Theme 2026
Join us to explore how craniosacral work can enhance sensory integration and awaken deeper awareness of our senses in subtle and powerful ways.
This congress brings together pioneering researchers and experienced practitioners to share the latest insights into how Craniosacral Therapy can enrich sensory experience, support self-regulation, and foster wellbeing, or how sensory awareness itself may guide and deepen the therapeutic process.
Whether you’re a craniosacral therapist, a healthcare professional, or someone on a path of personal growth, you’ll gain practical techniques and fresh perspectives to expand your understanding and your practice. Don’t miss this sensory-deepening experience!
Speakers 2026
Prof. dr. Danny Sandra
PhD CST PCC
Founder & Host
As founder and host of the International Cranio Research Congress, Prof. Dr. Danny Sandra serves as Adjunct Professor at IÉSEG School of Management, where his research focuses on spiritual leadership, entrainment theory, and organizational synchronization. His academic journey reflects an unusual trajectory: from aeronautical engineering and internet entrepreneurship to a profound exploration of consciousness and embodiment. This transformative path led him to craniosacral therapy, systemic constellation work, and contemplative practice, which now inform both his therapeutic work as a certified craniosacral therapist (CST) and professional coach (PCC), and his scholarly inquiry into how teams and organizations achieve coherence. Danny’s doctoral research, completed at the University of Antwerp, pioneered the use of heart coherence measurement as an indicator of spiritual leadership, demonstrating how inner practices and coherent interaction among team members can foster collective well-being and adaptability. His work bridges indigenous wisdom traditions with contemporary neuroscience, exploring how consciousness-raising experiences in executive development create the conditions for organizational entrainment: the synchronization of naturally occurring rhythms within individuals, groups, and their environments. This unique perspective informs his vision for the congress as a space where the principles of entrainment, sensory awareness, and physiological coherence can illuminate pathways for both therapeutic practice and leadership development, revealing the profound interconnection between subtle perception, self-regulation, and collective transformation.
Lizette Villaverde
RCST
Listening to Scars: Gateways to Sensory Integration
A highly respected and trauma-informed Craniosacral Therapist, Lizette Villaverde, RCST, utilizes a therapeutic approach that is grounded in a deep, evidence-based respect for the body’s innate capacity to heal. Before dedicating herself fully to craniosacral therapy, she worked as a social worker and led a mental health charity supporting refugees, gaining a clear understanding of the impact of systemic structures, principles she continues to carry into her practice. This background makes her work particularly resonant with the Cranio Research Congress, where the exploration of subtle sensory perception, regulation, and embodied listening lies at the heart of the inquiry. This expertise informs her presentation, “Listening to Scars: Gateways to Sensory Integration,” which explores how scars – often sites where the body’s sensory and regulatory systems have adapted to protect and heal – can become portals to deeper sensory awareness and integration. Drawing on clinical experience, she will demonstrate how approaching scars with the combined principles of Scarwork and Craniosacral Therapy can shift both local and global sensory experience, inviting greater coherence within the fascial network and nervous system. By listening to the subtle language of scars, Lizette highlights pathways for tissue transformation, emotional regulation, and embodied presence. She co-founded the Craniosacral Collaborative, is a trustee with the Craniosacral Therapy Association (CSTA), and is an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the field.
Lin Vermeiren
MA SEP RCST
Continuum as a Path of Sensory Intelligence
A craniosacral (BCST), pre- and perinatal therapist and Continuum teacher, she brings a deep sensitivity to the role of implicit memory of conception, life in the womb, birth, and ancestral legacies. Living and working in Girona, she supports individuals in exploring how early sensory and relational imprints shape consciousness, embodiment, and patterns of being throughout life. Her professional journey includes extensive training with leading pioneers in the field, including William Emerson, Ray Castellino, Tara Blasco, and midwife Mary Jackson, through studies in California and England. These lineages inform her refined capacity to listen to the psycho-body system, where early experiences are held as sensations, emotions, beliefs, postural tendencies, movement patterns, and subtle cranial dynamics. At the Cranio Research Congress, she will present on Continuum as a therapeutic approach that invites deep listening through movement, breath, sound, and sensory awareness. Her work resonates strongly with the congress theme, as it explores how pre-verbal and pre-conceptual sensory experiences continue to inform our perception, relationships, and our capacity to self-regulate. By gently opening to this original somatic blueprint, Continuum supports the restoration of coherence where interruption or trauma occurred, allowing for greater freedom, authenticity, and connection with one’s full potential.
