Presencing, Being, and Animal Communication

I have just watched an amazing and touching film I wish everyone could be exposed to. You can watch it, too, at  http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/11936/The-Animal-Communicator

This is a documentary on communicating with animals. It follows a woman who listens to and talks with wild and often upset animals. As I listened, transfixed by her presence, I recognized the kind of resonant, receptive presence we aspire to in Biodynamics in establishing and working within a safe relational field. This is important in Biodynamics in order for the client's system to settle under conditional patterns and resonate more fully with deeper, Biodynamic forces.

The animal communicator endeavored to explain her ability to talk with and understand animals as a function of the quantum connections between us all. As she spoke, I thought of the natural resonance accessed in a quiet being state. In relative stillness, I suspect we all can receive and listen to animals. We also can receive and listen to ourselves and each other.

The state of resonant presence required to practice Biodynamics and other forms of therapy requires  deepening beyond an egoic state of active doingness into a state of universal beingness. Here, we can receive and communicate what is essential for health and well-being.

This is a state we naturally and relatively easily enter into in practicing Continuum Movement. Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum, speaks of interspecies inclusivity. Like the animal communicator listening to the animals, the Continuum practitioner slows down into a quiet, receptive state, where we can experience the nourishing waves of energetic information from the cosmos, the planet, and our own internal fluids. We may find ourselves moving like other species, our arms becoming wings, our tail swaying, it's movement rippling up through our mid-line.

In communication with other species, there is an acknowledgement of an interspecies continuum. Indigenous peoples who are still skilled at this level of listening and being, declare that we are all connected and belong to one family. We can learn about ourselves and our potential from other animals, as we are on one continuum with them. We can also help them, as well as ourselves and each other, in this state

We can consider this a natural and spiritual state. In the film, traditional animal trackers speak of seeing a line of light leading them to the animal they are tracking. This again is similar to my experience of Biodynamics (and Continuum). I often see or sense light, like a path, guiding me to understand the dynamics of the client’s system and where it wants me to make contact next. Like the animals, the client’s system is often relieved just to perceive it is being heard, without requiring anything of it.

When we emerge from this being state, we run the risk of forgetting it in our busyness, then need to return to rejuvenate. This is one reason I am so grateful for my occupation, where I can spend my days deepening into quiet presence with others, appreciating and receiving who and how they are. It is also why I practice and teach Continuum, as I see an almost desperate need for those of us immersed in modern culture, and its incessant speed and overwhelm, to settle into being and re-member, re-connect with, what really matters.

Being is not only our original, natural state; it is also essential for us to thrive. It may be becoming increasingly important for our basic survival as a species. I hope it is not too late, and that we are willing and able to let go enough to return to being.

Being as Nourishment: Wu Wei Wu Part 3

A client recently raised the question about doing Continuum when in pain but not doing it to get rid of the pain. How does that work? Her question reminded me of the concept of wu wei wu or doing not doing. I felt inspired to talk about being with as providing nourishment rather than more actively trying to reduce pain. That might be a useful side benefit, but our challenge is to not make that our goal.

It is natural when tested by pain, be it chronic or acute, physical or emotional, to want to get rid of it. Most of us dislike pain. We pursue what feels good and avoid what doesn’t. When pain becomes intense, we naturally seek help. Any technique, medication or practitioner offering hope becomes a beacon, signaling escape from pain.

Health practitioners also usually want to reduce pain. Often, we go into practice knowing what it’s like to hurt. The “wounded healer” desires to diminish or prevent wounding. Although possibly expressing unconscious practitioner needs, we consciously hope to reduce clients’ suffering. Faced with a client in pain, we do everything we can to help; trying every tool in our toolkits, every technique we have learned.

When we enter the realm of being, however, we practice not doing, not trying, not interfering. How can it be helpful to not try to reduce pain? Is that even ethical?

Nourishment or Escape?

The example of a baby crying comes to mind. Would you leave her to cry it out? Or pick her up and try to soothe her, exploring if she was hungry, wet, or had some other needs? In choosing to soothe her, what might motivate you? Would you be trying to get her to be quiet, or have some other intention?

