directors

Maura Sills S.R.O.T., U.K.C.P.reg.

Maura first qualified as an Occupational Therapist in 1971. She was Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychiatry and Group Psychotherapy at the London School of Occupational Therapy, and District Head Occupational Therapist at the Middlesex Hospital, London. In America, she worked at Stanford University Medical Centre in the Department for Comprehensive Medicine, and studied at Esalen with Joan Fiore and Dick Price. On her return to Britain, Maura returned to her clinical practice and began offering Trainings in Core Process Psychotherapy. She and Franklyn co-founded the Karuna Institute in 1984. Maura was a founding member of the Association for Accredited Psychospiritual Psychotherapists, and a co-ordinator of the Spiritual Emergency Network UK. Maura offers teachings and retreats internationally.

Maura became involved in Buddhism in London in the early seventies. Her first seven years of Buddhist practice were in the Chan tradition. In the U.S.A. she studied Tibetan Buddhism as a Kum Nye student at the Nyingma Institute, Berkeley. She subsequently met Rina Sircar, a Theravadin teacher of the Burmese Forest tradition, and soon after met her teacher, Taungpulu Kaba Aye Sayadaw.

Franklyn Sills M.A., R.C.S.T, U.K.C.P.reg.

Franklyn has been a major influence in the worldwide development of Craniosacral Biodynamics. He has been teaching in this field for over 27 years, and has influenced many of the current trainers in the U.S.A. and Europe. He has presented at many Conferences over the last twenty years and his books, Craniosacral Biodynamics Volumes 1 and 2, are seminal texts in the field.

Having originally studied medical sciences, Franklyn has a long history of study and clinical practice in psychotherapy as well as in craniosacral therapy. His original psychotherapeutic orientation was in humanistic psychology, working with neo-Reichian and pre-natal and birth psychotherapy. He has studied and collaborated with Dr. William Emerson, one of the prime developers of pre- and perinatal psychology. In the Core Process Psychotherapy Trainings Franklyn offers his expertise through lecturing on Buddhist psychology, shock and trauma, and pre-natal and birth psychology. His recent studies include the neurophysiology of stress and trauma, and he has brought this into the Institute's Trainings. Franklyn has helped to develop the integrated paradigm of being and selfhood used in the Core Process training

Franklyn was a Buddhist monk under the most venerable Taungpulu Kaba Aye Sayadaw of Northern Burma, and also studied in the Zen and Taoist traditions. His experience in the cranial field has convinced him that the body must be included in any form of therapy. His published books include The Polarity Process, Craniosacral Biodynamics, and most recently Being and Becoming, Psychodynamics, Buddhism and the Origins of Selfhood. Franklyn offers teachings internationally, including America, Germany and Switzerland.

Karuna Institute

International Training and Retreat Centre

directors

Maura Sills S.R.O.T., U.K.C.P.reg.

Franklyn Sills M.A., R.C.S.T, U.K.C.P.reg.

other staff