Infants Carol Gray of Portland Oregon, www.carolgray.com/ is both a midwife and very experienced CranioSacral therapist. Recently she has begun to teach cranial classes specifically about working with Infants. Such courses are very rare in the world. Last month I had the pleasure of taking her course in Portland. Throughout my 32 years of practice I have worked with children of all ages including newborns. It was a pleasure to study with Carol again and see the latest developments of her work. On the whole infants are easier to change than adults. Changes can be made in minutes with babies which would require hours of work with an adult, or even be impossible. In babies most of the joints between the bones in the skull are much looser than in adults. Babies also have more total cranial bones, since several sets of bones fuse in the adult into a smaller number of mobile bones. From her expertise as a midwife Carol brought into the course a great deal of information about pregnancy and delivery. In the last trimester of pregnancy the baby has little room to spare and babies always get into asymmetric and sometimes very uncomfortable positions. The birth process involves several twists and a lot of pressure to come through the birth canal. Many of the babies who came to the class for us to work with had very much the same kinds of problems in their heads, necks and elsewhere that I see in adults. This brought home to me how much of what I work on was present at birth. There are many factors in successful nursing. One of them is displacement among the facial bones; another is tension in the floor of the mouth and throat. During the class we watched a couple of babies go from significant challenges with nursing to much more ease, in the space of just a few minutes. As nursing problems are often complex, advice from a lactation consultant is also essential. To find a lactation consultant see www.breastfeeding.com/directory/

There is more to Joints than meets the eye Recently French Osteopaths Jean-Pierre Barral and Alain Croibier have discovered that often when we perceive a joint capsule as tight, the real issue is physical tension in nerves and or blood vessels to the joint capsule and surrounding tissue. About 30 years ago it was recognized that impact injuries such as hard fall, or car accidents injure arteries and nerves so they no longer stretch and glide through tissue. This causes a great deal of stiffness and pain. Early on this was recognized as a problem for muscles and for internal organs. Most recently it has been discovered that physical tensions in nerves and blood vessels will give a joint the appearance of stiffness. If this is true trying to treat the joint capsule itself is slow going. Gently stretching the nerves and blood vessels produces more rapid results. I have been working with the nerves and blood vessels to nerves for some years. Later this month I will study directly with Barral and Croibier to learn the most recent developments in this arena. www.barralinstitute.com/ A middle aged professional woman came to me complaining of chronic headaches, jaw joint pain, neck pain and stiffness and upper back pain and stiffness. She had tried several kinds of treatments over the years with no lasting results. Her history included a motor vehicle accident when she was a young adult. While there were no broken bones and only minor external injuries, her pain dated from that accident. As the first treatment session unfolded it became clear there were substantial tensions in all four of the arteries delivering blood to the head. All four of these arteries arise near each other from the arch of the Aorta, the largest artery in the body. In addition to the tensions running up into the head the same tensions continued down the arterial tree into the torso and out into the arms. During the first treatment session part of this arterial physical tension pattern was relieved. The client reported an immediate lessening of her headache. She also felt her mind had greater clarity. These changes lasted into the weeks and months to follow and additional treatments further improved this situation. Perceptible change from this kind of vascular treatment is usually fairly quick, however sometimes the situation is complicated enough that 2 - 3 treatments are necessary to feel substantial results. This client was fortunate to have a situation that was somewhat less complicated so that noticeable reduction of symptoms was immediate.

Economy The current recession presents challenges for all of us. I have not raised my fees for the past three years while the cost of most things I purchase have risen. In real dollars the fee for services is now significantly below what it was when I began practicing in 1977. As of September 1, 2009 there will be a $5 per session increase to $125.

Course offerings During 2009 I have offered for the first time a one year long course in functional treatment methods. At the half way point this course is so far very successful and I will offer it again in 2009. The most commonly used varieties of functional methods are unwinding, direct, and indirect technique. There are however about ten more less common methods including flossing, Hoover technique, mixed direct and indirect, and middle barrier techniques. Experience with all of these gives a therapist a larger toolbox with which to approach each client. Some tissue types are likely to respond better to certain techniques, and some techniques are contraindicated for other tissues. Most body tissues will respond to any of several techniques but better to some than others. For the next offering this course will be expanded to 15 months. In addition there will be a separate 15-month yearlong course on the cranial base. This will include all of the bones of the cranial base, intracranial membranes, cranial vasculature, cranial nerves and upper cervical vertebrae. For this and other course offerings see www.jeffreyburch.com/home/jb1/smartlist_4