Caregivers wanting to quiet a baby may stuff a pacifier or breast in the little one’s mouth. They might yell at the baby or, even more extremely, put a pillow over the infant’s head. All of these have been known to happen. Babies die of being shaken by distraught parents who cannot tolerate their crying.

While these methods will quiet the baby eventually, perhaps indefinitely, caregivers usually have other motives besides just getting the infant to stop crying. A crying baby can drive a parent to distraction, but most parents care deeply about their children, wanting them to not only be quiet, but to survive, even thrive, growing up happy and healthy. With this intent, they hold the crying baby, perceiving a need. If the baby is hungry, they want to feed her. They desire to nourish and nurture the little one, supporting her growth and well-being. Beyond their own need for quiet, they aim to give their baby what is most supportive and nurturing.

How many of us have such a compassionate attitude towards ourselves when we are in pain? When we practice Continuum, treat clients, or engage in any of the practices we engage in, what is our intention? Often, we want to reduce pain, but we may also have larger intentions, worth acknowledging.

Considering our role as nourishing and supporingt, rather than rescuing and fixing a problem, we may discover ourselves as surprisingly more effective.

I learned this in Biodynamics, where we perceive the fluid body as highly sensitive to external intentions. Even a practitioner’s well meaning desire to change a misalignment causing pain may interfere with the system’s own inherent treatment plan. On the other hand, aligning ourselves with a deep bio-intelligence enhances the potential for that intelligence to effectively express itself. Our practitioner orientation supports the client’s system in accessing the greater nourishment of the Breath of Life. To this aim, we settle under our busy minds and ego-centered needs to do or accomplish or succeed at something.

Our cultural conditioning can get in the way:

What will my client think of me if this pain doesn’t go away? What will my friends and family think if I still have this pain after months, or even years, of trying all kinds of practices and practitioners?

Deepening under such externally imposed goals can be both challenging and rewarding. Returning to the model of the embryo, where nourishment equals environment, can help.

Nourished like an Embryo

Embryos develop according to the context they find themselves in. As cell biologist Bruce Lipton points out, fetuses develop differently when mother perceives her environment as safe and nurturing or as dangerous and threating. Different genes are turned on and off within embryonic cells in preparation for the environment the little one will be born into.

Cells forming the embryo also develop differently according to their immediate environment. They grow, divide and shape shift according to what surrounds them, informed by messages from other cells, growing towards nourishing fluids, and protectively withdrawing from toxic influences.

Regardless of age, perceived safety promotes growth, while threat triggers

protection mode. One of the most helpful things to offer ourselves and our clients is a sense of safety. Safety, and anything that supports our sense of it, is nourishment.

Fluid nourishment

Fluidity is also nourishment. Our embryonic tissues are fluidic and juicy. Embryos consist almost entirely of water, a highly resonant element. Founder of Continuum Movement, Emilie Conrad, notes that our fluids resonate with the rhythms of the both the planet the cosmos.

When our tissues, like those of the embryo, are soft and fluid, they are nourished by receiving information they need through resonance. In injury and dis-ease, they tend to densify, becoming isolated from the whole and losing touch with essential information flow. Cancer cells, for example, seem to dance to a different drummer, indifferent to the rhythms of their host organism.

Health depends upon fluidity and its resonance. As A. T. Still, founder of Osteopathy wrote,

“He who is able to reason will see that this great river of life must be tapped and the withering field irrigated at once, or the harvest of health be forever lost.”

In health, as in the embryo, our tissues and cellular communities dance in resonance with the whole of our body, our being and our larger community. Mother Earth is always there, holding us in her ample lap, while she, in turn, is supported by the whole of the cosmos. We are nourished on all these levels. Simply returning to resonance with these fields within fields waters “the withering field”, often more effectively than applying more active techniques.

Resting into a Larger Whole

In taking care of ourselves and others, we can remember the embryo growing in relationship to its environment. Deepening to orient to the larger whole, pain ceases to be experienced as the whole of us (or our clients). Widening our view, the wound gains access to a larger whole and its resources. Our field of resource and nourishment grows and the problem can more easily be addressed within it.

Widening our perspective supports health and healing, and provides needed nourishment. This is challenging however until we slow down.

