BSR CERTIFICATION
Students are required to pass examinations on the different course elements including: Anatomy, Technique Theory, Principles, Client Management and a final Technique Practical exam. On successful completion of the practical apprenticeship programme, students graduate and are presented with their BSR Academy Certificate and professional name-plate. Body Stress Release is a proprietary technique and is therefore only taught by the Body Stress Release Academies in SA and the UK and is not accredited by any state or other academic authority in terms of providing credits towards further study. Certification to practise the technique is granted by the Body Stress Release Associations that members belong to.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
The South African Body Stress Release Association is a member of the Confederation of Complementary Health Associations of South Africa (COCHASA). As well as offering regular workshops for practitioners, the BSR Association SA organises an annual three-day conference which is attended by practitioners from all over the world.
The Body Stress Release Association (UK) is a member of the British Complementary Medicine Association (BCMA) and is recognised by the Guild of Complementary Practitioners. Regular workshops and an annual AGM are held in the UK.
The BSR Associatie Nederland is recognised by a number of Dutch health insurance companies and the BSR course is accredited in Holland by KTNO, on HBO level for 105 ECTS. The BSR Associatie Nederland maintains a close relationship with both the South African Body Stress Release Association and the Body Stress Release Association (UK). It represents practitioners based in the Netherlands (including Curaçao and Bonaire).
The International Body Stress Release Association is the association for practitioners in those regions that do not have national BSR associations.
In most regions, BSR is a self-regulating profession with the relevant Association certifying practitioners and providing continuing educational workshops in each region. All certified BSR practitioners are members of these Associations and are governed by the BSR Constitution. This ensures that professional levels of practice are maintained with defined standards of conduct, practice and ethics, and disciplinary powers resting with these Associations.
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Prospective students must have, as a minimum, a valid (school-leaving) matriculation certificate (Grade 12) or equivalent (A level in UK, HBO in the Netherlands, or equivalent) and must be 25 years of age or older.
BSR practitioners deal with people in varying states of health, both physical and emotional, so it’s really important that applicants have both the confidence and empathy to relate effectively to people from all walks of life. Applicants should have the drive and ambition and the means to set up and run their own business.
All practitioners are encouraged to actively promote the growth of Body Stress Release and are required to be committed members of their local BSR Association. It is of course essential that all prospective students experience the benefits of BSR before applying to do the course.
For more info on becoming a BSR practitioner:
South African Academy: [email protected]
European Academy: [email protected]
Facebook: BodyStressReleaseAcademy
What is Body Stress Release?
Body Stress Release is a unique complementary health technique that was researched and developed in South Africa in the 1980s by Gail and Ewald Meggersee and is now practiced worldwide.
Body Stress Release offers a gentle and effective way to release stored tension from the muscles and works with your body’s natural desire to be stress-free.
This stored tension may be the cause of the discomfort or other symptoms you may be experiencing including; backache, neck pain, headaches, sciatica, cramp, constipation, vulval pain or anxiety to name but a few.
Body Stress Release uses information provided by the body to determine where stored tension may be undermining the efficiency of the nervous system, disturbing the body’s ability to co-ordinate its functions and perform at its full potential.
The BSR Academy is located in Rondevlei, a small, rural village among the scenic lakes on the Garden Route in the Western Cape. Rondevlei is 6km from a major highway, the N2. The villages of Wilderness and Sedgefield are each about 10 km away and the largest towns nearby are Knysna and George. George airport is a 35-minute drive from the Academy.
The Academy is nestled against a hill looking down on the Langvlei Lake. The call of the Fish Eagle is often heard and the indigenous trees covering the property are home to many bird species including the beautiful Knysna Loerie. The Academy has a library of about a thousand books and facilities for training students in both the physical technique of BSR and the theoretical, academic aspects of the BSR course. The BSR course has been run here since the founders of BSR moved here from Cape Town in 1997. Leisure activities in the area include hiking, mountain-biking, paragliding, bird-watching and water sports on the sea, lakes and lagoons. Reasonably priced accommodation is available for students in local holiday cottages and guest suites.
Drs Gail Meggersee and Ewald Meggersee developed the technique of BSR in the early 1980’s in South Africa. Ewald passed away in 2013 and the BSR community was saddened by the death of Gail in February 2021. The Academy Faculty are Boetie Toerien, Sancroft Damant, Jeanette Gibbs and Mary Parker.
