Craniosacral Therapy

Craniosacral therapy (CST) or cranial osteopathy is a form of alternative therapy that uses gentle touch to palpate the synarthrodial joints of the cranium. CST is a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterised as quackery.

It is based on fundamental misconceptions about the physiology of the human skull and is promoted as a cure-all for a variety of health conditions.

CST was invented in the 1970s by John Upledger as an offshoot of cranial osteopathy, which had been devised in the 1930s by William Garner Sutherland.

Medical research has found no good evidence that either CST or cranial osteopathy confers any health benefit, and they can be harmful, particularly if used on children or infants.

The basic assumptions of CST are not true, and practitioners produce conflicting and mutually exclusive diagnoses of the same patients.