The Death of Biodynamics

(Transcribed, edited, and updated)

I'm Ryan Halford and I love cranial sacral therapy, from the theory to the practice to the people. There's always something in cranial work that fuels a sense of adventure in my life. I'd like to share that adventure with you on the cranial sacral podcast.

Welcome my cranial sacral friends to Episode 68 of the podcast. Well, eight is my favorite number. So I always get a little giddy when releasing an episode with the number eight in it. I will probably completely melt with joy when we get to Episode 88. That might just be too much for me to handle, we'll see. Oh, number eight so balanced. So pretty, so infinite. I just love it. I'm releasing this a little before Thanksgiving, and I have been enjoying gratitude practices lately. I hope that from time to time you stop and consider some of the things that you are grateful for, maybe relationships, or experiences you've had simply having a safe place to live or enough food. I know I find myself taking a lot for granted sometimes. But one good thing about our work is that we have Windows during our day to deeply contemplate what is important in life. As we come into relationship with the creative forces that sustain us sustain our biology and our consciousness. It's pretty amazing to be alive, my friends, and it's pretty amazing to be a cranial sacral therapist. And I hope you're all feeling that.

Today we are going to spend some time with Charles Ridley, the author of the book Stillness Biodynamic Cranial Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness. Stillness was first published in 2006. And when it hit the shelves, it was widely regarded as a valuable contribution to the field. With Charles exhibiting a noticeable clarity about biodynamic perceptual experience.

From a personal standpoint, I consider Stillness essential reading for students as do many other teachers.

In our interview today, Charles will elaborate more about how the book Stillness was born, and also share his concern that biodynamics has become watered down in many BCST trainings, trainings that he feels don't truly support the practitioner coming into direct perceptual contact with the breath of life.

He published a blog article in 2016, entitled The Death of Biodynamics where he laid out these concerns.

This was a very powerful and challenging article that created a bit of a ruckus on the cranial sacral playground. Let me just say there were some hurt feelings after that. But I believe that Charles was challenging us in a healthy way. With that document, he makes several valid points that any reasonable person I feel should consider.

So I'm happy to bring him to you directly today. To better explain why he has concerns, and to share his own vision of Sutherlands original intentions for working biodynamically.

I feel that this is one of the most important interviews I've done to date.

And I hope it serves to educate the biodynamic community in a positive way. Charles has so much to offer us regarding our healing and understanding of primary respiration. And I think that comes out in our interview. So I'll put an Amazon link to Stillness in the show notes. An Amazon link to Stillness wouldn't that be convenient?

I'll put a link to the book Stillness, as well as a link to his pivotal blog, and a link to a YouTube video transcript interview with Charles as well.

I'm going to yet again need to skip closing comments for today's episode, even though I have a lot to say about multiple topics that Charles brings up, because I'm leaving in about an hour on a flight to San Francisco and I am not yet packed. I'm gonna put flowers in my hair and spend five days soaking up the West Coast vibe while we consider biodynamic ignition in a training in Berkeley. So as always, I sincerely hope that you are finding deep resourcing your own healing and repose in your exploration of the primary respiration question, and in dynamic stillness. And I hope that this translates through your touch.

I think hearing from Charles today will help make all that more of a reality for all of us. Enjoy.

Okay, everyone, I am here with Charles Ridley, which I know is going to make many of you very happy. I've had many people wanting me to connect with Charles so we can hear more about his perspective on the work. I've got Charles here via Skype, he is in Mexico now, living in a little paradise.

It sounds like from our discussion earlier, Charles, your blog The Death of Biodynamics in the Cranial Field that you wrote last year, was really challenging to the field of BCST. You're challenging the field to be honest about their experience of the work with themselves and others.

I think that blog is one of the most important documents I have read in quite a while related to cranial sacral work. And it really reflects my experiences traveling through biodynamics for almost 20 years now.

