Basic Teacher Training (Summer 2024)
August 4, 2024,9:00 am-August 16, 2024,6:00 pm
Basic Teacher Training (August 4-16).
After reviewing course details below, please fill out the application form.
Application
Basic Teacher Training Total = 97 Hours
Prerequisites: To enroll you must have proof of high school graduation or equivalent and have some knowledge of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method and a desire to practice the method. You must obtain approval from a school official and supply two personal character references.
Objectives
This course is primarily focused on the needs of the participating students. The goal is for students to personally apply Self-Healing principles inwardly so that they become aware of their personal healing potential through experience, leading to:
- Awareness of movement and innate healing potential
- Improved health and well-being
- The ability to use the knowledge learned to help clients
- Growing intuition and inventiveness in the student’s self-healing practice
This first course is based heavily on information contained in Vision for Life and Awakening Your Power of Self-Healing. Both books will be reviewed and should be read before the training course begins, as there will not be time to read both books thoroughly during the training. Take notes or highlight as you read and bring your questions to class.
The goal is to develop enough self-awareness and deep knowledge of our own movement that we can help expand the regenerative movement for the clients we work on. Thus, this initial course is popular with students who seek self-growth, and information on how to best meet their bodies’ needs. Healthcare professionals also find Basic Teacher Training helpful for expanding their skills.
This course is taught over the course of eight or nine intensive nine to ten-hour days.
Developing Kinesthetic Awareness
Within the first day, we begin to learn kinesthetic awareness. Kinesthetic awareness is a deep, powerful awareness of the body and its positions, and developing it is a foundational skill as a Self-Healing practitioner.
Kinesthetic awareness comes with deep and slow breathing. Parts of us, like the lower back, move in a different way when we breathe deeply. Without kinesthetic awareness there is no deep intuition on how to help ourselves or others.
We will have lectures and movements in combination, so that you can learn the theory while engaging in actual practice. We will use a very wide range of exercises to develop kinesthetic awareness. We will walk and run near the beach. We will watch our shoulders and the way they tense and loosen in front of a mirror.
We will learn how to create better length of the spine and re-align the vertebrae, and we will learn how subtle movements can affect the body.
The combination of these exercises and the lectures around them are very informative, and comprehensive leading to a positive life change.
Breathing
We will begin to work on our breathing in the first days of class. Breathing deeply and properly is the beginning of transformation. Proper breathing creates better sensations in the body. We will learn very practically how to allow the waist, back, ribs, and chest to expand while you breathe.
This will make a revolutionary difference for our bodies. The transformation that can happen to the body’s circulatory system and lungs cannot be described, but they can be experienced in the class.
We will learn why exhalation is as important as inhalation, and how to help the breath become complete.
We learn why nose breathing is the best breathing there is. We will find out about difficulties like obstructive and restrictive breathing problems, like asthma and emphysema, and the difference between them.
We will also show you how you to reduce breathing problems through bodywork and exercises. We will
also discover how changes in temperature, touch, and movement can affect breathing and how specific bodywork can expand our breath and lungs.
We will learn how to increase space in the chest, ribs, and lower back so breathing can be full and complete. There will be some book study of anatomy and physiology and we will learn how oxygen is carried to the cell with the blood. You will also see how to diagnose someone’s state by observing their breath.
The Circulatory System
Nearly 50% of deaths are forty years before their time due to cardiovascular problems, and one in eight people suffer from irregular blood pressure, usually high. With good circulation, we have a sense of well-being and relaxation. Without good circulation, we are more tense and more prone to illness and injury.
We’ll learn the principles of improving blood flow and the sense of lightness it brings. Getting warm hands and feet is very important for this task.
We will learn how to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular conditions by improving circulation and reducing immobility in the chest cavity. We will see how chronic tension in the hips
and shoulders can diminish circulation, and learn methods to release this tension. We will demonstrate bodywork techniques, practices, and exercises to increase mobility of the chest and to manage blood pressure to improve the overall condition of the heart. Lectures and demonstrations also cover the presence or absence of swelling.
