Jenna Milner

Lucky for us, Biodynamics doesn’t rely on the practitioner having it all together. Instead, the work depends on the quality of our Neutral. Neutral simply means we are receptive to health. In a Neutral, we are free to shift in response to Primary Respiration.

Being in Neutral is not an indication that we have achieved a glorified state. It doesn’t require our mind to quiet down profoundly. It doesn’t indicate the perfection of our actions. Instead, Neutral is a description of our ability to flex. Neutral means we are not stuck in one fixed position. It means we are attuned to and aligned with a global source of intelligence that is greater than our personal mind. Therefore, the condition of our local mind is not the determining factor in doing good Biodynamic work. Thank goodness.

So we can get up on the wrong side of the bed, have an argument, or be freaked out about the state of the world. As long as we have enough equanimity to cultivate the Neutral, we have enough equanimity to serve our client. We can be a “Good Enough Practitioner,” along the lines of the “Good Enough Mother.”

Saint Francis de Sale — an actual saint — wrote about this in June 1617. (I have removed the religious language, but otherwise the quote is verbatim.) He wrote to a nun:

When your heart roams or gets distracted lead it back very gently; and even if you spend your whole hour doing nothing except gathering up your heart quite calmly…your hour will have been very well spent.

Returning to the heart is returning to the Neutral. The foundation of our work is to cultivate a Neutral – which is really no different than to return repeatedly to the heart.

The heart is a complex organ. Science is beginning to recognize its capacity to receive and transmit information. In my own experience, a spot at the upper right of the heart has been a remarkable support in stabilizing my Neutral. This spot is sometimes called the SA Node, but I prefer to call it the “back of the heart.”

In a nutshell, the function of the SA Node is perceptual freedom. When you experience any event from the vantage point of the SA Node, you are at the perceptual intersection of the personal and the transpersonal. You have access both to the embodied and the transcendent. You’re not limited to seeing with your own human eyes. Along these lines, the poet Rumi has suggested:

Try another way of looking. Try you looking and the whole universe seeing.

At the back of the heart, the non-physical dimension is as available as the physical. Stillness is there, no matter the turbulence. Thanks to this co-existence of the nothing with the something, we can recognize Stillness even when the mind is active. Thus, orienting to Silence doesn’t require silence. We recognize that nothingness always co-arises with any thing that arises. Stillness is always present, no matter what else is occurring.

That’s why when we meditate, the mind doesn’t need to get quiet. And that’s why when we offer a biodynamic session, the practitioner doesn’t need to achieve a saintly degree of inner stillness. Silence and Stillness are already present.

I can recall a Neutral that occurred over 25 years ago. I lay down on my mentor’s massage table and spent the next 39 minutes in a relentless inner parade of thoughts and emotions. In the last minute of our 40-minute session, a Neutral emerged. It was so clear and tranquil. It felt like the clouds parted and the uncluttered blue sky became apparent. What a relief.

Just as clear in that memory is the vividly still presence of my mentor. The absence of being goaded to relax was so strong, it was like a presence in itself. Although I can imagine my teacher’s exhaustion after flying across the country and giving seven sessions, his Neutral that day was my inspiration for a decade to follow.

There’s a quality of innocence to a Neutral. You could say it’s childlike. In the old fable of the Emperor’s new clothes, everyone saw that the Emperor was naked, but only the child was willing to say so. The child doesn’t have to work at this perception or debate its truth. In Biodynamic terms, the Emperor’s nudity (the inertial fulcrum) appears unbidden in the child’s unprejudiced awareness (the Neutral).

That’s how things arise in a Neutral. The Neutral is the clear surface of a pond in which everything under the water is effortlessly seen. When an inertial fulcrum has freedom to arise, it can be released. Just like I experienced with my mentor all those years ago, the practitioner’s Neutral enlivens and amplifies the client’s Neutral. That’s the basis of our modality, right? We allow the truth of things to arise effortlessly in awareness, and we register the response of an inherent intelligence in the client.

Therefore, when a session feels lousy, the practitioner must not overlay the uncomfortable feeling with thoughts like, “As the practitioner I have to make things feel better. I must be doing something wrong, because this doesn’t feel delicious the way I want it to.” Instead, the practitioner in Neutral allows things to feel as terrible as they feel, without suppressing the information and without trying to change it. As de Sale advised, we keep gathering up our heart. As we rest in the SA Node, we give the client freedom to recognize both the inertial burden and the health, because both are present.

I promise that by attuning to things just as they are — and by freeing your perception in a Neutral — the clinical results you desire are closer at hand, than if you spent your time judging yourself or the client for the uncomfortable session.

Do you have an example from your own practice of a successful session that didn’t require a pristine environment or practitioner perfection? Please share below, I’d love to hear.