How our CST Training is like making PIZZA!

(As I write this I have some very Italian music skipping around my head… I invite you to conjure up your own accompaniment!)

So, where do you start with a pizza?

First off there is the dough, a mixture of flour, water, and a bit of yeast to help it rise. You mix it, knead it, let it rest a while until you are ready to roll it out.

Where do we start?

With CST1. Full of the basic CranioSacral Therapy techniques: how to tune into the craniosacral rhythm, work gently with fascia, how to listen to and follow tissue, understand what is different about Upledger CST. You learn hand placements to apply this to specific areas of the dural membranes which are part of the craniosacral system we are aiming to work with, and a whole treatment protocol to take away. Can’t have a pizza without the dough.

Then, to a pizza you add the tomato base. (Well you can carry on without it – maybe add a bit of garlic to create a form of garlic bread – but then it's not really pizza right? You can likewise just do CST1 and have some great techniques in your toolbox – but it's not truly CST in all its glory!)

The tomato sauce gives flavour and depth. Want to add this to a burgeoning CST training? Add CST2. For flavour and depth. It helps you become more efficient with the information from CST1 and then segways more deeply into our paradigm of listening to where a body wants you to start. A pizza closer to being a pizza, if you see what I mean.

But we need the cheese. Be it mozzarella, cheddar, a combination. Definitely not pizza without cheese. Our cheese? SER1. SomatoEmotional Release. The introduction to the way we work when emotional pieces are in play, how we can keep on track with the process for the client, and how to assist them in expressing what needs to be expressed or understanding what is there and what may need to be done. Always letting the client make the discoveries for themselves.

A basic Margherita. Nothing wrong with that. But many of us like to add something else, to really make it tasty. Cherry tomatoes and a bit of basil, parmesan, pick a topping… Adding SER2 to the core curriculum does just this too. Adds more refinement, more personalisation, more understanding of how we can work with the method of SomatoEmotional Release with an awareness of some aspects of other psychological models. But always staying connected to the body tissue.

Then you have to cook it. Allow all the ingredients to combine, melt, blend flavours and become the pizza. The Advanced class. A five day retreat class that sees you working with 4-5 others in groups, all getting a multi-hands session every day, blending and melding all you have learned in previous classes and doing your own work on the table. Becoming pizza. In a beautiful pizza oven!

But so far we have made a relatively simple pizza. What about the pepperoni I hear you ask? Or the aubergine? The ham and pineapple? The huge variety of other options? You pick your desired topping/s. We can offer you a paediatric curriculum for treating kids, families, pregnant mums (and babes), we can help you apply CST to brain tissue and to the glial cells. We have specific courses treating the immune system and the enteric nervous system (the gut). You can learn how to apply what we do to any aspect of the body-mind-spirit that a client may need.

Our core curriculum (CST1, CST2, SER1, SER2, ADV1, all with lots of practice, study groups, support classes and treatment receiving in between) gets the pizza made and cooked. Other in-depth and specialist classes add all sorts of other gorgeousness to it, extraordinary pieces that you get to experience and practice to create the therapeutic practice that you dream of.

Taste buds tickled? Hungry? Get ordering!

Find the CST menu: www.upledger.co.uk/calendars.html

We look forward to serving you soon!