A massage therapist demonstrates cranial massage techniques to release head tension by gently working the skull's sutures and pairing jaw movements with slow breathing. Five repetitions of this pin-and-stretch method, done with attention to the client's sighs and eye reactions, can increase blood flow and release facial tension.
Questions this video answers
Five ("go ahead and just do that five times in a row").
A good sigh (the client typically gives a good sigh).
Chapters
Moving a little more out of the neck into the cranial massage. So working into those sutures into the brain. You have plates in your head that are held together by sutures. I try to find where those sutures are and separate them minutely. It's a very minute thing. Some people don't think the plates move. Some people do. I feel that they have space. They can gain space.
That allows for the blood flow to come into that area. And you can literally feel like once you open up one of those areas, you can just feel the fascia release. And typically, the client will give a good sigh when you get those. So that's my goal with getting into the actual head, is bringing in blood flow and release and all that tension in the head. You'd be surprised how much tension we hold in our head. Ben feels really tight in here. So part of the jaw work I like to do when I feel tension here is not just doing it in the jaw, but I'm going to do it right here. So, Ben, when you feel me getting into some of these areas, or when I tell you, go ahead and open up slowly, close slowly, and go ahead and just do that five times in a row, just really slow. And you can tell by his reaction in the eyes right there that he's feeling that. And this is like a pin and stretch. So I'm holding a lot of this muscle down. So when he's opening and closing his jaw, he's feeling that stretch from this right here.
