Craniosacral Therapy (Julian Cowan Hill, etc.)

Has anyone tried craniosacral therapy for treating tinnitus?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniosacral_therapy

 

I do rate Julian Cowan Hill, and his ability of overcoming his own tinnitus, I would wish for us all to overcome it including yourself mate. Give it a go if you live in the London area, and post on here you're experience, that's what I am doing with mine, with some other treatment...

 

Excerpt from the Julian Cowan Hill webpage:
"In this state, ears not only pick up external noise, but now, because they are registering more than normal, they start hearing the nervous impulses along the auditory nerve inside your head. In most cases, tinnitus is nothing more than hearing the noises of your nervous system. It results from hypersensitivity listening in to the inner world of the nervous system. You have become so reactive that you have begun to monitor the background nervous impulses that normally are ignored. People with tinnitus often spend months or years in a heightened state of nervous arousal, so that eventually their hearing becomes so sensitive they end up listening to nervous impulses all the time."​

Interesting. This seems to imply that "hearing" is not necessarily from just our ears, but how we interpret signals in our nervous system.

The onset of my own Tinnitus started after a period of strong emotions/stress. This would support the statement about a "heightened stated of nervous arousal".

I have never heard of "craniosacral therapy".

 

Ok so describe your Tinnitus, is it a high pitched tone? Is it a buzzing? I believe the body can go into fight / flight mode so yes sensitive hearing could play a major part in Tinnitus

 

I visited him twice a very well meaning guy.He is profoundly deaf and had really bad T for 16 years but its gone now.

Thing is when he knew I knew a lot about Chi Kung(hadnt done it for years) he very sportingly said instead of spending money with me go away and do your chi kung every day for 30 mins and it will be better for your ears than I can achieve.
All the best Pete

 

Hi all ,I have met this guy a few times

How to Let Go of Tinnitus by Julian Cowan Hill

Hes a cranial osteopath and psychologist ,his hearing is so bad that he has to lip read but his bad tinnitus of 16 years was cured ,so why is the brain now not producing noise to combat his ear loss.????????????

 

How cured is it? Sometimes I don't hear my T and I think I am cured but then I realize I haven't heard it and it magically appears. Maybe he's figured out the magical way to ignore his T permanently...which works for me.....

 

Hello Erik ,well he said to me it has completely gone ,now considering the guy Is profoundly deaf not to hear it is well fantastic.Has he trained his mind not to hear it ,I have to say i do not believe he meant it that way.

Sounds like your doing ,great!! well as i type the TvIs on and also on is the Jet engine In my head.

 

I've checked this guy out before via his web site and other info on the web even though he 's way too far away for me to visit (across the Atlantic), and I was not too impressed with his theory then. However, after hearing him explain it as he does in this video, I must say that his explaination of tinnitus rings true to me. His explaination about the nervous system being in hyper mode to the point that your hearing you're brain working (that's kind of what he said), fits my experience and how I feel to a T (Alright, enough puns).

I do have a high frequency hearing loss in the range of the frequency of my tinnitus which would support that theory of tinnitus, but I often wonder if it is a true hearing loss or whether its the tinnitus masking the external sound so it appears like a hearing loss in a hearing test. To me the sound I hear - or to be more precise, the sound that my brain senses - has always sounded like I've imagined the flow of electricity to sound. Maybe I make that association because the squealing sound I hear is exactly like I remember a failing vacuum tube in an old TV sounding. Now I'm showing my age. Probably many on this forum are too young to know what a vacuum tube is.

If anyone knows of someone who practices Mr. Hill's brand of CST in mid-America, please post info.

 

I am skeptical about Julian Cowan Hill and others like him. They have been around for years, he is part of Curetinnitus.org which is a subscription based site and hasn't been updated in over a years so that can't be good. I know he claims to be completely cured of tinnitus and maybe he is that 1 in a million that it happened to but I doubt it was because of his methods. If his method was truly a "cure" or even a successful treatment, this would have made headlines throughout the world and we would all know about it.

 

I bouthg this book ages ago. Ive read most of it and it makes a lot of sense. Its explaining it in the same was as the Jastreboff Model really. Its about anxiety causing the hearing to become super-sensitive (as happens after hearing loss too). And about how to combat that anxiety.

 

True Louise, this seems to be the best advice for T sufferers in general. Deal with the other issues surrounding your T and it will most likely make your life with T better. If you have extreme anxiety, depression, panic etc --treat it with meds and/or counseling and the T will improve. If you have some type of hearing loss, get some aids and most likely the T will improve. Mix in some "Time" and improvements should come.

 

Yes. Its saying though (as does Jastreboff) that the anxiety makes the hearing so sensitive that you hear the 'normal activity' the activity that was always there. He does make a lot of good points. I'll write some of what he says up on this post tomorrow.

 

Anxiety is probably the worst part of T. It can make tinnitus dramatically worse-- causing heighten senses, pain and other physical symptoms. Maybe that is the diff between the 99% with T who don't have an issue with it and the 1% which do, the 99% don't have anxiety about their T.

 

I have the same feeling. But he is cured, which is great for him.

I've always assumed there is an audiological defect that is starting the problem. From there, it becomes neurological.

