Hello everyone and Happy New Year from Cherionna! Welcome to the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Class forum. Here we have an opportunity to stay in touch between classes and after graduation, to inform and inspire each other, and to exchange ideas, questions, and discoveries. I have not worked with this format before so please pardon my simplicity of form here!
I would like to begin by sharing excerpts from an email exchange on CHRONIC CEREBROSPINAL VENOUS INSUFFICIENCY I had recently with another experienced RCST, which I thought would be of interest to you as students of this work.
Here is an excerpt from the original email posing the question:
The following links lead to some interesting new research re MS and the possible connection between iron deposits in the brain and 'changes in the flow of cerebrospinal fluid'.
Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency
Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency2
I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or insights that come to you re what a BCST perspective might have to offer in this matter.
Here is my response:
Thank you so much for sharing this article. I have just gotten to this and am excited by what it suggests. Our work can be so helpful with venous sinus flow, as well as flow of CSF. It would be amazing if we could have a research study of MS patients receiving BCST. If the hypothesis in this study is true, our work should have profoundly healing effects. Here are some thoughts. This hypothesis could explain how our work can be helpful with MS.
Here are some thoughts. If the veins outside the skull are narrowed, venous sinus drainage would be impaired, which can lead to many issues, including impaired immune function. I see our work not only helping with CSF flow, but it also can help with softening of connective tissue, including that in the walls of the veins. When these tissues become more fluid, they have the potential to spread and widen, like everything else in the body. Returning to a more embryonic, less differentiated state, they can re-form themselves more according to the original blueprint. This could support venous blood flow, as well as CSF flow in and around the brain. The narrowing of blood vessels generally relates to smooth muscle constriction in the vessels walls, which is regulated by the autonomic nervous system. I see this condition also benefitting from our work via its regulating effect on the ANS.
As a Continuum Movement teacher and practitioner, I am also excited by this research. Continuum works very directly with connective tissue to support it in returning to a more fluid, sol state, when it has become more solid and compressed. I know people who have used Continuum very successfully to help turn around their MS symptoms. This research helps make more sense of how this could be working.
Wikipedia also has some information on this condition and its possible relationship to MS at: Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency Wikepedia