Dr. Michael Shea
PhD
The 7th Sense: Embodied Metabolism and Interoception
A highly respected clinician and educator, Dr. Michael Shea holds a PhD in Somatic Psychology from the Union Institute (1995) and an MA in Contemplative Psychotherapy from Naropa University (1986). Dr. Shea specializes in treating infants and adults with complex metabolic and developmental challenges, a focus that directly informs his presentation, “The 7th Sense: Embodied Metabolism and Interoception,” at the Cranio Research Congress 2026. His lifelong inquiry into interoception, regulation, and embodied metabolism places him at the forefront of understanding subtle sensory perception, making his work especially aligned with the congress theme exploring cranio work and sensory intelligence. A prolific author with eight books, his most recent work, The Biodynamic Heart: Somatic Compassion Practices for a Clear and Vital Heart, provides the foundation for his research into the integration of heart-centered practices and the body’s deepest regulatory functions. A dedicated U.S. Army veteran (Vietnam Era), he brings unique depth and lived experience to his clinical and teaching work. He lives in Florida with his wife, Cathy, where he cultivates renowned mangoes.
Silvia Sédoc
CST
The Senses as Gateways in Cranio Work
A holistic therapist and craniosacral practitioner, Silvia Sedoc is the founder of the Practice for Universal Health and of Holistic Movement & Dance. With over 35 years of experience, she works at the intersection of systemic therapy, trauma-informed healing, and embodied awareness with individuals and groups. Her work integrates craniosacral therapy, family constellations inspired by Bert Hellinger and Franz Ruppert, Voice Dialogue, music, and conscious movement. Holistic Movement & Dance marked an important transitional phase in her journey, where craniosacral principles met movement and rhythm, and has since fully evolved into her signature method. Through this method, Silvia guides participants into deeper sensory awareness, nervous system regulation, ancestral healing, and the activation of self-healing capacities. Her emphasis on embodied sensing, rhythm, and relational perception aligns closely with this year’s congress theme, where subtle sensory intelligence and integrative awareness are central. She facilitates international workshops, trainings, and collective healing spaces.
Dr. Therese Rowley
PhD
Multisensory Intelligence: A New Framework for Understanding Neurodiversity
As a visionary intuitive, business strategist, and leading voice at the intersection of science, consciousness, and organizational transformation, Dr. Rowley serves as the CEO of Accelerated Alignment and founder of The Wonder Children + Parent Community and The MSI Discovery Labs + Foundation, she holds a PhD in Organizational Transformation and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. For more than three decades, she has advised Fortune 1000 leaders through complex strategic and cultural change as well as personal transformation. Her pioneering work reframes neurodiversity through the lens of Multisensory Intelligence (MSI) – a developmental framework recognizing heightened sensory, emotional, intuitive, and energetic perception as an advanced form of human intelligence rather than a disorder. In her presentation, “Multisensory Intelligence: A New Framework for Understanding Neurodiversity,” Dr. Rowley introduces this integrative model, which draws from neuroscience, quantum biology, intuitive development, and subtle-energy research. Through early findings from The MSI Discovery Labs + Foundation, she highlights how MSI correlates with physiological coherence, emotional regulation, and expanded perceptual capacity, including emerging evidence related to intuitive processing. Dr. Rowley is the author of Mapping a New Reality: Discovering Intuitive Intelligence and founder of the Conscious Business Network of Chicago, where she convenes leaders dedicated to conscious business, social innovation, and the evolution of human potential.
