Episode 226: Holistic Healing and Craniosacral Fascial Therapy (CFT)

Hi and welcome to episode 226 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Kim Sherlock and Holly Steflik joining us. Kim Sherlock is a licensed massage therapist who has specialized in the Gillespie Approach Craniosacral Fascial Therapy, also known as cft, in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Holly Sethlik is a licensed massage therapist also specializing in CFT in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. As partners in the CFT Global team since 2015, they have trained hundreds of professionals and parents each year throughout the world. Their passion is teaching transformational CFT trainings and building a practitioner network so everyone of all ages, newborn through adult, has access to this amazing modality. Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified Myelin functional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway, tethered oral tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since June 2019, thanks for being a loyal listener. As we jump into today's episode, remember to listen with correct oral rest posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose. Let's get started.

Foreign.

Kim, welcome to the podcast.

Hi Holly, thanks for having us.

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to chat. I know you have a lot of fun information to share with us today. I'm sure I'm going to learn a few things, but before we dive in, I would just love for you to introduce yourselves and share a little bit about your background and how you got into your current specialty.

Sure, I'll go first. I'm Holly Steflick and I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and I became a licensed massage therapist body worker back in the 90s and you know, over the years have studied many, many different modalities and taught some other modalities as well. And probably about 15 years ago I was introduced to CFT and it just, it was kind of the missing piece in my practice because I did practice other structural integration modalities and some other energetic modalities so when CFT came into my life, it really kind of. It changed things for me. And I started doing more and more and more CFT. And then finally my practice just became CFT. I was fortunate enough to become friends with Dr. Gillespie, with Barry, who is the founder of the system. And through that, I also met Kim, and we became fast friends. So back in 2015, you know, we began teaching together the, you know, Barry's work. So with that, I'll introduce Kim here, my partner. And, yeah, we've been teaching together for the last. Since 2015.

So I'm Kim Sherlock. I live in Westchester, Pennsylvania. And I was introduced to CFT in probably about 2007 by a friend who had amazing results for her son who had been seeing Dr. Gillespie, who I'm lucky enough that I live very close to him and work close to him. I decided after her enthusiasm and encouragement to take his class just as a mom so that I could work with my kids or friends. Family always had an interest in health and wellness. I took the class in 2008, and I was just blown away. I thought, wow, this is a whole new world. I love the people in the class. It was so interesting. I got it. I came home and I bought a table, and I just started working on friends and family. And from there, things really started to build because they started to feel so good. They started to tell people, and they started to tell people. And as I became more friends with Barry and I started to help him in his classes, he really encouraged me to get my license in Pennsylvania. We needed to have a license to touch if I wanted to pursue this as a business. And it was looking like I was going in that direction. So I went to massage school. Never in years thought I would do that. And I was ready to go. So I started practicing, and it just started to build and build and continually working with Barry as an instructor in the classes. And sometime around 2015, he really decided that he, you know, he did not want to be traveling. We were getting requests from all over the world to teach at that point. So I went to him and I said, if you don't want to, you know, travel and teach, we can't expect the world to come to Philadelphia. And that's when Holly and I took over the teaching. And we have developed an infant class from there and just really upgraded and continual. You know, as we learn, we continue to add more to the class in collaboration with Barry. And so we are loving the teaching aspect. I am still practicing, you know, as with. With a private practice the best that I can, because the teaching has really exploded. And we're very excited because the more people that we can get out practicing this work, the more likelihood when someone asks the question, hey, do you have somebody in Tulsa, Oklahoma? We can answer, yes. So that's our passion, is really creating this practitioner network at this point.

I love that I have a similar passion in the pediatric feeding space. And so I can appreciate that because it's. It's so needed. And you know, what you all do. The craniosacral fascial therapy or sacral fascial therapy is different than cst. And I think there's, you know, I'd love to kind of dive into, like, what is it? If you could define that for us, and then maybe we can then talk about how it's different. Because I hear a lot of cst, but I don't hear as much cft. So let's start there.

Sure. Yeah, we hear that a lot. When we have new clients coming in, they will say, oh, you know, I've had this before. I've had, you know, this. You know, my child has had this therapy before. And where I live, there's really nobody else right now. So I'm like, oh, really? Who did, you know? Where did you go? And they. And it turns out that they've had CST before, which is cranial psychotherapy. And so our modality is just a little bit different than that. We. It's called.

It's.

We say for short, cft, but the long word is craniosacral fascial therapy. And the reason it's called that is because it is a blending of two different modalities, Cranial sacral therapy and myofascial release. Sometimes you hear CST and MMR. So back some 30 years ago, Dr. Gillespie is a periodontist, and he was in practice, and he was seeing a lot of his clients with a lot of cranial dental strain, a lot of other conditions that were curious to him. Allergies, asthma, you know, TMJ issues, headaches, migraines. And he himself had very poor health as a child and continued to kind of be perplexed by some of his other health conditions. So he kind of started diving into these, you know, separate modalities, Cranial sacral therapy. He studied with John Upledger, and then he dove into myofascial release with John Barnes, and he was thinking, well, what about how the fascia is affecting the cranial sacral system? So that was the very beginning of him sort of putting These modalities together. So to this day, that is what we're doing. We're blending these two modalities. Cranial sacral therapy with myofascial release. And Kim and I have both studied each of those modalities separately and practiced those as well. But CFT is something that we just find. We find that the fascial system is a web. It is part of the whole cranial system. It wraps around the brain and the spinal cord, and it goes from, as you know, the tongue all the way down to the toes. So, so we can't really separate out the fascial web from any part of the body, and certainly not the cranial sacral system, the cerebral spinal fluid, the brain, the spinal cord. And so when we are addressing those issues that we talked about, and Kim will talk more about a lot of the issues that we see in infants and children, we know that we really have to address the fascial strain in the body. That's where the CFT becomes a little bit different, because we are really addressing all of the accumulated fascial strain from fetal life forward, and we're addressing all of the cranial dental strain that comes from the oral ties and oral dysfunction. So we're the piece of cleaning up all that fascial strain within the body and within the oral structures and the cranial dental system, which does include the tongue ties, the lip ties, the buccal ties, you know, all of the issues and fascial fascia in the whole cranial dental system. So we find that CFT works better than those standalone CST or myofascial release, because we see in babies particularly, and in adults as well, but when they have a lot of fascial strain, if we don't address the fascial system, that fascial system will override the cranial sacral system, and we don't see the same results. So sometimes CST is enough, and that works. But if that, that individual has a lot of fascial strain or a lot of cranio dental strain or oral ties, then the fascial system really needs to be addressed. And that's what we're doing with cft.

