Chapter 26

Basic Points of Biodynamic Practice female gender

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is the creative application of a set of principles and processes, some of which are listed below. The rest are revealed while treating a client and living one’s life. Understand that this is a contemplative style of work. It is about establishing a relationship between Stillness, Love and Compassion.

PART TWO

1. I.                Practitioner Hands – Body Visualizations
   1. Learn to have buoyant hands at the beginning, floating not following.
   2. It takes time for one’s hands to soften internally in order to contour and conform to the shapes of each window.
   3. Spend time in each window transforming the inner structure of the hands to gel even if it takes the whole session.
   4. The practitioner senses from the back of her hands, the back of her arms and the back of her body. The hands are 3D organs not limited to sensing through the palm and finger pads only.
   5. Such hands and bodies gradually become transparent as 1° and everything else moves through them as if the skin is a giant fish net sensing the tide coming in and going out.
   6. Then learn to hold the whole fluid body of self and other as one drop, one egg or one heart of living transparent living fluid.
   7. Imagine periodically an amniotic sac attached to the back of the practitioner and the client and a yolk sac attached to the front of the practitioner and the client. The hands and arms are like an umbilical cord.
   8. The practitioner might imagine holding the fertilized egg that her client developed from and sensing it expanding to include and surround the practitioner.
   9. The practitioner might imagine she is in the fertilized egg of her client and it is breathing with 1°.
   10. The practitioner has no intention to sense inside the client’s fluid body.
   11. The practitioner waits for the inner contents of the client’s fluid body to surface into her hands. Every thing happens at the surface which is the immediate interface between the practitioner and the client.
   12. Metabolic fields.  Another important biodynamic sensibility for the practitioner’s hands has to do with the metabolic fields of the embryo. This refers to the process of congealing and densification of the fluid body into the various structures of the embryo and their final fates in the adult body.  Dr. Blechschmidt defined eight types of metabolic fields having to do with their position in the embryo, their relationship to one another via ordered movement in the fluid body of 1° and the resulting sculpting of the cells and their aggregates into specific structures.  These same metabolic fields of the embryo are present in the adult fluid body maintaining the same structures.
2. II.             Stillness Continuum
   1. In general, stillness and mindfulness build the healing power of unconditional presence in the practitioner.
   2. Voidness, stillness and mindfulness are each considered to be a type of intelligence or deeper level of knowing that is precise and subtle.
   3. The stillness continuum is directly related to ignition, the therapeutic process and healing.
   4. Void (ness) generally describes an experience of receiving a session of work more so than a state of practitioner awareness although it is possible with those practitioners who have a great degree of mental equanimity and serenity.
      1. Voidness is defined as a vacuum without form. It is therefore difficult to describe the experience beyond that.
      2. It is a space empty of self existence. In other words, one experiences or has a memory like a dissolving of their personality and/or full of inner peace.
      3. It is generally not perceived a steady constant state which means that it is available through brief glimpses during and after receiving a session.
      4. Synonyms for voidness include: one taste, indivisibility, black hole, dark matter or dark energy from the field of astrogeophysics, deep trance. Metaphors are used to describe the experience.
      5. There is no subject – object relationship consciousness, in other words an experience of the absence of being separated from anything in the experience of the client and/or the practitioner.
      6. The client may experience a deep state of relaxation in which he feels completely renewed and free from excessive mental activity.
      7. The client may feel that he has been in a very deep place that he cannot describe. A client also might say it was very dark or very bright.
   5. Dynamic Stillness
      1. A practitioner’s non dualistic awareness or perception of the zones. In other words, the zones take on a quality of being awake and full of visual clarity and contain a sense of peace or tranquility.
      2. Synonyms: Bliss, ecstasy, wholistic, light trance.
      3. Mindfulness becomes active as an awareness or feeling of confidence and right knowing without hesitation or excessive thinking. In other words, the practitioner does not second guess herself when shifting to another hand position.
      4. The practitioner experiences non distraction, effortlessness and nonattachment.
      5. Gentle reminders of love and compassion may be experienced around the area of the heart in the practitioner’s body.
   6. Stillpoint - Nature
      1. The practitioner notices that zones C and D become still as separate locations not fully interconnected with her or the client. Waiting usually connects them together as one thing.
