Peoplemapsdavid

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Hello, Peoplemapsdavid, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 13:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Soapboxing

Please don't use Wikipedia as a soapbox for your opinions. Your edits at Craniosacral therapy were rightly reverted because you gave undue weight to your own side of the argument, and used a first person perspective that is inappropriate in an article. I have restored the meaning of your addition, with the caveat that it is the opinion of one proponent of CST. That gives the argument its proper weight in the context of skeptics v. proponents. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 13:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

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Possible conflict of interest

Hello, Peoplemapsdavid. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Craniosacral therapy, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Avoid writing in the first person in articles as this creates an impression that Wikipedia is speaking in your/your organization's voice.
• Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
• Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 16:26, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality

David, as you have already identified yourself as connected to the Craniosacral Therapy Association of the United Kingdom, you clearly have a conflict of interest and your neutrality regarding the topic of Craniosacral Therapy is clearly in question. Your recent edits at Craniosacral therapy (here and here) bear out the problem. I would suggest that it may be best if you step away from this topic. You should make talk page requests if you feel the need to correct facts, but leave the page editing to others who are not closely involved in the subject. Of course, you are free to ignore this suggestion, but continued contentious editing on the page is not likely to help matters and may get you blocked. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:59, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

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WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 20:08, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Minor edits

Thank you for your contributions. Please remember to mark your edits, such as your recent edits to Craniosacral therapy, as "minor" only if they truly are minor edits. In accordance with Help:Minor edit, a minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Minor edits consist of things such as typographical corrections, formatting changes or rearrangement of text without modification of content. Additionally, the reversion of clear-cut vandalism and test edits may be labeled "minor". Edits like this one, which was very similar to a recently reverted edit, are clearly not considered minor edits. Using the feature in this way may be seen by others as an abuse of the feature or even as a way of attempting to circumvent dispute resolution. Please be sure to mark your edits as "minor" only if they truly are uncontroversial minor edits. Thank you. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 23:18, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Your input is requested

David,

There is a discussion ongoing at Talk:Craniosacral therapy#WP:OR that could use your input. Specifically, the issue of the CSTA's claims about the research methods to be used for Alternative Therapies needs a source. You have pointed to papers by Carol Black and others, but these are not sources, per se. What we need is a source that verifies that the CSTA (or any other CST proponent) has cited these papers in their pro-CST arguments. Without that citation, that fact may well be deleted. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 15:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Craniosacral Therapy

I gather that you practice CST (or did I misread something?) in the UK. If this is so, perhaps you could help elucidate the topic in general, as well as some specifics on what the actual treatment is. Since I had never heard of CST before finding the (terribly written) article about it here on WP, I knew nothing of it coming in. I approached this article starting, naturally, with the most basic questions. What is CST? Is it a therapeutic procedure? What ailment(s) does it purport to treat? What are the mechanisms of treatment? Basically, how does one perform a CST session? (And one other important question: How did it get the puzzling name "craniosacral"?) I think the article could be improved more by explaining the basics of the treatment itself than by quibbling over the validity of this study or that paper. And if you do CST treatments, that puts you in the unique position of being able to explain what it is and how it goes. Of course, we'll need published sources for article content, but I'd be happy to start with just a simple explanation here in user talk. I would like to help improve the article in this way, but I've been having a difficult time finding reliable sources, or ANY sources that deal with the mundanities of performing a CST treatment session. It's as if defining the treatment procedure would be revealing some sort of trade secret. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 20:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Wilhelm! I'm willing if the others are OK with me putting something on the CST talk page (or is it just for you here)? It'll be a few days before I can do this - I'm pretty fully committed to other things right now. Thanks also for your earlier advice notes -they were appreciated as a new user trying to find my way around without much time available to read through everything! Peoplemapsdavid (talk) 10:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. If you have something you want to include with the article, I would suggest putting that at the article talk page, but if you just want to answer some of my questions informally, putting that here would be fine (no citations needed if it's just you and me talking). Whenever you get around to it will be fine. I'll be pretty busy next week myself. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 17:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Wilhelm! Perhaps it's best I just discuss the issues with you for now. If this leads to a conclusion that something useful can be added to the article talk page prior to suggesting further changes to the Wikipedia page, that's fine too!

