'Listening To The Small Voice Within - Craniosacral Therapy Research Findings' with Dr Nicola Brough

Free webinar with Dr. Nicola Brough recorded on July 22nd 2020. Listening to the small voice within ignited a process that was to take Dr. Brough on a 10-year journey from Craniosacral Therapy practitioner to researcher. Her vision for the profession is for practitioners to evaluate the work that they do and to collectively develop an evidence base that furthers the profession. In this webinar, Nicola shares the ups and downs of the research process, the holding and the challenges that she experienced at pivotal stages of her Master’s degree research project and her PhD into Craniosacral Therapy outcomes. She provides an overview of her work to date and offer a vision about the potential to be realised by the profession.

Nicola finds that her Craniosacral Therapy training with an orientation to ‘Health’ informs her work. She has developed an understanding of what matters to clients in terms of outcomes, and believes that this is essential to practice. She has found the principle of ‘wellbeing’ is of primary importance to clients and has developed an outcome measure that not only captures those results, but also has validity. Wellbeing can be described as ‘feeling good and functioning well’ and is holistic in nature covering, as a minimum, mind and body; it is much more than just the absence of disease and disability. The outcome measure developed and used by Nicola is sensitive to change and has the psychometric rigour found in ‘Patient Reported Outcome Measures’ (PROMs) used in mainstream healthcare settings. This is vital for the recognition, acceptance and development of the Craniosacral profession.

Dr. Nicola Brough qualified as a Craniosacral Therapist from the Karuna Institute in 2006 under the guidance of Franklyn Sills. She runs an integrative Wellbeing Clinic in Staffordshire, UK and supports a wide client base, specialising in mums and babies, children on the autistic spectrum and highly sensitive individuals. She undertook a Masters research degree sponsored by the Craniosacral Therapy Association and was awarded an MPhil for outstanding work exploring client experiences. She published her study ‘Perspectives on the effects and mechanisms of Craniosacral Therapy: A Qualitative Study of User Views’ in 2015. Nicola won a scholarship from the Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick to undertake a PhD. In 2018 she won the Federation of Holistic Therapists Research Award for Complementary Therapy and she received a ‘Services to Research Award’ in 2019.

For details of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy trainings please send an email to [email protected] or go to www.cranio.co.uk.