   7. Stillpoint - Biodynamic
      1. The fluid body of the practitioner and/or the client becomes still and 3D.
   8. Stillpoint - Functional
      1. One or more systems of the fluid body of the client become still.
   9. Stillpoint – Biomechanical
      1. Localized quieting of the client’s tissue, bone and fluid compartments.
      2. The practitioner may have induced it or not.
   10. Idling
       1. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) of the client settles which allows 1° to be more noticeable.
   11. Pauses
       1. This is a shift in attention or consciousness of the practitioner. This usually occurs when a sound in nature intrudes into the consciousness of the practitioner causing her to stop thinking momentarily.
3. III.           Therapeutic Relationship - Windows
   1. The therapeutic relationship is a joint practice. In other words, it is a communion between two human beings, a two person biological system.
   2. Sit in stillness with the client and wait until 3D is a conscious reality.
   3. The practitioner imagines the whole fluid body as a 3D reality wherever her hands lie on the client.
   4. The relationship between the practitioner and the client is like a unitary circulatory system fluid body to fluid body, midline to midline, midline to fluid body or fluid body to midline.
   5. Start a session usually in the pieta position or at the feet.
   6. Early sessions are about harmonizing with and assessing the resilience of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) of the client.
   7. Work around the client’s body to cover the four directions of bottom, side, top and other side when appropriate.
   8. The practitioner is free to put her hands near the heart of the client any time and sense it breathe with 1°.
   9. Clavicles, scapula and nape of the neck are all windows for the heart as is the face and neurocranium (vault).
   10. The practitioner is free to put her hands under the diaphragm (fulcrum of the fluid body) anytime.
   11. The practitioner waits as long as possible or at least two or three sessions to put her hands on the client’s head.
   12. The face comes before the cranial base in a treatment sequence. Consider the effects of physical trauma to the client’s face if revealed and start with the vault.
   13. Parietal lift and temporal lift (vault) are the most benign windows for the cranium.
   14. The midline is not approached until after the whole fluid body begins to breathe with 1°.
   15. The alternative vault hold is preferred rather than the traditional vault hold for relating to the cranial base. The cranial base is a midline window for the notochord. It forms as a compressive field in the embryo.
   16. Always finish with the sacrum or feet when possible.
   17. Three or four windows are usually enough in any session or just one or none at all.
   18. More than four windows may be too much for the client. There are exceptions.
   19. The anterior midline is the last element in a treatment sequence.
   20. The sacrum is the preferred choice to settle a client if he or she is unsettled at the end of a session.
4. IV.           Ignition-Basics
   1. 1° is directing the ignition process.
   2. Ignition has its own organization and arises in the midline in relation to all other midlines in self, other and nature. In other words, ignition is potentially everywhere in all the zones.
   3. All rates and rhythms in the practitioner and client are ignition related especially the sights and sounds of nature and the imaginal mind.
   4. Ignition is pre-existing in the biology of the fluid body. It is already active as an interaction of the basic elements of fire, earth, air and water with 1° and dynamic stillness.
   5. The practitioner synchronizes her attention first with the ignition process in her own 3D fluid body and then the client.
   6. 1° and secondary respiration synchronize their inhalation phases regularly. This is the most common ignition process available for practitioner synchronization.
   7. Practitioner practices taking 3-5 deep inhalations any time during a session.
   8. Practitioner practices taking a deep inhalation at the beginning of Primary Inhalation 3-5 times during a session.
   9. Practitioner ignites her heart imagining it is still a tube with a lengthening breath, a deepening breath and a widening breath in order for her heart to fill her fluid body.
   10. Practitioner ignites her notochord by accessing its serpentine movement, like seaweed in the 3D ocean of the fluid body.
   11. Ignition involves a sequence of events named as spark, ignition, permeation, augmentation and disengagement. They are real sensory experiences especially heat.
   12. Permeation is a 3-D spreading of heat, warmth, affect and feeling locally or systemically.
   13. The pilot light (spark in the midline) is extinguished in many clients.
   14. The pilot light (spark) has a chance to ignite every 100 seconds at the beginning of Primary Inhalation.
   15. The pilot light needs the help of the augmentation phase. Augmentation is a subtle boost of 1° as it changes directions from exhalation phase to inhalation phase. Listen for it during the last 10 seconds of Primary exhalation.
   16. Wait for the midline to manifest by focusing on ignition.  In other words, pay attention to when 1° is changing directions in whichever zone. This will translate to the midline without having to go there directly.