Welcome to Milne Institute
Visionary Craniosacral Work® is a soothing, noninvasive, hands-on therapy.
The craniosacral system includes the brain, the cerebrospinal fluid, the system of membranes inside the cranium, all 22 cranial bones, the spine and the sacrum.
What the Navajo call ‘the wind’s child,’ Genesis calls ‘the breath of life.’ It is a silent force, a field of chi, which blows through the craniosacral system, animates it, and infuses it with information and intelligence.
It is possible to listen to this field. The ability to do this is called ‘the heart of listening.’
A visionary knows how to touch a client with precise and gentle contacts that help the client feel more aligned, and more at home in themselves. Sometimes, by touching just the right place in just the right way, a visionary can help the client understand what troubles them, and what they need to reclaim their equanimity, and their place in life. Such work can also help the client access and release their healing potential.
The Milne Institute offers an avocational, in-depth training in the heart of listening, a visionary approach to craniosacral work. This may mean that students may not be eligible for certain kinds of CEU or vocational credit. What we offer is continuing education, not vocational education. Kindly check with your local licensing authority to be sure our training will give you the educational credit you need.
If you want to go deep, be deep.
Contact Us~ info@milneinstitute.com
The Heart of Listening by Hugh Milne
What is VCSW?
A visionary is someone who can do four things equally well, and hold all four things as equal in importance. The four are:
First, they can perceive the entirety of the client's
anatomy and physiology.
Second, can perceive the parts of their anatomy and physiology, and notice which parts have left concert with the whole.
Third, they can perceive the client's inner spiritual journey, emotional state and energy level, and hold no judgment about what they perceive.
Fourth, they can perceive their own inner spiritual journey, emotional state and energy level, also without judgment.
Craniosacral Work is an evolution out of Cranial Osteopathy, a specialization of the osteopathic profession that was introduced to the world in the 1930s by an American osteopath and visionary called William Garner Sutherland.
Origins
Craniosacral work comes out of osteopathy. Osteopathy comes out of bonesetting, and bonesetting was practiced in Neanderthal times, 130,000 years ago, and probably much longer ago. Osteopathy never took hold in the USSR, so bonesetting continued there under its original name. When I first met a Russian bonesetter in 1990, I was astonished to see how similar their technique was to what I had learnt in osteopathic school in England in the 1960s.
In the Navajo understanding, the cranial wave is called ‘nilch´í hwii siziinii,’ the ‘little wind,’ or ‘wind’s child.’ They believe that a Wind is present within a person from the moment of conception, when a Wind from the mother meets a wind from the father. In Genesis it says ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’ The breath of life, a little wind.
(According to Tibetan Dzogchen embryology, when the sperm and egg first touch, there is a flash of bliss, the basis of the heart charka.) Coming from its sacred home in the four directions, the Holy Wind enters all living things. It is a messenger wind. “The one called Wind`s Child, this is just like living in water.”
Experiential Track & Certification Track Programs
The Milne Institute’s Visionary Craniosacral Work® training is a minimum two-year program.
There are two training tracks available. The first track is the Experiential Track, which consists of classes C1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6.
Ideally, these classes are taken in numerical sequence. Before taking a C5 or a C6 class, the student must complete a tutorial review of 30 Client Records and 30 Session Sign-Offs with a Milne Institute Supervisor (you can find the complete list of Supervisors on this website).
This track is designed to give the student a basis from which to harness intuitive and analytic craniosacral skills into an existing massage or bodywork practice.
Note: A ‘license to touch’ is often needed in order to practice craniosacral work.
The second track is the Certification Track. It is a focused, in depth training sequence whose core consists of intensive tutorial coaching.
Teachers
In Visionary Craniosacral Work®, presence is more important than technique, but accurate technique is the discipline upon which presence is founded and built. These classes honor the sacred nature of this work and offer a path to mastery in this most fulfilling of Ways.
Hugh Milne
Rebecca Mae Bacon
Ellen Lensen
Benjamin Shield, Ph.D.
David Kaminker
Steve Schumacher
Paul Brown
Matthew Kirsch
David McCauley