That's very helpful. I love how beautifully explained the integration of the two to basically create cft. So I know you mentioned, you know, obviously we, we talk a lot on this podcast about being connected from the tip of our tongue to the tip of our toes, and how really everything is so integrated. But can you speak, you know, who are the patients that you work with most Are there certain populations that you feel are best served by this? I'm sure everybody can benefit, but you know, obviously tongue tied individuals come to mind in my population that, that we often treat and talk about. But I'd love to hear, you know, some of the benefits.

Yeah, that's a great question. If you were to ask Barry, he would say, anyone with a brain. So, but you know, we treat at birth, we treat newborns, we treat all the way up into the elderly. So I have a very, you know, varied practice with the different types of people that I see. And so, you know, with the newborns we may see things, issues are coming in. Usually the first red flag would be breastfeeding and latch issues. You know, they're coming for that. But what they don't realize is that there's a whole fascial strain beneath that that we want to address. So all of the newborn issues that you would then see, colic, reflux, crawling issues, torticollis. Moving into childhood, you may see kids that have learning issues, adhd, they have asthma, allergies, they don't sleep well, they wet the bed. All of the childhood conditions. Moving into adults, you have headaches, migraines, anxiety, depression, concussions are a big one. Just so many different things. You think about how the fascia affects all ages and all conditions. And so what's really great is that it's a piece that is very important across many different professions too. So for your OTs, PTs, speech therapists, lactation consultants, dentists, doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, parents, all of these type of people can learn this work and integrate it into what they do because it complements all of these other modalities by freeing up the fascia and freeing up the system. When we talk about the craniosacral fascial system, what we're referring to is the ability for the brain and the spine to be moving the cerebrospinal fluid so that the body is getting nourished. There's a whole detox mechanism involved with that as well. And so by freeing up that system, we feel that people can live and feel their best and become the best version of themselves. So our passion with the newborn work is why not set these babies up from the beginning? The reason we have this fascial strain is trauma. But we, you know, that trauma can be in utero. There can be positional strain, there can be lots of different components that are already affecting us in utero. Then we talk about the birth trauma, which sometime is evident and sometimes it Isn't we really don't know what that baby's journey was into the world. And then we start to layer in the falls, the surgeries, the concussions, the emotional traumas, everything else that builds and builds. And we've got one big tight fascia bundle of strain in someone's body. And that's where, you know, we have to begin. So it's much better if we can do that from the beginning and keep on top of that versus getting a 40, 56 year old on the table that already has a host of conditions. And it's like, okay, it's, it's a little more complicated. We can still get them feeling better. But that's why we really like to get the word out to the moms and the dads with their newborn babies and young children. Tongue tie is something we are introduced to. You know, really, I'd say in the last six or seven years we started to attract a lot of the dental community to our prac, to our classes where we learned so much. And it was such a light bulb moment when we realized, oh my God, that is the 50 year old on the table that is just a mess. And when we look at the oral structures, the funny thing is that Dr. Gillespie was a periodontist before he discovered this. So there's so much involved in the oral structures and the ties. And we really believe that CFT is a big part of it. Holly mentioned we talk about cleaning up the tightness. I know there's a lot of talk out there about tongue ties, and it's a lot of different points of view. We stay out of it. Our point of view is we're going to go, we're going to help release any tightness that's related to fascial strain up into the point of if there is a true tie and if there is a tie, CFT is not going to release your tongue tie, but you're going to be in optimal condition to then go to your provider and have that release done. And from the providers that I work with, they are so pleased with those releases because in addition to the myofunctional therapy that their patient's doing, in addition to the cft, they are primed and ready to go to have just the best possible outcome. And then we like to follow up with that patient and see them after so that we can release any residual strain.

What does the protocol typically look like, whether they're going for release or not? Like, do you have. And I'm sure this is very individualized, but is There an average number obsession. You might see a baby versus an older adult who needs a lot more unlocking, if you will.

It's a great question and everyone will ask because they want to plan for it. You know, my goal is to always get someone in and, and move them on.

Right.

It's, it's not like you have to keep coming back, coming back. But that said, there is always, you know, the idea of maintenance and just occult, just, you know, a check in or tune up. And I say to people, let me at least have. If they're coming with a specific condition, I never go into it and say we're going to help this migraine or we're going to help this concussion. But I say give me at least four sessions. And in four sessions we're going to know if you're moving in the right direction. If we are, then we know that their condition is related to fascial strain. Usually we see something I've never really had. Nothing happened. It may not be what they came in for, but something else could be benefiting. So it's really interesting to watch how people progress with, with the work. So that said, I would say that for a baby too, let me at least have four sessions. Most of the time within the first or second session, something great is happening.

