Episode 271: Certified Myofunctional Therapist® Certification (CMT®) with Hallie Bulkin

Hello friends and welcome to episode 271 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we are going to dive into talking about all things cmt, the Certified Myofunctional Therapist certification. So let's jump in. Quick disclaimer. All information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Holly Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial Myofunctional Therapy, airway, tethered oral tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since 6-29-19, thanks for being a loyal listener. As we jump into today's episode, remember to listen with correct coral rest posture. Tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose. Let's get started. Okay, so where to begin? So the first thing that I want to make super clear before we go through a bit about the cmt, what it is, all that fun stuff, is that my company, okay, which is Elevation Movement llc, is the only company where you can get the cmt. Why am I highlighting that? Well, because there is another company out there who has basically taken our property, right? And they're infringing. They are taking our IP or intellectual property and infringing by putting certified myofunctional therapists on their website when they know that that belongs to the cmt. So just putting it out there that you cannot get this through any other company, including the aomt, who is infringing. So there's that, right? Let's just put that out there. Let's let it be known. I am recording this on the podcast because this has been going on for a couple of years now, actually over two years. February 18, 2018, a colleague messaged me and said, hey, you know, I didn't know that you were connected to the aomt. And I said, well, I'm not. And they said, well, they just filed for your certification, Mark. And I was like, what? Long story short, my team, my legal team, has been reaching out to theirs and no movement, absolutely refusing to back down. Now, the ustpo, which is the governing body in The United States that awards trademarks has given my company the cmt. Right? We've got the registered trademark that follows a cmt. So those letters in a row can only be used for the Certified Myofunctional Therapist certification by my company and those who go through the certification through my company. Beyond that, we are still waiting on the USTPO to award us the trademark for the written out version of Certified myofunctional Therapist. That is what is being held up and which honestly I think the US TPO had. It's been like frozen. They haven't really touched it in over a year at this point. Probably because of all the confusion cause who knows. But that's neither here nor there at this moment. I just wanted to make it super duper clear and with permission of my, my legal counsel, they're choosing to engage in this behavior. They're not, they're not playing nice. And this is just an example of how you don't do business. Okay? So for all of you out there who are looking to create things for yourself, when you create something, I'm not saying go run and register it to protect it, but just know that sometimes other people will see what you've created and they might try to register it for their own use even though they don't have rights to first use. You do. Right. So anyways, two years of, you know, actually over two years now, February to March, April, May, June. So two years and four months, we're going on two years, four months now of this happening. But I wanted everyone to know that your CMT is absolutely safe because that registered trademark that are in a circle, right, that follows the CMT that was awarded to us a while ago like over a year plus ago via the ustpo. So that is totally, totally protected. I just wanted to make sure there was no confusion when and if you see the Certified Myofunctional Therapist like written out version on someone else's website where it doesn't belong. Okay, all that said, let's jump in and talk about what the CMT is and just some of the procedures because we get questions about this and you know, I've seen some people who actually have never reached out to us, never inquired with us, but have been certified somewhere else who want to protect their own certification. Good, great, whatever. But I find that they sometimes make up lies, right? They share non factual information to almost make like the certification that they did look superior to the cmt. Let me tell you, I had zero plans to create the cmt. I created it because I had therapists going through the myo method course. My myo course, you can check that out@the myomethod.com and they were saying, you know, you've got to create a certification. We need a functional helpful certification. We need something that is going to allow us to move beyond, you know, what's available today and into a certification that will actually help us understand how to best help our patients. Right? And so when I realized that we needed to create this, I said, okay, fine, we will do this. And I took everything that I felt was wrong with the initial certification that I personally went through and ended up creating what I felt would be functional. Right? Something that would be useful when actually going out and assessing and treating patients like, what good is it to just try to learn more theory or answer questions that seem tricky and open ended questions like 10 essay questions like what good is that? That doesn't help you learn anything. Re reiterating information from a course is not enough. You actually need to learn to apply it. Right? So, and in my experience too, when I went through my certification through another company, I felt like I didn't get any feedback. There was no mentorship at all throughout