You will learn special bodywork to release the body’s peripheral channel of circulation. A unique, pleasant aerobic dance with music is included to release blood to the periphery. Students will study the heart and entire cardiovascular system for knowledge on how to prevent disease and increase longevity.
We’re going to have a discussion and quiz on the circulatory system. There will be open-book questions given in advance, discussion during the course, and then a quiz in class.
Bones
We will learn how bones regenerate and how we can contribute to their regeneration, and prevent or help overcome osteoporosis. We will talk about how arthritis can be prevented with movement.
You will learn how to help people with bone difficulties through special exercises on the bones. We will see how to prevent and reduce arthritis when it occurs, and reduce or prevent the need for harmful medication.
We’ll also learn how shoulders and elbows are interconnected, and see how our hands and fingers are connected to the shoulders and why it matters.
Digestion
As many as 65 million people in the United States and hundreds of millions worldwide suffer from various digestive problems, especially irritable bowel syndrome. By studying the digestive system, students learn that peristalsis, a wavelike motion in the digestive system, is the secret to healthy digestion. Students learn specialized exercises for improved digestion, and bodywork for improved peristalsis.
You will learn how to relax and open the digestive sphincter muscles through bodywork and awareness, which improves digestion and can relax the entire body. Healthy digestion brings a sense of ease and lightness, and even makes studying easier because the digestive system affects our thinking. Students also see specific massage techniques to release tight digestive muscles, which can be effective in preventing surgeries and overcoming grave conditions.
Students learn and practice massage techniques for irritable bowel syndrome that can ease and potentially eliminate symptoms. Other topics include colitis and Crohn’s disease.
You will learn how the autonomic nervous system can be affected by exercises and how the autonomic nervous system affects the digestive system and vice versa.
There will be discussion, book review, quizzes, and hands-on digestion activities.
Muscles and Joints
Unevenness of the muscles leads to joint problems and pain. Lack of muscle balance causes the bones to be pulled in the wrong directions and is a leading cause of osteoarthritis. We will learn how that happens and how to prevent it, as well as how to stop it as quickly as possible with bodywork and many other techniques.
We will discuss joint movement patterns, and learn how muscles and joints freeze and how to unfreeze them. We also learn the way that muscles contract on a cellular level, and we see how the muscles function as levers.
We will also see how evenness of the muscles helps circulation. We will learn to create more space between bones to alleviate pressure on the spinal nerves. This positively affects every part of our body, including breathing.
You will also learn to relax muscles with soft bodywork. We believe our bodywork can penetrate into the cell and affect the sub-cellular activity. It loosens strong muscles that commonly overwork to hold non-ideal postures, especially from over-sitting. We learn how we over-strain our muscles, both in exercise and in normal activity, and we learn how to reverse and prevent that. We also share special bodywork that breaks adhesions and tension to release necrosis from the cells.
When we work on the muscles, we teach how to avoid straining through imbalanced motions. This leads to more efficient movement, which benefits our health and mindset. This renewed relationship with movement increases the benefits of our bodywork, and bodywork makes it possible to engage in movement that breaks bad postural habits.
At the same time, we also work with movements that help the cells remain loose. We go to the pool to learn how to help ourselves and others with less gravitational resistance.
Learning to work with muscle disease is covered in the course, and we discuss how to work with a range of muscles from those of an athlete to the rigid back of an uptight airline passenger. Students also learn how to provide bodywork in water, which is especially helpful to clients living with different types of paralysis and joint restrictions.
Muscular Dystrophy
In this course, there are five hours of hands-on work with muscular dystrophy. Students review the structure and function of muscles and participate in lectures and demonstrations on methods to enhance the quality of movement. A class discussion on the video, Self-Healing Techniques for Muscular Dystrophy, is included. Also, there will be sections on different types of muscular dystrophy, compensatory patterns for muscle weakness, and a sequence of self-healing therapy exercises for people living with muscular dystrophy.
Eyes
Meir’s journey began with his eyes. For students with vision problems, we can discuss your situation, assess your challenges, and help you with them.
We will also learn the relationship between hearing, seeing, smelling, and posture, something that most people don’t know. Meir always says “You can never help someone with back pain before you work with their vision”, and the details about why will be covered in this course.
