CranioSacral Therapy is a gentle yet often surprisingly effective modality of touch therapy. The visual translation of elements and treatment protocols of the therapy have been undertaken to create a greater social awareness of the therapy and it is hoped that the studies will be of interest and value to students and practitioners, related body work therapists and people with an appreciation of the arts. Is therapy art, and if so what contribution can such a formulation of art bring to postmodernist thinking?

'Stillness, spaciousness, intention and listening' form an important aspect of the language of craniosacral therapy. Hugh Milne in his book, "The Listening Heart" describes this silent language as a form of communication that existed before verbal language. In the paintings of Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca (c. 1420-1492), the element most often remarked upon by art historians is a quality of unexplainable stillness. His works are described as embodying a kind of mysterious beauty and stillness which is cited to have influenced much of twentieth-century art. Silences and spaces are likewise present in the human body. Mabel Todd, an important early thinker in the field of somatic awareness, points out that the gaps between heartbeats are longer than the length of the heart's contractions. Similar observations are made about the workings of the diaphragm. "Next to the heart, the diaphragm is the most continuously active of all body structures. It does not become fatigued, partly, because like the heart, its rest periods are longer than its working periods; that is, the phase of relaxation is longer than that of contraction." "Like the 'rest' that the musician employs in a composition, to enhance and amplify appreciation of musical tone quality and variation in phrasing, so Nature employs frequent rest periods. It is as though Nature must re-establish the potential energy balance before allowing it to be employed again in kinetic form."

The potency of dynamic stillness is an integral principle in the practice of CranioSacral Therapy (CST). In the human body the craniosacral and sympathetic nervous systems alternate in their function. The degree to which the sympathetic branch is activated, is the degree to which the craniosacral system cannot function. Dr James Jealous attributes eighty percent or more of disease and illness to an imbalance in this interchange. In the practice of CST the encouragement of still points facilitates a craniosacral response which serves to equalise the imbalance. Dr Becker states:

"The stillness is that which centres every molecule of being of the living body. The body physiology is the outward expression of that stillness. They are in total unity, in balanced interchange. Health is related to a return to the freedom of interchange between body physiology and stillness."

Art and CranioSacral Therapy can be seen to share a dynamic in the potency of stillness. In the case of art, it is beauty that arises from stillness and in CranioSacral Therapy a transmutation process which arises facilitating healing and health - both can be experienced as a means of enhancement and transformation.

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