Craniosacral therapists don't diagnose, do not deal with symptoms and nor do we either prescribe or discuss medication. We're not medical but we are a subset of what is usually described as Energy medicine. The science behind energy medicine usually starts with what is described as the living matrix which is a continuously interconnected system comprising virtually all the molecules of the body linked together in an intricate network: the skin, the connective tissue and the cellular structure together provide a communication system and one also capable of storing information such as emotional or traumatic experience. Touching the skin brings us into contact with the whole of the living matrix.

I find the best explanation of the science behind energy medicine is that provided by Dr James Oschmann in two books: Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis; and Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance. I find this science much more satisfactory than the hypothesis put forward by the originators of craniosacral therapy, the science of which has rightly been criticised; and which made me decide not to challenge the assertion that CST is pseudoscience.

We haven't carried out any research on how CST works, preferring to concentrate on showing that it does work. Research is very expensive and beyond our means. It can only really be afforded by pharmaceutical companies who have absolutely no reason at all to want to help us. We've used available funds to set-up a building block approach to providing evidence that CST works. This will take time but there are now about 50 worldwide small studies (not ours - just carried out independently of each other by interested groups). Taken together, these show that clients receive quantifiable benefit from receiving CST treatments; and that it would be worthwhile setting up much bigger trials. This where the lack of funding prevents us from doing this; but the collection of small trials and my own and other therapist/client experience is the primary reason I object to the quackery description. It isn't quackery. I've seen too many people helped!

CST takes two year's training in the technique plus a further one year's study of foundation anatomy, so 3 years in all. It's a touch therapy. Clients remain fully clothed; and we use a number of hand holds on various parts of the body to sense where the body is holding tensions. These may arise either from pain, from injury, or from emotional or traumatic experience. There is evidence that 'intent' plays a part in a healing process i.e. the intent to help the client to heal; and placing the hands on the body results in the held tensions relaxing. This is why I find the living matrix science so fascinating because it possibly explains why touching the body can lead to changes within it.

It's thought that the internal tensions inhibit the flow of energy and fluids through the body; and prevent whatever healing mechanisms the body has from working. These are primarily the flow of peptides from their source of origin within the body to the receptors for which they're intended. The body manufactures a little over 50 chemicals which jointly enable health and the effective running of the organs and other mechanisms within the body.

I agree with you that it would be better to remove the description of how CST works from the Wikipedia page. No-one knows how it works and until this is done, whatever is written is likely to be rightly described as pseudoscience. It would be better to focus on whether it works. The science quoted against CST is wholly about how it is claimed to operate; not on whether it works - and this isn't clear from the CST page as it's written. The handful of cases I've seen quoted as meaning that CST doesn't work are taken from other healing modalities such as chiropractic. They are not trained to be CST therapists and are not using CST therapy.

To answer your other questions: we're not allowed to describe conditions that we treat but I've had clients with a very wide range of injuries and illnesses, a number even referred informally to me by GP's who prefer to remain anonymous. The description craniosacral was provided by the early pioneers in the use of CST who thought that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid through the spinal column to the brain running from the sacrum (the centre-most part of the pelvis) to the cranium was part of a significant healing process. As already discussed, I think this is part of the 'nonsense' which will remain until work is done on finding out how it works.