But where I want to start our conversation is with your book Stillness, which is how many people are going to know you. I was up in the Northeast recently teaching a biodynamic class to some therapists from Kripalu. And I heard an anecdote from one of the students who took your Stillness Touch classes there, they said "you know, Charles said that he almost regrets writing that book." And I'm wondering if that's true. Tell us about the book. What does it mean to you now, and then we can move on to your other article

Charles

Okay, thank you, Ryan. I don't think I said I regret writing Stillness, I said I regret that I didn't put more in the book. But I am in the process of writing a sequel (Stillness Touch Union of Body & Love). But I don't regret that I wrote Stillness because it presents an accurate history of Sutherland-based osteopathic cranial work in general, and his biodynamic cranial osteopathy in particular.

I started writing Stillness in 1998, which originally were class notes for private biodynamic students I was teaching in a San Francisco home. Before that class, I had taught a college cranial study group in the late 70's, and I offered Self-Care classes in Manhattan in the 80's, and then I taught Milne's Work.

I learned cranial from Dr. DeJarnette an osteopath who was Dr. Sutherland’s direct student. 

In Stillness, I laid out the total osteopathic biodynamic cranial map for students who took my biodynamic classes that I offered in my Dynamic Stillness School. I started writing because I needed class notes.

I was never officially trained in biodynamics, the tidal enfoldments of consciousness began to spontaneously emerge in me during my sessions with patients.

However, I was fortunate to have traded sessions on a regular basis with three biodynamic osteopaths. These DO’s taught Dr. James Jealous' work, who is well known in the United States for teaching biodynamic cranial in the osteopathic field. When I started trading sessions, I hadn't referenced in my 1995 writings all that much literature about biodynamics.

However, after I started having tidal experiences with clients and with students in my private biodynamic class, the wonderful DO teachers who worked for Dr. Jealous filled me in on the map. You know, the osteopathic biodynamic cranial map, its terms and principles that the DO's had developed based on Sutherland and Becker's work. However, I wrote Stillness from a sensual perspective not an intellectual one. In other words, I characterized 'what does it feel like, inside me, while I'm offering the sessions when the different enfoldments are present?'

I decided to start with the cranial wave, which is absolutely not a biodynamic enfoldment. But I needed to start there because most of us, almost every cranial practitioner learned pre-biodynamic cranial wave work. I wanted to show how to transition to biodynamics from the cranial wave functional work. In a functional practice, we move things around in the body, either with intention or with cranial techniques, along the guiding principle of the cranial wave. Since we all started practicing cranial from there, how do we segue out of that into a literally absolute, non-doing practitioner disposition?

I wrote Stillness to create a field guide that shows how to transition from functional work to biodynamic. And further, how to navigate the different biodynamic tidal enfoldments and beyond, to Dynamic Stillness.

It took, believe it or not, from 1995 to 2006 to finish the book Stillness.

Over that time, the sensual details began to slowly fill in as I taught classes, private intensives, and as more students shared their experiences. Almost all of my so-called teaching is not from my teaching at all. It's simply a written record of what transpired during session exchanges, and during the sharing in classes, but a sharing without using the biodynamic nomenclature.

In other words, we don't use terms. For example, to say ‘Oh, I felt cranial wave’ ‘I felt fluid tide.’ Why not? Because jargon is not only a bypass trap, it is meaningless, experientially. So first, we characterize our sensual experiences. And after the sensual experiences are described, if we want to understand the parameters and the boundaries of the actual experience, we ask questions like “How wide was your presence expanded?” “Was your presence only in the body?” “What was the timing of the rhythm of the pulse or the breathing?” “What experiences are you having in your consciousness” "What elemental qualities and tones are here?"… and on it goes.

Only then, would we put those sensual experiences, our inner experiences, on the map using the terms: (pre-biodynamic) cranial wave, (biodynamic) neutral, fluid tide, long tide, dynamic stillness, and the post-biodynamic pure breath of love. Pure Breath of Love is a post-biodynamic non-tidal unfoldment that emerges beyond Dynamic Stillness. I AM, infinite consciousness, Dynamic Stillness dissolves the sense of a separate self, like a 'Charles.' The tides also disappear here and the biodynamic map ends. (Recall that the Sutherland's etched on their headstones a message from beyond the grave "Be Still And Know I AM").

