biodynamic cranial sacral training (BCST)

What differentiates this biodynamic training from others?

practitioner cultivation

We encourage practitioners to consistently practice activities which strengthen and refine the nerves, glands, and fascia such as yoga, qigong, dance and other cultivation forms. Perceptive acuity and clarity depend upon the state of the practitioner’s physiology. It takes more than palpation skills and knowledge to practice biodynamic work. Our trainings include qigong warm-ups before class as an integral part of sensing and relating harmoniously with biodynamic fields. We also feature specific qigong forms to amplify and regulate the practitioner’s energetic structure specifically for biodynamic work.

orienting to health

We help students learn to find health, to recognize the palpable sensations of health, and help it grow in the client’s system. Instead of searching the cranial system for dysfunction, or for something that doesn’t conform to ideal notions, we encourage discovery of health and following the innate intelligence of health as it guides us in each person’s system. This leads to clients feeling profoundly met, acknowledged, and accepted on physiological and other levels.

small classes

Biodynamic studies require significant hands-on guidance from experienced practitioners to ensure students genuinely learn and embody the work. For this to happen, the ratio of students to teachers/assistants must be close enough to enable each student practitioner to receive one on one assistance for at least 30-60% of the allotted practice time. For a class of 12 students, we’ll have 3 or more teachers/assistants spending quality time at each of the 6 tables. The larger institutions cannot budget for this ratio. If you’ve ever walked into a national organization’s rented hotel banquet room, with 30 other students, an unpaid teacher and an unpaid assistant, you’ll be gobsmacked at the difference an intimate learning environment makes. You want to learn, we want you to be successful.

ongoing support

After a workshop, we offer supplements – elective 4-hour gatherings to practice, receive, ask questions, and get hands-on help. Supplements help you deepen what you know, review what is not yet clear, and help you stay connected to the larger community of biodynamic practitioners between workshops.

We also maintain an opt-in biodynamic cranial exchange list for those who’ve completed a workshop with us. This helps connect students from various workshops seeking exchange/trade partners. You don’t have to practice in isolation. There’s a ready made group of people genuinely interested in trading with others studying this approach to biodynamic work. Giving and receiving regularly, from diverse skill levels, can advance your understanding tremendously.

And, feedback sessions are available too. We can arrange for you to work on a model client, with hands-on assistance from Todd or one of our other instructors, to focus in on any particular aspect of the work you’d like help with.

Lastly, we offer a 30% discount for repeating a course. It’s amazing what is noticed and learned when attending a workshop with the benefit of having practiced it’s content previously. Get it at a deeper level, with the clarity of experienced eyes and attuned system.

digestible curriculum

We do not lock students into a multi-module curriculum that delivers content at a faster pace than most practitioners can meaningfully integrate. Many biodynamic training programs present learning milestones at a faster pace than many people’s system can accommodate. Our experience shows that deep embodiment of biodynamic work is a many-year process, requiring consistent practice and regular receiving of the work. Students can attend each workshop at their own pace, integrating and truly embodying the work before taking the next step, however long that may be. Many students repeat workshops out of an earnest interest in learning at a deeper level.

We also require students to track their giving and receiving hours as a prerequisite for taking intermediate and advanced courses. When arriving at a workshop, you’re studying with people who are properly prepared for the content, instead of landing in a module with people who’ve been under-practicing and are funneled towards the next installment leading to a certification standard. We present the curriculum in a way that acknowledges the need for gradual pacing to ensure true learning and embodiment. If you’ve ever tried to force a cranial system to adapt at your preferred pacing, you know the inherent wisdom of going at the rate each unique system can be resourced for change.

local economic support

Your tuition funds stay in the local community, get spent supporting the local economy. They’re not transferred out of state or country to a large for-profit enterprise. Our teachers and assistants are paid ethically for their time and skills, with financial transparency about workshop expenses and compensations shared among staff. When you study with us, you’re supporting local talent that develops the next generation of local practitioners.  Yes, you could eat at Arby’s, but dining at the local bistro delivers much more satisfying nutrition. Compare the pricing, too.

professional diversity

A monoculture can be found among large institutional biodynamic training programs. We offer local diversity instead. Skilled local teachers develop new approaches to grow the profession forward, bringing diversity to what practitioners can study and what clients receive. As an alternative to national and world wide institutions defining and disseminating a narrower perspective and approach to biodynamic work, we offer teaching methods, class sizes, and orientations to biodynamic work that cannot be reproduced at scale and that do not easily lend themselves to a profit oriented business plan. We’re here to give you something different, help you embody it, and provide the teacher to student ratio that requires. When you support local talent, the profession grows in the diversity of perspective, skill, and understanding that emerges from being unconstrained by corporate, institutional necessities.