Today we’d like to introduce you to Margaret Rosenau.
Hi Margaret, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
The School of Inner Health was started in 2005 out of love for an ancient and powerful form of hands-on healing known today as Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy.
The original owner and instructor, Kathleen Morrow, was aging out of the business. I purchased it in April 2016 to carry on her vision and craft my own. Owning a School was not something I saw as part of my path. Teaching was the carrot on the stick that led me to purchase the School of Inner Health in 2016 because I realized that I could have a permanent place to teach. I also saw that through a school, I could express my lifelong love of alternative education, healing, and embodied teaching and learning and contribute to the world in effective and wide-reaching ways.
All the conditions and components that led me to be capable of teaching and running a business began to form decades earlier.
I was in my twenties when I found Somatic work while searching for my healing. Something was wrong in my body, but what was wrong had been going on long enough for me to decide there was something wrong with me. In 1995, at a holistic health fair in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, I attended a lecture by a woman named Sharon Porter, who became my first teacher of Somatic work. Sharon said many things that were new to me and one sentence that changed my life: “You don’t need to know what happened to heal.” Her words freed me instantly to stop trying to figure out what had happened to my body. That was the beginning…
My first session with Sharon blew my mind and body open in unexpected ways that I had not known were possible. I walked out a different person and I walked differently too. I spent the next hours walking and letting my body adjust enough to the newness to drive home. After the second session, I went home and slept for 14 hours!
My body was feeling heard, seen, and understood! Over the next six months, the debilitating condition I had struggled with for years was resolved. It had always been hard for me to commit to anything, but now I knew that I wanted to learn the tools that were helping me so I could help others and pave the way for someone else’s road to be easier! I made that decision over twenty-five years ago, and I’m still at it! Along the way, I became a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist (RCST), Polarity Therapist, and Pre and Perinatal Practitioner. I also got a Master’s Degree in Gerontology (2012). And I have had a private therapy practice in multiple locations for over twenty years.
Every step I took, even ones that seemed to be taking me away from somatic work, ultimately took me deeper into Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, a modality I first studied with Sharon Porter. I knew instantly that I had found something that I had been searching for a long time. I continued to study with Sharon and then later completed the same Biodynamic Craniosacral Certification program I now teach with John and Anna Chitty at the Colorado School of Energy Studies. Anna also mentored me in a four-year process to become a teacher. I have been an approved teacher for the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America since 2006, and the owner and lead teacher at the School of Inner Health since 2016.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
What’s been easy and rare is the ongoing opportunity to do what I love. Not everyone finds their passion, and even fewer can follow it, and even fewer people find following it invigorating. Too often when we have to make money doing what we love, we love it less. That’s not true for me.
There have certainly been hard parts of the journey, and I have been strengthened by them. Every experience I have had running The School of Inner Health has ultimately made the business better. I recognize that every moment I have lived, whether filled with challenge, grace, laughter, or loss, is relevant to what I have to give. I am quite certain I would not have found my work without the losses I have endured. Like everyone, I still have to navigate my story. The healing is never done, and the hardest parts never stop being hard.
One of my first challenges was orienting to being in a position of relative power and how people approached me because of it. I’m a relational person and the core of what I teach and am passionate about is relationships. I’m not a transactional person and was thrown off by people initiating relationships with me because of what they hoped to get from me. A related challenge was learning to set and hold strong boundaries.
It took a lot of work at first, but I am proud to say that the School of Inner Health has become known for having strong boundaries, and these boundaries benefit the students and the learning process. It has also been hard to market what I love, to convey the depth of potential in somatic work in ways that are concrete and believable.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about the School of Inner Health?
The School of Inner Health is a holistic educational organization committed to quality instruction in a supportive, relational, and dynamic environment. Our classes are body-centered, diverse, and experiential. All our courses are taught from a biodynamic perspective, oriented to the ever-unfolding aliveness and potential in every body and circumstance. Biodynamics is first and foremost an orientation to that which is always well and whole within us.
We specialize in teaching Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. We offer a multi-year certification training in this modality, as well as a range of introductory courses and courses that teach Biodynamic skills to non-bodyworkers which professionals in a wide range of fields have found to be a transformative addition to their existing skillsets.
We are a very non-traditional, comfortable school. At the School of Inner Health you won’t find desks and upright chairs. We sit on the floor, congregated in a circle on top of a beautiful ornate rug. Against one wall there is a shelf stuffed with pillows and plush blankets. Students find themselves in an array of positions, supported by layers of softness, comfort, and warmth. The classroom is lined with south-facing windows and it is flooded with natural light during the day. When the sun goes down during winter months, the lights at night are soft and warm. It feels like the most comfortable home environment you could imagine. We love to settle in and learn, and no detail of comfort has been spared in the physical considerations of the space.
We also cultivate an environment where we can truly slow down to the speed of the central nervous system. Students are asked to accept this slower pace and set aside the clock on the wall. We dive into subjects so deeply that we not only understand them with our minds but also know them within our bodies. To embody knowledge in this way is a slow, deep, and enduring process. Days spent at the school are captivating and immersive.
Another thing that sets us apart as a school is the way we teach the material. Ours is a non-hierarchial model where everyone’s knowledge is valued. We don’t ask you to put aside what you already know but to carry it differently. We will learn in a variety of ways: through experience, lecture, movement, bodywork, small and large group study, discussion, and meditation. I strive to teach in a way that you can learn and gain skills that you are confident in.
Students at the school commit to learning and often find themselves living and choosing a lifestyle rooted in biodynamic principles. We are a group of people focused on wholeness, health, innate intelligence, and connection with the natural world around us. This unified presence, attention, curiosity, and commitment to something bigger can tangibly be felt in the room.
What matters most to you? Why?
Our business seeks to do something big in the world. We recognize and seek to remedy the widespread modern disconnection between people and their bodies as well as between humans and the living ecosystems they inhabit.
We believe these forgotten connections with our bodies and the living world are at the root of many of the world’s most significant challenges.
We teach in ways that rebuild and strengthen these connections. The Biodynamic paradigm we teach is an ancient approach to health and healing that orients practitioners and clients to ever-unfolding life forces in the body and the world, and how these forces are in endless communication with each other and all of life.
Pricing:
- Online/in-person 1-day BCST introduction $250
- Online 3-day BCST introduction $450
- 6-day BCST Hybrid $750
- BCST Certification training $7500 (increasing to $8000 in 2024)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.schoolofinnerhealth.org
- Instagram: @innerhealthed
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/schoolofinnerhealth
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/school-of-inner-health
- Threads: innerhealthedthreads.net
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@schoolofinnerhealth6165
Image Credits
Christopher Cleary, Gary Buehler, and Margaret Rosenau
