Biodynamic Osteopathy - Treatment of Children -­ Phase 2

I was never comfortable treating children Osteopathically because the methods I was taught were almost always perceived by the children as controlling, threatening and/or harmful as evidenced by their crying and trying to get away. The methods usually involved making an objective evaluation from the practitioner’s perspective and then applying some “corrective” force to restore the malpositioned part to a more ideal position with the hope that it’s function would improve, usually over time.

The biggest part of the problem, I understand now, is that we were evaluating them as small people, but nothing about them warrants this approach. So to correct this we need to start by meeting them where they are. As spiritual beings who have only recently entered a very limiting world in which they can only minimally communicate or move and are totally dependent for survival and nurturing.

This course is about learning to allow our perception to shift so that it can be coherent with that of the child so that the evaluation and treatment can proceed in a way that is non-threatening and consistent with the priorities for and methods of treatment appropriate for that child in that moment in time. (These are generally different than what we would have done if we had not allowed our way of perceiving to be shifted.) As a result the evaluation/treatments are a continuum and more simple and brief. So the children tend to respond very well and are not usually afraid to come back for follow-up visits. In fact they usually like to come back to that person who knows how to relate to them. This applies to children with disadvantages, diseases, and various disabilities as well as normally developing children who have had the typical traumas of “growing up”.

The type of treatment taught in this course is one that would usually be used in the first few visits to basically assist and support the child’s own healing efforts without placing additional demands on already stressed systems. It is not directed specifically towards a particular disease process, but is applicable to any. Once the initial contact and communication have taken place the process is a gentle, caring, light touch and the child does not have to be in any special position and may even be held by the parent or guardian the whole time if necessary. It is a process of sensing for very subtle internal motions and gently augmenting them in various ways. These treatments generally support any other ongoing care the child might be receiving and has no known contraindications. (The treatment is not the same or really even similar to what is becoming commonly known as Cranial Sacral Therapy.)

In terms of the overall Biodynamic Osteopathy Curriculum, the Treatment of Children Curriculum is a separate series, which is planned to consist of 4 courses compared to the 8 courses presently in the former. It could be said that the Children’s courses enter the continuum of the curriculum nearly from the opposite end, starting from the “inside” rather than from where the typical biomechanical osteopathic treatment ends and the Biodynamic reatment begins and moves deeper towards cause.

Es gelten die Anmelde- und Stornobedingungen Variante B2.