“The International Trepanation Advocacy Group does not encourage self-trepanation. ITAG does not support the practice of self-trepanation. ITAG assumes no responsibility for any damage incurred by anyone performing self-trepanation.”
The Trepanation Advocacy Group, reachable online at www.trepan.com, is pursuing a legal effort to make the practice of cranial trepanation simple and accessible to all. Creating a hole in the skull is, in fact, an outpatient surgical procedure that would not take your doctor more than fifteen minutes. Nevertheless, almost all ITAG members have had to perform trepanation on themselves:
Peter Halvorson, unable to find a doctor, learned the procedure from a plastic surgeon and in 1972, in a small room in the Netherlands, drilled into his own skull using a local anesthetic, a chisel, a small bit, and an electric drill operated by foot pedals.
Mellen operated on himself with a surgical drill; the adrenaline in the anesthetic helped reduce blood loss, which nevertheless spurted profusely when he penetrated the bone.
Amanda Feilding, after shaving and bandaging her head and wearing dark goggles to prevent blood from entering her eyes, used a small manual drill to perforate her cranial vault in front of a mirror in her bathroom, under the watchful eye of her husband Mellen. The footage filmed by her husband now constitutes a rare and valuable document.
The operation requires great care to avoid damaging the dura mater covering the brain, which is why the use of a special surgical drill that stops after penetrating the cranial bone is recommended. For this reason, self-trepanation is strongly discouraged without the proper tools and knowledge.
Self-trepanation, however, is a practice rooted in ancient history. A skull showing signs of trepanation recently found in France appears to date back about 7,000 years—a time when hygienic conditions were far from ideal, yet analysis of the bone and the hole’s condition indicates that the subject survived the operation. The discovery of numerous other perforated skulls across different parts of the world demonstrates that the practice was ritualistic and widespread.
Peter Halvorson describes the precautions he took and the healing process of the hole:
"At the time, I sprayed sterilized water on the area to clean it from blood and bone fragments. Then I disinfected with peroxide, and the edges of skin around the hole adhered to its interior."
Using a 3/8-inch drill, Halvorson noted that in the months following the operation, the hole slightly widened. The day after the procedure he experienced no pain (indeed, the skull is largely insensitive, and even open-skull surgery often does not require full anesthesia), he wrapped a turban around his head to avoid accidental bumps, and continued his daily life normally. Within a week, the hole was fully healed and could be touched without hesitation. Hair regrows over the healed area. The membrane inside the skull slightly rises through the hole; doctors performing brain surgery do not close the hole afterward, because the skull rebalances itself, regenerating cartilage rather than bone.
The skull not sealing completely allows the brain to remain in a ventilated environment, rather than in a vacuum-sealed enclosure as is typical in adult crania. The infiltration of air and oxygen into the cranial cavity is precisely the goal of trepanation. Observing children’s heads reveals a slight pulsation corresponding to the heartbeat, associated with cerebral blood circulation. Children have an open “fontanelle,” meaning the skull is not fully closed; it gradually closes along the sutures—the junctions between cranial plates—until complete closure around ages 26–30.
As long as the fontanelle remains open and the sutures are not fully ossified, air can circulate in the cranial cavity, and brain pulsation is perceptible. When the skull becomes vacuum-sealed, pulsation diminishes or stops, reducing blood flow throughout the brain tissue and consequently impairing gray matter function.
Bart Huges, who performed self-trepanation in 1965 while a medical student in Amsterdam, highlighted in his work “Mechanism of Brain Blood Volume” the key factors that enhance brain performance: a hole in the skull restores the expansion capacity of the brain’s membranes.
Even accidental incidents can produce conditions similar to those intended by trepanation. A March 5, 1998 email reported a programmer who, after an accident, developed a hole in his frontal skull; doctors believed he would not survive the night. Contrary to expectations, he returned home five days later, relieved of his monthly debilitating headaches. The Advocacy Group emphasized the importance of restoring proper brain pulsation, which, as noted above, diminishes with skull calcification.
Brain pulsation and intracranial pressure have been largely ignored by the US and Western European medical establishments. The first modern researchers on the topic were Russian. The most prominent, B.N. Klosovskii, became internationally recognized for his studies on cranial blood circulation. Around 1950, B.M. Klosovskii successfully mapped the brain’s vascular network. His main work, The Circulation of Blood in the Brain, was translated into English in 1963 and published in the US with the U.S. Public Health Service.
Still, there is no legal or medical pathway to request trepanation, and ITAG members claim there is a deliberate reluctance among doctors to recognize the benefits of cranial holes—perhaps even a conspiracy—understandable because acknowledging these benefits would imply that humanity requires a hole in the skull.
Nuove Frontiere della Modificazione Corporea: la Trapanazione del Cranio, testo di Macchina, Torazine3000, 1999