Craniosacral Massage: A Gentle Way to Support Healing and Relaxation

If you’ve ever felt like your body just can’t relax, no matter how much stretching, resting, or massaging you do, your nervous system may be holding the tension. Craniosacral massage is a gentle, hands-on therapy designed to calm that tension from the inside out. At Uplift Pelvic Health and Wellness, we can integrate this treatment alongside pelvic floor physical therapy to support deeper healing, relaxation, and balance in the body.

What Is Craniosacral Massage?

Craniosacral therapy (CST) is a light-touch manual technique that focuses on the craniosacral system: the membranes and fluid surrounding your brain and spinal cord. This system directly impacts your central nervous system, which affects how you process information, control body movement, involuntary movements like breathing and digestion, and how you access your thoughts, emotions and memory.  

Craniosacral massage works by applying gentle pressure (often less than the weight of a nickel!), to release restrictions in the craniosacral system, which helps the body restore its natural rhythm and flow, then allowing tasks like processing, movement, and accessing emotions and memory flow more easily.

While it may feel subtle, craniosacral work helps your body move out of “fight or flight” mode and into a calmer, more regulated state. Many people describe it as a full-body reset, deeply relaxing yet grounding.

Benefits of Craniosacral Massage

This technique can be helpful for a wide range of people — especially those experiencing chronic stress, muscle tension, or pelvic floor dysfunction. Some common benefits include:

• Nervous system regulation: Helps calm your body’s stress response and supports better sleep, digestion, and emotional balance.
• Muscle relaxation: Releases deep-seated tension in the neck, jaw, back, and pelvis.
• Headache and migraine relief: Reduces pressure and improves circulation around the head and spine.
• Improved pelvic floor function: Encourages relaxation in the muscles surrounding the pelvis, helping to ease pain, urgency, and tension.
• Enhanced circulation and fluid flow: Promotes the body’s natural healing and detox processes.

How Craniosacral Massage Supports Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy

Your pelvic floor doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s directly connected to your spine, diaphragm, and nervous system. When your body is in a constant state of stress or tension, these connections tighten, making it harder to relax, release, or engage your pelvic muscles properly.

Combining craniosacral massage with pelvic floor physical therapy can help:

• Release tension patterns that contribute to pelvic pain, tailbone discomfort, leakage urinary urgency
• Improve your body’s ability to respond to manual therapy and exercises
• Create a sense of calm and connection that supports your overall healing journey

At Uplift, we often recommend this combination for patients dealing with pelvic pain, hypertonicity (tight or stiff muscles), or trauma-related pelvic floor conditions, as it allows the body to process and release tension both physically and emotionally.

What to Expect During a Session

During a craniosacral session, you remain fully clothed and lie comfortably on a treatment table. Your therapist uses light touch along the body to assess rhythm, tension, and restrictions in motion throughout your head, spine, and pelvis. Most patients find the experience deeply relaxing and gentle. 

It is very common and normal to have emotional responses or body sensations like heat, tingling or euphoria come up during a craniosacral session, however this is not always the case. The reason for this is that the body tends to hold a lot of stored stress, tension, and memories. As this tension moves and releases, so too can the emotions or different body sensations. Again, this is completely normal, and encouraged to allow whatever is meant to come up as a way to process and move through the experience. It is also possible that you will simply have a restful and non-emotional session. It all depends on what your body needs to work through at a given period of time, and how you process this type of work. 

Rest assured, regardless of the response, your therapist is there to guide and support you along the journey!

You may notice changes like improved breathing, decreased tension, or an overall sense of calm during or after your session. The effects often continue to build over the following days.

The Takeaway

Craniosacral massage is more than just relaxation. It’s a way to help your body and nervous system find balance so true healing can happen. Whether you’re dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction, stress, or chronic pain, this gentle therapy can be a powerful complement to your pelvic floor physical therapy plan.

At Uplift Pelvic Health and Wellness, we take a whole-body approach to healing, helping you reconnect to your body, restore optimal function, and feel at ease again.