Slowing into Being

We are not designed for the speed of the modern world. We undergo constant stimulation from electronics, commuting, and even just from knowing so many more people than we would in a quieter traditional village. Our nervous systems are repeatedly overwhelmed with input and demands for immediate response.  Within a world of speed, our sympathetic fight-flight nervous system is on over-drive, while our para-sympathetic system often numbs us. This protection mode contributes to a myriad of modern dis-eases, mostly unknown until recent history.

The simple act of slowing down can benefit and feed us in so many ways! For example, when a cranial client settles on the treatment table their digestive system often begins gurgling.

In sympathetic mode, digestion is relatively shut down. Only those functions essential in emergency mode are active. Slowing down, our bodies can register safety. The saber tooth tiger is gone. Miraculously we were not eaten! Digestion can resume. Other physiological activity supported by the parasympathetic system also returns. We enter rest and rejuvenation mode. Our immune system begins to do its job more effectively once we know we are likely to survive long enough for it to matter. Somatic repair teams return to work. The body begins to mend.

Emotional healing also happens more readily when we slow down. In speed, we tend to function automatically. Lacking time to consider alternatives; we engage the same old patterns repeatedly, unable to perceive the safety of the present moment. When trauma patterns are triggered, we are sucked into them, reinforcing neurological pathways involved. We feel powerless to make significant changes.

Slowing down, we have more possibility of perceiving and accessing the options available for us. We can recognize safety. Our true potential becomes more apparent.

The Path of Least Resistance

In speed, we take the path of least resistance. It’s a bit like moving house and finding yourself

unconsciously driving home from work to the old house instead of the new one. Habit. The path of least resistance when we are in a hurry or not paying attention is the path most traveled. If we are hiking in nature, it is relatively easy to follow a path already well trodden. To take a new path, we need to slow down, survey the environment and make choices. We may need to cut down grasses or move branches and rocks so we can get through.

The next time we approach this same spot, we may find ourselves taking the old path because it is easier. Without pausing to evaluate the situation, we might miss the new path, which is still relatively unclear. We walk right past it. Then, realizing at some point we are back on the old path, we wonder, how did we get there?  Choosing a new path initially takes awareness and work. Each time we pause and make the choice to take the new path, it becomes clearer, while he old one gradually becomes overgrown.

Slowing down can be a key to creating new pathways, in our bodies, our relationships and our lives. New options become apparent. Nourishment begins to flow. Old patterns may then seem less important or even less relevant. We may be surprised to discover the old pain is gone. Instead, something new is emerging.

Doing Not Doing In Biodynamics– Wu Wei Wu Part 2

My previous blog article explored the concept of doing while not doing in Continuum. As follow up, I would like to now discuss how this phenomenon applies in my other passion, Craniosacral Biodynamics.

Biodynamics has evolved from the later work of William Sutherland, grandfather of cranial osteopathy. As an early osteopath, Sutherland’s training involved assessing boney and structural alignment. He explored osteopathy in the cranial field from this perspective, evaluating if and how the cranial bones moved and using subtle manipulative techniques derived from osteopathic practice to enhance their alignment.

Towards the end of his 40 years of studying and facilitating the subtle movements of the bones, tissues, and fluids of the body, Sutherland had a direct experience of a mysterious essence he termed “the Breath of Life.” His work in the last decade of his life was characterized by less active doing, and more attention to deeper forces. He advised his students to “Rely upon the Tide.” He wrote:

“Visualize a potency, an intelligent potency, that is more intelligent than your own human mentality … You will have observed its potency and also its Intelligence, spelled with a capital I. It is something you can depend upon to do the work for you. In other words, don’t try to drive the mechanism through any external force. Rely upon the Tide”

The meaning of this advice has taken some time for cranial practitioners to integrate. As it is interpreted by some of us in the field of Biodynamics today, relying upon the Tide is a highly foreign approach for modern, western people. It involves a major paradigm shift. In a sense, this paradigm shift is the topic of this article.

Many forms of cranial practice are derived more directly from Sutherland’s earlier, more manipulative work. While the manipulations and listening are relatively subtle, compared to everyday activity, they can be extremely active and even invasive from a Biodynamic perspective. As we enter into Biodynamic perceptual states, the practice of Wu Wei Wu, doing-not doing becomes increasingly relevant.

