Become a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist

Have you ever…

• listened to the roar of ocean waves and found your body swaying with them?
• wondered at the miracle of a pregnant woman's belly and the new baby
forming within?
• touched someone and wished you could understand more of the mystery
beneath your hand?

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is like a combination of these experiences - an opportunity to touch the mystery more directly, and to be touched by it. And it begins with the tides that are always moving in us and the peaceful stillness that rests beneath them.

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy - Practitioner Training

The Practitioner Training is a comprehensive 700-hour course for anyone who wants to become a professional Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist.

• This training deepens your ability to listen unconditionally to the life force, so you can perceive WHOLENESS within yourself and other people.

• When you learn to resonate with health and wholeness, you invite the life force to show you and your clients the way to natural and optimal healing. This training may also transform you on a deep personal level.

• When you graduate, you will be eligible for the credentials of RCST^® - Registered Craniosacral Therapist through the Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America (CSTA/NA). www.craniosacraltherapy.org

• This training is a good complement to other therapies you may already know, and you can easily incorporate the skills you will learn into any existing healing practice.

Introduction
Outline of Certification Training
The Teaching Team
Prerequisites to the Training
The Curriculum

Introduction

Perceiving WHOLENESS within yourself and other people is a rare skill in our modern world - different from focusing on what is wrong (or sick or out of alignment) so it can be fixed.

In your Practitioner Training you will learn how to...

• Focus on HEALTH instead of problems or pathologies
• Participate in a resonant field where health is predominant
• Perceive the WHOLE, rather than just parts
• Work with the innate healing intelligence of the body
• More info about Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

Outline of Certification Training

As an embryo, you began as a WHOLE, a single life-filled cell. Ideally, you were held and nourished within a loving, welcoming field created by parents and community.

In the training we create a similar field, where you can rest and be nurtured in your learning.

The early part of the training establishes your ability to invite and resonate with health and wholeness. These foundational skills are deepened and reinforced as you progress to perceive and palpate more specific motions, structures, and functions within the whole.

In the first modules you will learn t0...

• Enhance your ability to settle deeply within yourself
• Establish relationship based on safe, contactful presence with and without touch
• Shift your focus to a wider view so you can perceive health and wholeness
• Sense and support fluid movement and stillness
• Appreciate the power of being rather than doing

The Teaching Team

Your teaching team - the teacher and the teaching assistants (TA's) - have all graduated from the Practitioner Training and are Registered Craniosacral Therapists with experience from their own professional practices. As an added bonus for our trainings, Franklyn Sills, founder of Craniosacral Biodynamics, will present once by Skype in each module.

With its small class size and high teacher/student ratio, this training offers some of the benefits of an apprenticeship. Our intention is to embody the principles of this work as we are with you, so you can learn through resonance, and pass this on to your clients.

• We will guide you with experiential exercises in class and provide feedback and guidance for your practice sessions and assignments outside of class.
• You will also receive brief sessions from us in class and get feedback from us when you practice your skills with us on the table.
• During in-class practice sessions, we will sit close to you, sometimes with our hands over yours, to help you to develop your skills at the table.
• There will be at least one teacher/TA for every five students.

Prerequisites to the Training

• Receive at least 3 Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy sessions from an RCST^® or equivalent (i.e. a graduate of an BCTA/NA approved foundation training). If you have received craniosacral therapy sessions and are unsure about your practitioner's training, please find out about the practitioner's credentials and training and check with us if this is sufficient for the purpose of preparing for this training.
It is important for you to experience the work in your body so that you begin to understand what you are committing yourself to.
• Attend an Introductory Seminar. Or receive at least 1 of the 3 sessions from the instructor if possible. Or if you cannot attend an introductory seminar or receive a session from the instructor, please call for a telephone or Skype interview. It is important that we have a sense of each other before the training starts, to determine if this is the right training for you.
• It is highly recommended that you have a basic knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology, which can be obtained by taking a basic introductory, college level course.
• Having previous training and experience as a health care practitioner or therapist can be helpful but is not required. Note that in order to practice professionally after graduation, you are responsible for having a license to touch (e.g. massage license), if required in your locale. The degree of training required varies between regions.

