Center for Continuing Education of Osteopathy & Manual Therapy

If you would like to learn how to incorporate 

Cranial Osteopathy using an biomechanical approach 

 into your Bodywork or Massage Therapy practice, 

this online course is for you!

Based upon the live 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 format.  Additional private in-person hands-on tutoring to complement your online learning is also available with Maureen at her private studio in Montreal.

This course contains all of the same material as the course Fundamentals of Cranial Osteopathy Part 1. A Biomechanical Approach to Understanding and Assessing the Cranial Mechanism (for Osteopaths/Osteopathic Practitioners) but has two additional chapters that non-Osteopaths need to learn, including important contra-indications and how to incorporate Cranial Osteopathy into your Bodywork or Massage Therapy Treatment.  If you are not an Osteopath or Osteopathic Practitioner, you must chose this course version.

About this course:

As a self paced 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, quizzes, and homework assignments, that allow you to integrate what you have learnt, not only theoretically, but in a hands-on practical way.  

This course is estimated to be 30 hours, with 15 theoretical learning hours and 15 hands-on practical hours.  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 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 correct Restricted range of motion . An emphasis on Hand Placement and refining your palpation skills is taught through many instructional videos.  You will come away from this course having a solid foundation for understanding and assessing the various aspects of the Cranial Mechanism and how to integrate Cranial Techniques into our Massage Therapy and Bodywork Treatments.

Request One-on-One Calls with your Instructor

Your Instructor makes herself available to all of her students who need a private one-on-one telephone or WhatsApp call to ask any questions or to get individual guidance or feedback.  You can email Maureen at [email protected].

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

Certificates of  Completion valid for 30 hours are awarded to Participants who complete the course and successfully submit the short Quiz found in each chapter, as well as the hands-on Practice assignments.  Certificates can be submitted to their respective associations for CPDs / CEUs or can be displayed in their clinics.

Who this course is for:

This course is suitable for  all Manual Therapists and Massage Therapists  who have an  interest in learning the basics of Cranial Osteopathy 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 and biomechanics. 

Why learn a biomechanical physiological approach to Cranial Osteopathy ?

If you have never studied a  tangible, anatomical approach to treating the cranium, and wish to take a more structured, concrete 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 and manual 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. 

Three different people in order to practice the skills and techniques that you will learn in each chapter and in order to complete each homework assignment.

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]