What is Biodynamics?
Biodynamics is an orientation to Health, a dynamic, living intelligence - a presence which is always well and whole within us. It is capable of dialogue, timing, and relationship. We were formed within this field of living intelligence and continue to live in and be in relationship to it throughout our lives.
Health is never lost; it is part of everyone’s essential nature. Practitioners learn to perceive and access these deep original forces of Health and to create the conditions that allow Health to flourish. We do not deny or turn away from dis-ease. Our inherent inner Health remains unaffected by dis-ease, which is a response to an imbalance or overwhelm in the body. Biodynamics supports wellness by seeing dis-ease within a larger field of Health.
What Is Craniosacral Therapy?
Craniosacral Therapy is a hands-on healing modality that uses gentle touch to enhance the functioning of the craniosacral system to facilitate the body’s innate healing processes. The therapy supports the nervous system to recognize the present moment and differentiate from its traumas and restrictions, which has a beneficial ripple effect on the entire body and all its systems.
The Origins of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy
What we call Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy today has its roots in Indigenous wisdom. Tribal traditions around the world, practiced bone setting. Bonesetting is what it sounds like, the setting of bone. This was a necessary art and form of care for all people, because a broken misaligned bone can shorten a life.
Andrew Taylor Still was the 4th generation in his family to live among and speak the language of the Shawnee. He became a capable practitioner using bone setting and manipulation skills he learned from his Shawnee and Cherokee mentors. We don’t know a lot about exactly what he learned, or who taught him, but he began to call what he did Osteopathy, and founded the first Osteopathic college in Missouri in 1892.
In the last 150+ years since Andrew Taylor Still introduced this way of healing to students and patients as Osteopathy, those those who followed him developed the specific branch of Cranial Osteopathy and then Craniosacral Therapy, one form of which is Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST).
The acknowledgment of the indigenous origins of BCST has been scattershot, with some teachers naming these origins and others omitting them.
In 2020, this omission was called out by Susan Raffo’s blog.
Since then, more acknowledgement and recognition is being given to the origins of this work. The School of Inner Health would like to acknowledge the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association for their rapid and not easy changes in this regard.
We are profoundly grateful for and humbled by this ancient, profound hands-on healing work which has kept itself known and alive for thousands upon thousands of years by many names through countless hands. We honor its roots and share its wisdom as we understand it.