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Cranial Osteopathy

"Allow physiologic function within to manifest its own unerring potency rather than apply a blind force from without." 
Dr. William Garner Sutherland (1873-1954)

The cranial concept of osteopathy was discovered by Dr. William Garner Sutherland, D.O. (1873-1954) who was a Graduate of the American School of Osteopathy in 1900. He studied directly under the founder of osteopathy, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still. During his studies one day while studying a disarticulated skull he suddenly noticed that the articular surfaces of the temporal and parietal cranial bones were "beveled, like the gills of a fish, indicating articular mobility for a respiratory mechanism."

 

With further study and practice Dr. Sutherland began to feel a rhythmic change in shape and motion of the bones of the cranium. He was able to correlate these movements in the cranium to movements of tissues throughout the entire body. He could associate these movements with dysfunction of any part of the body to include bone, muscle, soft tissue, organs and nervous system. He named this motion "Primary Respiration."

 

The five phenomena of The Primary Respiratory Mechanism (PRM) are:

 

     1. Inherent motility of the central nervous system

     2. Fluctuation of the cerebrospinal fluid

     3. Mobility of the intracranial and intraspinal dural membranes

     4. Mobility of the cranial bones

     5. Involuntary motion of the sacrum between the ilia

 

​Why Would I Need Cranial Osteopathy?
​
  • Newborn treatment - Reflux, difficulty breastfeeding, birth trauma
  • Newborn Plagiocephaly, Torticollis, shoulder or hip problems
  • Traumatic Brain Injury
  • Concussions
  • Infections, Lyme Disease
  • Neurological and CNS Disorders
  • PTSD, Anxiety, Addiction
  • Much more

© 2015 - 2019 by Shawn Marie Higgins, DO.  All right reserved.

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