Recall that my first session in 1973 expanded my consciousness all the way to infinity for 30 days!

At the realization of I AM, and if we wait here for as long as it takes, there's a process that can happen:

Dynamic Stillness descends the midline and implodes cellularly (Pratyahara) and then expands from the inner body of the practitioner to infinity; and oftentimes, this also can occur in the client on the table (Click for details on the cellular implosion of I AM from the Ancient Spiritual Traditions). 

Then, something else emerges. And that something I at first called Pure Breath of Life, because it was a very undifferentiated unfoldment. It contains all the tides, including the tissue motion of cranial wave, but they are not available to sense any longer.

In other words, we can no longer sense tides because all prior enfoldments of consciousness are absorbed in Dynamic Stillness, which then emanates Pure Breath of Love. Another thing I introduced to the cranial field in the book Stillness is that the enfoldments - cranial wave, neutral, fluid tide, long tide, dynamic stillness, and pure breath of love - each are distinct aspects of human consciousness.

The first cranial session that I received in 1973 expanded my consciousness to infinity for 30 days.

I always knew that cranial work was a path of consciousness, for the evolution of consciousness, because the first cranial session I received in 1973, expanded my consciousness to infinity for 30 days. I received one sutural cranial biomechanical treatment, the kind that Sutherland developed and first taught in the 1920’s and it opened up my consciousness for 30 straight days, and I went “This is what I’ve got to do for a living." I was 20 years old at the time, and I never looked back. Dr.Kenneth Bernd gave me that sutural session in Santa Rosa, California in 1973. After the session, I contacted him and said ‘Let me have the names of all the books, let me know who you studied with, let me know everything about cranial work, I gotta do this.” I was like nuts.

Dr. Bernd studied under Dr. DeJarnette who was a student of Dr. Sutherland!

While taking the pre-med courses, and before I had enrolled in the college that Dr. Bernd went to, I signed up for Dr. De Jarnette’s courses, and continued them for not quite 20 years until Dr. DeJarnette passed.

It was wonderful having DeJarnette as my cranial teacher. Not only because he was a student of Dr. Sutherland, he also talked about Sutherland nonstop in his cranial classes. It felt like Sutherland was in the room!

DeJarnette told beautiful stories, he explained how the techniques were named by Dr. Sutherland: the Pussyfoot, the Tomcat, Rocker Temporal Technique, Compression of CV4, and so on. DeJarnette shared these beautiful anecdotes.

I could feel Dr. Sutherland’s spirit inside me and in the group field of the classrooms.

I've always felt deeply connected to Dr. Sutherland. And so once I got out of school, I continued to train with DeJarnette's certified cranial teachers in New York. I was there for eight and a half years. I practiced and studied in their office, which specialized in cranial with four master cranial practitioners.

Then I moved from Manhattan back to California. And it was after I moved to California that biodynamics began to emerge in me spontaneously. My experiences started to shift my disposition towards a non-doing cranial. I also met Hugh Milne in the late '90's and he asked me to be a teacher for his school sight unseen. I said ‘let me take the courses first, let me certify, officially certify like everybody else. And then I'll teach your courses.’ He agreed, and I took all his courses over one year and certified. You know, I took the test, and in 1995 I wrote my thesis Beyond The Stillpoint which was on biodynamics.

Ryan

You know, Charles, Hugh Milne gave me your 1995 thesis to read when I was staying at his house.

Charles

Oh my God, that's fantastic. Yeah,

Ryan

Back then, in biodynamics, there was still very little written material outside of osteopathy. And Hugh knew that I had an interest from my exposure to Dr. Jealous and Michael Shea. And Hugh is like, here, Ryan, you might like Charles’ thesis. I gobbled it up. I saw where the framework for your book that came out 10 years later in your thoughts. I didn't mean to interrupt.

