Craniosacral therapy is a subtle and profound healing form. In a typical craniosacral session, you will usually lie fully-clothed on a treatment couch. The therapist will make contact by placing their hands usually lightly on your body and tuning in. The first thing you will probably notice is a sense of deep relaxation, which will generally last throughout the session. This release of tension often extends into everyday life.
The approach typically involves changing how the memory is neurologically represented, rather than analysing it in detail. Common elements include:
Dissociation from the memory The client imagines watching themselves in the situation as if from outside (like watching a movie). This reduces the emotional intensity.
Running the memory differently The scene is often replayed very quickly, sometimes backwards, or with altered imagery. The idea is to break the brain’s automatic fear response pattern.
Re-encoding the memory By repeatedly changing the sensory qualities (speed, distance, colour, sound), the brain stops linking the event with the same level of threat.
Future pacing The client imagines being in the previously feared situation again—such as using the London Underground—but now experiencing calm or neutrality.
Why single-incident phobias often respond quickly
When the phobia is tied to one clear event (like being trapped on a train), there’s often one dominant memory network driving the reaction. Once the emotional encoding of that memory changes, the trigger may lose its power quite quickly.
More complex cases can take longer—for example when:
the fear developed over many repeated experiences
the phobia is linked to broader anxiety patterns such as Specific Phobia
the situation connects to deeper trauma responses like Post‑traumatic Stress Disorder.
Your case example
Your process of:
clearing earlier emotional material first
then working directly on the phobic memory
and later confirming real-world behaviour change
Combine the changes with craniosacral therapy
The follow-up where she was comfortably using the underground again is often considered the best evidence of successful integration.
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Phobias can have a powerful impact on daily life, whether it’s fear of spiders, snakes, heights, water, needles, or the sea. In many cases, these fears are linked to past experiences that the mind has learned to associate with danger.
Using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, we work to identify and change the patterns in the mind that trigger the phobic response. Many people experience significant relief from their phobia in a short period of time.
Your first consultation lasts approximately 90 minutes. During the session we will address the phobia using NLP techniques and support your nervous system with gentle craniosacral therapy to promote relaxation and balance.
Many clients report feeling calmer, more confident, and able to face situations that previously caused fear.
There are many researches now that mention the possible connection with the trauma from grandparents to the grandchildren. We have many memory cells and since the first human on earth we have learned from experience and passed on that experience via our memory cells. If somebody was eaten by a tiger, or worse, the survivor human who saw it or witness it, would have that memory in them and pass on that trauma to the next generation for them to be aware of the tiger. It could be that the human would stay away from the tiger as an inner instinct that was pass on in our memory cells (all theory as this is very difficult to show in the scientific way).
The research and studies done so far have connected trauma from past generation to the new generation, and especially the Holocaust survivors and the grandchildren of the survivor where it seems to be a connection between the “Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPA-axis). This means the stress response in certain situation is much higher than any other person that did not have parents with traumatic events.
My small sample of that is that my grandparents suffered more scarcity of food, and my parents growing up had the same. I grew up with my parents making sure that we always had enough food or plenty of food, and still to these days my mum stores more food that they can ever eat. During the pandemic, that was even more essential due to fear of not being able to get to the supermarket for food. So, for my parents, food or lack of, is the biggest enemy.
And in some way, that might have been passed on to me in an unconscious way, hence my choice of becoming a nutritionist and making food also my priority in some way or another.
In many studies, the traumatic events are only imprinted in some way in the cellular memory, when the survivor of the trauma reacted to the trauma with long term stress response and lifestyle changes. With the pandemic for example, everyone has been affected in some way or another, but many people have been affected more strongly according to the way they can cope with stress and life challenging. This seems to be in accordance to how their own parents dealt with stressful situation, unless they learn another way of dealing with traumatic events or have healed whatever trauma they had themselves in the past or their grandparents.
I have seen this ancestral healing many times in the craniosacral sessions and now with the neuro-linguistic programming, where the person is linking the possible trauma with a past ancestral trauma, which comes either from the father or mother side. It is amazing to see once that is healed, how the person life unfolds in a different direction and behavior for future stressful event. In some studies, the transgenerational transmission of trauma (TTT) has been connected to not only the holocaust grandchildren, but from survivors of war trauma, childhood sexual abuse, refugees, torture victims and many other samples. Even though there have been a lot of studies, it is very hard to prove such a thing as a genetic transmission of trauma.
Energetically I can say yes, this is what happens, as I have seen that many times in my own clients for the past 10 years through craniosacral therapy. Scientifically harder to prove. In reality as long as my clients gets better, that is where my loyalties go, rather than having a scientific evidence of it. Even with the placebo effect, if it works, well it works. If the clients feel much better after letting go of a trauma that was not theirs to keep or to hold on to, well it is good to let it go!
In some of the research on the topic, some of the children or grandchildren have nightmares of being chased and tortured like they were living their parents lives during the war. Where do the dreams come from? Considering that in the studies the children did not see any of the war films and I am sure their parents will never put them through that, where do the nightmares come from?
“Epigenetics is defined as the study of heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to changes in the underlying DNA sequence” (Kellermann N.P.F.).
The gene expression changes will be the consequence of environmental stress and major emotional trauma that would leave a mark on the memory cells. Our body will carry this type of memory in all our body cells, this includes eggs in women and sperm in men. This memory is then passed on into the new born chromosomes and hence will be processed as their own trauma. This will lead to a constant reminder of past events, our own or our ancestor’s past.
This type of memory can be passed on from generation to generation, if not solved and let go.
From the start of my craniosacral therapy and healing learning, I have been healing and clearing not only my past childhood trauma, but also my ancestor’s trauma.
I cleared that for my next generation too, energetically, so that the trauma will not be carried on to the next generation. I know that the healing works, as I can see the changes in myself and also subsequently through my next generation
This concept cannot be understood by the logical mind, and hence is impossible to explain it in a sound and scientific way, as I mentioned above. Remember if it works, it works!
Reference
Kelermann NPF (2013). Epigenetic transmission of Holocaust trauma: can nightmares be inherited? Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci.
Ali B Rodgers AB & Bale TL (2015). Germ Cell Origins of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Risk: The Transgenerational Impact of Parental Stress Experience.Biol Psychiatry