Yeah, I've seen some of these, you know, before and after in a session videos. A colleague of mine, Megan, who recently took your course and who doesn't, you know, she has, has shown some of the work and you can just see the relaxation on the body, especially in some of these newborns and the little, you know, the younger infants where just the mad working with them. It's, it's like magic. And you know, it's one of those things that I'm like, once upon a time in a perfect utopia of a world, these babies will all have their tether tissues checked at birth. Somebody will come and do this work on their body so that they like, like you said, they. You addressed a really big conversation surrounding birth, whether it was positioning in utero or there was some type of birth trauma going through the birth canal or how, you know, delivery went or something after delivery. You know, a lot of these babies I think could benefit from, like you said, anybody with a brain. But a lot of these babies, I just think we could set them up so much better if they had access to this.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's so much talk and opinion around why there's so many tongue ties, we don't know. But what we know as therapists are that when we see babies who have ties, they are tight. They are tight babies, their entire body is tight. They're not happy, they can't settle into their own bodies. Their nervous systems are wrecked. We're also addressing the nervous system. How do you send a baby into a release when their nervous system is so jacked up? So we want to get them calm, we want to get them as loose as possible before we send them on that, you know, to that next piece. So the other important part is that we like to work with the moms because when you've got a baby like that, you know, what's mom's nervous system like? What was her, her experience with birth? So working with them together, we also feel like we can make a big difference for the entire family.

Yeah, no, I love that you have to absolutely address, you know, the caregiver, the mom, the baby. And I think another really great point you made is that sometimes there are compensations that also may mimic a tie. So it's not always that there's a tie present, but it may appear like there's a tie present. And that's why I'm such a big proponent too of that pre operative intervention. Because if we can avoid a procedure, why are we not trying to, let's not just enter the baby's mouth and release some tissue surgically. Not that a laser release is that big of a deal. I don't want to scare anybody, but at the same time it is because if you're not supporting the surrounding tissues and muscles and the fascia and the entire body properly, then the baby's just going to be the same as they were right after you release it. And I always tell families it's possible to also release worse than it was attached to begin with if you're not doing the proper like pre op work and post op work. And so I think that more critical sometimes than even the release itself is the therapy that you do leading up to it and following it. Just, you know, I tell everyone the tongue just doesn't magically function on its own. Now occasionally we may see a tongue go nicely up to the palate. Feeding may improve, sleep may improve, nervous system may improve after a release. But more often than not, that's a baby who's had that pre op work done. And then we need to follow up. Like you said, you want to see them afterwards to then continue to support their healing process, to support the full body, their nervous system. I love how you brought that up too. Because these babies who are in fight and flight and not in rest and digest. You know, we say. We say this all the time. They're not going to be. Well, they're so you said they're tense. You know, you see this tension on these babies, especially if they are actually tied, but in other babies, too, and, you know, the second you put them to breast, if they throw themselves back or they kind of crunch themselves forward or their head is moving one way and they're only feeding well on one side of mom and the list goes on it, you know, it impacts that feeding experience. So, you know, I think one of the biggest things that we try to tell families, too, is if we can get baby relaxed and mom relaxed, as you pointed out, and everybody's kind of in this rest and digest, you know, point of being, before we latch a baby or give baby a bottle, then the feeding is going to go much better than, you know, than it would if we didn't have that on the front end.

Yeah, that's what we see.