Hugh Milne
DO
How Medical Intuition Works
A third-generation Scottish naturopath and osteopath, Hugh Milne, DO, graduated from the British College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1971. After a decade in an Indian ashram, he began teaching Visionary Craniosacral Work® in England in 1984, subsequently teaching more than 900 workshops and numerous meditation retreats worldwide. His pioneering exploration of perception, intuition, and meditative awareness places him at the heart of the Cranio Research Congress inquiry into sensory intelligence, making his work especially relevant to a congress dedicated to cranio work and expanded ways of sensing and knowing. His seminar 510-page work, The Heart of Listening: A Visionary Approach to Craniosacral Work, is published globally. His presentation, “How Medical Intuition Works,” will outline the uses, benefits, and limitations of intuition in healthcare, demonstrating how to harness the seven channels of perception used in Visionary Craniosacral Work® to facilitate diagnosis and treatment. Drawing on his 59 years of experience as an osteopath, teacher, and pilot, his talk elucidates how perception, anchored in meditative practice and the philosophy of osteopathy’s founder A.T. Still, can be a crucial asset to healing. Key insights include the importance of ad hominem perception, perceiving who walks into the office, and the capacity of a practitioner’s covert awareness to locate undisclosed dangers, such as tumors, before medical technology can detect them. Hugh lives in Oregon on the edge of a National Wilderness.
Dr. Cherionna Menzam-Sills
PhD BCST
Primordial Sensing: How the Embryo Can Inform Health and Healing
As part of her doctoral studies in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology, Dr. Menzam-Sills began teaching Embodied Embryology through somatic movement in 1997. Since then, she has taught and practiced Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Therapy, Continuum, a mindful movement practice, and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy internationally, often in collaboration with her late husband, biodynamics pioneer Franklyn Sills. Cherionna trains practitioners to deepen their capacity to meet prenatal and birth material arising in session work, and facilitates small womb surround process workshops, for which she is approved through Castellino Trainings. Her background includes extensive study with pioneers in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology William Emerson and Ray Castellino, as well as with Continuum founder Emilie Conrad, who authorized her to teach Continuum in 2007. Her lifelong inquiry into embryological development, sensory awareness, and embodied perception makes her work especially resonant with the Cranio Research Congress theme Cranio and the Six Senses, where subtle sensory intelligence, pre-verbal experience, and relational presence are central. She is the author of three books: The Breath of Life: An Introduction to Craniosacral Biodynamics, Spirit into Form: Exploring Embryological Potential and Prenatal Psychology, and The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Experienced Before and at Birth. Cherionna is deeply committed to embodied presence.
Joke Langmans
MA
Psychological Perspectives of the Senses in Healing and Regulation
An independent psychologist in Flanders with a focus on child and adolescent care, Joke Langmans, MSc, creatively integrates trauma and brain-related therapies, influenced profoundly by her extensive international experiences. This unique approach includes practices and philosophies from Chinese medicine, Indian Ayurvedic massage, yoga techniques, and South American cultural insights. In her clinical practice, Joke emphasizes the physical and energetic dimensions of therapy and utilizes techniques such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), advanced breathing, acupuncture, and Brainspotting to achieve a deep and targeted engagement with the cognitive and emotional regions of the brain. This commitment to evidence-based, integrative therapies provides the perfect foundation for her workshop at the Cranio Research Congress, where she will bring her unique psychological perspective to facilitate a deep exploration of the senses and their role in healing and regulation.
Sevastiana Koutroumpanou
MSc CST SPNDA
Craniosacral Therapy in Treatment of Psychotic Syndrome
A highly respected psychotherapist, somatic therapist, and craniosacral therapist, Sevastiana Koutroumpanou is known for pioneering Somatic Psychotherapy with a Non-Directive Approach (S.P.N.D.A.). After comprehensive training in Psychology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the Non-Directive Interventional (N.D.I.) approach, and Craniosacral Therapy, she recognized that true healing requires approaching the individual as an inseparable psychosomatic entity. Her integrative vision, bridging craniosacral listening, therapeutic dialogue, and somatic awareness, makes her work particularly relevant to the Cranio Research Congress, where the exploration of subtle perception, embodied sensing, and clinical depth is central. Leveraging her extensive experience since the late 1990s, she created S.P.N.D.A. as a practical method to integrate these modalities, evolving Craniosacral Therapy (CST) through the enrichment of therapeutic dialogue. Her presentation, “Craniosacral Therapy in Treatment of Psychotic Syndrome,” demonstrates this unique approach, specifically positing that CST awakens the memory of the body’s tissues, giving patients the opportunity to access somatically stored memories that cannot be retrieved through cognitive recall. She will present findings from a long-term research study on the contribution of CST combined with therapeutic dialogue to the treatment of a person with psychotic syndrome. In 1995, she founded the Humantherapy Institute to disseminate S.P.N.D.A., and her work culminated in her influential book, Touching the Memory of the Body (2016).
