Hi, this is Dr. Doreste with the Cranial Release Technique® back in the car, another mobile video here in Long Island, New York. Fabulous weather we’ve had. It’s May 31, and as we’re ready to enter June, I wanted to follow up with sort of a commentary to the last video. I did get quite a few responses about what I feel while performing a cranial release, what the patient experiences, and I just wanted to dive a little bit deeper because some I’ve received some questions, and I just wanted to follow up on a few of those topics.
So, one of the things I notice when I perform the cranial release. The patient is on their back, typically on a chiropractic or massage table. I’m holding the head in a very specific way with a very specific contact. And many times, as I mentioned in that last video, it sometimes feels like you’re just pushing on a bowling ball. Sometimes you’ll feel the head sort of expand and contract under your hand. But one of the other things that I very frequently experience is a tremendous amount of heat coming off the top of the patient’s head.
Now, understand when I’m doing the Cranial Release Technique®, basically my head is right over the top of the patient’s head. In the beginning, I started noticing it, and now I experience it almost all the time, just a tremendous amount of heat sort of escaping from the top of the head. Not the same as if you just put your hand over the head of a patient or yourself while engaged in performing the Cranial Release Technique®. It’s like a tremendous amount of heat that’s coming off the top. Many times the scalp will get very red, and again, to me, what’s happening is the typical patient that’s getting on the table, the one leg is short, the one leg is tight, one side of the pelvis is higher than the other, there’s cranial distortion, the shoulders are misaligned, the spine is misaligned, the brain is functioning, as we covered in previous videos, one hemisphere is overactive, one hemisphere is under active, and the long and short of it is they’re stuck in a sympathetic nervous system state. They’re stuck in the fight-or-flight mechanism.
Life is very stressful for many people, and our biology is to handle that stress as best we can, and sometimes that’s by running, fighting, or retreating away somehow and doing something to respond to that stress. But any way you slice it, the body gets stuck in what’s called the sympathetic nervous system. Blood pressure’s up, heart rate is up, you’re ready to run, you’re ready to fight, you’re ready to attack, you’re ready, period. You’re ready.
Now, they get on the table with me, now I apply the Cranial Release Technique®, and one of the most interesting things I found in the beginning of this work was when you apply the Cranial Release Technique®, somehow, for some reason, we have different theories on that, the body sort of shifts from a protect-defend-survive mode of sympathetic to one of more of a heal-relax-balance parasympathetic side of the nervous system. So, while I’m holding that contact and the nervous system is shifting, one of the things that happens when you shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic is the diameter of all the tubes in the body, including the capillaries, open. The smooth muscle, which contracts the capillaries, the arteries, the veins, the intestines, all the tubes in the body, now become more relaxed and open, and with more opening comes greater blood flow. With greater blood flow comes the hyperemia, the redness that you see, and comes the heat.
Now, that’s one possible excuse. It’s one possible theory as to why this is happening, and that may be the one. That may be it. And that may be why, you recall, when I worked on the surfer in Las Angeles—sorry, Las Vegas—he said, “Wow, I feel heat running down my leg,” because we took him from a survive-protect-defend mode to one of rest and relaxation.
So, that’s the simple answer. But again, as the practitioner, as I’m there at the top of the table holding the contact, performing the Cranial Release Technique®, a tremendous amount of heat typically comes off. So much so that many times, by the time I’m done applying the cranial release, my face is sweating from the heat that’s hitting me in the head and the face.
Okay, so I wanted to describe that. And then other people said to me in some previous emails, “Well, gee, we love that story about the surfer. Would you share some other strange things that you’ve seen while working on a patient?” So, another very interesting account was, again, at a seminar. Because at seminars, I work on a lot of different practitioners. A lot of this happened to be another chiropractic seminar in Dallas, Texas. And we were working on someone, and this is a chiropractor, six foot two, six foot three, 250 pounds, big boots, big hat, you know, blue jeans or a cowboy—I mean, you know, I’m from New York City, I don’t see many cowboys walking around, so this was a real—you know, lived out in the sticks outside of Dallas. Worked hard for a living and a full-time practitioner, too. I ask him, “Any health trouble? No. Any complaints? A little stiffness here, a little stiffness there, you know, nothing major.” Put him on the table, one leg short, one leg tight, a couple other tests all positive. Gets adjusted on a regular basis.
