Reflections of the Past Year & Looking Forward
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A MOMENT FOR REFLECTION
Dear Moving Mountain Institute Community:
In my anti racism and equity training we start each class with an A-Z check in before addressing the content of the day. Each person identifies a word that describes how they are entering the space. My word today while writing this is reflective. Even though I’m super excited to share our new curriculum, reflective is where I need to start.
A year has passed since the pandemic initiated a sudden and utterly disorienting life change for all of us, and we entered into a world of unknowns. I truly hope you are all doing as well as can be expected given a year’s worth of the pandemic, political turmoil, and a national reckoning on the realities and impacts of racism — most recently, the horrific murders of Asian women in Atlanta.
I imagine most of you have spent time reflecting on the past year. I realized I can’t do healthcare work without acknowledging and addressing the harm caused by racism in our culture. It is complex work as is our medicine. We are trained to meet complexity. I got into medicine because I care about people and want to help them. For me, that must extend to addressing the consequences of racism that pervade our culture.
My year has been dominated by my work with Kheoshi Owens and Empress Rules Equity. I have met monthly with a group of over 20 healthcare professionals unlearning racism, and we are now beginning to address equity in our field and businesses. The training lasts 14 months overall and I recognize that this will be lifelong work, that equity work merits the same focus, if not more, that I offer to my clinical work and teaching. In the near future, I will share more about how I plan to incorporate my training into how Moving Mountain Institute operates going forward.
The questions (and their answers) I brought to redesigning our curriculum have been influenced by the work I am doing with Kehoshi and my colleagues. I also want to acknowledge all of the class participants over the years who have raised different issues with me about social justice and medicine and education. You inspire me and I learn from you. Together we evolve and change culture.
NEW AND (R)EVOLUTIONARY CRANIALSACRAL THERAPY CURRICULUM
It’s finally here! With great effort we have completely redesigned the Craniosacral Therapy curriculum. The course series represents a new paradigm in clinical skills-based training. The old paradigm was teacher-centric and institution-centric. Our new course design is participant-centric; in education it’s called backward design. I started with you in mind — you, being an excellent craniosacral therapist who is inspired and excited about your work — at the end of the experience. Everything was designed from there backwards.
I had to completely break up with my old way of doing things, sever all ties — it was difficult, just like a break up!
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OLD WAY?
I imagined myself back at the very beginning of my career, which began with craniosacral therapy. I remembered that I spent evening after evening over the course of a year studying the work, then practicing on folks as I was building my new bodywork practice in a basement studio in Mt. Shasta, CA.
MY KEY REFLECTION ABOUT THAT TIME: the determining factor for developing a high level of skill with these techniques is the time one needs to study the concepts and anatomy, be able to practice the techniques presented, and integrate them into practice. The process must allow for reflection, integration and deeper skill development. The old (current) models of education leave the participant to their own devices for this most important part of the training. We have addressed that problem in our new curriculum.
I was reminiscing about my old 4-day intensive seminars and how exciting they were, and also how overwhelming and hard it was to absorb so much presented material, let alone retain the skills. I recognized that I had designed something similar in Moving Mountain Institute’s former course incarnations. Even before the pandemic I was feeling the need to change my approach. It wasn’t until COVID forced me into stillness that I realized there was an opportunity to “unpack” our courses. There is so much amazing multi-dimensional content that’s possible in the craniosacral approach and it was not getting fully expressed in the courses at Moving Mountain Institute.
LEARNING SHOULD NOT BE ARDUOUS
Craniosacral work is more than just a series of techniques - it is a way of being with an embodied individual. To offer the fullness of the work, we have created a curriculum that exists in multiple classroom spaces. Content is matched to the type of classroom where it will be best expressed — and best received by you. To that end, learning should be fun and engaging, satisfying our innate curiosity and desire to help our patients.
THREE INTEGRATED CLASSROOM SPACES
Each module in the course series contains three integrated classroom spaces:
LIVE IN-PERSON CLINICAL WORKSHOP
This is where you will learn the hands-on work. There are five 2-day in-person sessions of 5 hours each day. Because the conceptual content will happen in a different learning space, this in-person time is dedicated to our clinical work. We will be able to flow with the techniques much more akin to how we practice clinically.
The focus of this classroom is learning the techniques, with instructor demonstrations and ample time for practice and feedback from facilitators and your practice partner.
The Live Workshops will be centered around what I call a review and new format. We will learn and practice the techniques in grouped sequences, learning to develop a felt sense of moving between techniques instead of learning each technique in isolation.
ASYNSCRONOUS CLASSROOM
This is the essence of this new model — you will have all of the conceptual content at your fingertips whenever you want!
The content is highly organized into topical 15 minute lectures that you can watch on your computer, tablet, or phone. Each lecture is presented in an engaging slideshow with Michael’s voice over, written lecture notes, and additional related resources or short activities like discussion forums with your peers, facilitators, and instructor.
