Jenna Milner

Why does Biodynamics work? I’ve heard many practitioners say it’s effective because it regulates the nervous system.

Indeed, that’s an essential aspect of any healing modality, especially in the frenzied atmosphere of sympathetic overload that burdens many of us. Some practitioners are particularly skillful in working therapeutically with specific elements of nervous system. For example, one Biodynamic practitioner I admire educates her clients about the vagus nerve.

However, I believe we sell our work short when we rely solely on the nervous system to explain Biodynamics’ effectiveness. In fact, what we work with is a therapeutic agency that is beyond the nervous system. Let’s look at two aspects of this.

PRIMARY RESPIRATION IS THE THERAPEUTIC AGENCY (NOT THE NERVOUS SYSTEM)

When our treatment modality is biomechanical or functional craniosacral work (not Biodynamics), we work with the Cranial Wave in parts of the body to establish a more harmonious pattern in those parts. In that case, the therapeutic agency is the nervous system, which is an invisible player behind the scenes.

A balanced nervous system is an aspect of the biodynamic Neutral, which is only the threshold of a Biodynamic session. It’s impossible for our clients to feel safe, whole, and receptive to Primary Respiration if the nervous system is a riot of reactivity, or if the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches are strongly out of balance.

When our client can’t achieve a Neutral, entrainment is another effective strategy that is frequently named as a clinical mechanism in Biodynamics. Jangled clients are able to soothe their nervous system by co-regulating with the practitioner.

But Biodynamics is about addressing the body as one whole. So why would we name a single part of the body as the agency responsible for the success of our work…even a system as powerful and influential as the nervous system?

In my view, it’s important not to confine the work of the session into such a narrow arena. Our true objective is to support our client in expanding their capacity for health. This goes far beyond the nervous system.

To sidestep Primary Respiration in our “mission statement” is to sideline the agency that most profoundly impacts our client on every level, unpartitioned. The therapeutic agency that makes our work so powerful is Primary Respiration — by which we mean the Fluid Tide, the Long Tide, and the Dynamic Stillness.

(Even when we speak about the target of our work, unless it is an emphasis of your own practice, to name a particular system of the body as the intended target of our field seems to pinch our work into too small an arena.)

Primary Respiration transcends the nervous system. Primary Respiration is what made our nervous system. It formed us, sustains us, and repairs us. In fact, it’s beyond any of the particular parts to which our scientific mind wants to reduce the problem.

The nervous system is surely part of the problem, but it (alone) is not the solution. The whole point of a Biodynamic Neutral is that it’s a portal to Primary Respiration. By definition, a Neutral means that our client has surrendered their personal will (allied with the individual nervous system) to a transpersonal intelligence (Primary Respiration).

Primary Respiration is like balm that pours through our client’s body, knowing where to go and what to do to nourish and repair our client at any level.

We all have access to this extraordinary power, which can be leveraged for optimizing health and healing; augmenting intuition, guidance, and perception; and awakening spirit. But the constraints and pace of the nervous system are what keep us locked out of Primary Respiration. So we can’t appeal to the nervous system in order to transcend the nervous system.

I acknowledge that in explaining our work, it’s much easier to talk about the nervous system than Primary Respiration. It’s hard to put words to it. We all seem to have different ways to describe it. That makes sense to me. We have different words to describe love, or God, or anything else that’s not a “thing.”

So I tend to rely on my clients to come up with their own language. I ask them about their experience. Then I use their language to speak about it — sometimes about Primary Respiration, sometimes about how they accomplished this level of letting go, and its impact in how they inhabit their body.

RELAXATION ALONE CAN’T EXPLAIN OUR RESULTS

Our nervous system is based on our history and conditioning. Our societal bias toward tapping into the nervous system for healing creates an obstacle when the nervous system alone is not effective or resilient enough to resolve an issue. And this is where Biodynamics can come to the rescue.

Instead of identifying and then fixing such “problems,” Biodynamics calls on an inherent wisdom that transcends the central nervous system. Stillness is that wisdom, and its advance guard are the Fluid Tide and Long Tide, which operate through the Midline.

No matter what you call this greater intelligence, when you reliably connect with it, you have access to an agency that can astutely address numerous life situations.

Unlike with nervous system work, Biodynamics gives access to a native state of the body, one that precedes conditioning and transcends circumstances. The session is in sync with the priorities of the system, so there are fewer or no side effects, and the results tend to be more sustainable.

Allowing Stillness to take the lead lends itself to improved clinical results; and it sometimes addresses client issues that go well beyond tight muscles. In fact, Primary Respiration has addressed things that had previously been perceived by my clients as intractable problems. 

Among my students, I see a heavy (and understandable) emphasis on relaxation. Relaxation is an imprecise term. It can be experienced anywhere on the spectrum from the Cranial Wave to the Dynamic Stillness.

Consider several extreme insomniacs I’ve seen in my practice who were not able to reliably medicate their way into sleep. Getting a massage or taking a bath was not going to do the trick. Conventional relaxation was not enough, because one can feel relaxed without achieving a Neutral.

Biodynamics fundamentally shifts the conversation, so that instead of (or more likely, in addition to) the client feeling more relaxed, the nervous system as a whole surrenders to Primary Respiration. Sometimes, when this has happened in a session, it has spurred a severely insomniac client to let go into sleep the night after a session. 

When we defer to Primary Respiration, we aren’t even beholden to relaxation to get the work done. One client with a complex trauma history was unable to be touched without panic. She called the feeling of inner work happening “touching without touch” and leveraged it into some exceptional healing work. This was uncomfortable, but vital for healing.

In another example, a middle-aged man was close to death from cancer, yet a Biodynamic session explicitly supported his ability to handle both his physical pain and his anguish about dying.

I have also seen that a Biodynamic session can favorably affect a hypoaroused nervous system state, such as physical depletion or psychological depression, scenarios that seem less susceptible to working with the Cranial Wave or other structural interventions.

In sum, our superpower is that we don’t rely on the nervous system to conduct our treatment. So why are Biodynamic practitioners relying on the nervous system to explain our work?

How do you explain the effectiveness of your biodynamic work? How do you relate to the nervous system? Can you share an example of a Biodynamic session where attending to the nervous system alone can’t explain the favorable outcome?