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.