In Biodynamics, we work with multiple levels of perception relating to our emergence as physical beings within an energetic suspensory system of overlapping energetic fields within fields. Widening our perception to include more and more of the wholeness of being involves slowing ourselves down. The more we try to do, the more active we are, the less chance we have of perceiving the more subtle fields supporting our being.

Here is the ironic twist of this paradigm shift. In our modern western culture (and quite possibly in many more traditional cultures), we actively engage with life. Particularly in the 21^st century, we shift from one activity to another quickly, checking off our to-do list, answering phone calls, reading and replying to emails, texts, Facebook pokes etc., driving and watching television in between. Rest is poorly understood and rarely practiced. How do we not do? Even more challenging, how do we not do while doing? What does that mean?

Evolving a Curriculum of Being

Franklyn Sills, who began developing the first curriculum in Biodynamics for non-osteopaths in 1987, has struggled with how to teach this approach for many years. Initially, he believed it was important to provide the kinds of skills and techniques he had learned in osteopathic college. By 1992, he and his teaching team realized they were teaching skills they weren’t actually practicing, that were not actually relevant to a Biodynamic practice. Here began a long exploration of how to train practitioners to perceive and practice in more subtle, energetic realms. More active manipulative techniques were replaced in the curriculum by practicing shifts in attention and intention. When I began learning Biodynamics in 1999, I was taught to have conversations with the tissues, rather than testing them to see which way they preferred to move. Instead of nudging them physically in one direction or another to assess the direction of ease, we would ask them in our thoughts questions like, do you prefer to move this way? Would you like to have more space here?

There was an understanding that the fluid body we were interacting with was highly sensitive to external influences. Our tissues are made up mostly of water. We know that water is a highly resonant element. For example, Masaru Emoto has illustrated how water responds to words, both written and spoken, and to music. While his research has been questioned due to challenges of other researchers to replicate his results, the research of William Tiller clearly demonstrates that the pH of water responds to human intention, even over many miles.

As Biodynamics developed further, it became clearer that even posing a question to fluid tissues affected it in a way that may not be aligned with the inherent intention of the client’s system. The understanding and teaching of Biodynamics continues to evolve, further reducing the level of active engagement by the practitioner. At this point, the primary skills used more often in treatment are about providing a supportive, relational presence. We support the client in settling and quieting in a way that their trauma history becomes less predominant and more inherent Biodynamic forces of health can come to the fore. With sufficient settling, the client’s system is increasingly able to access the resources it needs to enhance and reorient to deeper levels of health. Most of the time, this is all that is needed.

Sutherland’s student, Roland Becker, coined the term rhythmic balanced interchange. He noted that the goal of the practitioner was to support the tissues in communicating with the Breath of Life. Once this interchange was apparent, the practitioner’s job was done. In rare situations where the system or tissues are too locked up for this interchange to occur, some form of intervention may be helpful. This seems to apply only about 5% of the time when we know how to meet and hold the system in a truly supportive way. I find this percentage interesting, as I have encountered the same numbers in relation to the realistic necessity for intervention by birth assistants! When a birthing family is held and met with settled, respectful, supportive presence, interventions are rarely needed. Just as understanding and skill in supporting birth in less active, intervening ways has been returning in the west, so, too, has Biodynamics been continuing to clarify in this direction of non-doing.

Skills of Augmentation

More recently, Sills has shifted his language from skills of conversation to skills of augmentation. As Sills points out in his book, Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamics, Volume 1, wu wei wu is very relevant to the practice of augmentation skills.

Augmentation basically refers to how practitioner attention can be utilized to enhance an already naturally occurring phenomenon. For example, in the inhalation phase of the subtle breath we call primary respiration in Biodynamics, there is a natural expression of space within and between the tissues. When tissues are highly compressed or contracted and unable to move with this primary breath, practitioners might “augment space” by orienting to this natural increase in expression of space and the potency within it during inhalation. We aren’t exactly doing anything here. We are slightly altering our orientation. On a possibly more active level, we may allow our hands to breathe slightly more with inhalation as they float on the tissues, suspended in the breathing fluid body. Personally, I find I don’t need to think about allowing my hands to breathe more; they do this naturally as I orient to inhalation.