One of the things that Kim and I just realized probably in the last five years, maybe a little bit more than that, is how important the myofunctional therapy piece is in that. And so much so that we did go do some training in that because we really needed that piece to help our clients understand that it's not just a release. It's not just cft. You have to be doing the myofunctional therapy before, you know, and after. And I think that's. It's always really sad when you see. We just, you know, we see it all the time. An adult or a child who is released without myofunctional therapy, and, and it doesn't go well. And, you know, we're always just so disappointed that, you know, that, that. That people get themselves into that situation with a baby, you know, or kid or adults that didn't get the right protocol, you know, and the right progression of therapies before we are. So it's so important to be collaborative with our, you know, the other modalities out there that are part of the whole release process. And myofunctional therapy is such a huge part of that also. Just, you know, that's why we love seeing the infants and educating the parents, because oftentimes, even when they find a fantastic provider, that provider is only with them for such a short period of time, and they don't necessarily get the education about compensation. So they, you know, and especially if the child or the infant or, you know, doesn't get released, so they go to the provider. And the provider says, ah, you know, they're doing okay, they're fat, they're happy, things are fine, like, you know, I don't think you need it. And then we see, okay, well, I'm going to see that baby in my office in five years with the mouth breathing and the bedwetting and the adhd, and then I'm going to see that adults, you know, with the TMJ and the migraines and the nervous system dysregulation, and so we know what it turns into because those are our clients. So it sometimes is a little bit. It's really a lot of education and a lot of information for parents to have to digest in those very early sessions when they're bringing their baby in and they're just trying to get, you know, good enough. And we just really want them to know, like, this is the golden time to make these corrections. It's the least expensive to do it now than to wait when they are, you know, preteens or adults. It's a whole different ball game, you know, in the release and myofunctional therapy and palatal expansion process. So it's just, it's a lot of, it's a lot of information and a lot of education for parents to have to digest. And I'm always pleasantly surprised at those parents who've done their homework and listened to the podcast and found, you know, like, they come in and they know so much and then, you know, sometimes we just have to help them out a little bit with, you know, giving them the right resources so that they can have optimal, you know, releases and moving forward with those other modalities.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's, it's interesting too. I think a lot of, like, speech pathologists and occupational therapists have actually had their own babies and found my Feed the Beats course because, you know, they come in and they go, well, I really took the course for my child, but now I'm falling into the space, which excites me because, like you said, you want to kind of grow that list of, you know, that directory of providers that no matter where someone says, hey, do you know someone who does X? You're like, hey, yeah, like, we've got somebody we can refer you to because it's so hard to find these people sometimes. And you know, on the flip side, right, the traditional myofunctional therapy trainings really are geared towards, like your 4 year old on up. And so even if you're an SLP or an OT or A PT or somebody who maybe has like infant feeding therapy, you know, outside of like IVCLC and everything and breastfeeding infant feeding therapy in your repertoire or at least covered by your license. Most people are not trained and don't know how to work with that population. And so, you know, I get a lot of people come to me too and they go, well, they have biotraining or they're a feeding therapist. And I'm like, but are they an infant feeding therapists and like what background do they have and who do they refer to and who do they collaborate with? Because if they're working with someone who does work like you all do, like the craniosacral fascial therapy or you know, they're working with an IBCLC or they're working with somebody who understands the need to set up these babies nervous systems and you know, support them from head to toe in addition to the oral work that we might be doing. And then also the breastfeeding or feeding dyad, you know, that's where I kind of started to go like it is a lot. And you're absolutely right. And it's, it's so overwhelming and it's, and it's time consuming and these, you know, I just, I had this experience with my first one. I didn't know she was tired until she was 24 months. But our first 13 months of breastfeeding were miserable. We only got through 13 months. Thankfully we got through 13 months because it was painful and I had to like turn my head away from her to latch her because I was so stubborn and so like adamant about breastfeeding her. But she also would barely take a bottle and I only worked like six hour stretches two days a week because she would not feed very, maybe more than 2 ounces during that time period from a bottle. And I was like, well, I own my own business, I can do this right now. Obviously feeding my baby is important, but zero support. I tried to get it, nobody offered what I needed. And then when I did dive into this space and started going to the people who were supposedly the people in our area, I was turned away like, oh, she's not breastfeeding anymore, she's fine. Or you know, nothing about, let's monitor maybe let's try this. She had enlarged tonsils, she was mouth breathing. You know, now she's 24 months. And I was like, something's gotta give. And then, you know, fast forward my second one, she's born, she's got a tongue tie released. Five days of life we set her up beforehand, I supported her afterwards. Two very different children with two very different journeys. But I can also see that difference between even starting at birth versus two years in and then, hi, I'm the adult with the orthodontic relapse, with the adhd, with the septoplasty a year and a half, almost a little over a year ago, with the turbinate reduction and the nasal swell body reduction, with the UARs, but didn't register as having sleep apnea, but never got REM sleep. And, you know, going through life just kind of like as an energizer bunny with, with not a whole host of symptoms but enough symptoms. And I'm like, how was I living and functioning before? Like, I'm a completely different human now that I can sleep and actually get restorative sleep, you know, so it's, you know, it's very interesting to see it. Like you're saying it's. It feels expensive, it feels very time consuming, and it's a lot for new parents and mom who's also in her fourth trimester to have to go through all this. But you're absolutely right that on the back end, it is a lengthy process. It is way more expensive. You know, I had braces and expansion as a kid, and I've had more expansion as adult, plus the nasal surgery, plus my own MYO and all the things. I worked with a therapist who's a PT who's done manual counter strain therapy, as he likes to call it. And, and it was phenomenal. I would go to him and I couldn't crank my appliance anymore, and I would see him, and after seeing him, I could turn my appliance immediately, you know, and that was one of the things that really, really cued into the necessity of looking at the entire body because he was treating the full body, right? Like, he was not just looking at my mouth or certain areas. And, you know, I could talk about this all day long, but even to the point of I went to him before I got pregnant the second time, and he was helping me with my breathing and kind of releasing things throughout my body in order to support my pregnancy and, you know, what was to come. And again, very much so opened my eyes, but only because I happened to fall into the space and meet these people. Nobody was talking about this.

It's.

I couldn't find this information anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's. I'm dumbfounded at the lack of information and misinformation that my clients come in with. Part of the. You know, the big challenge is educating these parents so that, you know, before baby comes, they know what to look for. They have their team set up. And you're not just in crisis mode. Right. And educating the IBCLC so that they understand the importance of the fascia and what they're doing. Like, yes. You don't have myofunctional therapy sessions for an infant. It's breastfeeding. So we've got to work with the compensations and work with someone. We are not breastfeeding specialists. We don't claim to be. We want to be in collaboration with the IBCLC who understands the piece. I don't know about where everyone else is, but where I am. These parents will take their baby to get diagnosed by the dentist, and then the dentist will do it right then and there. And it's like, I just cringe. It's like, please don't rush into that. The dentists need to understand the importance of the fascia, too, and for the best interest of their patient and for them to shine with their outcome. So, you know, how great would it be to take your baby to a dentist, a center where you have CFT available there, you have the IBCLC there, and everybody's working together and mom isn't driving 40 minutes to this appointment, that appointment all over. You know, that's kind of a vision that we have so that everybody is on the same page and working towards the same goal.

