Dyslexia can take many forms and degrees of severity.
Some of the common symptoms are:
- Can only see 2 or 3 letters at a time, the rest of the sentence is darkened or blurred.
- Difficulty learning and remembering printed words.
- Sentences can ripple on the page causing nausea.
- Letter reversal (b for d, p for q), number reversals (6 for 9), and changed order of letters in words (tar for rat, quite for quiet) or numbers (12 for 21) or confusing left and right.
- Leaving out or inserting words while reading.
- Confusing vowel sounds or substituting one consonant for another.
- Persistent spelling errors.
- Difficulty writing.
From a craniosacral perspective, the causes of dyslexia usually relate to a restriction somewhere in the craniosacral system. Because of the reciprocal nature of the system, the restriction can be anywhere in the system. The effect of the restriction ends up causing pressure in the head, often but not exclusively, in the temporal regions of the brain.
If the underlying cause of the dyslexia is because of a restriction in the craniosacral system then once this restriction is treated the improvements can be dramatic and swift.
I vividly remember a patient who came to see me for neck pain. During one of our sessions, she released a restriction from a car accident she had been in as a child.
She returned for treatment the next week and told me that since the last session she had become dyslexic. I was a little surprised to hear this. She went on to explain that she remembered that after the car accident she had been dyslexic for a while but had ‘grown out of it’. She now realised that she had never really grown out of it but had compensated it for it.
In our previous session, she had released the restriction from the car accident and her body had returned to its pre-traumatised state. Her brain had been compensating for her restriction induced dyslexia for so long that now ‘normal’ looked back to front.
She said that as the week had progressed the dyslexic feeling had faded.
She was back to normal by the following week.
I think this case illustrates how dramatic the results can be if the cause of the dyslexia is in the craniosacral system.