I was there with one of my instructors at the time. My instructor started applying the cranial release, and probably about five, ten seconds into it, this man, on his back on the table, the only way I can describe it to you without you being there—and I didn’t have a video camera at the time—was he starts hopping like a frog. All four quadrants, arms and legs going in and out, and he’s like, “What the hell is going on?” I said, “I don’t know.”
My practitioner was a little afraid, a little nervous, but I said, “Just hold it. Hold the contact. Let him go through this. There’s something in there that’s got to come out. I don’t know what it is. We’ll talk about it later.” So, he held him for 20 to 30 seconds. He kept doing that and then started to slow down and stop, put his head down, did the other side. Sure enough, same thing happened again. We finished up. He gets off the table. He’s like, “What was that?” I said, “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never seen that before and now speaking to you, I’ve never seen that since. That’s one time and I’ve been doing this over 20 years, that I’ve seen that.
I said it was 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning. I said, ‘Come back around three or four o’clock. Let’s do another one.’ Because we were only there for two or three days. Three o’clock comes around, four o’clock comes around, five o’clock comes around, he never shows up. Okay.
The next morning, 10 o’clock in the morning, here he comes back to the table. We started talking and said, ‘Hey, I mentioned to you yesterday, come at around three o’clock. I wanted to give you another one.’ He said, ‘You know, I went into the seminar. It was very boring. I started getting very sleepy around 12 or 1 o’clock. I’m gonna go up to my room. I’m gonna take a little siesta.’ And he laid down about one o’clock in the afternoon, and he slept the entire afternoon, the entire night. He said he got up at about seven o’clock the following morning.
So obviously, to me, that means there was a lot of healing that went on. When we sleep, typically the body heals and repairs, rebuilds itself. He comes back to me, this is 10 o’clock in the morning the following day, and then we start talking. Without any questioning, I said, ‘You know, how are you feeling today? What do you notice different?’ And he said, ‘You know what, my body feels much better. I slept like I was dead. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what that was all about.’ And then he went on and started to proceed to say, ‘You know, when I was growing up, my father was an alcoholic. He used to beat us all the time.’ And he went into this whole explanation of things that I didn’t ask about, things that were none of my business, but things that he felt he had to just share with me. And whatever it is, he then got back on the table, had another CRT. No more hopping like a frog. To the last of my knowledge, that’s over with.
He healed from a lot of other things. Later on, we communicated, and that’s another one of those things that just happens when you apply this technique. You never know what’s in there until you sort of pop the top. And when you pop the top, so to speak, you never know what’s going to come out. But whatever has to come out is better off out than in.
He benefited tremendously from that, and I’ve seen other things like that, and maybe I’ll share some other stories down the road about other things that I’ve seen. But I see things that I never saw with traditional osseous-type adjusting, let me just say that.
Again, regardless of what type of practitioner you are, if you could add this one-minute Cranial Release Technique® into your repertoire, whatever that is—chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, physical therapy, occupational therapy, dentistry, naturopathy, whatever it is that you do every day with patients—if you could find the time to learn this technique and add that one minute into whatever you’re doing, you will see results that’ll just blow your mind. It’ll enhance everything that you’re currently doing.
Again, if you’re watching this on YouTube, please like, share, subscribe to the channel. If you’d like to visit our website to look for a practitioner, that’s at cranialrelease.com, all one word. There’s a button that says “Find a Practitioner” where you can search for someone in your area. And if you’re a practitioner and you’d like to learn more about this work, again, go to cranialrelease.com, click on the online training program, and that will take you to another website where the training program is located. You can learn all there is to know about how to apply this technique in the comfort of your home or office. We have all the modules there, it’s all videos. I’m easy to reach if you have any specific questions. I’m happy to talk to you, happy to work it out with you.
Again, cranialrelease.com. This is Dr. Doreste, wishing you a fabulous day. It’s the last day of May, here we go into June. Like it or not, here we come. And I hope this is a great summer for all of you. I hope it’s a summer where you explore the Cranial Release Technique®, either by getting on the table and experiencing the work or making the investment to learn the online training program in the comfort of your home or office.
Dr. Doreste, adios, my friends. See you down the road. Have a great day. Goodbye.