Center for Continuing Education of Osteopathy & Manual Therapy

If you would like to learn how to Incorporate Cranial Manual Therapy using a more concrete anatomical  and biomechanical approach into your massage therapy practice, this online home study course is for you!

Based upon the live Cranial Osteopathy four day course that Maureen Hannah Maher has been teaching to Massage Therapists and Manual Therapy Practitioners for several years, this course is now available to you online in a self-paced, home study format with the option to request live Zoom chats with the Instructor anytime throughout your learning experience to discuss cases or any questions you might have, or guidance you feel that you need.

  Independent home study learning is convenient and the structure of this course ensures that you practice everything that you learn in each chapter.  And because you can request a Zoom call with your Instructor, you are never alone in your online learning!

About this course:

As a self paced home study course, you can enroll now, download the Workbook,  and start learning immediately.   You can progress through each chapter at the speed that suits you.  Each  chapter contains new material that builds upon the next, and contains audio lessons, demonstration videos, and homework assignments, that allow you to integrate what you have learnt, not only theoretically, but in a hands-on practical way.  There are four quizzes inserted throughout the course to help you consolidate what you learn into your memory.

 Upon enrollment, you have access to all of the course material for one full year (365 days), allowing you watch all 32 training videos as many times as you want and review the course material at your own pace.  The training videos have been digitally mastered to contain several close-ups, so that you can get a clear visual of the hand placement needed for each technique.

What you will learn:

This course places an emphasis on a more concrete biomechanical approach to Cranial Manual Therapy.  We will teach you the important Anatomy, Physiology, and Biomechanics of the Cranial Mechanism.  You will begin to develop your palpation skills to locate each bone, suture, and whether each bone in the Cranial Mechanism has full amplitude and how to restore it for optimal brain health, how to correct restricted range of motion, compacted sutures, vault holds and other useful techniques that have a broad spectrum of application to your clients. 

An emphasis on precise hand placement and refining your palpation skills is taught through many instructional videos.  You will find that this more precise approach differs greatly from an energetic approach such as Upledger, and is more akin to the standard Cranial Osteopathy that Osteopaths practice throughout the world.

You will come away from this course having a solid understanding of the mechanics and physiology of the Cranial Mechanism and will be able to assess every aspect of it for potential dysfunctions. You will then learn how to perform corrections to the Cranium that will integrate very well into your Massage Therapy and BodyWork Treatments.

The Workbook:

You will be able to download and print the Workbook that accompanies the live  version of this course immediately upon enrollment.   

Certificates of  Completion

As a Licenced American Massage Therapist, you are eligible to receive two Certificates upon completion of this course:

1) A Certificates of  Completion awarded by the Center for Continuing Education of Osteopathy & Manual Therapy valid for 30 hours  to display in your clinic.

2) A Certificate of achievement awarded in accordance with NCBTMB requirements where the Certificate is issued by Maureen Norah Maher, Instructor, for 14.5 CEs.  This second Certificate confirms your CEs and number of credits and is usually the one you must submit to your governing body.

A Student is eligible for Certificates when they  complete the course, the quiz found in each chapter, and successfully submit all of the hands-on Practice assignments for review and approval by the Instructor, Maureen Norah Maher.

Who this course is for:

This course is suitable for  all Massage Therapists  who have an  interest in learning the basics of Cranial Manual Therapy and incorporating it into their Massage Therapy practice.   This is not an energetic based CranioSacral course but rather one that is based on tangible principles of anatomy and physiology. 

What you will get from learning an  anatomical approach to Cranial Manual Therapy?

If you have never studied the tangible, anatomical model of Cranial Manual therapy, and wish to take a more structured, concrete physiological approach to understanding the Cranial Mechanism and your clinical assessments this course is for you.

If you have already studied an energetic approach, this course will help to round out your knowledge and provide you with the concrete anatomical principles of Cranial Manual Therapy that other energetic approaches do not.

Massage Therapists who enjoy learning how to incorporate a greater variety of manual therapy techniques into their practice, albeit with a very gentle approach, will enjoy learning these valuable skills.

For those Practitioners who have experience with the more energetic forms of CranioSacral Treatment, such as Uppledger's CranioSacral or the Biodynamic Model are beneficial when seeking a more diffuse and energetic approach to healing, but when you encounter specific conditions such as Congestion Headaches, Vertigo, Sinusitis, Trigeminal Neuralgia, or Upper Cervical Misalignments related to dysfunctions within the anatomical functioning of the Cranial Mechanism, learning how to treat the Cranium from a more concrete biomechanical perspective will provide more tangible and predictable results within your treatments.  Students who have trained and even mastered these more energetic approaches will benefit greatly from this course, as it will round out and complete your education and understanding of the Cranium.

What skills you will take away from this course:

Through this course, you will learn to identify & treat all the major components of the Cranial Mechanism.  You will learn the outline and relative positioning of each cranial bone, the location of each suture, how the cranial mechanism works, how the venous sinus system drains, and more.  You will learn how to treat and correct the cranial mechanism,  how to balance its rhythms in order to be able to provide relief for your patient using a very tangible, scientific, anatomically based approach 

Although this is Part I and designed to give the anatomical and functional basics, you will come away with sufficient knowledge to treat basic conditions such as congestion headaches, fatigue, and includes cranial osteopathy into your treatments where full body alignments is crucial for symptom relief.  

Although this course is designed to give the anatomical and functional basics, you will come away with sufficient knowledge to treat basic conditions such as congestion headaches, fatigue, and includes cranial osteopathy into your treatments where full body alignments is crucial for symptom relief.  

The  downloads and take-away tools:

At the beginning of the course, you can download the printable Workbook.  Then, each chapter contains download of explanations how to perform various assessment or treatment techniques that you can use to guide you through your hands-on practice.  You will then submit these practice sheets as part of your homework requirement to achieve your Certificate.

You also get Unique Assessment Sheets that are very useful tools help you learn how to palpate for and diagnose each component of the Cranial Mechanism in a step by step manner.  These Assessment Sheets help take the guesswork out of palpation and diagnosis.  

This learning approach was designed by Maureen Hannah Maher, the course Instructor, Cranial Osteopath and Massage Therapist, for over fifteen years. 

 Maureen is also the author and instructor of Cranial Osteopathy Part 2 Continuing Fundamentals, which will be available online in 2023, and the complete Advanced Cranial Pathologies series that she teaches in live seminars and workshops to learners who wish to build on the fundamentals of this course and go on to effectively treatment more complex but common cranial pathologies.  But to do this, one needs to start with the fundamentals, which you will acquire in this course.

What you will need:

Access to a printer to print the Workbook and Worksheets for practice

Order a practice skull like the one you see in the videos.

Up to five different people in order to practice the skills and techniques that you will learn in each chapter.

Join us online and learn how Cranial Manual Therapy can be incorporated into your Bodywork practice today!

Have a question about this course ?

  Please feel free to email us at [email protected] or 

in the USA call 1 954 889 7615

in Canada call 1 438 865 6355