Another way to augment space, which we tend to do all the time as Biodynamic practitioners, is in orienting more widely than the tissues themselves. We perceive the tissues as suspended within a larger fluid field (the fluid body), suspended within a still larger energetic field (the tidal body of the long tide). All of this is suspended within a ground of dynamic stillness. When we work with tissues in a particular area of the body, we do not narrow our attention in on this area. We maintain a wide field of perception, accessing the space, as well as deeper formative forces of the surrounding fields. Our orientation in itself serves to augment the relationship to space and the resource of these forces for the tissues. The area in question then has more ability to access these larger resources.

Shifting orientation, where I put my attention and what I think about, remind me of meditation. How much is this a doing? To what extent is this a non-doing? Wu wei wu. If I try to practice these skills of augmentation as a doing, the fluid body is likely to object, sensing an external force. If I am able to practice this subtle doing as a non-doing, more of a being with, the client’s system can settle, relax and receive the support of a friendly assistant.

Being with, as a doing not doing, wu wei wu, reminds me of love. Can I be present with my client in a state of loving appreciation and acceptance for what is, for how their system has organized itself to compensate for any conditions in their history? Can I rest in trusting the intelligence of the Tide to do its work? Can I truly allow the inherent treatment plan to unfold without needing to bring in my opinion of how I think things should be, what I believe needs to be worked with next, or what my ego feels I must do in order to be important, appreciated, needed, good enough, etc?

Like any meditation practice, Biodynamics is an opportunity to witness my tendencies, practice being with what is, and deepen further into love.

Doing Not Doing – Wu Wei Wu

The question arose recently in a Continuum workshop about doing and not doing. A rich discussion ensued, exploring the relationship between these two and how they can meet.

The Taoist notion of Wu Wei Wu comes to mind, natural doing without attachment. In Continuum, we do various things and then observe their effects, like scientific inquiry. It involves keen skills of observation, but we learn from applying different variables to shift conditions.

I am reminded of my challenge with Vipassana meditation some years ago as I became passionate about Continuum. The Vipassana teachers under S. N. Goenka were extremely strict and rigid about what could and could not be practiced in addition to Vipassana. As you became a more “serious meditator,” like I was, attending long courses of 20, 30 or even more days of silent meditation, you were expected to have Vipassana as the center of your life. Essentially all other practices were considered problematic.

 I knew I needed to tell the teachers what I was doing with Continuum, that it was not strictly a movement exercise but involved awareness and certain states of consciousness, as well as intention. If I did not tell them, the withholding would not be right speech. As expected, when I told them, I was asked to make a choice. If I continued with Continuum, I would not be able to continue sitting long courses, running a weekly meditation group sitting, or serving the Vipassana community in any way. They seemed to consider me a bad influence. What was my crime? I chose life!

Well, that was my interpretation. In Vipassana, there was talk of getting off the wheel of life. I realized that, for the first time in my life, I really wanted to live. I wanted to embrace being in a body fully and to enjoy it. As much as I loved and benefitted from Vipassana, I knew that my body was suffering from the long hours of sitting and doing nothing other than observing sensations arising and passing away. It was becoming stagnant. A short time later, I was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma, as if to prove the point.

Perhaps, intense meditative practices like Vipassana are the ultimate for people who have already had the experience of fully living their lives. Sometimes I wonder if many of us drawn to those practices are actually unconsciously acting out our dissociative or ambivalent attachment tendencies. Observing what is can be helpful in coming back into a body, but I wonder about how useful it is to reject life in favor of the cushion.

A Continuum of Embodied Awareness

My choice to continue deepening into Continuum (and life) was not an ending of my meditation practice. To me, it was a way to deepen my awareness and bring it more fully into my life. Continuum involves increasingly subtle awareness, just like Vipassana. It differs in its feminine flow within the body. My body loves it!

The main issue for the Vipassana teachers with Continuum was that it involved doing something other than just observing. In Continuum, we use different kinds of breaths, make sounds into our tissues, and move our bodies as part of the inquiry into our fluid nature. We do what we do with as much awareness as possible, sensing the vibrations of the sounds as they enter our tissues, the tingling of nerve cells awakening, the trickle of motion and breath into new areas. We sense the places of stuckness, pain, thickness or heaviness, the places where we hold our bodies up from the support of the earth under us, and where the weight of our bodies yields into that support.

