Can CranioSacral Therapy Help Your Kid Sleep Better?

A twelve-year-old girl, Isabelle, (not her real name) sat on my treatment table. She brushed a long curl of red hair off her face, revealing dark circles under her eyes. Although she looked tired, she vibrated with the urgency of a hummingbird on an IV drip of caffeine. A month prior, I had treated her dad for insomnia and after one session of CranioSacral Therapy, he slept through the night for the first time in four years. Now, he was bringing his daughter for some help.

The first part of my conversation with Isabelle was pretty predictable. She told me about stress and anxiety at school. Her shoulders hurt from carrying a 40 lb. backpack all day. Then I asked about sleep. She told me she slept about 4-5 hours a night.

“What’s that like?” I asked.

“I survive,” she said. “There’s just always something else to do.”

At twelve years old, she was already wearing concealer to cover up the bags under eyes. Her situation may sound extreme, but Isabelle’s story is shockingly common. In today’s world, kids face social and academic pressures that don’t hold a candle to what I experienced 25 years ago.

Stress and Anxiety from School

Between academic and social pressure, long hours of sitting, late nights of homework, and early mornings of classes, kids today face stress levels far beyond their capacity to deal with it. 40 percent of parents say their high school child suffers from stress at school and it is taking a toll on their health. The pressure to make good grades, involvement in extracurricular activities, and an average of 1.5-3 hours of homework per night leaves kids with far less than the 8-10 hours of sleep they need to support cognitive function development. Not to mention, the average 8-10 hours is exactly that: an average. Your child (and honestly, most adults) may need more than that to replenish neurological resources. When a student’s nervous system is already stretched thin from all the demands of school and aren’t sleeping on top of everything, their physical and mental health suffers.

Some of the consequences of poor sleep in kids and teens include:

• Headaches

• Insomnia 

• Depression and anxiety

• Increased risk of injury. (Damaged tissue repairs itself during sleep.)

• Mood swings

. . . Not ideal for anyone, let alone someone who needs all the resources they can get to support physical growth.

CranioSacral Therapy and Neurodivergence

Our understanding of neurodivergence is still in its infancy. We are in the early stages of learning how brains work and how neurodiversity is not only an asset, it’s necessary for our survival as a species. Unfortunately, mainstream culture still comes with a lot of stigma and not much support for anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of qualities that serve our capitalist society. Researchers like Gabor Mate (The Myth of Normal) and Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking) consistently challenge the notion of what we consider “normal.”

Until our culture catches up and starts embracing a wide variety of ways of thinking, many of us are just trying to get by without falling apart. For those with sensitive nervous systems, especially kiddos, it can take a lot of energy just to function in a world that is woefully ill-equipped to support them. It’s exhausting, overstimulating, and can wreak havoc on their minds and bodies. CranioSacral Therapy supports the nervous system by providing an environment where your child can take a break from being on high alert and into a place where their body and mind can rest. Better sleep is one of the hallmark benefits of CST, providing a chance for the body to replenish resources for more resilience, better mood, and enhanced emotional awareness.

How CranioSacral Therapy Can Help

CranioSacral Therapy (CST) is a gentle, non-invasive manual therapy that works with your child’s nervous system to create balance throughout the whole body. When we are stressed, overworked, or on edge, we’re in a state of fight-or-flight. In biological terms, that means our brain switches over into a trauma response that protects us from threat. A hundred thousand years ago, that threat may have been a tiger coming toward the village. Today, we don’t have to worry about tigers, but our brain still perceives threat in other ways- like the fear of failure, or a need for perfection. (Social media does not help, by the way.) You could say “that’s silly, of course I know failing isn’t the same threat as a tiger.” But you can reason yourself out of this logic all day long and your brain won’t know the difference until it feels safe. To create safety, you need an environment that reduces threat long enough for your nervous to switch from fight-or-flight into rest-and-digest. The more often you can cultivate that environment, the easier it will be for your brain to feel safe so it can relax and- you guessed it- sleep!

Unlike massage, chiropractic, or acupuncture, a session of CranioSacral Therapy doesn’t look like much. There is no pounding on muscles with a meat tenderizer, no forceful cracking of joints, and no needles. Instead, the practitioner’s hands rest gently while holding the head, an arm, a leg, or a hip. We start by assessing which areas of the body carry restrictions and then use our hands to guide movement through the places that are stuck, opening up new pathways for circulation, communication through nerves, or cerebrospinal fluid. Congestion of joints, particularly in the skull, can contribute to a buildup of pressure and cause headaches, back pain, and neck tension- all of which have adverse affect on sleep. Relieving those areas soothes the nervous system for better sleep and emotional resilience.

So. . .What Next?

It’s unlikely that we’re going to change the entire education system and all the external stressors overnight. But we CAN help kids develop the tools to handle stress and anxiety by supporting their nervous systems and promoting better sleep. We all want to leave the world better than we found it, and supporting the next generation is vital.

If you’re wondering if CranioSacral Therapy is right for your child, feel free to reach out to me at erin@erinboyt.com (Seriously, I love questions. Send ‘em!) And if I’m not the right person to help, I can point in the direction of someone who is.