Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy International

Standards

BCTI training schools maintain the highest standards of teaching, methods, support and ethics that are grounded in the knowledge and practices developed by key founders of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. Member schools include a minimum of 700 hours of learning in their practitioner trainings, including at least 320 hours of supervised classroom learning, 150 home practice sessions and 10 hours of personal treatment experience of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. The remaining 220 hours can be taken up by home study and a written project.

Training schools cover a core curriculum that is organised autonomously according to their own design and educational philosophy. Schools may also teach additional subjects and topics of special interest.

There is an emphasis on supervised practical sessions to support the development of students’ skills.

Schools maintain a ratio of at least one tutor for five students to ensure comprehensive student support during practice sessions in class. Methods for assessing progress may vary, and each school outlines its clearly defined graduation criteria. Schools are committed to train students to robust levels of competency, skills and knowledge, and an ability to demonstrate safe and effective treatment in accordance with professional codes of practice.

The following palpatory, perceptual and therapeutic competencies form part of a core curriculum offered by member schools:

• Skills that provide a safe therapeutic relationship, including practitioner presence and neutrality, negotiation of contact, settling, spaciousness, sensitivity, stillness and resonance.
• Skills that relate to the different unfoldments of the primary respiratory system.
• Competencies in perceiving and supporting health and orienting to the therapeutic needs of clients.
• Skills for listening to and supporting priorities of treatment; commonly referred to as the ‘inherent treatment plan’.
• Specific competencies and skills in relation to unresolved life experiences and inertial fulcra.
• Understanding Biodynamic diagnostic and treatment principles, and skills that relate to various levels of function and tidal expressions of health.
• Skills for sensing health and wholeness, the ‘holistic shift’, ignition processes, the three-step healing process (as described by Dr. Becker) and Dynamic Stillness.
• Competencies in appropriately identifying and safely responding to presentations of shock and trauma.
• Competencies in process and communication skills.
• Competencies in facilitating therapeutic stillness.
• Competencies in palpating inherent potency.
• Developing non-invasive augmentation skills that can support a therapeutic process.
• Understanding the mind-body connection and psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine relationships.
• Studying embryology with an emphasis on skills that relate to the underlying forces that govern our health.
• Skills and competencies to work with adults, infants and the elderly.

The following structural and functional relationships also form part of a core curriculum offered by BCTI member schools. These may be covered in the form of classroom lectures, demonstrations, supervised practical sessions, feedback sessions with tutors, and supplemented by homework practice sessions, reading and home study assignments:

• The fluctuation of cerebrospinal fluid
• The central nervous system
• Reciprocal tension membranes
• The mobility and motility of cranial bones including facial structures
• The involuntary motion of the sacrum between the ilia
• Vertebral dynamics
• Whole body dynamics including fascia and the limbs
• Introduction to the viscera.