Ged Sumner and Steve Haines - Cranial Intelligence

It seems like a long time since we started to develop a biodynamic approach to craniosacral therapy. It started back in 1986 when a colleague, Claire Dolby DO, suggested that I develop a cranial course outside of osteopathic practice that was more directly influenced by Sr Sutherlands later work. We had both met while in osteopathic college. Claire was afraid that the cranial approach was not reaching enough people and that there was a real opportunity to create a new profession. So, with some trepidation, we started the first training group at the Karuna Institute in 1987. It was only 36 days long and geared for people already practising some sort of orthodox or complementary healing form. We took a mixed approach where there was a predominantly biomechanical mental-set oriented to analysis, motion testing and various techniques geared to resolve resistance and compressive forms in the body. This was supplemented by some orientation to the fluid tide and potency, and an introduction to dynamic stillness. It also had a cathartic edge with unwinding techniques and emotional releases without a real grounding in, or understanding of, trauma skills.

At a tutors meeting in 1992 we all agreed that we were not really teaching what we were practising, which was much more oriented to primary respiration and a biodynamic approach to the work. We decided to change the curriculum at that point. It took another ten years to develop new teaching approaches and slowly change the curriculum. In this period I had to develop both new perceptual exercises and a new language for the work. This included perceptual processes that oriented students to the various levels of expression of primary respiration, new terms like mid tide, state of balance, relational field, primal midline and holistic shift and a real reorientation of student mentorship in the trainings. We also increased the course length to 50 days spread over two years. We clearly saw that it takes at least two years for students to deepen into the work and to develop the perceptual skills needed in the work. A number of us (initially myself, Claire Dolby, Michael Kern, Colin Perrow, Katherine Ukleja and Paul Vick) also taught outside England: in America, Canada, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, to name just a few places. Along with Michael Kern DO, I also helped start the Craniosacral Educational Trust in London. The various people who have taken the work out into the world have developed it in different ways, and biodynamics is a growing, developing and diverse field of work.

A biodynamic approach to craniosacral therapy entails a real perceptual shift from the patterns and conditions present within the system, to the inherent forces that organize them. The student learns to perceive primary respiration, the inherent health within the human system, and orients to conditional patterns and their organizing fulcrums within this context. Thus the practitioner orients to formative forces, not just to their effects (like strain patterns, compressions, pathologies, etc.). The most important components of a biodynamic approach includes the development of a state of presence, the ability to establish a clear and negotiated relational field, the ability to orient to primary respiration both in yourself and in another person, and the perceptual skills to orient to what is called the inherent treatment plan and to be able to track to its unfoldment with appropriate clinical skills.

I started to write new texts for the field in 1995, which were published in 2000. They were out of date from the moment they were available! I am in the process of framing new texts, but it was to my delight that Ged Sumner and Steve Haines contacted me about the new book they were producing. Both were originally trained at the CTET in London and Steve has been a tutor both on the CTET course and at the Karuna Institute, while Ged, who originally taught at the CTET, has developed trainings in Australasia. Their book provides a practical approach to the work based upon their clinical experience, with lots of exercises, a focus on embodiment and a clear orientation to the simplicity and power of a biodynamic approach. I hope their new text becomes a real resource both for trainings and in professional life. May we all continue to learn, deepen and continually clarify our relationship both to this wonderful work and to the nature of life itself.