In BLDC motor generally sensors are used to sense the rotor position. This rotor position is required in order to start and run the motor. In order to avoid sensors, researchers generally use back emf in order to track the rotor position. The BLDC motors which use this kind of techniques are generally called as sensor-less BLDC motors.
If you put a shadow coil with each phase winding, it can provide the zero crossing of the voltage which should be applied to different phases. But this type of method fails to self start the motor.