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 if the troubled segment is not a bone — or the other possibilities given by our field? What if the part that holds itself separate from the whole is an organ, a muscle, or an aspect of the psyche? What if the imbalance is in a chakra or an acupuncture meridian?
In other words: Why, as a professional field, does Biodynamics identify bones, bony articulations, and dural membranes as the parts that we work with?
I have two possible answers.
One is that those parts are a historical artifact going back to Dr. Sutherland and the origin story of Biodynamics. Our field was oriented, from its early days, to Sutherland’s craniosacral mechanism, composed of the cranial bones, cerebrospinal fluid, the sacrum, the dural membranes, and the nervous system.
A second possibility is that we work with these parts, because students benefit from an educational on-ramp. It’s often easier, at first, to perceive and manipulate the Cranial Wave in a bone, than it is to slow down and widen our gaze to the Fluid Tide.
Perhaps, once you learn to work with cranial bones, it’s cranial bones that you tend to see in your clients. Like when you visit a surgeon for a consult; and surgery is the sole remedy offered.
There’s an institutional assumption in our field that learning about the sphenoid or the vomer is an essential aspect of learning about Biodynamics. Schools and books don’t seem to acknowledge the oxymoron of teaching about wholeness, while orienting to parts.
Achieving a Neutral in the whole requires us to steep in stillness and gain perception of the whole. The Initiatory Neutral (also called the Client Neutral) is the first state in which parts recede, and wholeness comes into view.
Tokopa Turner, while not a Biodynamic practitioner, perceptively speaks of wholeness:
Wholeness is not a state of completion at the end of a long dedication to attainment. Rather, it is a channel into which we can always tune. It just so happens that our ability to remain in reception of its broadcast can take a lifetime to master.
Biodynamics, it seems to me, offers training and practice in learning how to attune to the frequency of wholeness. Once you know the feeling of wholeness, the body’s wisdom will guide you and relate to you, using any parts you recognize. Any parts at all.
I’ve been teaching Biodynamic Craniosacral Work for almost 20 years, and have never taught a single lesson on the ethmoid bone. Another great quote from Jim Jealous: “This work is not about bones, it’s about Primary Respiration!”
That’s why I teach about the Neutral, the Fluid Tide, and the Long Tide. I teach about the Dynamic Stillness. Then I encourage my students to engage with these universes of wholeness, in contexts well beyond craniosacral treatment.
Not only does Biodynamic Craniosacral Work not rely on cranial bones; but we can widely apply our awareness of Biodynamic phenomena and the wisdom of Primary Respiration. Not just in craniosacral work but in parenting, meditative self-inquiry, generating art, or practicing acupuncture, massage, or psychotherapy: The brilliance of Primary Respiration can shine through daily living, spiritual development, and any healing arts modality.
Even when I show my students how to place their hands on the occiput or the sacrum, our emphasis is on taking up a seamless contact, not on executing a technique like decompression or augmentation. We never direct the tide, nor do we narrow our gaze to the perceptual level where we would be intervening at the level of the part.
That said, it is clinically useful to register the existence of a “visible segment in trouble.” But only occasionally is that visible segment contained or constrained in the movement pattern of a cranial bone. If that were my orientation, I’d probably be better suited as a biomechanical or functional craniosacral therapist.
If, in contrast, the practitioner — you — are oriented to wider units of function (like the biodynamic Neutral, the fluid body, or beyond), then the clients who magnetize to the stillness will find their way to you as a biodynamic practitioner.
Whatever your background and interests, the intelligence within the wholeness will take advantage of your skillset and perceptions. When I spent three years studying the bioenergetic defense structures proposed by psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, it never occurred to me that I would ultimately put the material to use in my clinical biodynamic practice. Yet I do so on a daily basis.
And once in a while, I gratefully draw on my knowledge of cranial bones to take up a contact at a sphenoid or an ethmoid.
I actually have an inadvertent speciality of working with clients who can’t achieve a Neutral. And I find that Biodynamics is an excellent resource for these clients. But cranial bones are not the parts that I work with.
About 25 years ago, I took a few Upledger Institute workshops. In their biomechanical curriculum, I learned a 10-step protocol of working with bones and membranes to favorably affect physiological function. The more advanced Upledger curriculum, however, also works with unresolved emotional imprints and “energy cysts.” With their SomatoEmotional Release techniques, clients can communicate verbally with parts of the body that are not components of the craniosacral mechanism, including cells, organs, and beyond.
I suspect this represents a transition from a biomechanical paradigm to a functional one. In functional technique, the practitioner initiates therapeutic activity at the level of the part, but implicitly recognizes and relies on an intelligence in the system as a whole.
Biodynamic practitioners take this to another level. We explicitly perceive, experience, and engage the intelligence of the whole. We work with a variety of wholes, which we call the Neutral, the Fluid Tide, the Long Tide, and the Dynamic Stillness.
This begs the question, then: Once we discover the benefits of the Biodynamic paradigm, why be hobbled by an attachment to particular parts? I respect a sphenoid as much as anybody, but I’m not tethered to it as a fundamental component of my Biodynamic path.
I’ve never heard anyone else with this perspective, so I’d especially love to hear your comments. How does this post strike you? Do you work with bones in a Biodynamic environment? Do you have a different take on this topic?
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Thank you again Jenna, for creating a unique arena for reflection. It is highly appreciated!
Do you have a different take, you ask? Well, your contribution to clarification of the oxymoric relationship between parts, central bones, and the whole – arguing to trusting The Tide, or maybe The Whole, to do its work – brings both clarity and wondering to the table. It is highly valuable.