Love that. That's beautiful. I mean, we. My practice, which I now live in Florida, but my practice is still primarily in the D.C. metro, Maryland, Virginia area. And we only. We don't have a center. We travel to the families, and part of it is, you know, we work with pediatrics of all ages, and we see adults. For myO2 now, we offer virtual, but with the babies, we really want to be in person, getting in the mouth. And, you know, that's one of the things that I completely agree with you. I was like, I don't want to get in the car and take my child somewhere when I'm a mom who just got home from the hospital and my baby struggling to feed and nobody's sleeping and my hormones are raging and, like, nobody told me it was going to be this hard. Right? Nobody told me what to expect. And so one of the things that I felt. Have felt very strongly about is because it's some of these centers, some people have tried to create them, and for whatever reason, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't seem to work. I think that It's a beautiful model when it does work, because there are some that I've seen in the country that, like, really have created what you're talking about. And these families thrive. They thrive.

It's a commitment. I mean, it's a commitment by that practice, right, to collaborate in that way, you know, and then there I have some practitioners that I know that do the home visits, which is. Which is phenomenal for mom. I just saw a newborn two weeks ago. He was about three weeks old. And I had the opportunity to see the environment and to, you know, notice some things that I had to kind of point out to mom in a gentle way that might serve the baby better. And so. So that was a great experience, too. So, you know, you can create whatever you want as a CFT practitioner. There are so many opportunities to, you know, aside from helping others, help yourself, design your own life, create your own. Own business, your own. Follow your own passion, serve the communities that you want to serve. If you have a passion about concussions, you know, you could have a complete niche business just working with concussions. So there's so much opportunity. We're sitting on so much. Holly and I get so overwhelmed with the knowledge that we have that we're trying to get out and share with people.

Well, I. That's amazing. I mean, there's. There's people who work with adults, pediatrics, you know, that we've had some, like TMJ dentists or even PTs, who focus on the temporomandibular joint and pain and with patients. And I think it's very cool that you're so basically they can come take your course. And you mentioned you have to have a license, like, to touch to, you know, in order to then physically work with patients. That. Is that correct?

We teach to. We teach to everybody. We do teach to a lot of parents who want to work on their children and babies and family members and spouses. And then we also have a lot lately, the last, you know, probably three, four, five years. A lot of dental professionals, so dentists, RDH, a lot of OTS, PTS, of course, SLPs, and massage therapists as well. And the people who are going to go out and do a practice and, you know, hang their shingle up, obviously have to have a license to touch in whatever state that is. And that's tricky because it's different everywhere, and there's all different nuances to that. So we don't really get into that piece of figuring out what you need to do. You have to kind of figure that out for Yourself. But yeah, we do teach parents as well. We have a really interesting piece to cft, which is a little bit different. That is a kind of a great assessment tool. So Dr. Gillespie came up with something called the brain cycle, and that's the expansion and contraction of the cerebral spinal fluid. So in cranial sacral therapy, we listen to that, and we listen to the expansion and contraction. We can feel it with our hands, and it's a short cycle, six to 10 seconds in and out. And as Dr. Gillespie was kind of combining these therapies, he found a longer tide within that cranial sacral system. And so what he found was that kind of like at the beach, when there's short waves and there's long waves, in cft, we listen to the long wave. And so we're listening to, with our hands, listening, feeling the expansion of that system and the contraction of that system. And we call it the brain cycle. So it's a way for us to assess within our clients how much fascial strain is there. So if we put our hands on somebody and they have a zero brain cycle, meaning there's no expansion or contraction, or it's very short, it might be expanding for 10 seconds, contracting for 10 seconds, we would call that a brain cycle of 20. We know that there's. We know that we can help them because we know that there's a lot of fascial strain from that very short brain cycle. So that is one assessment tool that we really love, that people learn in the training, is that once we have two, three, four sessions, we get that brain cycle open, we get the system open, and then other things turn on for them. So some of the. Their other modalities that they might be doing become, you know, working better, and they start feeling better, better. Nervous system regulation as we release the fascial strain within the system, and then they usually stay at that number that we get them up to like, say a 200. We. We know that the system is open and things are going to be functioning better.

So that's.

We love that assessment tool that we have in the training is, you know, we call it the brain cycle. Kim, you want to add anything about that?

I just want to add, going back to the parents, learning. We do have a lot of parents that will come to us who have a child. Maybe they have some special needs, and they really want to be able to work on their children consistently. And maybe that's a five, ten minute, little, you know, session that they do several times a day or a week or whatever. And it's been really remarkable to see the progress that parents can make. And then, you know, they work on other family members or other friends. And some of our former students have then gone on like I did and got licensed and turned something into a business. And I always say to them, you know, they come in and they have absolutely no knowledge of anything physical, anatomical, bodywork, medical. That was me. I had a business background. And I always say, if I can do this, you can do this. Sometimes it's even better to come in without all of that preconception and all of that information and education. And we have to really try to get our really highly educated professionals to leave it at the door and to just come in and learn cft. When you leave, you can blend it, but it's, it's a really great mix of people in the class and I feel like they all learn so much from each other and we learn so much from them. It's very conversational, it's very experiential. So the three day foundation class people are working and trading with each other. So really profound changes happen for our students personally in that way. And then our infant class is like none other in that over the three days we bring in about 30 to 40 babies and we work in groups of two usually that, you know, each baby gets three, four sessions over three days of free body work. And as we see that those little stories come back, the moms will say they slept like they haven't slept before, they're pooping, they started crawling, they are rolling to the other side. You know, whatever, whatever it is. Some really profound changes happen over those three days. The students have the opportunity to do the work and to see the changes and they leave very inspired, like their lives are different after they leave our class. So we, we love that, we love teaching. We're, you know, we're heading out tomorrow to go teach down in Virginia Beach. We travel about once a month to cities across the country. Probably getting back over to the UK next year. So that's, you know, that's, that's our passion right now.

