About the training

The training offers a practitioner course for individuals wanting to become qualified craniosacral therapists. The training is biodynamic in its approach orienting to the body’s natural wisdom and allowing innate intelligent processes to arise and bring about authentic change. These changes will be physiological and psycho-emotional. The body’s own priorities for change are listened for and encouraged to arise. The art of the therapist is to connect with the underlying forces of health and facilitate a process of natural reorganisation. These forces express as subtle motion of tissues and fluids that can be felt by sensitive hands. Biodynamic craniosacral therapy takes a whole-person approach to healing and the inter-connectedness of mind, body and spirit are deeply acknowledged.

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

William Garner Sutherland, a student of Andrew Still the founder of Osteopathy, is considered the pioneer of Cranial Osteopathy. The science and skills of this form of Osteopathy evolved over Sutherland’s lifetime (1873-1954) and with his students and eventually started to be taught to non-Osteopaths in the mid 1980s by John Upledger who created the term Craniosacral Therapy. This modality then developed separately to Cranial Osteopathy.

In the late 1980s, Franklyn Sills originated an approach to the work that included a fuller model of working with trauma processes, an orientation to deeper expressions of health, use of lighter intention and a recognition of the holistic nature of the human body. Courses became longer as these aspects of the work were developed more fully and now biodynamic trainings are typical 45-50 days over two years.

There are a number of training organizations inspired by these teachings in Europe and North America and now the work is spreading to Australia, New Zealand and Asia. In 2006 the International Affiliation of Biodynamic Trainings, IABT, was created to define standards in biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy trainings and the term Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) was coined to differentiate the approach from other forms of Craniosacral Therapy.

This approach’s paradigm is to become highly skilful at listening to the body’s inherent health mechanisms and the therapist typically looks for and encourages the forces of health to set the priorities of the session and to bring about natural adjustments from within the body’s own resources. It is hallmarked by a strong interest in the holism of the human experience where both the body’s anatomy and physiology are related to in real time with the subtle forces of life that act through the interface of the body’s fluids. Subtle movements in the body’s fluid and tissue fields are being listened for and the natural movement towards stillness is seen as deeply resourceful.

The simplicity of this therapy is its beauty. The practitioner takes up a position of being neutral and allows the process of the treatment to unfold. The practitioner is interested in facilitating the body towards deep intrinsic reorganizations across the body’s tissues, its fluid matrix and its energetic and emotional layers, so that there is a holistic movement towards greater health. The therapy creates a safe space for traumatic experiences to emerge and resolve smoothly without being overwhelming or re-stimulating.

Intention of the training

The intention of the training is to provide a life transforming educational process that creates practitioners of excellence. The training is in-depth and comprehensive and honours the classical roots of the work along with recent developments in the field. Emphasis is placed upon the development of palpatory, perceptual and treatment skills which the student practitioner can integrate in a step by step process. The course is designed so that the information and skills gained in each seminar are layered and built upon during subsequent seminars. There are a number of elements running through the course that create a basis for successful practice: contact and treatment skills, clinical understanding, practice management and self-development. The training’s goal is to facilitate student practitioners in the application of skills and theory to the practice of craniosacral therapy on real people with real issues and conditions, in order to provide effective and safe treatment. Here are some of the key skills you will learn on the course:

• Palpatory skills - in order to become aware of subtle motions and qualities in the body it’s necessary to develop a high degree of sensitivity. To enable this, the course places an emphasis on body awareness exercises and covers anatomy through self-experiencing. This opens up ways of becoming more body conscious and creates an ability to differentiate tissues and structures within your own body and ultimately in your client’s. The course therefore includes anatomy as a way to increase body awareness.
• Perceptual skills - you will learn to perceive the body at different levels of organization, the physical, the fluid and the energetic and follow how the body unfolds between one state and another. This leads you to be free flowing and mobile in your ability to perceive things and see the body and the world with different eyes
• Treatment skills - learning the art of how to deal with different clients and their needs, how to work with the variety of situations that arise in the treatment space. How to manage traumatic expressions skillfully and safely.
• Contact skills - learning how to access the sensitivity of your hands so that you can feel deep into the body by creating a spacious inviting touch. You can learn to touch in a way that creates a holistic relationship and brings you into awareness of structures remote to your hands along with an appreciation of the continuity and connectivity of the body tissues and fluids.
• Clinical understanding - learning how to use good judgment as a practitioner. Being able to be balanced and sensible in your approach to different health conditions. Having a sound ability to assess change to better health and identify baseline patterns.
• Practice management and self-development - learning how to set up in practice as a professional therapist and being successful. In practice, working as an ethical practitioner and making a commitment to continually developing your skills.

Living anatomy

In order to become aware of subtle motions and qualities in the body it’s necessary to develop a high degree of sensitivity. To enable this, the course places an emphasis on body awareness exercises and covers anatomy through self-experiencing. This opens up ways of becoming more body conscious and creates an ability to differentiate tissues and structures within your own body and ultimately in your client’s. The course therefore includes anatomy as a way to increase body awareness.