My First Craniosacral Session
A year after my car accident, I was mostly okay, at least from the perspective of conventional medicine. No broken bones, no dramatic injuries. But my body communicated a different story. I still carried tension patterns, nerve irritation, and an underlying sense that something wasn’t right.
I’d assembled a care team: chiropractor, bodyworkers, Feldenkrais practitioners. All helpful. All addressing pieces of the puzzle. Then one of them suggested I try craniosacral therapy.
I didn’t know what to expect.
That first session, after a normal intake conversation, I lay on the table while the practitioner placed his hands gently on my feet. The touch was light, also steady and grounded. He may have similarly held my sacrum, I don’t recall. Sitting at the head of the table, he then held my head and neck. The touch was so light it barely registered, but again it was solid and grounded. No manipulation, no adjustment, no pressure, but I did sense presence.
Something in my nervous system recognized it. A settling began, not forced, not directed, just allowed. For the first time in over a year, I felt held. Literally and figuratively. My body didn’t have to defend, brace, or manage. It could just be.
This is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but the predominant feeling was spaciousness and an unspoken invitation to settle and rest.
A feeling of openness, I hadn’t known I’d lost, washed over me.
Session after session, that settling deepened. Some days my mind would quiet and I’d drop into profound stillness. Other days thoughts would drift through, but even those felt softer, less urgent. Through it all, I could feel healing happening—not just in my tissues, but in how I related to my body, my recovery, my whole self.
I kept seeing other practitioners during that period. Healing isn’t linear, bodies are complicated, old injuries layer with new ones. But those craniosacral sessions created something I hadn’t experienced with other modalities: the conditions for my system to remember what it knew how to do.
Eventually, life demanded I get back to it. Work, family, obligations, I wasn’t fixed, but I was good enough to get back to life. Those sessions got shelved. Not forgotten, but necessarily set aside.
What stayed with me, though, was that feeling of being held. Of spaciousness. Of my nervous system finally being allowed to settle.