South African Academy: [email protected]
Website: www.bodystressrelease.co.za
The first training course at the Body Stress Release Academy Europe was held in 2014 at a beautiful venue just outside of Dorchester in Dorset. The Academy has now relocated to a new venue for the 2022/2023 course in the beautiful Norfolk Broads.
The course is residential offering fully furnished accommodation in a tranquil setting in the heart of the Norfolk Broads, located 20 minutes from the historic city of Norwich. At weekends there is also time for leisure activities. There are wonderful woodlands and waterways to discover as well as charming villages, an opportunity to enjoy quiet cycle ways and paths, miles of peaceful country lanes and wonderful coastal walks along Norfolk’s beaches.
The Academy faculty are five highly experienced European Body Stress Release practitioners from both the United Kingdom and The Netherlands, who all continue to run their own busy practices. They are Tracy Highton, Chris Balaam, Erik Onderweegs, Kees Varkevisser and Björn van der Ree who all have undergone the Body Stress Release Teacher Training Program.
If you are interested in finding out more about how to train to become a Body Stress Release practitioner, with a mission to help change lives, please email:
European Academy: [email protected]
WHAT IS STRESS AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Stress related health challenges are now a widespread global issue. Research links stress to physiological conditions like cardiovascular distress, immunosuppression, and gastro-intestinal problems. Stress adversely impacts attention, concentration, critical thinking, and other cognitive functions. Family and social relationships suffer.
While we might perceive stress as happening around us, it is actually happening within us. A physiological stress response happens throughout every system of the body, ultimately interacting with every cell. Our stress responses are interwoven with our emotions, immune function, thoughts, breath, and movements.
Our innate stress response could be described as a natural and helpful response to adapt and thrive in the world. But at times a lack of support and resources take our stress response offline and thwart our ability to utilize our stress response to navigate and have agency in relation to our current situations. When this happens we are unable to properly process and mobilize stress. We begin to form compensational patterns that over time wear down on our nervous system and show up as challenges to our health, focus, productivity, behavior, and relationships.
As we lose our ability to adapt, we start to experience a flooding of incomplete stress responses, known as chronic stress. Chronic stress wreaks havoc on our health, impacts biological energy conservation, and makes us less attuned to the need for self-care.
A SOMATIC APPROACH TO STRESS RELEASE
Somatic Stress Release™ is a holistic approach that recognizes the complex layering of each individual’s relationship to stress. Stress manifests itself in each person’s body differently. Understanding this unique body response allows each person to process and navigate the intricate layers of stress. One of the most effective pathways towards that awareness and negotiation is through feeling a deeper sense of and connection with the body-mind, an approach called somatics.
‘Soma’ is a Greek word for ‘the living body known from within’. As infants, we addressed stress through our primarily modes of communication and expression- movement, sound, and touch. Stress is experienced and expressed through the body- and therefore can only truly be processed, metabolized, and healed through the body. We can’t think our way out of stress, and we can’t meditate our way out of stress. Stress is fundamental to our survival- however it was never meant to be unchecked and driving our lives.
The inability to process and actualize our stress response creates an overwhelm in the body. This can take us away from feeling at home in our body, and creating a split within ourselves. This disconnection leaves us with less resources to work through stress to adapt and return to balance. Addressing this damaging cycle is an integral component of this modality.
The inability to process and actualize our stress response creates an overwhelm in the body. This can take us away from feeling at home in our body, and creating a split within ourselves. This disconnection leaves us with less resources to work through stress to adapt and return to balance. Addressing this damaging cycle is an integral component of this modality.
Returning to our primal modes of processing stress through body-based therapeutic techniques allows us to come home to ourselves to address habitual responses more quickly of internal and external stressors, and processes unresolved and stored stress in the body.
Returning to our primal modes of processing stress through body-based therapeutic techniques allows us to come home to ourselves to address habitual responses more quickly of internal and external stressors, and processes unresolved and stored stress in the body.
Somatic Stress Release™ offers holistic techniques for clients to sense and regulate their own physiology and states of being. This includes building more resources, building trusting and co-regulatory relationships, being invited deeper in the body to restore impulse and intuition, and given time and space to process the underlying emotions as guidance towards actualizing needs. Somatic Stress Release can access and metabolize deeply stored stress to help restore optimal functioning and well-being.
Somatic Stress Release™ offers holistic techniques for clients to sense and regulate their own physiology and states of being. This includes building more resources, building trusting and co-regulatory relationships, being invited deeper in the body to restore impulse and intuition, and given time and space to process the underlying emotions as guidance towards actualizing needs. Somatic Stress Release can access and metabolize deeply stored stress to help restore optimal functioning and well-being.
