Course Curriculum
"Allow physiological function within to manifest its unerring potency rather than apply a blind force from without."
- Dr William G. Sutherland
Aims of the Training:
- to provide a deep appreciation of the Breath of Life and the "primary respiratory system"
- to provide an in-depth understanding of the healing principles of the system with the ability to appropriately apply this understanding in a therapeutic context
- to cultivate clearly defined palpation and treatment skills that support the health of the patient and relate with care and competency to disease processes
- to develop trust in the instinctual, perceptual and spiritual capabilities of the student
- to graduate skilled, safe and therapeutically effective Craniosacral Therapy practitioners.
Seminar One - Five Days
Preparing the Ground - presence and palpatory awareness
- History of the work
- The 'craniosacral concept'
- The primary respiratory system
- Palpation and perception
- Palpating health
- Establishing a clear relational field
- Practitioner fulcrums and negotiating contact
- Therapeutic presence
- Practitioner neutral and a wide perceptual field
- Craniosacral touch
- The unfolding nature of the Breath of Life
- The Breath of Life and the three tides
- The five core aspects of the 'primary respiratory mechanism'
- Palpation of the longitudinal fluctuation of cerebrospinal fluid
- Resources, stillness and stillpoint
- Resources and trauma
- Introduction to tissue expressions of primary respiratory motion
- Clinical connections
Seminar Two - Four Days
Life and Motion - tissue, fluids and potency
- Introduction to embryology and the blueprint for health - tuning in to the 'primal midline'
- The transmutation of the Breath of Life
- The holographic paradigm
- Tissues and motility
- Palpating expressions of health within tissues and fluids
- Shifting perceptual fields
- Perception of the tides: the cranial rhythmic impulse, the mid-tide, the long tide
- Palpation of longitudinal fluctuation of fluid via stations of listening
- Creating safety during practice sessions
- Surface anatomy of cranial sutures
- Exploration of specific tissue motion and motility - temporal, frontal, parietal, occipital bones and sacrum
- Introduction to natural and inertial fulcrums
- Introduction to shock and trauma theory
- Contacting resources in the body and the process of 'shuttling'
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Three - Four Days
Entering the Heart of Healing - facilitating states of balance
- Perceiving the unit of function of tissues, fluid and potency
- Embryological development and primary respiratory motion of the reciprocal tension membrane system
- Understanding and perceiving biodynamic and biokinetic forces
- Understanding and perceiving natural and inertial fulcrums
- Perceiving patterns of experience
- Palpating inertial fulcrums and the health of the patient
- Membranous-articular strains
- The direction of priority in inertial patterns
- Understanding and perceiving the role of balance and stillness in the healing process
- Healing principles - introduction to the 'point of balanced tension' and 'states of balance'
- Clinical skills for the cranial vault
- Dr. Rollin Becker's work: the state of balance and 'three step healing process'
- Palpating the 'three step healing process':
(1) Tissues and fluids seek a state of balance
(2) Perceiving expressions of health within states of balance
(3) Perceiving tissue and fluid reorganisation - Trauma and overwhelm, resources and health
- 'CV4' - theory and practice
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Four - Four Days
Augmentation Skills - engaging the story of the body
- Following the inherent treatment plan - the 'wholistic shift'
- The wholistic shift and return to originality
- Learning to initiate 'conversations' with tissues, fluids and inertial fulcrums
- The principle of traction as an augmentation skill
- Traction and the reciprocal tension membranes
- States of balance and the 'point of balanced membranous tension'
- The principle of disengagement as an augmentation skill
- Disengagement or decompression within sutures and joints
- The mind-body continuum
- Stillpoints revisited
- 'EV4' from the sacrum
- Trauma skills - states of overwhelm and freezing
- Perceiving lateral fluctuations of fluid and potency
- Lateral fluctuation fluid skills for diagnosis and treatment
- The state of fluid balanced tension
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Five - Five Days (residential)
The Whole in the Part - the spheno-basilar junction and beyond
- Fluids, fields and fulcrums
- Direction of fluids and potency - 'V-spreads'
- The embryology of the cranial base
- The significance of the cranial base
- Classical cranial base dynamics
- The inertial patterns of the sphenobasilar junction (SBJ)
- Physiological strain patterns of the SBJ
- Non-physiological strain patterns of the SBJ
- Whole body SBJ connections
- Shock and trauma, resources and health; fight or flight response, principles of trauma treatment and developing verbal skills
- Case history taking
- The occipito-atlantal junction