Charles

That's a beautiful interruption, because I would have never known you read my thesis. The thesis led Hugh to invite me to teach biodynamics to his teaching faculty. My guinea pigs in my first public biodynamic class was Hugh and the Milne Institute teachers. We had a beautiful class in Big Sur, at a woman's house a cranial practitioner named Sheila. Hugh liked the class so much that he asked me to go to Europe and teach all his European teachers.

And that support from Hugh is what got me started with teaching biodynamics. He provided my public initiation into teaching biodynamics. Then I started my own school after that, which created friction and led to our separation. Functional and biodynamic principles are different paths. I couldn't keep my mouth shut in Hugh’s classes about biodynamics when I was asked questions, so it created tension between us.

Finally, it got to the point where I was too busy with my biodynamic classes. So I gave all my classes to Hugh that I had built and developed for the Milne Institute at Fort Mason in the SF Bay Area, and then we parted ways.

Ryan

And how nice of him to provide an environment for you to develop as a teacher, though and expand your experience and understanding

Absolutely. I always felt supported by Hugh. Even though biodynamics is a different than his functional work, he gave me the space to actually open my perceptual doors as a way to get my biodynamic teaching muscles exercised.

I wasn't really planning on going out to teach biodynamics publicly; it was not my idea. To the contrary, as you recall, I began to teach biodynamics because my most dedicated cranial students asked me to privately teach biodynamic courses. It was their invitation to teach them that led me to eventually open the Dynamic Stillness School. Because it was apparent that there was a lot of interest in those early days in my ‘brand’ of biodynamics that is strictly based in Dr. Sutherland’s osteopathic impulse (having nothing to do with Upledger's work).

Given that I was trained by an osteopathy who was a Sutherland student, my book Stillness provides an accurate history that maps Dr. Sutherland’s entire cranial osteopathic journey. Stillness Chapter 9 leaves off at what I call a fifth enfoldment of consciousness. Pure Breath of Love is mix of all the tidal unfoldments of consciousness after they disappear in Dynamic Stillness, which then implodes into our cells.

The most common misperception I run into with students, is the confusion that arises when they think that the prior tidal states no longer exist after they dissolve in Dynamic Stillness in infinite consciousness. When in fact, these states have simply been fully integrated by us, so we no longer can see them as objects, they become pure subject, we are no longer separate from them.

Pure Breath of Love is comprised of a specific alchemical mix for each particular person that's sitting in the room, and lying on the table. And it is this mix that assists in their evolution toward their next level of consciousness, that next place in their evolutionary expansion of who they are.

Obviously, given what I offer, a person who comes in my office weren't coming in for symptom relief, they came for an evolutionary journey.

I wouldn't accept people that insisted that I offer symptom relief. I would send them to an osteopath. So the client had to understand and agree from the get go that when they came into receive my work that we're not here to have me reduce their symptoms.

In Sutherland's biodynamics, we're not here to fix symptoms, we're not here to look at parts, we're here to be with the Whole. And potentially, by our meeting in mutuality together in the session room, an opportunity may arise, but we don't know anything about what will arise. An opportunity might arise for the power of the unerring potency to emerge that really knows how to take care of your body, take care of your psychology, and evolve your consciousness. Maybe potency will arise, and it’ll do what it's already doing.

Our meeting in mutuality has the potential for the evolution of consciousness. People have to agree to that before I accept them as clients. In almost every case, they were in awe of the power of that emerged in them, from the non doing, non symptom based, non fixing, and no treatment, … just touch while reposed in infinite consciousness of stillness, in not knowing, and in non doing, … and the potency that comes up in that is beyond miraculous.

Of course, the depth of the infinite stillness remains absolutely potent, because the practitioner is not creating efferent static in Dynamic Stillness. In fact, there is no practitioner and no client - both are mysteries, just reposing. Here's what we call neutral - when the practitioner reposes any notion of even what kind of motions patterns are going to show up, there is no notion of what the person might need based on my particular practitioner training, we let go of all doing of anything. We let go of any kind of an outcome, and simply repose in the mystery of now, which allows Pure Breath of Love to be in complete charge.

Ryan

That's a challenging thing for practitioner to do.