The lectures are directly tied to the in-person work that takes place in the Live Workshop. The real benefit of this innovation is the ability to go back and watch specific lectures after learning the techniques. This is when content will be most valuable, after you have context for it. Participants will have access to all of the previous lectures throughout the entire course.
Each lecture includes learning outcomes for participants to gauge their understanding. There will be optional guiding questions for your learning journal and facilitated course discussions based on key issues and participant questions.
INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS: The asynchronous classroom includes instructional videos of each technique you learn. This will support participants in their practice sessions between course meetings. This robust video library of the techniques will also be available throughout the course.
Note: An instructional video is never intended to replace in-person instruction, only to augment it and as a reference for repeated viewing.
SYNCHRONOUS “TOUCH POINTS”
These sessions will be an opportunity for a more in depth discussion about the work. In a typical “old style” course, participants would have important questions that often prompt a fantastic discussion that gets cut short due to time constraints. It is in these Touch Point sessions that each cohort will develop themes that we work with throughout the course series. These sessions will be spaces for fostering peer to peer learning, debriefing practice sessions, and addressing key concepts and questions prior to our in-person workshops.
Earlier in the course will feature more Touch Point sessions in order to ensure everyone has ample time to get oriented to the content and prepare for our in-person work. As we get further into the content we will generally have one Touch Point session between Live Workshops. There will be assigned a number of structured practice sessions between the Live Workshops and Touch Point sessions, which also creates opportunities for debriefing and case studies presented by participants and facilitators.
DOWNLOAD A SNAPSHOT OF THE NEW CURRICULUM,
COURSE SCHEDULE, AND TUITION PRICING.
FACILITATORS: AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS
As part of our new paradigm we are moving away from teacher-student modeling and using participants and facilitators. This reflects our belief in the inherent expertise and agency of each unique individual. We are a learning community, each of us learning from one another, and the use of this language better reflects that idea.
There will be multiple experienced facilitators in each Live Workshop and Touch Point session. Moving Mountain Institute is shifting away from the old TA-exchange model and will be paying facilitators competitive pay scaled to what professional training programs pay adjunct faculty. We believe that teaching is a crucial part of our profession and want to open opportunities for the expertise and creativity within our community to be fully expressed. We will all benefit from multiple perspectives on this multi-dimensional work!
Read below for how to become a facilitator.
A NEW WAY TO THINK ABOUT YOUR TRAINING
THE NEW INTEGRATED COURSE SEQUENCE AND CERTIFICATE PROGRAM IS APPROXIMATELY 9 MONTHS LONG
We are no longer numbering the courses, and we ask that you start thinking differently about your training. Each aspect of the training is designed to interrelate and integrate with the other aspects. For example, you may be in the third weekend and find yourself reviewing concepts or techniques we explored during the first weekend. You will get much more out of this experience than approaching the ‘old style’ learning method of going home after every class and watching a video lecture or reading a follow-up article.
This learning paradigm also allows each participant to individualize their learning experience and pursue their specific interests at their own pace.
Additionally, my research on hybrid learning and adult education pointed to the importance of learning in community, which is consistent with what I have experienced as an educator. The asynchronous digital learning space is designed to be as rich and robust an experience for the learner and community as are the in-person workshops. This new curriculum is designed as a cohort experience and will incorporate peer to peer learning throughout the course sequence as well.
REGISTRATION IS CURRENTLY OPEN FOR THE 9-MONTH COHORT, WHICH IS CURRENTLY LIMITED TO 12 PEOPLE DUE TO COVID-19 SAFETY AND PRECAUTIONS. THE COURSE BEGINS MAY 15!
PLEASE CONTACT US WITH QUESTIONS OR TO REGISTER.
DOWNLOAD A SNAPSHOT OF THE NEW CURRICULUM,
COURSE SCHEDULE, AND TUITION PRICING.
CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
Participants who complete this course sequence will be well trained in foundational and advanced perspectives of craniosacral therapy. Participants who complete all course activities and practice sessions will be certified in Moving Mountain Institute’s approach to craniosacral therapy.
Participants who receive this Moving Mountain Institute certification will then be eligible to apply for a role as an assistant facilitator.
EVOLVING TOGETHER
As I referenced earlier, I believe that we co-evolve: we evolve together. This instructional model will allow for that mutual influence to occur within the courses and will also benefit the entire Moving Mountain Institute community. It loosens up the learning space and adds dimension to what can be and accomplish and grow together.
I am continuing to inquire into how Moving Mountain Institute and the community that forms around our work can serve social justice work and help build equity within our community and in our culture at large. I will post future field notes on where I, Michael, and the Institute are, in this very lively inquiry.
We look forward to seeing you in the course! Be safe and well in your lives.
-Michael
TO REGISTER FOR THE UPCOMING CRANIOSACRAL COURSE SERIES STARTING MAY 15, PLEASE CONTACT US DIRECTLY!
