Posts Tagged ‘Biodynamic Craniosacral session’
Big-Picture Biodynamics in 50 Questions
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…
Read MoreAny Part Will Do: The Versatility of Wholeness
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…
Read MoreLosing Perception of the Tides: The Secret Second Phase of Biodynamic Craniosacral Work
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.…
Read MoreThe Chief Corner Stone: Not Seeking A Shift
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…
Read MoreThings We Weren’t Taught About Stillness: The Problem with Empathy
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;…
Read MoreNaming Things in a Biodynamic Session: Does It Matter?
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?”…
Read MoreNetworked: More Challenging Than You’d Think
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…
Read MoreDo We Have an Intention — Or Don’t We?
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…
Read MoreDoubt and Uncertainty, Part 1: The Power of Not Knowing
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…
Read MoreDoubt and Uncertainty, Part 2: Uncertainty Is A Name For The Neutral
Uncertainty is the very condition to impel us to unfold our powers. (Psychologist Erich Fromm) Our willingness to not-know (whether we are a healer, client, or human being) is what permits the most potent healing to unfold. Being comfortable with the unknown, dancing with chaos, is a recipe for health. We implement the Not-Knowing-Plan through…
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