiced on each other. A few days after the course I woke up one morning with silence in my head for the first time in 17 years. I remember sitting on the side of my bed in silent disbelief and that was enough for me to sign up for the whole diploma course.
Since then I have received dozens of treatments, but only a couple of times have I felt a direct connection with my tinnitus. In retrospect it was fortunate that I had a reaction so immediately, as it changed my career, and indeed my life.
Today my tinnitus is still there, but is very unobtrusive and only gets noticeable when I drink too much alcohol, get overtired or stressed. In many ways tinnitus has become a built-in health alarm system that keeps me aware of how I am feeling inside, reminding me to look after myself before I get run down or feel out of kilter.
During the craniosacral course I set up a project to see if this treatment could help other people with tinnitus as it helped me. The Guildford Tinnitus group provided 10 volunteers. After half a dozen treatments everybody reported a greater sense of well-being and relaxation. Some felt more energy, more mobility in their joints and started sleeping better. To my delight, others noticed a reduction in their tinnitus and were less distracted by it.
Here are some comments from people who participated in the project:
‘ After my second treatment, my tinnitus stayed at a very low level for about ten days … During the treatment the noise seemed to reduce into the distance”.
‘Though there has been no change in my tinnitus (I’ve had it for 30 years) I was much taken with the reaction in the general sinus area and base of the skull. How is this possibly with such gentle hand movements? I feel sure that this area of research into tinnitus could help sufferers.’
‘On two occasions, after treatments, I felt the noise was marginally less high pitched, however, as my tinnitus is not very acute it is hard to be specific.’
‘Relief of tinnitus during treatment especially during head massage’.
‘My initial sessions helped to reduce tension and I felt more relaxed, they did not help to reduce the frequency or level of my tinnitus, although later sessions did result in some benefits. The level of my noises seemed to reduce in intensity and have not been so intrusive.’
Interestingly, those who noticed an improvement have not come back for further treatment. The more I experience this work, the more I find this pattern in successful treatments. Sometimes the change needed to let go of something like tinnitus can be unattractive or undesirable, so people do not continue. It is almost as if some people do not want to let go of their problems. One of the many findings to emerge from the project, is that symptoms appear to have their own pecking order. The body seems to know what is most important and releases the most urgent patterns of discomfort first. Therefore, if your tinnitus is low down on this list of priorities then other things may need to happen before your tinnitus improves. I think you will agree from the above that Craniosacral Therapy does indeed have a positive effect on tinnitus and can help alleviate the symptoms.
what is Craniosacral Therapy and how does it work?
In Craniosacral Therapy the therapist works with what is called the ‘craniosacral motion’ that flows through every system in the body, several times every minute. It feels a little like a rising and falling movement, or expanding and contracting motion that can be felt in a bone, membrane, body organ, or indeed any part of the body. Just as you can feel the heartbeat pulsing through any part of the body, sensitive hands can palpate the craniosacral motion in any part of the body too.
Some regards this motion as the body’s energy system, whereas others prefer to understand it as feeling subtle movements of the fluids supporting the central nervous system (cerebrospinal fluid) and how this is pumped around the core of the system.
A more scientific approach leads us into the fascinating world of quantum physics. Here craniosacral motion is put down to laws governing the way things resonate with each other. Everybody remembers when they have hummed gently in the bath, and the whole room has boomed back in resonance. Scientists have shown that one person’s energy field can influence another’s if they resonate within the same limits. In this light, if you place the ordered energy of healthy tissues next to chaotic energy, eg diseased tissue, then the latter will slowly start to resonate with the stronger and more orderly organisation. Another example of resonance can be seen when you swing a large pendulum with smaller pendulums swinging at different rates nearby. Over a period of time they will all eventually swing together at the same rate. Quantum physics has opened up new levels of understanding that has come a lot closer to explaining how ‘morphic resonance’ and healing work. This research is continuing to change the way we view and deal with health. Once we have started to pick up the craniosacral motion, the body starts to heal in a most noticeable way. Rather than impose external techniques on the body, which can cause the whole system to tense up, Craniosacral Therapy gently looks at what is happening to the craniosacral motion and allows restrictions deep within the system to release.
will
Craniosacral Therapy help you?
I have found that most people respond really well to treatment. People are constantly surprised by how easily they relax and let go. Most start becoming aware of their own energy after just a couple of treatments and develop a sensitivity that can help them restore greater levels of health and start to understand where their symptoms are coming from.
Everyone is different. Maybe you will respond to Craniosacral Therapy as well as I did. The good news is that you will know fairly quickly if this is the right approach for you, when you will feel more comfortable in your body and experience a feeling of greater energy. Let the treatment speak for itself.
Tinnitus
“Deafness and tinnitus may go hand in hand,
tinnitus being the reaction of the organ of Corti in the cochlea to some kind
of stimulus such as inflammation or pressure, whilst perceptive deafness is the
failure to react to that stimulus.
Tinnitus is a common and very distressing disorder, experienced as a
continual noise in the head and ranging from a high pitched whistle to a deep
booming vibration. Occasionally it is
the result of the rushing of blood through the arteries around the temporal
area, and can be brought about by high blood pressure or anaemia, but the great
majority of cases, of which there are about 100,000 in the
It has been recognised that certain drugs, especially antibiotics such as streptomycin, can lead to both tinnitus and deafness, and that aspirin and quinine both cause ringing in the ears. Tinnitus may arise after a head injury, as a result of exposure to excessive noise, after lead poisoning or as one of the symptoms of Meniere’s disease or otosclerosis.
Arteriosclerosis of the artery supplying the cochlea is thought to cause deterioration of the organ leading to tinnitus in some. There is also a theory that tinnitus results from the minute currents set up in the region by mercury fillings in the teeth, and some have found relief by having their fillings removed.
Paradoxically a hearing aid may help control the symptoms by allowing more sound to stimulate the cochlea which pushes the tinnitus into the background. In a similar vein a masker can be used to generate sound of the same pitch as the tinnitus and this may even suppress the noise completely for a few hours so it is most useful in the evening before going to bed to ensure a good night’s sleep.
- UNDERSTANDING DISEASE
John Ball