When Your Baby Won't Stop Crying: How Craniosacral Therapy May Help with Infant Colic
If your baby has colic, you already know what it is. You know the sound of it, the timing of it, the way it fills a room and empties you. You have probably tried everything that was suggested. Some of it helped a little. None of it solved it. Craniosacral therapy is worth knowing about. Not as a cure, but as a gentle, low-risk option that has shown real signal in the research and that some parents find makes a meaningful difference.
What colic actually does to a family
Colic is defined clinically as crying for more than three hours a day, more than three days a week, in an otherwise healthy infant. That definition does not capture what it does to a family. It is isolating. It activates every protective instinct you have and then defeats them. You cannot fix it by holding the baby differently or changing the formula or driving around the block at midnight, even though you try all of those things.
Colic is not well understood, and treatment options are limited across the board. Most interventions that have been studied have not shown consistent benefit in clinical trials, and current guidance for parents centers largely on coping strategies while the baby grows through it. That is not nothing. For a parent in the middle of it, though, it is not enough either.
Why a baby's nervous system is involved
Colic is not fully understood, but one framework that makes clinical sense is that it involves a nervous system that is struggling to settle. Birth is physically demanding on a baby regardless of how smoothly it goes. The craniosacral system, the membranes and cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord, can carry restriction from the compression and movement of the birth process.
When there is restriction at the base of the skull or in the sacral area, it can affect the cranial nerves that govern digestion and the capacity to self-soothe. A baby who cannot be comforted for extended periods, whose digestion seems distressed, who cycles through crying and brief exhausted sleep and crying again, may be experiencing the downstream effects of a nervous system that hasn't fully unwound from birth. This is not pathology. It is the body asking for help with something it hasn't been able to resolve on its own.
What the research shows
The evidence on CST for infant colic is the most contested in the CST literature and deserves honest handling. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis that pooled multiple studies found no statistically significant effect when the results were aggregated. More pointedly, the reviewers assessed the individual colic trials as methodologically flawed and concluded that their positive findings are likely false positives. That is a strong criticism and should not be minimized.
The trials themselves, two randomized controlled studies by Castejón-Castejón and colleagues, published in 2019 and updated in 2022, found reductions in crying hours, colic severity, and improved sleep in infants who received CST compared to infants who received no treatment. The improvements were large in magnitude. But both trials compared CST against no treatment rather than against a sham condition, which is the methodological limitation the 2024 reviewers flagged. Without a sham control, it is not possible to separate the effect of the specific CST technique from the effect of gentle attention and touch more generally.
What this means in practice: the honest position is that we do not yet know whether CST specifically reduces colic, or whether the gentleness of the interaction is itself what helps. Either answer has value for a struggling parent. What is consistent across all of it is the safety record. CST uses no instruments, no medications, and no manipulation. The touch is no heavier than the weight of a nickel. No adverse events have been reported in the infant colic literature.
CST is best understood here not as a treatment for colic but as gentle nervous system support: an approach that works with a baby's capacity to settle. Some parents find it makes a meaningful difference. Others do not. It is low-risk enough to be worth trying when other options have not been sufficient.
What to expect in a session for your baby
Sessions for infants are gentle and typically shorter than adult sessions, usually 30 to 45 minutes. The baby remains clothed throughout. If being held is more settling than lying on the table, that is how the session proceeds. Nancy works with the entire infant body, fascia and involved systems to release and relieve strain patterns impacting the central nervous system, using extremely light touch to detect where the craniosacral system is restricted and create conditions for the nervous system to release.
Many babies relax noticeably during the session itself. Some sleep through most of it. Some fuss at the start and gradually grow quiet. What parents often describe in the days that follow is a baby who seems easier to settle, more able to be comforted, more capable of rest between feeds. The effect is not always immediate and is not guaranteed. But the sessions are brief, the touch is light, and there is no recovery period afterward, for the baby or for you.
Nancy Bradshaw has trained specifically in CST for infants and newborns through the Upledger Institute and has worked with families navigating colic, feeding difficulty, and birth-related strain. Her practice, Light Touch Craniosacral Therapy, is in Jacksonville, Florida. If your baby is struggling and you want to understand whether this work might help, she is glad to talk through it.
Ready to experience it for yourself?
Craniosacral therapy is not a substitute for medical care. Please consult your healthcare provider regarding any medical concerns.
Sources
Castejón-Castejón M, Murcia-González MA, Martínez Gil JL, Todri J, Suárez Rancel M, Lena O, Chillón-Martínez R. Effectiveness of craniosacral therapy in the treatment of infantile colic. A randomized controlled trial. Complementary Therapies in Medicine. 2019;47:102164. PubMed 31780018
Castejón-Castejón M, Murcia-González MA, Todri J, Lena O, Chillón-Martínez R. Treatment of infant colic with craniosacral therapy. A randomized controlled trial. Complementary Therapies in Medicine. 2022. PubMed 36113708
Ceballos-Laita L, Ernst E, et al. Is Craniosacral Therapy Effective? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Healthcare (Basel). 2024. PMC10970181
