Jenna Milner

A student recently asked, What does it mean to progress on the Biodynamic path?

There are many elements to mastery in our field. In the first phase of our education, we learn to reliably perceive and engage the four building blocks of the Ascending Current: Cranial Wave, Fluid Tide, Long Tide, and the Dynamic Stillness. This is the bottom line for a novice practitioner. It can be an exciting, even an ecstatic process.

In this post, I want to talk about a second phase of practice, rarely spoken about in our field: In this phase, we no longer routinely perceive any tidal phenomena. No Cranial Wave, no Fluid Tide, and no Long Tide. Many of us who go through this lose our bearings. We assume we have regressed.

It’s a paradox. Progressing along the path takes away the very elements that represented mastery.

Here is one explanation.

When you’re in first grade, it’s a big achievement to learn the letters of the alphabet. You’re focused entirely on learning the letters, sounding out the letters, and generating short, simple words in which the individual letters loom large.

But now, as an adult, you’re not too concerned about the letter M. When was the last time you read a book and were aware of the letter M? You’re at a stage of perception in which you’re more interested in meaning, not in the letters that form each word.

What we call Stillness is analogous to the book’s meaning. Ultimately, our gaze is not hung up on the nitty gritty, because we have unwavering perception of Stillness itself, as it permeates and co-arises with the world and the Self.

So, losing tidal phenomena is a reorientation of perception.

But I want to suggest that it’s also something more: It’s a reorientation of who we take ourselves to be.

As we access each step along the Ascending Current, we drop our understanding of ourself as the preceding, more limited body.

For example, as I move from a fragmented sense of self to experiencing myself as one whole, this evolution to a sustained Neutral unleashes the power of Biodynamics.

When I develop a sustained relationship with the fluid body, my sense of being includes other bodies that I would typically or conventionally consider separate from me. Instead of being exclusively identified as a physical body within the skin, in the fluid tide I open up my own boundary beyond the skin.

When we melt into the fluid body, we overcome the isolation of the tissue body.

When we float into the potency body, we transcend any sense of a personal body at all.

And when we surrender to the Dynamic Stillness, we release our identification with the world.

These are not simply descriptions of a physical shift from one smaller embodied universe to a bigger one. Your sense of who you are changes.

For example, you might describe the fluid body as your soul or as a more mundane regulatory system. But until you acclimate to it, your experience of the Fluid Tide is likely to be accompanied by a rush of emotion, integration, and healing. In the fluid body, your very sense of identity shifts, as you experience a more comprehensive understanding of who you are.

As a professional field, Biodynamics looks at the rhythms of Primary Respiration as breakthrough states that conduct healing. Clinical success relies on the Fluid Tide and Long Tide to conduct a healing treatment in our client’s body.

But we can also view these rhythms as stages that enhance our own embodied versatility. Ultimately we hope to play the whole scale of our human instrument; and the notes of the scale are the Neutral, Fluid Body, Potency Body, and Dynamic Stillness.

This is why I could argue for both birthright and evolution in my previous post. As our birthright, we have access to any Biodynamic state (as long as we slow down and become still, open, and whole enough to experience it). But to maintain perceptual access to all the states, we have to evolve along stages of surrender and expansion.

The Biodynamic path, the way I see it, is about this sustained expansion of consciousness.

This brings us to a well-kept secret: As we marinate in Biodynamic work, the rhythms of Primary Respiration tend to stop appearing to us.

If I continue to identify as the tissue body, then I experience myself as, not just being “in” Zone A, but as being Zone A. This is what I’m calling identification with the tissue body. And from this disposition, the biorhythms of the Fluid Tide and the Long Tide come toward me.

However, if I already identify as the fluid body, then I don’t experience the Cranial Wave, because awareness of my “parts” has receded. (The Cranial Wave only arises in parts.)

A similar phenomenon occurs with the Long Tide. Our field of Biodynamics presents Primary Respiration as rhythmic embodiments of a wisdom that is other than myself. We learn that the Fluid Tide and Long Tide move into and within the body, entering from an outside fulcrum.

But if I already operate from a disposition in which I identify as the potency body, then I’m oriented toward an immense landscape in which the fluid body seems fairly inconsequential. As I stabilize in my identity as the potency body, I’m not aware of the fluctuation of the Long Tide coming toward “me.” The me that the Long Tide comes “toward” would be a version of “me” that I superseded.

Why doesn’t anyone talk about this?

In summary, the Biodynamic states (the Neutral, Fluid Tide, Long Tide, and even in a manner of speaking, the Dynamic Stillness) can shift into stages of consciousness.

I propose that each stage of consciousness requires, not just a momentary breakthrough, but a commitment to maintaining that new level of perception. We must embody our initial insight, not just in a clinical setting, but in daily life.

I’m not suggesting this process is “one and done.” In some settings I might be more stabilized than others. Some times, I might be more contracted. We’re talking about an evolution that is physiological, psychological, and spiritual. Each step represents not just a new level of perception, but new levels of consciousness, awareness, identification, and openness.

I’m eager to talk to community members about this. Please let me know your thoughts below.