The 📝Craniosacral Therapy Glossary collects the terms used when 📝Craniosacral Therapy appears in a Somatic Realignment Therapy session note, defined in plain language for clients; the rhythm and fluid language here describes what practitioners report feeling, offered as an experiential model rather than settled physiology.
Glossary
C
- 📝Cerebrospinal Fluid — the fluid around the brain and spinal cord whose subtle motion the work attends to.
- 📝Cranial Base Release — light holds at the base of the skull, where the neck meets the head.
- 📝Craniosacral Rhythm — the slow, tidal motion practitioners report feeling at the head and sacrum.
- 📝Cranium — the skull.
D
- 📝Diaphragm Release — soft holds at the pelvic floor, the breathing diaphragm, and the top of the ribcage to let those horizontal tissues soften.
- 📝Dural Tube — the membrane sleeve running from skull to sacrum that, in this model, links the two ends of the system.
F
- 📝Five Grams — the touch used, about the weight of a nickel.
H
- 📝Holding — resting the hands still and waiting for tissue to change rather than pressing.
L
- 📝Light Touch — the defining quality of the work; nothing is pushed, thrust, or adjusted.
- 📝Listening Hands — hands placed to sense rather than to do.
M
- 📝Membranes — the layers wrapping the brain and spinal cord that this model treats as able to carry restriction.
O
- 📝Occiput — the back of the skull, one of the most common holds.
S
- 📝Sacral Hold — a hand cradling the sacrum to feel and follow its motion.
- 📝Sacrum — the triangular bone at the base of the spine.
- 📝Settling — the quieting most receivers report during and after a session.
- 📝Still Point — a pause in the felt rhythm that often comes with deep relaxation, which the practitioner may invite with a gentle hold.
- 📝SomatoEmotional Release — Upledger's term for emotion surfacing during craniosacral work; experiential, not psychotherapy.
- 📝Stillness — the quality of the session compared with compressive massage.
T
- 📝Temporal Hold — hands cradling the sides of the head above the ears.
- 📝Thoracic Inlet — the ring at the top of the ribcage where the neck meets the chest, a common release site.
U
- 📝Unwinding — slow, spontaneous movement of the head, neck, or limbs that the practitioner follows rather than directs.
- 📝Upledger — John E. Upledger, the osteopathic physician who developed the contemporary form.