This section will cover all of the nine principles of vision improvement, outlined in our book Vision for Life. When students focus on vision, they learn how harmonious the visual mechanism is and how different parts of the eyes work together. We teach how different parts of the retina work in harmony and how to strengthen the central part of the retina, called the macula, with specific exercises in shifting or looking from detail to detail. This is what the macula was designed to do.
We will also learn how to prevent macular degeneration, a disease that has become a plague on modern eyes. We will see how to help somebody with macular degeneration with the shifting exercises and bodywork that help to bring more blood to the head.
We also learn that most blinding diseases are a result of poor blood flow to the optic nerve, visual brain, and eyes, and how increasing blood flow can make a big difference in problems like glaucoma, wet macular degeneration, and neovascularization of the retina.
It will take some time to absorb the information from this part of the course, but it will be extremely exciting, comprehensive, and helpful to you, your neighbors, your friends, your clients, and humanity.
We also will learn to increase peripheral vision and prevent many eye problems, including glaucoma. We will discover how looking at a distance can prevent cataracts and much more.
This class is not to be missed.
The Nervous System
The nervous system governs our lives. In order to make our bodies strong, we need to know how to control our nervous system.
In this part of the course, we will discuss the potential we have to create better action in the nervous system in order to prevent dementia and senility, prevent and overcome paralysis, and more.
We will divide work on the autonomic nervous system, which is affected by our emotions, and learn specific exercises to balance the activity of the autonomic nervous system. This affects every part of our body and can prevent most internal illnesses. We will also learn the evolution of the central nervous system and learn exercises like crawling and cross-patterning. We will also learn coordination exercises, which can help prevent falls and other injuries.
Specific exercises for balancing the autonomic nervous system will be taught, as well as exercises for coordination.
We will also teach bodywork that can create a better connection between muscles and the brain. We will also review parts of the video Bodywork for Self-Healing, which we would like you to obtain and work with. It describes a lot of our techniques.
Personal Sessions
Each student in our classes will get at least one personal session. We teach you to find your specific needs and give you the tools to address them.
In personal sessions, we use a pool, a hot tub, and a trampoline to work on ourselves. Some people can be more vigorous and some more cautious, but we do our work according to your own capacity and needs.
Assignments
Upon acceptance to the Basic Teacher Training course, you will receive seven sets of preview questions
with relevant handouts by email. These sets of questions are study guides designed to help you through materials that may be unfamiliar and to give you a background of how self-healing applies to the body’s systems. For each question, you will find notes pointing out where the answers can be found in the provided materials.
You will need to complete the preview questions before classes begin. These materials and questions are for your enrichment and will enhance your class discussions. Please order your texts and materials shortly after being accepted as you will need them to answer the preview questions. Students are expected to have their answers and be prepared to discuss them in class. Please call if you get stuck—we want you to succeed and are here to help you.
Students are also required to give a twenty-minute presentation on one of the following topics:
- A demonstration of another style of bodywork
- A demonstration of another form of vision improvement work
- An exercise or group of exercises that are based on self-healing concepts that you have developed and used successfully
- A demonstration or lecture of another holistic movement, or exercise systemPresentations will be scheduled throughout the course. Please plan your topic in advance with Meir to prevent duplications.NOTE
The video and audio materials are not referred to in the preview questions. These materials contain guided exercises designed to provide a refreshing break from the preview questions, as well as to introduce you to the types of exercises we will be doing. We suggest you try them out before the first day of class.
Basic Teacher Training Outcome
Throughout this course, students learn how the range of their own body movement affects their health and their own capacity to give bodywork. So, the bodywork, visualization, and movement tools taught in Basic Teacher Training develop flexibility and strengthen one’s body. Graduates of Basic Teacher Training will have the foundation required to teach these basic methods and principles, and know how to use them to help people.
Students will develop a comprehensive understanding of anatomy and physiology. They will come
to understand the importance of body movement and awareness of their own bodies’ mobility. The importance of how the digestive system works is emphasized, and students learn correct bodywork and movement for digestive disorders. Students also learn the difference between soft and deep tissue bodywork to help energy flow in the body.
