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.

Loving Presence: Embracing Fear

Recently, one of my clients told me she had realized the lesson from her chronic pain was to be in loving presence all the time. When her fear came up, her body contracted, and she tended to move into isolation. How many of us resonate with this pattern? Some of us are not plagued with intense, disabling chronic pain, but most of us live in contractive isolation of some kind.

Where there is contraction, there is isolation. A contracted tissue is less in relationship with other tissues around it. This means there is less resource available. Cells throughout our bodies want to be in resonance and communication with one another. When strong walls are established between them, they suffer. In extreme, they become cancerous, losing touch with the community of the whole. I read recently that cells know when to die to support the community. Cancer cells have lost that knowing, or perhaps they just don’t care. They have lost their caring. They just keep on living and multiplying regardless of the good of the larger whole.

What if we lived our lives that way? There are those who say our world politics are cancerous. Living selfishly with a pervasive sense of danger and threat, each man for himself, is an expression of isolation.

Defensive Behavior Vs. Being

I loved the Breath of Life conference I attended a few weeks ago in London. One of the speakers, 

Stephen Porges, pointed out the need for us to dampen our defensive neurological reactions in order to return to our social engagement nervous system. Porges developed the polyvagal theory currently proving so important in trauma therapy. Whereas we used to believe that the autonomic nervous system consisted of our sympathetic fight-flight and our parasympathetic freeze dissociation systems, Porges pointed out that there was actually a third system related to another part of the Vagus nerve. This social engagement system is actually our first line of defense when we perceive potential threat. We, as primates, check to see if other humans are available and how they are reacting.

I was at a Continuum Movement intensive in Santa Monica some years ago when an earthquake occurred. We were all in deep fluidity melting into the floor. As the earth shook, every one of us opened our eyes and looked around at each other. This is our social engagement system in action. It enables us, as relatively small, weak mammals, to cooperate with one another to create safety for ourselves and our offspring.

In our overwhelmingly sped up, over-stimulating modern western world, many of us become stuck in our fight-flight or freeze reactions, as if we were still lost in reliving an old traumatic experience. In those states, our perception is different from how we perceive when the social engagement system is online. In defensive states, we perceive the world as threatening and prepare to act accordingly.

I remember being shocked once when I offered a highly supportive comment to a student in my training, only to be rebuked and accused of putting her down. I couldn’t imagine how she had come up with that perception, except to assume she was lost somewhere in her past. Porges’s comment about needing to dampen the defensive systems clarified this for me. She could not perceive my support as support. To her, it must be an attack or a put down because that was all she was capable of perceiving in her activated state. Her nervous system could not allow support in.

It is when we are lodged in these reactive, defensive states that we build protective walls inappropriate to the situation at hand. We actually are not present in the present, but are operating in our current environment as if it were the past. We are isolated in the past, like this student who was isolated from receiving a genuine offer of support.

Integration, Health and Love

Another speaker at the conference, Daniel Siegel, who coined the term Interpersonal Neurobiology, explained to us that health was integration. Where integration was lacking, there was dis-ease of some kind.

What is the most integrative, healing force available to us? I believe it is love. Loving presence can meet whatever arises, without defensiveness, without judgment, without the need for interpretation, being right, fixing it, or even doing anything. Can I just be present with what arises? To me, this is love.

When pain presents, when anxiety shakes us up, when we are afraid, we can be challenged to stay present. It can feel like too much.

Our job becomes finding what can support us in being present. What helps us to stay here in this moment, even when it’s painful, rather than returning to the past? Being present is about being with what is, rather than reacting to what if or what was.

Fear is never actually about the present moment. It is usually about what could happen in the future, based on what we have experienced in the past. If we can actually be here now, whatever it is, is not so bad. Even if we are in a terrible event, like a fire or a bombing or a hurricane, our fear is not of this moment. In this moment, we are actually ok; we fear what might happen next. If I am terribly ill or have been injured, my fear is not of the current condition; it is of the possibility of it never ending or getting worse or having to miss more work because of it or etc., etc. Our minds are very good at creating scenarios, usually based on our past. They quickly take us out of the present, as any meditator can attest.

Recent research has shown that mindfulness meditation actually shifts our neurobiology. The parts of our brain concerned with danger, like the amygdala, begin to settle and quiet as our pre-frontal cortex comes more online, with its ability to orient to present time. The result can include less need for anxiety or depression medications, as the meditator becomes more adept at self-regulation. Being in present time is the key. To me, this is love.

Loving presence is the ability and intention to be present with whatever arises. Awareness is the first step in any healing. If I am not aware of an wound, I am unlikely to take steps to clean it, protect it or in other ways support its healing.

I believe my client’s discovery applies to all of us. It is quite possible that all of our issues are opportunities to learn more about loving presence, challenging us to apply it in any situation. We can be grateful for all the hints we are given that we still can grow and learn by deepening our ability to be with even this moment with loving presence.

When we do this, fear may not disappear, but it often seems to dissolve. It becomes less important, having less clutch on us in our lives and our psyches. We become free to simply be, to be in relationship rather than in isolation, in loving presence with ourselves and each other. This is the setting for cellular resonance, integration, ultimate health. Our cells begin to sing in harmony with one another. We are no longer at war, in struggle, in defensive reaction. Instead, we can be in awe, nurtured by the loving presence everywhere.

Living Life Fully … Like an Embryo

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances,

That’s not for human beings. Move within,

But don’t move the way fear makes you move,

Walk to the well,

Turn as the earth and moon turn,

Circling what they love,

Whatever comes from the center.

