The hardest sentence to hear after a serious injury or a surgery is also the most common one: just listen to your doctor. It’s well-meant. It’s often given by family members who don’t know what else to say. And it leaves you with a recovery that’s a list of one item.
Listening to your doctor is necessary. It is not sufficient.
What a recovery team actually looks like
A complete recovery team usually includes a primary surgeon or physician, a physical therapist, sometimes an occupational therapist, sometimes a coach or counsellor, and a holistic practitioner of some kind. The team is rarely organized for you — you have to organize it.
This is not because the system is broken (though it often is). It’s because no single member of your team has visibility into all of the others. You are the only person who sees the whole picture.
How BCST fits in
BCST is a complement to medical care, not a replacement for it. The most useful thing a craniosacral practitioner can do is sit at the table with the rest of the team — through your reports, not in person — and offer the autonomic regulation that the medical and physical work depends on.
If you’d like help thinking through what your team should look like, that’s often the work of the first one or two sessions.