the entire process. There was no real feedback. Even when I had a. I had a therapist sitting across the table from me watching six hours of therapy and an assessment and everything. Really no feedback other than like, wow, you did great and like asking me a couple questions. But that was, I was like, come on, constructive criticism, like, give me something to work with here. Nothing. Right? I was like, okay, like I know I've been doing this for a year, but like I can't be that amazing. Like it'd be really helpful to learn some things. I think the person showed me an exercise, like one exercise which I thought was like really helpful but really challenging for the, the client that they did show me the exercise for like not really appropriate for that particular client actually. So that was kind of interesting. But again, that's neither here nor there. So what is a cmt? The CMT or the Certified Myofunctional Therapist Certification is basically the whole purpose behind it is to help professionals who are qualified based on having taken like the myomethod course, based on having. Having the right credentials, right. The right certificate. That's our vacation, sorry, the right licensure. Do you need to be an slp, ot, pt, RDH or dental colleague in order to enroll in the MYO method and in order to go through certification, but basically to help these qualified professionals continue their education beyond their initial myofunctional therapy coursework. And so you undergo a certification process that demonstrates your clinical knowledge and skills. It actually demonstrates it. And it includes comprehensive coursework, mentorship, review of research, participation in study clubs. You have to pass a multi step exam and present a patient case to your colleagues. Right. And we do all this virtually because that's just how I do things in my business. So we basically created these steps to certification. I'm not going to read through all of them, but I'm happy to send this document. If you email supporteedthepedes.com, we're happy to send the document to you that has all the certification procedures. I guess I'll run through it really quickly. I'm not going to go through the whole timeline and all the content and all that stuff necessarily, and our fair grading practices and all that. But you can read about that if you request this document from our team. But the steps of certification are, number one, completing the MYO method course in full. Step two is then taking a 50 question test. There is multiple choice, true, false, with immediate computerized objective grading. And the reason why we did that was because there were certain topics that we wanted you all to review and you can go back to your course and review them while you're taking the test. Like you can use your notes. The purpose is to review certain information so it becomes more ingrained, especially around certain topics that may come up frequently in practice and assessments that you know, questions that may be asked by your patients or things that you may need to be able to explain. So it's very strategically created. Step three is creating two treatment plans and that includes like goals and recommendations and referrals. And so we give the full assessment recordings for these two. One is a pediatric case, one is an adult case. And then we have an objective and actually like blind review process for the, for the grading. And it's, it's reviewed by more than one member, board member, basically certification board member. And then those results are sent to a third person who then combines the results and sends them back to the candidate, the certification candidate. And then step four is presenting a patient case study live. And that's like via Zoom, for example, to our MYO membership study club. And again, there's an objective grading process there, obviously that is not blind, but we do have a process behind this and certain things that we're looking for. But we do give you a lot of support along the way because this is not meant to be tricky, this is not meant to trick you or frustrate you. It's meant to grow you. It's meant to help you evolve into the myofunctional therapist that you want to be so that you can actually go out and assess and treat your patients and, you know, feel competent. And that leads to you feeling really confident. Right. And so the other thing that we also have you do is participate in at least four office hours and four other study clubs. Because if you are surrounded by other people who are asking questions and you're surrounded by other case presentations, you're also going to start to evolve your thinking and evolve how you look at things through the lens of others who are asking questions or sharing cases. And that's really, really important. But it also kind of gives you that, that network of individuals. There's a ton of other resources and supports in there as well. But basically this is the cmt. And so I wanted to be. I just, I wanted to hop on here and kind of explain what it is. It's an international certification. Anybody who is licensed in, you know, these professions that I mentioned before are able to take the course and become certified. But if any everyone has questions about it, let me know. Otherwise you can go to the myomethod.com and check it out for yourself. And as I mentioned before, you can always email supporteedthepedes.com and we'd happily send you the Certified Myofunctional Therapist CMT certification procedures. All right, this is Hallie signing off. Talk with you guys next time. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode with on your social media platforms. You can access free resources and all I offer@halliebalkin.com or pop over to allybulcan on Instagram to get all the latest updates.