That's amazing. And it's, you know, I love hearing that because one of the things that I tried to set out to do when I created my course was I want to make it functional. I want people to leave and understand how to assess and how to treat. Because if you're going to invest your time and your money and your energy into a course and this, you know, new modality or try to, you know, expand your skill set in order to Help your patients. It's very frustrating to even go, like, well, what. I have ideas for three patients. What do I do with the rest of them? And after I do that, what happens next? And that's always been my experience for probably 90% of the courses that I've taken after grad school, thinking I'd go in with, like, you know, coming out this whole new skill set. And I think there's maybe one or two flagship courses that, like, I can remember where I left going, like, oh, wow. Like, I can really apply this to my patients, adapt it, individualize it. Like, I feel like I've got, like, somewhere to go and, you know, just. I haven't taken your course. But to see my, you know, my call in Megan Thorn, my colleague Megan Thornberg, that I was mentioning before, to see her immediately come right out of your course and start applying it. I mean, she has, like, she's. She's busy. Her schedule is full. She's, like, in four different areas and plugging into, like you said, some of these clinics where they do offer more holistic services and being able to better support the patients that already exist in those clinics. I mean, she really ran with it.

And.

And it's amazing because she. I was like, you just took the course, like, recently, and, like, look at all the help that you're already, you know, offering to these patients and these babies and these moms. And so it's. It's very cool. I think she was at, like, a local farmer's market or something and had, like, a table out and was just doing, you know, some manual, some of the therapy on, you know, some. Some individuals who came up just to kind of give them a little taste of what it's like. And. And then I guess the colleague was working on the. Her children, and so she was posting videos. I was like, this is. Is so cool because just to normalize this, just to bring awareness that this even exists in, like, a marketplace like, that is phenomenal. And, like, we need more of that. We need more grassroots, baby.

Grassroots.

I mean, especially in our country right now, in the entire world. But in our country right now, everybody's nervous system is a little wrecked. We could all use a little CFT.

For sure. Yeah.

So how does everybody find you if they want to take a course? You know, is our website and share that with us?

Yeah, our website is very long. Craniosacralfascialtherapy.com. we call it CFT for short. And sometimes you'll see the Gillespie approach. It's obviously Dr. Gillespie was the founder of the system, so you'll see those, those kind of titles. So you find us there on our website and it's our, you know, we have all of our trainings up there. We have, all the information is up there about explaining what CFT is, how it works, who can benefit. A lot of the conditions that go along that we see every day. And we have, like Kim said, we do about a TR1 training a month and we combine them so we do a foundation training and then an infant training right after. So oftentimes people just want to learn the foundation work to work on their family and friends or they're not pediatric people. So they'll take the foundation training and then sometimes they will stay on for the infant training. We can, you know, take about, you know, 40, some 40 to 46 foundation students. And the beauty about that is that they're in the training for three days and they're receiving the work. So you have to feel it in your own body to be able to know what you're going to be doing to somebody else. You ha, you can't take somebody, you know, you have to, you know, you have to know what it feels like for you. And it is very somatic, very experiential and very right brained. And that's the other really fun thing about the training is that it's, you know, I'm sure we've all taken amazing trainings but they're sometimes they're very technical and they're very protocol based and you're like, okay, I've got the chart and I've got to memorize this and, and it's, and for cft, it's really hands on. So these are your tools. You, you need a table and you need your hands and you need a quiet, centered, you know, place within yourself to be able to, you know, do the work. And so it's, that's why it's so user friendly for the parents and for the people that are professionals. Sometimes it's a big sigh of relief that there isn't, there isn't a big protocol memorization thing. And sometimes it's a bit tricky. For those more technical therapists that are used to that, they have to kind of throw that out and just go, okay, what am I feeling, you know, below my hands right now? But that's, that's where we are, where, you know, that's our website. We have Instagram, which is, I think cft. The CFT Gillespie approach is our Instagram. And we are also on Facebook as well. We have a page there, but, and we're, we're not the best social media peeps, but we're trying to get better at that because we know that that is how a lot of people find us. We, we know that a lot of our students go out and share on their stories and their, you know, Instagram pages. We love that as well.

Yeah, social media is a whole nother beast.

Yeah, right.

I got on there, Gosh, I don't even know when it was. I was just like, oh, I should probably have some presence if I'm gonna launch this business. And that was kind of my driving, my driving force this summer that I launched the podcast and everything. And that was back in 2019. And really that's the main reason why I go on there. But it's, it's a lot.

It's a full time job.

Right?

I mean, you can, I have a.

Teacher team because there's just no way. I mean, it's me and my DMs, but like, otherwise, like, I'm not the one who's posting things. I am helping craft things. But it's, the rest is handled by the team because it, yeah, it's a full time job. It is a major time suck. So. But it's great. I think it's a great place to get information out there if you can. And I love the work that you guys are doing and I think it's really cool that parents are able to access this training for themselves, for their families, you know, their own children. Because I know there's so many parents that, that want the information. They want to be able to help their children. And I think on the flip side too is, you know, even when they come to us for like feeding therapy or for like a myofunctional therapy patient, we may be working with them, but then we're sending them home with education and like what they have to carry over for the week until they see us again next week. And so, you know, I think being able to empower parents and train them is just absolutely incredible. So I love that that is an option. And I guess, you know, if a parent, I'm sure you guys get lots of parents, but I'm also sure there's probably parents who are a little intimidated by it. Can you, can you speak to, you know, a parent who's kind of like, oh, you know, I'd really love to take this course, but I don't know if like, I'm going to be able to actually carry this out or this kind of just seems a little out of my wheelhouse, you know, do you, do you get parents whoever message you and yeah, when we, you know, in.

