Why I Practice Cranial Adjusting | Dr. Brant Larsen

I’ll tell you how this started. I wanted to free up my own skull.

That’s really it. When I first became interested in cranial adjusting, I wasn’t thinking about building a specialty around it. I was curious — about a different way of looking at the body, and about whether it was possible to get the bones of my own skull moving better.

More than 22 years later, I’m still fascinated by it.

What changed the way I look at the body

Over the years I’ve learned something that shapes how I practice: the place where someone feels a problem isn’t necessarily where the problem starts. I’ve worked with people whose headaches, breathing difficulties, muscle weakness and other symptoms didn’t make sense to me until I looked at the cranial system.

That’s why I don’t just look at the painful area. I take a history. I examine the person. I test muscle function. I look at how the body responds when I challenge different areas of the skull. Then I adjust what I find — and test again to see what changed.

What I’m not claiming

I’m not going to tell you that cranial adjusting cures a particular disease or symptom. My job is to determine whether the cranial system is functioning the way I’d expect, identify restrictions when I find them, adjust them, and then see how the person responds.

That distinction — between what I observe clinically and what has been established by research — matters to me. I’ve been doing this long enough to know the difference between “I’ve seen this happen” and “research has proven this happens.” Those aren’t the same thing, and I try to be clear about which one I’m talking about.