I hope you will allow me to try to bring in some perspectives that might (or may not) contribute to a discussion that can clarify the topic further?
Western, American: a bit alternative (still), but main stream western medicine: Richard C. Schwartz, Internal Family Systems (IFS). Attending to parts. To enable the whole (person/psyche/soma) to function better.
Western, French: alternative, western osteopathic medicine: Jacky Roux, Osteodouce. Attending to parts of parts. Listening to parts of bones, sutures, ligaments and so on (my short description here will not do Osteodouce justice).
Eastern, Chinese (mainly): TCM, specifically acupuncture. Attending to points (maybe even smaller than parts the way you write about bones). Points, who, when properly stimulated, serve as a way to balance, for instance the heart function (not only limited to the organ), via the weave or meridians, woven into chacras, being structural parts of a functional whole.
All the above examples belong to modalities reporting to achieve a larger degree of health, and maybe thereby larger degrees of wholeness, in a significant proportion of a client mass. All attending to parts or points or particular energetic expressions.
As you write, in the text above: “It is clinically useful to register the existence of a “visible segment in trouble.” But only occasionally is that visible segment contained or constrained in the movement pattern of a cranial bone. Or a any other part or point (the last sentence is my addition).
Émile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, is said have stated that when a symphony orchestra plays well, the outcome is more than the sum of the parts. I.e. there is something more being produced.
So, to end up with some sort of question: Is your main argument in the text to say that attending to parts is OK, as it might create more health. However, attending to the whole, without intervening at the level of one or more parts, universes of wholeness may add an extra dimension to craniosacral treatment?
And, then it is the HOW. How to? How do we sense or perceive, produce or stimulate or induce, expressions of wholeness in our clients (bodily) universe. In a way that create tangible, positive change?
Jan, You offer some thought-provoking questions here! Thank you so much for this comment. I’m still percolating with your words but offer a first reflection here…
YES! I definitely think that attending to parts is ok. Especially in the context of wholeness, just as you suggest.
If a part expresses itself, and our education or perceptual sensitivity allows us to recognize it, then our perception of the part *is* the way to attend to it. When we perceive a part without manipulating it, we inherently (in your words) “stimulate expressions of wholeness in our client.”
The reason for this (in my experience) is the very reason that Biodynamics is so effective: Awareness IS wholeness. The practitioner’s local awareness of the inertial (unresolved) fulcrum merges with global awareness. In Biodynamics we call “global awareness” the Dynamic Stillness or perhaps Primary Respiration more generally. When awareness (the whole) illuminates the part, this is a step toward healing.
This is absolutely congruent with the other modalities you name. For example, in IFS, as Dick Schwartz has said, there are “no bad parts.” Yet we recognize that the Self (what I’m calling the Whole) has a perspective that is advantageous over the parts. The integration of those parts with the whole is what brings healing.
Sometimes my students have a kind of vagueness to their sessions. “It feels good,” “it feels relaxing,” yet there’s something unsatisfying about the lack of precision. In the context of this conversation, I’m wondering if it’s because they’re so removed from the level of parts, that the kinesthetic dance with their client becomes overly amorphous.
That’s why I actually recommend something that’s heretical in my lineage: I recommend that the client name an intention for each session. As a clinician I don’t typically do anything at all, myself, with that intention. But it gives us a point of orientation…a relationship with a “part.” As you suggest, that “part” can be articulated in any way at all, and sometimes falls out of my wheelhouse. But I find that it’s by going IN to the part, that we find ourselves in the whole.
It’s important to clarify that it’s *not* necessary for the Biodynamic practitioner to be aware of something, for that something to shift. After all, it’s global awareness that does the work, not practitioner intervention. Here, I believe we’re only talking about those moments when the practitioner is aware of a part. And I’m arguing that it doesn’t matter whether that part is a bone, an acupuncture point, a region of the body, a psychological structure, a soul pattern, etc.
Jenna,
I love this blog post. As you know, I have my background in UI CST and it is interesting to me to think about this. I find that when I am with a client, I move between these to paradigms (sort of), but it feels to me that I am being directed rather than the work being segmented or choppy. I don’t “think”, I let my hands be moved. In this way, I feel that I am in the Biodynamic work, but my tools are expansive and sometimes they “do things” that aren’t my conscious doing. If that makes sense. I don’t suddenly have the sphenoid bone come into my awareness to “do a technique”, rather my hands are directed to a place (not necessarily a specific boney landmark) and I perceive changes happening. Sometimes I am aware of a “release” as we would call it in UI CST, but I just let the session keep moving forward without further inquiry about said “release”. I find my hands being moved often during a session (maybe 5 to 6 times within an hour/hour and a half session, but it feels right to both myself and my clients. I don’t try and “fix” anything, but I also don’t always sit with the same initial holds.
And Michele, I love your response. I think this is exactly what I’m talking about when, in Charles Ridley’s footsteps, I talk about taking up a “contact” as opposed to conducting a “technique.”
It’s important to note that when our hands are “moved,” we can probably assume that the Long Tide is the name we give to that agency that moves us. In other words, if you’re operating only at the level of parts and you’re conducting a cranial wave session (which is the only kind of subtle motion pattern identified in Upledger work), there’s no overarching intelligence available that would move your hands, beyond your personal will.
And in the Long Tide, we inherently have access to a level of wholeness that is unavailable to our work with parts at the level of the cranial wave.