-      Rumi

Six years ago, I was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma. I had always told myself (and others) that, if I ever had cancer, I would go for holistic treatment.  The moment happened very fast, however. The doctor called me herself the moment she received the results. She asked me if I could come in that morning for the surgery. I hesitated, partly explaining, partly thinking out loud in my shock. I was scheduled to teach a Continuum class that morning. The doctor’s office was in Santa Barbara, almost two hours drive away. She stopped me. “This is important!” she admonished, adding to the shock.

Please understand; I love this doctor. She was actually an osteopath who had chosen to specialize in dermatology. She had explained to me that she chose dermatology because she wanted to see her child grow up. She didn’t want to be on call at all times of the day or night when her child was little.

I drove to Santa Barbara that afternoon directly from teaching my Continuum class (!), telling myself repeatedly how healthy my skin was. As the doctor cut into my body, she exclaimed, “Look at this beautiful, healthy skin!” I was amazed! How often does this happen during an operation? I told her I had been saying this to myself all the way there. She acted like of course that had made a difference.

I then ventured to tell her I had been on a so-called anti-cancer diet for 25 years. Why had this happened when I had been Macrobiotic for so long? Again, I appreciated her response. She pointed out that the melanoma hadn’t spread and I didn’t require extensive surgery or other interventions like many people with this kind of cancer do. Perhaps Macrobiotics had saved me from a more severe situation.

I’m still Macrobiotic and still appreciating the apparent support to my health and well-being. I also still appreciate that I didn’t require extensive medical interventions.  And I am still aware of how close I came to something else.

A Wake Up Call

You never really get over a diagnosis of cancer, or at least, if you do, you shouldn’t. If you survive such an event, I believe it is a wake up call.

Recently, my body reminded me of this experience when I wasn’t paying as much attention to it as it would have liked. I felt pain in the incision site where the ghost of the melanoma lives. Of course fear arose. Could there be something there? Could the cancer have silently spread, invisible to the doctor? Could I have been discharged from regular check ups too soon?

Fear is a natural aspect of life. We can buy into it and feed it, or we can appreciate it and seek its wisdom.

I found myself thinking that I wanted to live my life as if I had cancer. What difference would it make to know if there was a recurrence or metastasis? I could just deepen my commitment to live as if there was. I could listen to the wake up call, as if it were there each day. I could just wake up!

The Wisdom of Fear

Where did that expression above about seeking fear’s wisdom come from? It is actually a new thought for me.

Can fear carry wisdom? We tend to think of fear as problematic. When children or animals are afraid, they need to be calmed, soothed and reassured. When adults act in fear, they seem to be re-living a child aspect, allowing it to rule life.

Fear, however, can also be reality based. We fear the unknown, which is at times very wise. We fear what reminds us of harmful or painful past experiences or relationships.

An important part of our brains, the amygdala, specializes in identifying incoming sensory and perceptual information as dangerous or benign. If the amygdala defines the event as dangerous, a neurobiological alarm sounds throughout the body-mind. We have the ability to quickly make this evaluation and get of harm’s way when deemed appropriate. This is extremely useful, even life-saving, if we are stepping out into the road in front of a speeding car, or about to be attacked by a saber-toothed tiger or other stranger.

The amygdala, however, can also evaluate things incorrectly. It bases its decisions on the information available to it, derived from past experience. That past influence is not limited to what we are consciously aware of. Our early experiences, like those in the womb and our earliest days after birth, can profoundly affect our perceptions throughout life. Developing awareness of our own personal history can actually help to liberate us from its effects, as awareness brings us more into present time, stimulating different parts of the brain. When fear arises, it can be a message to us to pay attention, attend to what is actually happening now, to differentiate between what happened back then and our current reality.

The neurobiological flow of information is something we can affect through regular practices that facilitate us in orienting to present time rather than staying locked in the past. Activities like mindfulness meditation, Continuum Movement, and other practices involving honing sensitivity to the ever-changing myriad of sensations, thoughts, feelings, and images we all experience stimulate the parts of the brain involved with being in present time. When the pre-frontal cortex is well tuned and connected, the amygdala is less likely to control our lives or get out of control. We need not live in fear.

Meeting Life Fully

I feel grateful for all the practices I benefit from. My ability to orient to present time, rather than rigidly responding from past experience, is supported not only by my practice of Continuum and other movement meditations, but also by being a practitioner of Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy. In this beautiful work, I spend hours each work day, sitting quietly in subtle presence and awareness, orienting to slow, subtle rhythms expressed in all of nature, including my clients. My teacher, Anna Chitty, called our work, “meditation in relationship.” What a wonderful opportunity to be as present as possible with another human being! In the process, my brain, as well as my client’s, re-creates itself. This is how I want to be living!

If I had cancer, I would spend most of my time in these mindful practices, doing hours a day of Continuum, Biodynamics and other meditations. When not actively in those practices, I would have an intention to meet all that arises in my life with that kind of awareness, being with life as fully as possible. And, yes, I would be writing about it - another of my favorite activities, which also (I hope) benefits others.

Whether the cancer, my wake up call, took over my body or not, it would take over my life in this positive sense, each moment reminding me of the importance of being. Here we return to the realm of the embryo, a little being floating in fluid, with nowhere to get to and nothing to do except develop.

I want to follow Rumi’s advice. “Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.” I intend to “circle what (I) love,” allowing my heart and love to guide me, learning from the fear.