Lastly. one of the primary reasons for saying that clinical trials are not the right approach for testing whether CST works (apart from the enormous cost of setting-up a large clinical trial) is that clients report receiving unexpected additional benefits from receiving CST in addition to any improvement they may or may not experience in the condition for which they first seek help. These are mostly to do with their feeling much better about themselves; better able to deal with that original condition; or even discovering unknown talents or handling their key relationships much better. Clinical trials do not enable these added benefits to be recognised. Peoplemapsdavid (talk) 13:34, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for that explanation. I think I understand it at least a little better now, as it confirmed some of what I have found hinted at but unstated. It sounds like it's not so much that the therapist is performing manual manipulations as that the client's body is responding systemically to gentle stimuli applied by the therapist. Not to be contrary, however, but I don't think we should remove from the article any explanation of how CST works, though we should perhaps tone down some of the argument over validity. Contrariwise, I think we should elucidate the technique for our readers by better explaining what CST is. See joint manipulation for an example of what I'd like to see for techniques such as this one which are poorly understood by the general public. The technique you describe sounds similar to western reiki, using specific hand placements. Am I correct in understanding that these are not necessarily on the head (as if to manipulate cranial synarthroses), but may be on other parts of the body as well? Am I also correct in understanding that manipulation of cranial synarthroses is a technique often used in CST? Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 16:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Craniosacral therapy is similar to Western Reiki, Wilhelm, in that it's purely hands-on with no manipulation involved. They are very different from each other philosophically. I do both but only Practice craniosacral therapy professionally. I tend to use reiki for distant healing.

We treat the whole body - not just the cranium - and we do not manipulate the cranial synarthroses. I think that sounds more like cranial osteopathy which focuses on the cranium. Cranial osteopathy should not be confused with craniosacral therapy all though they often are! Peoplemapsdavid (talk) 12:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

You're right! I got it mixed up again (some earlier versions of our CST article made little distinction between the two). Cranial osteopathy is more concerned with the synarthroses, and CST grew from the idea of circulating CSF and became more concerned with the flow of CSF, though I still have the impression that mobility of the cranial bones is still considered a central concern of CST practitioners (isn't this one of the components of Sutherland's "Primary Respiratory Mechanism"?), or has the CST community moved away from these in recent years? Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 00:15, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

An interesting question, Wilhelm, in that it's still taught in the current absence of an alternative, more science based hypothesis. I'm sure some therapists still believe it relevant. I don't - and nor do many others - except in one analogous sense: the flow of cerebrospinal fluid into and out of the brain produces the impression (to CSTs) that each of the paired and singular cranial bones appears to move in its own unique way. So, for example, the paired temporal bones appear to have a different and unique to them rhythm which differs not only from the paired parietal bones but also every other cranial bone. No-one knows why this is so - it could either be a sense of fluid or energy flow - and it's only relevant to us when we're 'drawn' to that area of the cranium and can sense which of the cranial bones is not 'moving' in its accustomed rhythm. Another key cranial bone is the sphenoid which is the only one that's attached to all the others. Although we don't deal with symptoms, we usually find an arrhythmic sphenoid associated with hormonal problems (the pituitary gland 'sits' in it). I also often find an arrhythmic sphenoid linked to vision problems and bad backs; but I don't 'buy' Sutherland's theory: I think it more likely to be the product of an energy dysfunction within the body's energy flows. Peoplemapsdavid (talk) 11:57, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey Peoplemapsdavid, just wanted to see if that edit you did on the craniosacral therapy page today was what you intended since the formatting is incorrect. Was that edit what you were trying to accomplish? I would have another look at it. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:22, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, TylerDurden8823! You're right in that the words used were intended (in the interest of providing a better balance between the conflicting views) but the references are numbered incorrectly. I'm a relatively new and infrequent editor so still learning! I'll have another look at it later today when I have more time. Peoplemapsdavid (talk) 07:55, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Anytime. The formatting is still incorrect on the page, so definitely make sure you go back to it. Just my thoughts here, but I thought I had the whole lack of randomized controlled trials aspect summed up pretty concisely before. I think it was better the way it was before. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 00:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Can you remind me what you said before, Tyler, or tell me where to find it? Apologies for asking this but I'm pushed to find the time to read up all the Wikipedia guidelines. I'll reinstate what you said tomorrow if you can tell me what you said. I'm also having difficulty understanding how to correct the references formatting! Peoplemapsdavid (talk) 15:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)