The beginning of class we like to go around the room and just introduce. Everybody introduces themselves and so I have labeled them the just the moms because their introduction is, is I'm just a mom. And it's like you're just everything. You know, I was just a mom. And so that's what I said. If I can do it, you can do it. And so they, they really are. They're so wonderful and open and they come with I think the most open heart and the most open mind out of anybody in the class. So we, we highly encourage it. Why not have the best tool in your tool belt as a parent, you know, to work on your kids, your spouse, your family. It's, it's really quite remarkable. And it goes without fail after every class we will hear something that week, a text or an email from the just a moms about the difference that they made by working on somebody in their family. And it's always about gaining the confidence. Everybody leaves and you have the self doubt. I didn't get it. I don't think I'm any good at this. Just go try, go practice. And we promise you that things will start to happen and you start to build these little success stories and your confidence builds and before you know it, you're off and running and you can figure out what you want to do with CFT from there. If it's just work on your family and friends, great. If it becomes something bigger, that's great too.

No, that's, that's incredible. Again, I love this. I love what you're doing. I think really empowering the moms. And I always try to tell parents like, like I'm just a mom too. And really my own children, children threw me into where I am now. My specialty was feeding with like toddler on up. And I was not in the myo space. I didn't know what a tongue tie was before I had babies. You know, I was just a mom. And then on the flip side, even as a professional in this space, when you have your own child, you forget everything, you know, and it all goes out the window. And you're like, wait, I thought I was the one who specialized.

I don't want to leave out the just the dads. We get getting a lot of dads, a lot of couples. It's, it's really great to see the, you know, the partnership between parents for.

Their and a Lot of times people, you know, the.

The.

The parents that come decide that they want to do this. So we've had that very recently. You know, a couple came and they decided that they were going to change their whole, you know, careers moving forward and go to massage school and get a license to touch and, you know, have a CFT practice practice that's actually kind of been quite common with a lot of our parents that come because they're so turned on by, you know, the modality, the availability of it, how easy it is. You just need a table and your, you know, your hands. And so they're quite keen on it. You make your own schedule and you're in service to people and, you know, educating people for something that really is like, you know, on the cutting edge still. You know, we know. We know this. We, you know, the airway issues, the sleep apnea, the tmj. What we tell people when they're taking this training just going back to the fascia a little bit, is that we're the piece of cleaning up that fascia, that tightness in the floor of the mouth, underneath the tongue, all of the other oral structures in there. And what we're trying to do and the whole system, the whole body, is bring everything forward and have it be as available as possible so that when they're. They do, if they choose to have a release, the provider's got everything already in place to give that, you know, infant, child, adult the best, you know, release possible. So that's really our hope with cft, is really addressing the fascial strain globally and locally within the cranial dental system and getting people set up. And then, of course, after they have the release, they come back and it's a whole reorganization of the fascial system and the coordination pattern of all of the cranial dental system to reorganize with that new freedom and that new movement, you know, without this, you know, the strains there.

So, yeah, I think it'll be cool.

That's our piece of the, you know, the tethered oil tie part.

Yeah, well, and I think, you know, as you mentioned, more of the craniofacial and the dental side of things. I think it'll be interesting to see, too, as more of these dentists and even RDHs are coming in and taking your course, who's implementing this in their own practices, because with these growth appliances and, you know, one of my kiddos is seven, and she just came out of her. Her permanent retainer that was only in for about, like, three, four months. Just to hold it a little bit while. A little while after we had her growth appliance removed, we did some forward growth and expansion and she had had a, a ALF appliance when she was 4, from 4 to 5. And that kind of kicked off her initial growth journey. And I know part of some of these appliances like that one, for example, they really say it' to support the nervous system. And you know, for her, this of course happened during the pandemic. And so we weren't really able to get the, you know, any type of body work at all because everything was so shut down in Maryland and D.C. and that was basically her, the period that she had that appliance and she. But I will say she was a calmer child. Her sensory system was more, you know, relaxed. And I think there's just something to it. When you are working with the body in a certain way and really supporting it and giving it what it needs, you really start to see it affect all areas of life. And so I think it'll be, like I said, I think it'd be very cool to see, you know, how this gets integrated into some of these practices that are even doing like expansion appliances, whether it's a 2 year old, a 4 year old, a 10 year old or an adult.

Yeah, yeah, I work with, we work with those kids all the way through that process us. So it's very important and just a.

Little bit to add on to that with the, with the nervous system and the emotional body. So we all have traumas, you know, in our unconscious from, you know, fetal life forward. And a lot of it we don't even remember. And some of them are very small and insignificant traumas that could be, you know, emotional traumas, it could be physical trauma and that goes into our body and it gets stored. So if it's not dealt with, then it's going to get stored somewhere within the body. And so we're really affecting the nervous system and the emotional body as well. And a lot of times people have an emotional release from releasing the fascial strain where that emotion was stored or that trauma was stored. So sometimes they're not expecting that at all. They don't even know what it's about. So we really want people to know that it's not just about, you know, releasing physical, you know, fascial strain, but the fascia holds all the emotions and all of the memories. And it's such a vast system. There's a lot of storage there. So as we are, you know, in these trainings or in our office working, we see that also happen, which is so beautiful because we don't have to be talk therapists. We don't have to know a whole story about what it is. It's, you know, it gets released and it's done.

