The Gillespie Approach for a Child with Headaches
A nine-year-old girl presented recently with a headache every day for six years. I felt sad since it probably could have been prevented at birth.
When I had headaches in the 1970s, it took me a few years to figure out the solution. Since many untreated children can have a lifetime of head pain, I count my blessings to have stumbled over the craniosacral and fascial pieces of this work.
This is my thought process when I work with a headache child. With no causative injury since birth, almost certainly fascial trauma during the 40 weeks after conception created the problem.
I know that her body has the wisdom to heal itself. I know that her fascial web is probably holding many traumatic layers. I trust that it will tell me what layer needs to be released at each moment.
I just need to listen to her body and trust what I am feeling is true. My job is to facilitate the healing by allowing her connective tissues to become free.
I look at her body as a traumatized fascial web, adversely affecting the function of the craniosacral system and other structural tissues. For an infant, I can readily engage the entire body. For a child or adult, I can engage the lower and upper halves of the web at each visit.
When I hold each leg and both legs at once, I am feeling strain patterns running from the feet into the pelvis and low back area, if not directly into the cranium. When I hold the back of the neck, I am feeling strain from the head and neck going down into the pelvis, if not into the feet.
I monitor the brain cycle at the end of each visit to have an idea of how much the craniosacral fascial system is freeing up in therapy. It is nice to have a great brain cycle of 200 seconds, but that may not completely mitigate problematic restrictions in the fascial web.
This child had mostly upper-body strains into her head. I am expecting a successful result with completed therapy.
Prevention at birth makes so much sense.
Gillespie Approach–Craniosacral Fascial Therapy Articles on Health Conditions