- Encouraging space at the foramen magnum and states of balance in the sub-occipital region
- Palpating sacral dynamics
- The sacroiliac joints and lumbo-sacral junction
- Therapeutic skills at the sacroiliac and lumbo-sacral joints
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Six - Five Days
Support and Balance - spinal dynamics and the primal midline
- Differentiating tissues, fluids and potency within their unit of function
- The notochord and midline organising principles
- The significance of the primal (notochordal) and fluid midlines
- The stillness of the midline
- Dural tube dynamics
- Dural tube evaluation via fluids and dural glide
- Inviting space and traction at the dural tube
- Vertebral dynamics and embryological sclerotomes
- Palpation of vertebral dynamics - motility and mobility
- Assessing inertial fulcrums of the spine
- Vertebral dynamics and encouraging states of balance
- Therapeutic skills at the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine
- Facilitated segments
- The embryological fluid fields of the spine
- Somato-visceral and viscero-somatic patterns
- 'Keeping it alive'
- Inherent treatment plan - orienting to shifts of potency and priorities within the patient
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Seven - Four Days
Return to Wholeness - whole body dynamics and the inherent treatment plan
- The unity of the body
- Connective tissues and connective tissue dynamics
- The role of fascia in retaining tissue memory
- Trauma and emotional 'coupling'
- Fascial glide
- Palpating inertial fulcrums throughout the body
- Transverse diaphragms and their relationship to the reciprocal tension membrane system
- Introduction to visceral dynamics
- The embryological unfoldment and dynamics of the heart and lungs
- Trauma and force vectors
- Force vector entrapments
- Biodynamic and biokinetic forces reviewed
- Joint dynamics
- Palpating and relating to joint dynamics in the appendicular skeleton
- Treatment skills review
- Listening and responding to the inherent treatment plan
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Eight - Four Days
The Seat of the Soul - fluid, potency and the central nervous system
- Venous sinuses and fluid dynamics
- Freeing the outlets to cranial fluid drainage
- The jugular foramen and cranial nerves
- Inertial fulcrums within the venous sinus system
- The dynamics and embryological unfoldment of of the central nervous system (CNS)
- CNS motility
- Relating to inertial fulcrums involving the CNS
- Brainstem, the stress response and CNS facilitation
- The dynamics and motility of the ventricles
- The third ventricle and ignition of the fluid system
- The 'tour of the minnow'
- Neuro-endocrine considerations
- The pituitary and pineal glands
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Nine - Four Days
Nourishment and Expression - the temporo-mandibular joint and its connections
- The hyoid bone and its interconnections
- Dynamics and assessment of the temporo-mandibular joint (TMJ)
- Clinical approaches to sternocleidomastoid and lateral pterygoid muscles
- Clinical approaches to unilateral and bilateral TMJ issues
- The principle of compression and disengagement at the TMJ
- TMJ ligaments - specific dynamics and inertial patterns
- TMJ issues in relationship to the hard palate
- TMJ and whole body harmonics
- Dental work issues
- Specific releases of fronto-sphenoidal and spheno-petrous patterns
- Following the inherent treatment plan - orienting to the long tide and automatic shifting
- Introduction to the face and hard palate
- Tuning in to facial relationships, the bony orbit and eye
- Cranial nerves supplying the eye
- Practical assessments
- Clinical connections and applications
Seminar Ten - Four Days
Reflections of the Self - the face and the hard palate
- The fronto-nasal-maxillary relationships
- The nasal bones, lacrimals and medial orbit
- The falx cerebri, frontal bone and ethmoidal notch
- Dynamics of the ethmoid bone
- The olfactory nerve
- The spheno-maxillary complex
- Disengagement of spheno-vomer-maxillary compression
- Disengagement of spheno-palatine-maxillary compression
- Hard palate dynamics
- Patterns of the maxillae and vomer
- Polyvagal theory and the 'triune nervous system'
- Practical assessments
- The embryological fluid fields of the face and throat
- Specific patterns of the palatine and zygomatic bones
- Clinical connections and applications, plus review
Seminar Eleven - Five Days
Out Into the World - pregnancy, birth, and completion
- Introduction to pre-natal dynamics
- Tuning in to the "inner embryo"
- Pregnancy and birth
- The infant's skull
- Birth trauma and its effects
- Birth patterns and intraosseous strains
- Treatment of babies and children
- The secondary ignition process at birth; the 3rd ventricle, umbilicus and coccyx
- General pelvic dynamics
- Pelvic patterns
- Grounding - the Breath of Life and its unfoldments
- Following the inherent treatment plan - deepening into dynamic stillness and rhythmic balanced interchange
- Review of organisational skills and healing principles
- Practice management
- Completion.