The Curriculum

The curriculum includes (but is not limited to):

• Skills of Being: settle into a state of neutral, being with what arises
• Relational skills: establish and maintain resonance, safety, and healthy boundaries, grounded in body-centered awareness and being
• Perceptual skills: orient to the whole and recognize specific aspects of the living system; perceive from head, heart, or belly; shift perception as needed
• Palpation skills: learn to feel and support subtle rhythmic fluctuations, tides and stillness within the body, motion and relationships of specific anatomical structures; differentiate between settling, activation and discharge, contact and dissociation
• Trauma skills: recognize signs of trauma in the body-mind and support their resolution (based primarily on the work of Peter Levine)
• Verbal skills: talk with the client to establish and maintain safety and relationship before and during table work; useful comments and questions to ask, to help deepen or integrate a process, access a more resourced or settled state
• Anatomy: Landmarks, mobility, motility, relationships and embryological development of relevant structures:
- Bones (cranium, spine, pelvis, joints, face, TMJ, hyoid)
- Membranes and Fascia, (dural tube, reciprocal tension membrane, horizontal diaphragms, neck, hyoid and pelvis support, pericardium)
- Fluids (CSF, ventricles, circulatory system, venous sinuses)
- Neuro-Endocrine system (brain, autonomic nervous system, cranial nerves)
• Theory: Biodynamic Craniosacral concepts including Health, Wholeness, Resonance, Embryological Imperative, Inherent Treatment Plan, Breath of Life as ordering principle, Primary Respiration, Tides, Neutral, Holistic Shift, Resource, Potency, Matrix, Field, Stillness, Augmentation, Still Point Gateways, States of Balance, Mid-line, Natural and Inertial Fulcrums, 3-Stage Healing Process,Reciprocal Balanced Interchange, Ignition, Original Blueprint
• Specific applications and strategies: Augmentation of space/disengagement, fluid drive, lateral Fluctuation, potency in relation to specific joints, cranial sutures or other tissues, Still Point Gateways (relating to CV4, EV4), working with TMJ and dental issues, Cranial Base, Spinal and Pelvic issues, Occipital Atlanteal Joint, Venous Sinuses, Nerve Facilitation and chronic pain, working with babies and prenatal and birth issues

The Practitioner Training is based on the teaching approach of Franklyn Sills
www.karuna-institute.co.uk/bios.html.

A brief history of the development of this approach to cranial therapy, written by Franklyn Sills, is available at:
www.karuna-institute.co.uk/cranio/history.html.

The 700-hours includes:

• 350 in-class hours
• 150 hours of guided independent study or homework to be completed between modules (reading, drawing, etc.)
• Completion of an independent project such as a research paper, clinical study or creative demonstration of learning (40 hours)
• 150 hours of clinical practice. (Practice sessions are performed outside of class with non-fee paying clients)
• Receiving at least 10 sessions from a Registered Craniosacral Therapist (RCST®) paid according to their fee - 10 hours. (It is recommended that students receive sessions from at least three different practitioners)

Class time occurs through ten 5-day modules scheduled 2 - 3 months apart. Students are expected to commit to the entire training. To help you understand what you are committing to, and to determine if this training is right for you, you are encouraged to attend an Introductory Seminar.

Upcoming Introductory Seminars

Dates	Location
Thursday - Monday, April 29 -May 3, 2010 OR September 9 - 13, 2010 9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.	Kutenai Institute of Integral Therapies (KIIT), Nelson, BC, Canada	Details Application (PDF or Word)
Wednesday - Sunday, April14- 18, 2010 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.	Portland, OR	Details Portland Website Application (PDF or Word)

Current and Upcoming Trainings

Dates	Location
Starts November 17, 2010	Portland, OR	Portland Website
Starts November 4, 2010	Kutenai Institute of Integral Therapies (KIIT), Nelson, BC, Canada	Details KIIT Website