A History… – part 2

Summary | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

In 1975-1979 Franklyn Sills, with a group of other enthusiastic students, studied the work of Dr. Randolph Stone DO. Franklyn was fascinated by what Stone called primary energy and the neuter essence. He discovered that Sutherland influenced Stone in this territory. In 1982, Franklyn and Maura Sills moved to England and created the Karuna Institute in Devon England, a center for the training of Core Process Psychotherapists and courses in complementary health practices. During this time, Franklyn undertook an osteopathic training and underwent an apprenticeship in a busy London practice. One of the osteopaths in the practice was a cranial practitioner and greatly influenced Franklyn’s work. Franklyn was encouraged to enter a receptive state, to orient to what was called the tidal potency and the fluid tide, and wait for the potency of the Breath of Life to manifest its healing intentions.

In 1986, Claire Dolby DO encouraged Franklyn to begin teaching a form of the work outside of the osteopathic profession. He had already developed a two-year training program based on the work of Randolph Stone DO. The first cranial training developed by Sills was taught at the Karuna Institute in 1986, assisted by Claire Dolby DO. It was a mixed biomechanical and biodynamic program where people learned biomechanical language and technique and were then encouraged to deepen into the more formative forces of primary respiration. It soon became clear that this mixed approach did not serve Franklyn’s and the teaching staff’s intention to orient students to the deeper organizing forces in the human system.

At a tutors’ meeting at Karuna in 1992, all present agreed that they were not teaching what they were actually practicing, which had a clear biodynamic orientation. The hallmark of a biodynamic approach is a direct orientation to the universal and conditional forces of life. In this approach, the practitioner settles into a still and receptive state of being, clearly negotiates their relationship to the client and their system, orients to the presence of primary respiration, waits for a shift within the client’s system to this formative ordering force, and creates a container within which decisions are made by the Breath of life and the primary respiration it generates. The practitioner’s role is to facilitate a deepening into this territory through perceptual clarity, appropriate relationship to the client and their system, and a deepening awareness and appreciation of the presence of both primary respiration and the conditional forces and patterns held within the system. During this time Franklyn and his staff team were a lone voice outside of the osteopathic community orienting a largely biomechanical craniosacral profession to what he called a craniosacral biodynamic approach.

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