Cornelia Elbrecht
MA AThR SATh SEP
A Sensorimotor Art Therapy Approach
A leader in groundbreaking art therapy techniques with a particular focus on healing trauma, Cornelia Elbrecht, MA, AThR, SATh, SEP, is a renowned author, educator, and the Founder and Director of the Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy. An art therapist with over 40 years of experience, she brings profound expertise to her field. Having studied Expressive Art Therapy and holding extensive postgraduate training in Jungian and Gestalt Therapy, Bioenergetics, and Somatic Experiencing (SEP), she is best known for her cutting-edge work with Guided Drawing® and Clay Field Therapy®. This unique body of knowledge, which utilizes sensorimotor input and somatic awareness to process trauma, makes her a perfect fit for the “Cranio and the Six Senses” congress. Her presentation, “A Sensorimotor Art Therapy Approach,” will demonstrate how body-focused art therapy can effectively engage and integrate the deeper, often unconscious, sensory functions relevant to craniosacral practice. She runs accredited online courses for art therapists, educators, and mental health professionals globally.
Joachim Aarts
Medicine Man
Sensory Understanding from a Traditional Healing Lineage
Following a significant personal health crisis – a burnout, depression, and car accident at age 27 – Joachim Aarts experienced the profound limitations of Western healing approaches, initiating a deep search for alternative pathways. This journey led him to a traditional Medicine Man, whom he began studying with in 2007, and by 2016, he was formally blessed in the lineage. Simultaneously, he met his second teacher and godfather, Santiago Andrade, in 2010, embarking on a path of initiation he continues to live today. Now a lineage carrier himself, Joachim is a Visionquester, Pipecarrier, Sundancer, and Medicine Man. Working primarily through Temazcal (sweat lodge) and Sacred Pipe ceremonies, his mission is to help people reconnect with their internal healing forces, themselves, and nature. This unique approach informs his congress presentation, “Sensory Understanding from a Traditional Healing Lineage,” where he will share the perspective of a traditionally trained healer on the understanding and sensibility of the senses. Alongside his wife, who shares this path, he coaches and supports individuals studying these ways, having built a vibrant healing community in Belgium.
Latest News
Danny Sandra’s Interview on the Congress featured in The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum, the magazine of the Craniosacral Therapy Association (CSTA) in the UK, interviewed Danny Sandra about his journey as a therapist and co-founder of the International Cranio Research Congress. Read the AAM-version of this interview here, or visit The Fulcrum.
Directions to the venue Hof van Liere at University of Antwerp
The congress will take place in the beautiful 16th-century Hof van Liere at the Stadscampus of the University of Antwerp. Address: Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium.
Our Congress Now More Accessible Than Ever
Experience our live presentations from anywhere in the world, complete with automatic captioning available in multiple languages. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to engage in cutting-edge craniosacral therapy discussions in your preferred language.
Accredition ongoing with NRO, LVNT and VBAG
In 2024, the NRO has accredited this congress for 12 points (12 hours), as well as the LVNT and VBAG. The accreditation for 2026 is ongoing. Attendance certificates will be provided on requests.
Previous Congresses
1st CRANIO RESEARCH CONGRESS
10 OCTOBER 2020 | VIRTUAL
Cranio as Connecting Field
2nd CRANIO RESEARCH CONGRESS
8-9 OCTOBER 2022 | UANTWERP
Cranio at Heart
3rd CRANIO RESEARCH CONGRESS
8-9 NOVEMBER 2024 | UANTWERP
Cranio for the Brain and Second Brain
