Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve: Self-Help Exercises for Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Autism

by Stanley D. Rosenberg

A project in Denmark involved a group of therapists who treated vic-tims of trauma from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The therapists included traditional psychologists, a craniosacral therapist, and body therapists using various modalities. All of the subjects received the same number of sessions, which included both verbal and nonverbal therapies. Some started with craniosacral therapy, followed by other body therapies, and others started with more traditional, verbal forms of therapy. Looking back on the results, the therapists noticed that the subjects who started with the nonverbal craniosacral therapy had better results than the subjects who started by talking about what they had experienced. One of the psychologists in the group, Marc Levin, speculated that when people felt safe and relaxed after the body therapy, they felt more robust and therefore more open when they started to talk about what they had experienced. By contrast, when people talked about their experiences first, it seemed harder for them to let go of it; some of them may have actually restimulated the trauma.73

While the footnote says there was no formal study for this it is presented as though it was. I recognize that in alternative treatments there is more space for this sort of claim but I also feel compelled to work in evidence based ways so this is disappointing. It does not help with confidence for the masses