Jenna Milner

Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous I don’t know. (Polish poet Wisława Szymborska)

The Biodynamic paradigm expresses our essential clinical inability to be certain. The paradox is that the more we lean into uncertainty, the more successful our work becomes.

The Biodynamic practitioner acknowledges that our mind doesn’t know with certainty what is wrong and how to fix it. But the flip side is that Biodynamics offers us access to an embodied intelligence that does know with certainty. Primary Respiration knows where to go and what to do. It is our willingness not just to recognize Primary Respiration but to defer to it that generates outstanding clinical results.

Take my client, who had a persistent sinus infection that wouldn’t heal. Long Tide put me at the sacrum. The sinuses cleared in short order. It stands to reason that through a myofascial chain of connection, a locked-up sacrum could prevent the sinuses from clearing. But that is different from a client saying, “Can you work on my sinuses?” and the practitioner going to the sacrum. This seems outlandish to the mind.

Similarly, a woman with persistent hip pain is a candidate for a hip replacement. She comes for regular massages, which moderately ease the discomfort. On one memorable occasion, a Long Tide session invites a contact to ethmoid and the nasal bones. I had no idea what the connection was; but the beauty of the work is that my mind does not need to know. I am led to the facial bones, work is completed, hip pain is substantially relieved.

(I happen to be trained as a craniosacral practitioner, so I often name bones as my reference points. But what if the root issue lies in a chakra, a gland, a suppressed emotion – or more likely, a multidimensional combination of things known and unknown? No problem, because in Biodynamic work, healing is an inside job based on our wholeness. So we’re not limited to working with separate “things” or single points of access.)

When we move away from Cranial Wave to Fluid Tide as the fundamental healing agency, we give up the goal of measuring and assessing range of motion — but (in my experience) we enjoy clinical results that are generated by an intelligence that intimately knows our clients’ needs and priorities. And thus, the results are uncanny; more sustainable; and less prone to treatment reactions. 

(Actually, in Fluid Tide the practitioner can know all kinds of things: what part of the body is being worked on, how the client inhabits their body, their secret wounds, back story, and more. For all these reasons, when your work lands in the Fluid Tide you may gain confidence, if not certainty.)

In Long Tide, however, the practitioner is moved by another presence. We lose the capacity to guide or even interpret the session. We simply do not know what is occurring. What’s more, if we try to know, we get in the way of the treatment. 

The Dynamic Stillness brings us into the full power of unknowing and its creative edge. A client comes in with symptoms, surrenders to a powerful blackness, and returns from the blackness with no symptoms. No process, no ecstasy, just a dip into that undifferentiated matrix. But given the profound results, no one’s complaining.

What about you? Do you have examples of grappling with doubt or uncertainty in your practice? I’d love to hear.