Charles

Yes it is, yet that's really how biodynamics was crafted by Dr. Sutherland. And then, of course, by his protege, the Kashmir Shaivite osteopath Dr. Becker.

Dr. Jealous continued Becker's biodynamics by sharing his New England Study Group's findings. He presented their findings through his writings and in his classes. He came out with the beautiful mapping that was created by the New England Study Group, that they crafted by sitting together with Dr. Sutherland’s original impulse and evolved and deepened it. That's the biodynamics that I’ve tried to carry, the original impulse that Dr. Sutherland brought, which definitely has zero doing in it.

Ryan

I want to read a little quote here from your article about the Death of Biodynamics. You say

There's a shadow side to biodynamic cranial to recognize and look at straight in the eye, namely the practice of biodynamics without actual contact with the breath of life. It is inaccurate to call the cranial you're offering biodynamic, if you have not realized and actual living contact with the whole body breathing tides of primary respiration and beyond into dynamic stillness and pure breath of love. This means if the living potency of pure breath of love is not present in you and the client, as whole body breathing tides during a cranial session, then you are not practicing biodynamic, cranial.

Ryan

Oh, yes, that's a that's a very big statement.

Charles

Yeah, and sadly, it's accurate. And it's not my opinion!

That's how Sutherland taught biodynamics. I'm going to share with you a couple of antidotes around that, because what I'm saying sounds like ‘"oh, Charles just has some axe to grind. He criticizes everybody." 

This is what I hear back from people, right? Well, the truth is that Sutherland's biodynamics has specific requirements. If I want to practice biodynamics, what is the requirement?

Sutherland's requirement is you have to be in contact with the Breath of Life.

And what is the Breath of Life? It is the mysterious force that made the body, heals the body, develops our faculties of perception, and evolves our consciousness. The force that is responsible for the embryological development, are the forces of the Breath of Life, they are the same thing.

I started teaching postgraduate post-biodynamic biodynamic courses in 2008 to people who have already been trained in other types of biodynamics (that are non-osteopathic). And I've got to tell you, it is heartbreaking to observe 50 or 60 people in a class and you can tell that none of them have had any significant contact with the Breath of Life.

I’m talking no actual living contact in the body, which means no true contact with the neutral, the potency, the tides - fluid tide, long tide - and the dissolution of the tides in Dynamic Stillness that then acquiesces into and becomes Pure Breath of Love.

After three or four days in my class, they begin to enjoy contact. How? They follow the non-doing principles that I offer, very simple principles, the same principles that Becker gave us, which are the principal's that Dr. Sutherland gave him. All of a sudden, in three or four days, they're feel distinct contact with the Breath of Life, and they're speechless or weeping, or both.

This is tragic, because I didn't really know that this problem existed out there outside of cranial osteopathy. I had no idea that BCST teachers were training folks to fake it. I had to look into what was going on. Because these sincere people go through a very expensive 2 year, 10-module training for $12,000, and they come out, go into a practice, and they're not really in any contact with the actual tides. What is this?

I asked a lot of questions, and I discovered that there are a whole array of efferent practices that the BCST Schools train these people in. But efferent practices prevent the Breath of Life from arising inside your inner body.

In other words, the very efferent principles they teach, prevent contact with the tides!

In my newest writings (Stillness Touch Union of Body & Love) I expose specific efferent practices that the BCST trainings teach practitioners. I also reveal that efferent practices have to cease in order for the tides to actually come in and become an experience inside your own body. Of course, if they arise inside your body, you're not being the doer trying to make anything happen by manipulating the tides, or do anything to a client on the table. We just touch another person on the table in neutral.

Again, the definition of neutral, is when stillness fills the whole body and the ego yields, gives up control over the body and lets the Breath of Life take over. That's neutral. Of course, certain phenomena emerge inside that tell you you're in neutral, and there are inner qualities that tell you when you're experiencing the tides. Through entrainment, the person on the table, if they're relaxed enough and they are receptive, also experience the neutral and the tides. That's a biodynamic session.