After our bit of doing, we listen in what we call Open Attention. We just listen, sense, observe. We may feel energy moving, a pressure building, blossoming into slow, surprising movement. We may sense our breath deepening, our tissues softening, spreading, our heart slowing, opening and warming.

If this is the effect of a little doing, is it so dangerous?

I have never experienced my heart open as fully and deeply as I have in Continuum. Even after 30 days of silent meditation, when I would emerge from the silence in tears, full of tender love and compassion, it somehow didn’t reach this same dimension.

It seems to me that the essence of mindfulness meditation is to be able to live mindfully. Meditation is not meant to be done just on the cushion; we can practice at all times. In Vipassana, we continued observing the arising and passing away of sensations while walking, eating, washing, whatever we were engaged in. We were encouraged, however, to reduce our sensuality and sexuality in life to reduce the chance of attachment. We practiced with minimal relational interaction, eyes down to the ground, as if we were alone in a cave somewhere.

I used to love serving courses, which usually meant working in the kitchen. As servers, we were instructed to speak only as needed to complete our tasks. I loved being able to apply the benefits of our meditation to our relational interactions and the challenges that presented. Isn’t it important to be able to do in our lives, as well as to not do?

How do we learn this kind of doing?

This is a doing which is also a not doing. In Continuum, the things we do are usually like gently blowing dust off a leaf. If we blow too hard, the leaf will be gone along with the dust. To be present with our doing, we need to be gentle, slow down to avoid being seduced into old patterns, stay awake to what arises.

Doing Life, Being Alive

Life involves doing. Our cells are being but they are also doing every moment. They produce substances, decide what to receive, and are highly active within and between themselves, making choices about when and how to interact with other cells in their community. Can we be like our cells, being with our doing, doing with our being?

When we stop doing, I believe we die. Something in us dies. We are designed to engage with life. Even sitting and meditating is a doing. One needs to move the body in such a way as to sit on the cushion. The meditator must eat at least occasionally. I discovered in Vipassana that I had the ability to not eat for a few days in a row, an extreme of not doing. After a few days, my body began to object and deteriorate. I realized that I needed my body function if I was to continue mediating! I could perhaps learn to be so equanimous that I could just observe the sensations of dying, as Goenka describes. In order to be aware of each moment in life, however, I must engage in living!

What this looks like will differ for each person, but I am convinced that some degree of doing is essential. If not, how do we discover our edges? How do we know where we tend to slip off the path into our habits? Even the most serious of meditators has thoughts arising here and there. Redirecting the mind when it strays, as is so often instructed in meditation, is a doing!

The question is, where do we draw the line? In our modern, western world, there are endless opportunities to do and to lose awareness. I remember as a graduate student in Somatic Psychology, learning to sense my pelvic floor. I discovered I could, with practice, write my papers from my pelvic floor, centering my awareness there. Being on a computer, however, tends to speed us up and take us away from our body awareness. How aware of your breath and your sensations are you in this moment as you read this page?

The internet speeds us up. Mobile phones, WiFi, internet television … There is no escape! In our modern world, we may not be able to get away from the over-stimulation, but we can learn to stay fluid, present and resilient. In my experience, we learn this by practicing deepening into these states and continuing them into our lives.

The challenge of doing not doing is exaggerated in Continuum when we begin to interact more fully with gravity. We do odd things like hang off of chairs and equipment designed for this purpose. As we engage in fluid fitness, pushing off the floor with hands, feet, or other random body parts, we are tempted to speed up into more familiar movement patterns. I have learned so much about presence in life by practicing staying slow and aware as I combine intentional movement with allowing the spontaneous to emerge.

But isn’t that like life? Even as babies, we intentionally reach for a toy and discover a leg spontaneously follows the reach. Soon we are crawling, challenging our parents to keep up with us.

If we consider the most subtle of doings, we find we can’t really ever stop. Even in the midst of the deepest stillness, we continue to breathe. It may be a very subtle, quiet breath, but it is there. The heart beats, a doing and not doing, from four weeks after conception until the day we die.

No, I am not ready to stop doing! May I do with not doing; may I do with awareness. May our awareness widen, our being deepen, our doing continue on the continuum of life.