When some experts talk in psychological terms, about anxiety and "being too sensitive", it can get confusing for some of us. Fundamentally, tinnitus has got to be an audiological and neurological problem. Psycho-babble can generalize and group together a whole slew of mental conditions, swapping common terminologies that may not apply to tinnitus.

Tinnitus isn't depression or anxiety, it's more complicated. I find it hard to believe that tinnitus can be caused by such things a guilt trips.

 

I agree Karl but I do think depression and anxiety are somehow tied into T in many cases. It seems like most have either one, or OCD issues with depression or anxiety. And I program and compose music....I am doomed!

 

I have been doing Cranio Sacral Therapy for a few weeks now and here are my experiences.

At first I just felt the relaxation effects of this therapy which was nice but did next to nothing for my T.
Then I started to come in with massive T and hearing it reduce during the therapy, coming out feeling pretty good. This would never really last more than a day or so.

Just recently my therapist started a new procedure where she actually puts her fingers in my mouth and does some hocus pocus *cranio is mostly about doing next to nothing to you, except touching lightly?*
I have only had one of these "mouth" sessions but it did something, in fact it gave me the most insane spike i have ever experienced, thought I would not survive that day/night....for real.

Insane as that may sound , I can't wait for the next session, if it gives me such an insane spike that would be proof that is does ...well...something, which is better than nothing. I think

Apart from that I am also doing something that involves a light device that I hold to various points of my body, including ears ...bio-something ? Will report on that, although that REALLY feels like mumbo jumbo.

But...what can you do , except try .

 

Yep all you can do is try.Just another thing that empties your wallet and gives false hope..there you go what can you do.

 

Well , it's free, so why not. It's relaxing.

 

The therapy she is doing in your mouth sounds like trigger point therapy. If your T is somatic, it could cure you, or at least help reduce it.

 

I had 2 Cranio Sacral Therapy sessions, the last being Monday Feb. 3rd. I seemed to have low T for a day after the 1st treatment and higher T after the 2nd, so inconclusive at this point. The fact that my tinnitus changed does hold some promise. Cost $60/hour.

I had added to a existing thread from 2010 on DS Tinnitus which had much more posts on this topic. http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Tinnitus/forum/9684717-cranial-sacral-therapy

 

I have recently been to CST and i must admit i was a little sceptical to begin with but the last time i went something strange happened.
She had her hands under my head and she told me to imagine projecting the whole left hand side of my body out from where i was laying, out as far i could imagine, to the opposite wall.(my T is worse on that side)
The T almost halved in intensity! I cant explain it, was it a placebo effect, was it something she did, all i know is that for that short time my T was greatly effected.
The T did come back as normal after the session but there was an effect.
I am going again tomorrow so i will see what happens then.
I am not promoting this therapy or making it sound better than it is, i am just relating my experience.
I hope it can make a lasting difference. I will give it a few more tries to give it a proper go.

 

Yeah, there is something to it. I personally don't care so much if it's a placebo or not , if it works it works.
Admittedly I do not expect it to clear up my T , but it makes me feel better and lately I have come to realize that even though I am pretty much powerless about T I am far from powerless in doing a multitude of little things that make me feel just a little bit better

 

Thanks guys. This is next on my list of things to try. Appreciate your feedback.

 

Hi LadyDi, I had 4 or 5 treatments, did not help T. When she put her fingers in my mouth and massaged the lower sides of my mandible it did help open my sinuses, and took away that fullness feeling in my ear. I agree with others here, no harm in giving it a try.

 

Thanks, Gary. That is kind of my benchmark: I am looking for therapies that won't cost me a fortune (although I am doing Neuromonics) and that won't make my condition worse. I have done acupuncture for about 18 sessions, through an inner ear surgeon and researcher rather than a traditional Asian medicine practitioner. I feel it did help me initially but now I have gone about as far as I can go.

Trying different supplements, too. CST also sounded like it was worth a shot.

 

What is somatic tinnitus?

 

I am not sure if this is part of the standard definition (if indeed there is one), but I believe that somatic tinnitus goes beyond one's ability to magnify or produce phantom sounds by clenching or pressing body parts.

Certainly, I am able to magnify my tinnitus when I squeeze the back of my head or press the right side of my jaw. But what I find really interesting is that immediately upon waking, I rarely have any tinnitus at all. However, within moments of gaining consciousness---usually accompanied by movement of some sort---the ringing sets in. It could simply be that as my brain fires up, the tinnitus goes along for the ride. Alternatively, my body movements could have something to do with the problem. That is, assuming some kind of interconnectedness between movement and head noise, somatic tinnitus could be much more complicated than the effect of direct pressure near the auditory nerve.

I should add that once the noise sets in after getting up in the morning, it is with me for the day unless I can relieve it with a shower (which is another topic altogether). So, subsequent lack of movement does not reduce or eliminate the tinnitus in my case.

-Golly

 

I might be daft but why is it called somatic tinnitus , seems like everyone can modulate their T by clenching their jaw or pushing against their forehead ? Isn't somatic T just ...T ?

I can most definitely modulate my T with my jaw and and pushing against my forhead , would that imply any different treatment options ? I am confused .