Do you see? I've actually had a friend tell me about this, and she explained the, you know, her experience to me. But how do people typically react? Like, is it people. People cry or people kind of like, do they have. Like, they can.

Yep, there can be an emotion. It could be. I had a little girl very recently who was her first CFT session, and she had had a lot of trauma. I think three of her grandparents died within a month. And then she was in a car accident, and she came in with her mother. Her mom got a session. She watched it. She was just a happy, you know, kid. And she got on the table, and as we started to work, work, she had this very big emotional release and started, you know, just like kind of quietly crying. We didn't have to talk about it. You know, I just kind of asked her what she needed and we continued the work. And then I didn't know that there was all this trauma up front. So then the mom, you know, and she got up off the session and ran out of the room. And the mom explained to me, yeah, she's had a lot of emotional trauma recently, and I think that's what that was. So then I saw her.

She.

She asked to come back, and she came back for her second session, and it was great. So there was. There was, you know, no, no tears. But sometimes it is tears, sometimes it's laughter. You know, that's also a release. You know, people experience that as well. And it's just. It's just great to see because we're helping somebody and we don't have to have a big story around what it is or. Or how it happened or how we're going to get rid of it. We just. We let the body, the innate wisdom knows how to heal itself, and we're there to be support and witness that, you know, for the. Our clients on the table.

It's beautiful. And, you know, when a child asks to go back somewhere, you know, that they thoroughly enjoyed the experience. And it's, you know, it's like one of those things too, where the child's like, more, please. Like, I want more. Because that felt good and that, you know, they recognize things that support them. And so I also. I love that it removes the verbal communication part of it too, because a lot of the children that we work with, with don't have that ability and that's something they might struggle with too. So for them to be able to have that kind of an experience and to just have a smile on their face or to know that they, you know, they want to come back and they're happy to see you, they ask for the person. It's always such a big testament to like the work that is being done. So that's, it's incredible.

Yeah, very cool.

All right, well, we will make sure that the craniosaccofascial therapy link is in the show. Notes will be right under the episode everywhere this appears. But is there anything else that you want to discuss or share with us before we start to wrap up?

Well, I just want to thank you too for having us and for everything that you're doing to bring awareness out there. Because it's, that is the, that is the most important part right now is the educating the parents because, you know, we, we have to be our own advocates. No one's coming to save us. And so it's so overwhelming out there. So that when you get a really sound, educated voice like yourself, consistently delivering the message, having great guests on. Many of your guests have, some of them have taken our class, some of them are friends of ours. So I always love to see who you're speaking with. And so I say continued success to you, Hallie.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And it's, you know, one of those things that I just, I love doing it. I love meeting individuals who are like minded and who are supporting patients holistically and sometimes in different ways than, you know, the traditional narrative. So, so thank you for joining me and for sharing this. And you know, I think towards the end of the episode here too, we just touched on some other things that were really beautiful that, you know, dives into kind of the other side of my life where I've become this more like holistic person and, you know, very. We won't dive into all of it, but I've dived into homeopathy and I, you know, I've just started looking at like, what else is out there that we can use to support our body function, you know, better on a daily basis that maybe I'm not going to be told about when I go to my traditional practitioners. So I think the more that we can open everyone's eyes to the options of what's out there and the successes that people are having with, you know, like cft, for example, my hope is that these, these will Be, you know, the treatments of the future, because it's. It's more supportive.

Yeah, we hope so.

Where are you in Florida?

Holly.

So I'm in Boca Raton. Anybody down here?

We just did a training in Naples, so. Other side.

Right.

But we had a. We had a pretty big class there, and I think there are a few people on your side. We're going to be back there in April next year in Cocoa Beach. So definitely the opportunity. I know Florida, you know, there's a lot of. Of therapists down there doing some really great work, so hopefully we'll get some more cft.

Yeah.

We are getting ready to launch a practitioner list, which will be on our website of all of the people who have trained in foundation and an infant as well. So that'll be coming and make it much easier for people to find a practitioner.

Fantastic. Well, let me know, excuse me, when you guys launch that so I can share. I get asked daily, who do you know in this area that does this? And I'm like, if I could just have this beautiful little package list to give to people. You know, I also say if you can find somebody who gets it, sometimes they have the team. Right. So if you can just kind of find the one person, whether that's the feeding individual, the myo person, you know, whether it's cft, what, whoever that person is. Because like you said way back, you know, earlier in the episode, if you find the dentist who releases right away, same day when you go in, because they think they're helping, but in reality, if there's no other support surrounding it, that we're not really helping, you know, it's not to knock on our dentist. But, you know, I think it's. That is a conversation we have. And in the beginning, the way that I was trying to curb a lot of that was just by not referring to the dentist or the release provider until I knew the child was ready or like a week away from being ready. So that if something like that did happen, baby was at least ready for the procedure. But, you know, it takes a lot of education, and some people are open to it and some people are not. So we. We have a ways to go. But I think. I think, you know, having you all join me here and having these conversations definitely adds to that the education that I think is just really, hopefully opening up more eyes.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for joining me.

Yeah, well, hope to meet you someday in person.

I have to come take the course, if not at least for myself and my family. I need. I'M like, I need to know how to do this.

Definitely. We'll see you in April.

Perfect. Sounds good.

All right, Holly, thank you.

Thanks, thanks. Thanks you guys. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your social media platforms. You can access free resources at all I offer@halliebalkin.com or pop over to allybulkin on Instagram to get all the latest updates.