Lisa Prentice Craniosacral Therapy

10/03/2025

‘WE ARE SHAPED BY OUR EXPERIENCE’

As I think of Franklyn these words play in my head. I heard him repeat these words often, over my long years of close association with him and they guided my clinical practice.

Southerland was fond of the proverb ‘As a twig is bent, so the tree will grow’. Meaning that events in early life affect our future health. In particular, he was describing the impact of physical forces exerted on the head when we are born and how these forces mould the growth pattern and potential of the whole body, as we progress through life.

Franklyn’s phrase, WE ARE SHAPED BY OUR EXPERIENCE, expands that idea beyond the structure and function of the physical body to encompass the emotional, psychological and spiritual dimensions of human experience. The living body becomes a storehouse for our biography.

So, when we put our hands somebody, we are touching their life history, their whole being. That opens the door to a more authentic, compassionate engagement with those who seek our help.

08/13/2025

07/22/2025

It's World Brain Day! We've all got one. Here's a fine example featured in Kaishi Hen (Analysis of Cadavers), an anatomical atlas from the dawn of experimental medicine in Japan, published in Kyoto in 1772.

More from the book here: https://buff.ly/2Y6emkA

03/31/2025

"Scientists have known for more than a century that, at the moment of death(opens a new tab), CSF flows from the spine into the brain. This suggests that the living brain somehow keeps the stuff moving, but no one knows exactly how or where it flows."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mysterious-flow-of-fluid-in-the-brain-20250326/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJXjcFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWKFJOSAoGVz8JXEYsHkJMpfDTNtD0ZLX5Lpr19z0AwfRAMwnBlfVFleag_aem_44Y4a74TMLOkWkvxlXannQ

A popular hypothesis for how the brain clears molecular waste, which may help explain why sleep feels refreshing, is a subject of debate.

01/08/2025

"A truly revolutionary idea can take 20 to 40 years before it’s thoroughly adopted,” says neurosurgeon Kevin J. Tracey of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., “at which point everyone says how we needed that all along.” The vagus vine’s power may be partly mythical, and the research on it is by no means conclusive or clear. But some scientists say it offers hope for millions suffering from complex, hard-to-treat conditions."

The healing potential of the brain’s most interconnected nerve intrigues researchers

09/09/2024

A continuous flow of cerebrospinal fluid from the central to the peripheral nervous system is something Cranial osteopaths and Craniosacral therapists have long intuited. It's also something that is explored in the somatic work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Now new research is emerging to support these "felt-sense" explorations.

Cerebrospinal fluid flow extends to peripheral nerves further unifying the nervous system
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is responsible for maintaining brain homeostasis through nutrient delivery and waste removal for the central nervous system (CNS). Here, we demonstrate extensive CSF flow throughout the peripheral nervous system (PNS) - Our findings suggest that CSF plays a consistent role in maintaining homeostasis throughout the nervous system with implications for CNS and PNS therapy and neural drug delivery.'
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3259
Image credit - Karola En.art

08/20/2024

Is our understanding of art limited to what we can see? Can touch be experienced as art? Dreaming the Asklepion is an exploration of cranial touch, movement and language in the art gallery.

07/06/2024

"New experimental techniques are showing that in addition to controlling movement, the cerebellum regulates complex behaviors, social interactions, aggression, working memory, learning, emotion and more."

The cerebellum is responsible for far more than coordinating movement. New techniques reveal that it is, in fact, a hub of sensory and emotional processing in the brain.

06/25/2024

BIODYNAMICS IN CLINICAL PRACTICE

Rollin Becker gave us the inspiring concept of the Inherent Treatment Plan. A wonderful principle which explains how the Intelligence that Sutherland attributed to the Potency is in charge of any healing process. In much of our clinical work we rely on this principle – starting with relational touch we attune to the tide, deepen into the holistic shift and wait for a sequence of priorities arising from within to guide our hands.

Yet frequently in sessions that is not what happens. The Inherent Treatment Plan cannot be accessed. This may be because of excessive traumatic activation, acute physical symptoms or chronic disease. Because so much Potency is tied up in protecting the organism, in centring the historical insults stored as tissue memory, that there is not enough ‘free’ Potency available to initiate and direct healing. In those sessions, we have to rely on supporting safety in the rational field and using our diagnostic and therapeutic touch to point the struggling system back towards its blueprint of optimal function.

Image: Healing Hands by Rotem Zirlin

05/14/2024