There are hordes of BCST teachers out there who teach efferent procedures, practices, principles as conceptual theories that block contact with the tides. For example, when awareness of the BCST practitioner is on the client as an object, and we negotiate the hand contacts by talking about that contact with the client, we talk about the tides, talk about what we believe is happening, and we offer intentions, and we suggest still points, and we negotiate space. On it goes, … there are over a dozen efferent steps in a BCST practice that is supposed to be non doing if we're calling it a biodynamics that Sutherland taught.

So with so much efference, no wonder, you don't feel tides. Then, due to shame, you pretend with your peers that you are feeling tides! You have to maintain this secret little collusion game, and keep it going to pretend that neutral, tides, dynamic stillness are happening in you when they're actually not happening. And we use of jargon as a substitute for the real experience “I feel long tide” when we really do not feel it.

First of all, in my classes we do not use terms. Of course, the first thing that comes out of somebody's mouth is a biodynamic term and I stop them. Right? I ask them 'please do not use a term, like I feel ‘long tide.’ Long tide doesn't mean anything to me. Please tell me what you sensually experienced.' Often they don't know what to say. So make suggestions ‘let's start with is your consciousness expanded?’ ‘how far was it expanded?’ ‘was your presence just inside your skin?’ They go, ‘yeah, it was just in my skin.’ ‘Did presence go further than your skin, like a few feet outside your skin?’ Or, way out further that that?’ ‘No, it was just in my skin.' ‘And was there radiance?’ ‘No, there was no radiance.’ We have this dialogue. “You said you were experiencing long tide. Is that where you're saying?’ ‘Yeah, I was experiencing long tide.’

I then say ‘I'm sorry to have to say this, if you don't mind hearing it, that's not long tide. What you're describing, by characterizing your sensual experience, is fluid tide. You think that long tide was happening, but you weren't really experiencing the long tide based on its established biodynamic definition.’

As painful as it is for the ego of the practitioner, the truth is what I offer. I point out how misperceptions arise from the use of biodynamic terminology. It's easy to say ‘I was in fluid tide’ when in fact it might not have been fluid tide, it could have been long tide, it could have been dynamic stillness, it could have been pure breath of love, or cranial wave. But regardless, it’s better to not use terminology as though it is the experience. It's a cop out.

Each of the enfoldments from cranial wave and neutral all the way to Pure Breath of Love, have specifically defined parameters - boundaries - that are stages of consciousness. Each is defined by how far our consciousness has expanded. Is there luminosity versus non luminosity, is there a timing, a tempo, what are the elemental qualities that occur in the body - earth, air, fire, water, ether, etc., experientially.

For example, in long tide, vast luminous deities can arise like the Buddha, Krishna, Christ. In fluid tide, shamanic symbols arise like animal spirits, and you feel very connected to nature and plants, and animals. Each tide as a level of consciousness is impactful.

Fluid tide is very impactful the first time it emerges. There is zero doubt that something powerful happened. It's not just a nonchalant experience like ‘fluid tide came yesterday, I think I’ll feel it again tomorrow.’ It's not like that. That is the ego trying to disrupt our contact with the tides. The self-sense that thinks it is separate from everything, the Charles, the me.

The little me is completely disrupted and it expands by a shift in consciousness from cranial wave, which is literally ego’s territory, to something as profound as the fluid tide. Here, not only do you have a body, but there a breathing field of consciousness that expands from within to outside and around your body, and then the breath comes back into the midline. And this subtle tidal breath is connected with nature.

You feel completely one with Natura - a living feminine being - who permeates the atmopsphere, plants, animals, stones, other people. You feel the way you felt when you were a little boy or little girl, before the core wounds happened to us that affected our psychology and created our personality structures. When we touch fluid tide, we go ‘oh my god, this is how I felt when I was little I and was one with all of nature.’

So fluid tide is potent. When people nonchalantly use these terms, neutral, fluid tide, long tide, dynamic stillness, etc., and they can't characterize the actual experiential events that occur relative to those fields, there has to be a pointing out and a correction of the misperception that’s present. That's what I run into over and over and over.

