Topics Archive
Biodynamic
What is a body? What is your felt experience of the substance your body is made of? Does that substance ever change in feeling, texture, tone, or quality? Does the body have boundaries? Where are they? What is healing? What embodied disposition is necessary for healing to happen? What are signs that that disposition is…
Biodynamic Craniosacral Work is about wholeness. So why does our field emphasize cranial bones, dural membranes, and cerebrospinal fluid? Books, education, and practice all place a high priority on these parts of the body. Biodynamic pioneer Dr. James Jealous memorably quoted a friend of his: “A visible segment is a segment in trouble.” But what…
A reader asked about the terms Cranial Wave, Fluid Tide, and Long Tide. Biodynamic Craniosacral Work typically uses these terms to describe three subtle motions, which we feel in or around the body. I use them in a more wide-ranging context. Yes, they are the foundation of Biodynamic practice. But I actually understand them as…
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.…
Biodynamic Craniosacral Work introduces us to four qualities of body: Neutral (Tissue), Fluid Tide (Fluid), Long Tide (Potency), and Dynamic Stillness (the non-physical dimension). Do these four universal expressions of embodiment represent something that everyone can enjoy? Or are they evolutionary steps that require a leap of consciousness? To both of these seemingly opposite questions…
Biodynamics abounds in paradox. Perhaps the most counterintuitive element of our work is that we don’t seek a shift in our clients. At least, we don’t seek a shift in the moment, while we’re in session. (I’ve written a previous blog about overarching intentions, which I distinguish from efferent activity.) Seeking for something to shift…
The empath is a channel of non-ordinary perception, in which your own body’s signals reliably reflect what’s happening in your client’s body. I first learned about this channel from Hugh Milne. For years, I looked to the empath channel as a primary source of information about my client’s experience. My right leg tingled or ached;…
We say we aren’t the ones conducting the treatment. We defer to a therapeutic agency more potent than our own will. Yet our education teaches us to follow the narrative arc of a session and to discern its features. “Is this a Neutral or a Stillpoint?” “Is this the Fluid Tide or the Long Tide?”…
Are you convinced that your body is an isolated object, separate from everything else? Do you experience that your isolated brain is carried around passively by the workhorse of your body? Actually, we exist in a network. Our bodies, our minds, and awareness itself are an interconnected web. Like mushrooms within their mycelium, our bodies…
One of the most confusing elements of biodynamic training is the emphasis on non-doing. Does this mean that our clients visit us in a professional setting, seek good care, pay us money…and yet we do not seek a favorable outcome to their clinical issue? Absolutely not! Let’s explore what it means not to have an…