Lineage of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

The heart of biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BCST) is the whole-bodied witnessing of the life present within the body. That in every bone, vessel, cell, and breath, the creative energy of life is here. BCST practitioners hold space that is founded in trusting that the palpable presence of life is able to guide transformative healing.  Practitioners’ soft and gentle attunement creates ease and flow for the rivers of life to move through. To speak of Life as Water honors that the water is our oldest ancestor. The deep symbiotic waters are where life emerged and these same waters continue to flow through bodies as blood, lymph, cerebral spinal fluid, and more. The waters in the earth are billions of years old, they continue to ebb into each other, whispering of the journeys through mountaintops, bogs, bones, cultures, trees, and stones. When we listen to the waters in the body, there is a sense of home and belonging, of the nourishment that the waters, chooses to pour through us, and animate these bodies. I begin the framing the lineage of this work with the waters and with the essence of life, because the breath of this work, of all life, is born out of water. 

In craniosacral work, the birth stories and embryological patterns a person carries are felt and respected as foundational and instinctual places that guide healing and becoming. When an element of the birth emerges during the session and is able to be witnessed in moving through a pattern that was stuck or incomplete, a healing cascade of shifts and re-alignment can follow. The expression of life can move more freely through the body when birth stories are heard.

One of the most common things people share with me during sessions, is that old memories presented themselves and came through with a new narrative that felt supportive and perspective shifting. When held in connection to the creative forces of life, the shapes and stories in our bodies can shift in ways that support life and liberation work, as truth telling, as growing ourselves big enough to honor the life and histories in ourselves and in each other.

Speaking about birth, ancestors, and lineage can be intimate and necessary work and is strengthened by ongoing listening, inquiry, and connection to past, present, and future. For the last decade, the field of biodynamic craniosacral therapy has been in a process of retelling its birth story in a way that centers truth, reclamation, and decolonization. This work has been invigorated and informed largely by the research of Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, by the writing of Susan Raffo, and supported by a number of BIPOC practitioners, including Ruti Wagaki. There are ongoing calls to acknowledge the indigenous roots of Osteopathy (where BCST is rooted from). Many BCST schools, including Body Intelligence who I learned with, and the accrediting body in North America, BCTA/NA,  are now in the beginning work of acknowledgement and reparations. However, these calls are still largely unmet by the Osteopathic community. 

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is rooted in the field of Osteopathy, as its creators were all osteopathic doctors. Osteopathy was developed by Andrew Taylor Still in the 1800’s, who was of European and Lumbee descent, who learned western medicine from his father who was a doctor. From 1853-1855, Still lived on a farm on the Shawnee reservation and was a doctor at the Wakarusa Mission in Kansas. Still learned from and was greatly influenced by the healing techniques of bone setting which was practiced by the Shawnee, Cherokee, Pawnee, and Potawatomi people who had all been violently and forcibly moved to this area during the Trail of Tears. After these two years, Still advertised himself as a lightning bone setter, practicing musculoskeletal and organ massage. He then he named his work as Osteopathic medicine and developed a school to teach Osteopathy. 

Until the past decade, the origin story of Osteopathy, and thus BCST, did not fully acknowledge the indigenous roots of this field. In promoting the field of Osteopathy, Andrew Still did not directly acknowledge how the Shawnee practices of bone setting were fundamental to the field. Both during Still’s life and in the present day, the context and violence of colonialism, assimilation, racism, and patriarchy have all influenced what cultures and peoples were honored and respected, and which were extracted from and left unnamed. Much of this historical cultural examination and the call for the recognition of the indigenous roots in this field has been led by Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, of Cherokee and Lakota lineage, who noticed similarities of Cherokee bone setting and Osteopathy. Through his ongoing research, he has found many similarities between osteopathy and craniosacral therapy and the 100,000’s years old practices of bone setting:

“Cherokee bodyworkers, reports Mehl-Madrona, who learned the method from two traditional Cherokee women, are masters at working with energy and the breath, and they also move cranial bones, seeking the ridges, albeit with more force than Craniosacral practitioners. They do this along with osteopathic-like massage and manipulation of musculoskeletal tissues, organs, and joints, as well as acupressure on points and energy channels (that, in fact, correspond to the meridians). They combine all this with gentle rocking and with narrative healing, both verbal and energetic, using storytelling, and dialogue with the musculoskeletal system and with the client, and intense breath work to ‘restore spirit’ to all parts of the body, when giving treatments that they commonly refer to as ‘doctoring.’” (from Nita Renfrew’s article)