(NOTE: Stillness articulates all the above based on osteopathic definitions)

I'm blessed that my postgraduate biodynamic classes have beed so well received by sincere practitioners who do not have contact with the tides, even though they were supposedly trained in biodynamics.

I also teach French biodynamic cranial DO's in small groups of 20, and my Europe post-biodynamic Master Classes have 30-50 people. But when mutuality and Pure Breath of Love are in charge of the potency of the group field, it doesn't matter how large the classes are. People commit to meet for four days and deep dive into the principles that were offered by Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Becker. You allow Pure Breath of Love to just take you, and we tour biodynamic and post-biodynamic cranial together. By the time you get out of the Master Class, you're pretty well steeped in different experiences. You are ready to go out and actually offer something that gives a client an opportunity to really contact the Pure Breath of Love. And off they go on their evolutionary journey.

The pain of all this is that this precious life principle, this Pure Breath of Love, is a living Divine Feminine being. She has a tender love for all of us, every single one of us, she loves us terribly so. She is patiently waiting inside our cells to guide us toward becoming whole, and to get free from suffering, and to evolve ourselves so that we're not separate from her any longer.

Because at some point, we long for union with love. And it's very painful to see that principle not really taken into account in biodynamics outside of osteopathy. When these trainings offer a curriculum that does not permit actual contact with this presence, this Pure Breath of Love, this evolutionary force, a force that began at conception as the Self Recognition System and in 9 months made the body. Then, it heals the body, sparks our perceptual capacities, and evolves our consciousness. So that's what really gets me. 

Ryan

You've tapped into phenomena that definitely I have noticed, too. I get a lot of emails from listeners all around the world from all different types of trainings and a lot about BCST that I hear this being secretly shared with me that they're not really feeling the tide, and now they're a teaching assistant, they're not confident, they don't know what they're doing, they're coming out of their mind, rather than a true owned experience of that a full body permeation, where you feel every molecule of your matter responding simultaneously to this very large, mysterious unfoldment you know, and, and so I think what you're offering is so valuable, Charles, you know, being positioned as a postgraduate training, it's perfect. I mean, you could take them to the next level.

So I have a question. Do you feel like it is essential to have a BCST training under your belt before you start to try to work from your dynamic stillness perspective?

Charles

No, I don't actually.

As long as there, you know, it's a little bit more challenging because, let's just say you've never had any exposure to biodynamics, BCST or anything, and you're trained in biomechanical cranial. You don't even know what a cranial wave is, because biomechanical is not cranial wave based; whereas functional is cranial wave base. And of course, biodynamics is based on the neutral that open into the tides, and on into Dynamic Stillness. So it's a little bit more challenging for people to walk into a biodynamic class, who haven't had some kind of a biodynamic training because they don't have the terminology or the background, but I'll be absolutely honest, Ryan. It really doesn't matter on some level, because they can go back and study to learn the terminology. I found that as long as they're open to non-doing, and they can give up what they are trained to do, and just practice the principles. They can have access to the tides and then they can go on their own journey. But the fact is, that those letters that you receive, those emails, I get them too. But I don't receive probably as many as you do, because I'm not nearly as exposed as you are. But I get them weekly and they're heartbreaking.

"Dear Charles, I spent, $12,000 plus another $5,000 for travel and thousands of dollars in loss of work income. I've been a bodyworker for 30 years and it is hard earned money. I took the BCST training. And now, I'm an assistant teacher" ….exactly what you said Ryan, … they say "and I don't even know what I would do if I felt a tide."

I mean, those confessions break my heart. I've regularly gotten those emails since Stillness came out. Like you say, it's a secret, because you can't really admit that you're not feeling anything because there's a collusion going on and it is difficult to break the taboo.

BCST teachers confess to me that they keep it a secret that they take my classes!

And I'm gonna share this because it's in the book Stillness, I won't name names. I went to a BCST teachers course in Maui taught by a Big Kahuna teacher of that work. It was exactly like you described with your student emails, but this occurred in the room. I was with four other people that weren't part of the BCST group. 

