1. What is Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST)

2. What is Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy? (BCST)
BCST is a healing art focused on supporting the health of the whole person. It is grounded in the belief that Health is a deep and abiding part of our essential nature. In a BCST session practitioners use an educated gentle, non-invasive touch to engage the expressions of health in the human system. While not a manipulative therapy, BCST has its roots in osteopathy and has evolved to include influences from advances in neuroscience, human development, pre and perinatal psychology, and trauma. BCST supports nervous system regulation and allows the resolution of conditions resulting form stress and trauma. “To penetrate the hardest armor, use the softest touch.” Lao Tzu

3. Why would Someone Seek a BCST Session?
Everyone wants to be healthy. When asked what health means to them, people often answer that it means physical vitality, emotional well-being, a sense of purpose, and a capacity to enjoy life.

4. “Relating to our resistances and defended structures is one thing.
Relating to our health is a whole other affair.” Franklyn Sills
BCST’s strength is in its ability to access an inherent vitality within the body that helps to restore health in all dimensions of overall well-being.
BCST is specifically oriented to support the way this vitality meets the causes of dis-ease, particularly stress and overwhelm that interfere with our body’s natural ability to heal.
Clients report feeling more energy, resilience, mental clarity, and calm. Areas of pain and discomfort often find ease. Clients often notice an improvement in their symptoms.

5. Who Does BCST Help? Acute and Chronic Pain Birth Trauma Related Issues
As a gentle and safe healing art, BCST is suitable for people of all ages and physical conditions. Conditions caused or made worse by stress can benefit from BCST.
Acute and Chronic Pain
Birth Trauma Related Issues
Nervous System Disregulation and Trauma
Auto-immune Disorders
As a gentle and safe therapy, BCST is suitable for people of all ages and physical conditions. Conditions made worse by unmanaged stress can benefit from BCST
Acute and Chronic Pain
Birth Trauma Related Issues
Trauma and Nervous System Dis-regulation
Auto-immune Disorders

6. Acute and Chronic Pain: Injuries, Surgeries, Backaches, Chronic Inflammation, Headaches, Sciatica, Structural Misalignment
Pain research has shown that the functioning of the nervous system plays a key role in how we heal from injury and how we experience and perceive pain over time. An activated nervous system creates a condition that slows the healing of tissues, contributes to inflammation, and sometimes generates a despairing mental orientation to pain.
BCST can help support the nervous system to return to a less activated state and thus can reduce the conditions that worsen pain. A softening and realignment of tissues that can occur in a BCST session is often a source of greater ease and comfort.

7. Auto-Immune Disorders: Rheumatoid Arthritis, Diabetes, Allergies, Multiple Sclerosis, Inflammatory Skin Disorders
The effects of an overactive nervous system can compromise the optimal functioning of the immune system causing it to fail to recognize real threats to the body’s health while actually mistaking the body’s own tissue as an invader.
BCST supports the immune system to function
more efficiently and intelligently by helping to
restore nervous system balance.

8. Birth Trauma and Pregnancy Issues: Colic, Excessive Crying or Irritability, Sleeping Difficulties, Nursing, Bonding and Attachment Issues
BCST can help mom, dad and baby build resource
during and following the pregnancy. Reducing
prenatal stress has been proven to improve
baby’s brain development and other gestational
and developmental outcomes, including a
successful delivery.
Following birth, BCST can help resolve the effects of a challenging delivery on both mom and baby, including those that may be related to both bonding and attachment, such as difficulties nursing.

9. Nervous System Dysregulation and Trauma Resolution: PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Stress, Difficulties Sleeping,
BCST is particularly effective in working with the effects of shock and trauma. Shock and trauma have a particular impact on the nervous system resulting from an inability to respond to the trauma with either fight or flight. Nervous system overwhelm, called the “freeze response” can result in longstanding feelings of helplessness, patterns of behaving that recapitulate the trauma, or the inability to move forward in a creative empowered way with one’s life.
When the client’s nervous system is supported to discharge shock and trauma while at the same time feeling inner resource and strength, it can be a turning point in recovering the felt sense of one’s essence apart from one’s experience. The client’s experience of inherent wholeness, wisdom, and resiliency can be enhanced.

10. What is a BCST Session Like?
Session length varies but is usually between thirty to sixty minutes. During a session, the client rests fully clothed on a massage table. A level of safety is created for the client as the practitioner and client negotiate the space and contact between them. The session proceeds as the practitioner listens with a light non-invasive touch to the deep and ever present expressions of health within the client’s system.

11. “Each patient carries his own doctor inside him
“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides in each patient a chance to go to work.” Albert Schweitzer
The BCST process comes from within the client, not from the outside. There is no attempt to manipulate the client’s system toward a theoretical ideal state. The session is guided by listening to an inherent expression of health within the client as it meets the conditions presenting as pain and discomfort. The whole system is engaged in a re-patterning toward health in an order of priorities and a natural progression initiated by the client’s own body.
BCST sessions are resourcing. By the end of a session, the mind and the body feel rested and Health is experienced as more accessible and embodied.

12. What is an RCST®?
An RCST, registered biodynamic craniosacral practitioner, has been certified and approved by the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America to use their registered trademark RCST® and to offer Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy sessions. An RCST has been trained in the foundational principles of BCST, and is is certified to offer sessions. He or she has developed skills needed to be able to listen and to engage with basic life forces in each client to support just the these forces to find balance.
An RCST has successfully completed a 700 hour Foundation Training. He or she is a member of BCTA/NA and has agreed to abide by the Association’s ethical guidelines and to complete all requirements for renewal of membership, including ongoing learning and personal growth. RCSTs are listed on the Association’s website:

13. “Life heals itself given the right conditions. ” Dr
“Life heals itself given the right conditions.” Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, MD, DO
RCSTs are trained in the foundational principals of BCST, but more importantly they develop the skills needed to be able to listen and to engage with basic life forces that are expressed in an embodied way in each client. They are skilled in supporting just the “right conditions” for these life forces to find equilibrium and balance so that the client can reconnect to his or her innate expression of vitality.

14. How to Find an RCST Near You
Registered Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapists can be located on the website of the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America:

15. Jennifer Corlett, Ph. D. , RCST®, BCST/NA Approved Teacher
Jennifer Corlett is a registered biodynamic craniosacral therapist (RCST®), a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America (BCTA/NA) approved teacher, a wholistic psychologist licensed in the State of Ohio, and a Gestalt trained clinician, and group facilitator. Jennifer is a member of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland.
Dr. Corlett has over 20 years of experience in wholistic approaches to wellness. She teaches the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Foundation Training to practitioners interested in becoming registered Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapists (RCSTs). Jennifer maintains a private practice in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and offers psychological services with an emphasis on life transitions and wholistic approaches to managing illness and trauma recovery. Her work integrates spirituality, body/mind approaches, and human capacities development.
Contact Information
Ursuline Educational Center
2600 Lander Rd., Pepper Pike, OH 44124
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