William Sutherland was one of Still’s students, who later developed Cranial Osteopathy based on his findings that there is respiratory movement between the cranial bones. Sutherland’s research was foundational to those who created craniosacral therapy, which is a biomechanical practice created by John Upledger in the 1970’s. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, a number of practitioners at the Karuna Institute in Devon, UK, including Franklyn Sills, Claire Dolby, and Rollin Becker, moved away from a biomechanical approach of the body and created biodynamic craniosacral therapy. 

In 2020, Susan Raffo asks an important question in this article exploring the lineage of craniosacral therapy:

“What would this field look like if 170 years ago, grandfather Andrew, you took this idea of osteopathy, this movement between membrane and fluid, and you stated from the very beginning that this work has the possibility to not only support the realignment of bones and the softening of tissue, but it actually has the possibility to remake worlds? Not just in the balancing support of a human shape, or in the energetic way, the fluid body way, but in the way of infrastructure and what we teach in schools and the fact that ALL healing is collective, all trauma is collective. What if you said to your students, you can not learn how to listen to the body unless you also learn how to listen, to be in right relationship, with those who never forgot the things our people are trying to remember?... I don’t know what craniosacral therapy would be if the ferocity about abolition and some clear gut-based refusal to support all Native disappearance, was woven into every single class, every single student, not just as something to know but something to be, something to be.” 

Bodies carry culture, stories, and shapes of what was, is, and can be. Similar to the human body, the bodies of healing lineages are shaped and impacted by cultures they are nourished in and by white supremacy culture and colonialism. As the roots of bone setting continues to be acknowledged in the birth stories of BCST and Osteopathy, alongside the action work of supporting indigenous people, cultures, and sovereignty, the healing to birth worlds of justice and liberation may be more possible.

This is one drop in the waters of the telling of the BCST lineage. I highly recommend reading Dr. Mehl-Madrona’s research, as well as the other resources I am linking to below. My intention in writing this piece is to help carry the torch of truth telling. This feels fundamental to meeting the wholeness of how this work may be related to by clients and to frame some of the ways I am holding this lineage that I am a part of. If you are someone who is a part of the lineages and cultures referenced above and you feel harmed by anything shared, I will listen to you and seek to repair the harm. I intend to continue to show up with humility, space to grow, and care for the experiences of all those I am in relationship with. As a white person who practices healing work, I am committed to continuing to learn healing practices within my Ashkenazi Jewish lineage, unbodying white boded supremacy within myself and my communities, and supporting BIPOC led liberation and healing work. 

References:

Research article calling for Osteopathic field to acknowledge the Indigenous roots, and a comparison of Cherokee bonesetting and Osteopathic treatments. Mehl-Madrona, Lewis, Josie A Conte, and Barbara Mainguy. "Indigenous roots of osteopathy." AlterNative 19.4 (2023): 923-932. (a free trial is available on deepdyve to read this research in full. If you are able to financially support Dr. Mehl-Madrona’s work, you may do so here.)

Research article focusing on Dr. Mehl-Madrona’s findings: Traditional American Indian Bodywork, the Origin of Osteopathy, Polarity, and Craniosacral Therapy, Nita M. Renfrew, 1st published in Journal of Contemporary Shamanism, 2015

Education and Call from BIPOC BCST Therapists for Acknowledgement and Action from BCTA/NA:  Decolonizing Our Origin Story: A Pathway Toward Communal Healing, Ruti Wagaki. Cranial Wave 2022

On feeling the impacts of this history:aligning the relational field: a love story about retelling the creation of craniosacral therapy (and a lot of other touch-based bodywork as well), 2020, Susan Raffo. (as more research emerged, Susan gave updates to her piece in the footnotes)

On the history of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy: The Evolution to Modern Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST). From the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America website. Accessed Dec 2024.

On the history of Osteopathy and Andrew Stills:  Our Lineage. From the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America website. Accessed Dec 2024.