When you finish the course, you see how your own range of body movements has increased and how that affects your ability to understand clients’ problems with their body movement and health. You will also come to understand the bodywork needed for the person you’re working with. We develop that awareness by assessing real people, and you will have living examples to assess and work with during this training.
Our graduates learn a new way to move, develop better sensory awareness, better vision, and better hearing, and develop a capacity to inspire others to develop the same.
At the end of the class, you will be able to touch other people with confidence and help them move in a better, healthier way. You will also receive a certificate naming you Entry-Level Self Healing Practicioner / Educator in the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method. This allows you to work with relatively healthy people. It can also be used to adjunct other therapies when working with people with different disabilities through other modalities, or to help family members with special needs.
That ability is very profound and unique to our work. That’s why it’s so good for you to work continuously with the book, Awakening Your Power of Self-Healing, before you start to study, while studying in the course, and after the course. The practical knowledge in it is something that will start in the basic practitioner training, and will continue throughout your career and your life. It will also prepare you for the Advanced Teacher Training course.
We hope our class leads to a big change for the better, with more vitality, strength, and openness. Many of our students develop a new sense of purpose in their life and go on to help others at home, nationally, and abroad.
NOTE:
Graduates of Basic Teacher Training are certified to work with relatively healthy clients who have issues with mobility, digestion, minor visual challenges, and other common minor problems. Graduates are not certified to work with clients suffering from chronic or life-threatening conditions (with the exception of students who come to Basic Teacher Training with a professional license). To work with clients who have chronic or life-threatening conditions, students are required to take Advanced Teacher Training.
Criteria for Satisfactory Performance in Basic Teacher Training
Grades are awarded on three levels, Pass with Excellence, Pass, and Fail. Grades are based on the program objectives for the course and are made on the basis of documented observations and answers to oral questions. In Basic Teacher Training and Advanced Teacher Training, grades include performance on written quizzes.
All late arrivals and absences are documented and must be for good cause. With permission from Meir, a student may be excused for a total of eight class hours per week. As substitution for the excused hours, a student may work on a project with pre-approval by Meir.
Meir’s assessment of performance is based on observing the student’s work, informal questioning, the student’s presentation, and participation in class discussion, along with written answers to quizzes. If a student experiences difficulty with any part of the course work, they may work with Meir to develop a plan that better supports their learning.
Text and Materials for Basic Teacher Training
Required:
• Movement for Self-Healing, by Meir Schneider (available in ebook and Audible)
• Vision for Life, by Meir Schneider (recommended as a paperback because it has eye charts, but is
also available as an e-book and on Audible)
• Awakening Your Power of Self-Healing, by Meir Schneider (also recommended as a paperback
because it has illustrations, but is also available as an e-book and on Audible) • 5 Pack CD set (also available on MP3) by Meir Schneider which includes:
o Sensing Your Spine
o Breath and Mobility of the Joints
o Meir’s Vision Exercises
o Relaxation of the Eyes
o Strengthening Your Central Nervous System
• The Natural Vision Improvement Kit, by Meir Schneider (audio)
• Yoga for the Eyes, by Meir Schneider (DVD or downloadable – 62-page study guide included) • Bodywork for Self-Healing, (DVD or downloadable)
• Miracle Eyesight Method, by Meir Schneider (audio)
• Complex and Hidden Brain in Gut Makes Stomachaches & Butterflies – New York Times
• An anatomy and physiology book of your choice, we often use Scanlon and Sanders
• The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light, by Paul Bogard • Muscular Dystrophy and the Self-Healing Method, by Carol Gallup (Dissertation)
• Healing Neuromuscular Conditions, by Beatriz Nascimento (DVD)
Recommended Material (to be ready before or after the course):
• The Body Has Its Reasons, by Therese Bertherat
• Awareness through Movement, by Moshe Feldenkrais
• Body Learning (An Introduction to the Alexander Technique), by Michael Gelb • What to Do About Your Brain-Injured Child, by Glenn Dornan
• The Art of Seeing, by Aldous Huxley
• The Bates Method for Better Eyesight without Glasses, by W.H. Bates
• The Healing Sun, by Richard Hobday
• The Body Electric, by Robert O. Becker