There was an osteopath friend of mine who got us into the class, a chiropractor, a rolfer and me. And we were all floored by the fantasy in the space. Now, I want to give you a little bit of context.

I was already practicing and teaching biodynamics when I took this class. And normally in a class, you have an experience that expands beyond what you enjoy in your office, and you go back home, expanded, and you see if you can continue what you learned from your workshop. you take the fruits of the workshop to your practice. That's normal, right? I was having the opposite experience at this BCST teachers class.

I regularly had tidal and Dynamic Stillness experiences in my office. But in this workshop, with 18 BCST teachers, I had cranial wave the whole time. The most shocking thing to me was practitioners kept telling me stuff that was happening to me, but it wasn't happening to me. ‘You had spraying up your midline with shimmering light.’ And it wasn't happening.

I couldn't finish the workshop. To be frank, all four of us had to leave. So, that's where I got my first taste of the collusion that's going on. It was absolutely devastating to me that they call this biodynamics, because it is unrecognizable from an osteopathic perspective. If you were to look at the simplicity of Dr. Sutherland's approach and add Dr. Becker's, which you only can get now from his two books, biodynamics is not complicated.

So, back to your question, do you need to have the BCST training? No, you don't. In fact, you said you went up to Kripalu and worked with some people there. I go there every year, and my class is a lay class! It's a two and a half day class in Stillness Touch. Some of them have never touched another person, and in two and a half days of applying the principles, meditations, and the inner practices, they access the breath of life, which is absolutely how it ought to be, right?

Biodynamics isn't rocket science reserved for the few; it doesn't require complex training.

I used to believe that it required a heavy duty training, but I have experienced that it doesn't. It requires ethics. It requires that you are conscious that you're touching someone and that is potent. It requires following the principles of orienting your awareness inside, and not doing anything to the person on the table, not objectifying them as a person that's separate from you. You simply touch them while accessing your own inner body in a neutral state. And then the breath of life comes in and both people, whether they're sitting up touching or they're being being touched on the table, enjoy this experience together.

I've been teaching now I think for four years, I’m going on my fifth year at Kripalu with lay people and I just love it. It’s the whole opposite end of these postgraduate courses.Because with the lay classes I don't use any jargon. I don't even use the word tides, I don't use breath of life, I don't use fluid tide, long tide, I don't use any biodynamic terms. I use elemental terms, like neurological motion, fluid flow, vast luminous space, and infinite stillness as presence, like that. People take to it.

Ryan

Yeah, I find myself the more I teach, dropping much of the technical terminology, and just trying to get the class into a place of simplicity. And working to build that naturally and gently in the classroom space. So we can sit at ease when we are working at the tables. So I'm really relating to what you're saying. And I can see how teaching lay people can be really nice and simple.

Charles

And satisfying, too, because then, you really do see that biodynamics is accessible to everyone.

I'll interrupt myself: how I even got to teaching a lay class, because there is a peer pressure like 'how dare you teach this to laypeople?' I noticed in my early years of teaching biodynamic cranial touch mentor courses, that the people who didn't come from a cranial background, that didn't have any cranial technology, terminology, or principles. I noticed by observation, that they were having the deeper experiences. I noted it, and said to myself ‘that's not on my map.’

I started holding out a little bit more of an awareness for observing if that observation is consistent. I noticed a pattern: that the more innocent a person was relative to any kind of training, the better, they accessed depth. They accessed the depths of the tides, the enfoldments. Then I got up the courage in Berkeley to start teaching Stillness Touch classes to lay people. At Rudra Mandir, a Kashmir Shavite ashram run by my Swami friend Nathaji a master who recognizes my work. People don't even have to have any cranial training to enter the class.

I just got an email the other day from someone that took one of my first lay courses in Berkeley six years ago, and now he wants to take the mentor course and start practicing. He had never touched a person in his life. The class had an impact, because it percolated for six years. Hopefully, he will start doing Stillness Touch. We don't have to be cranial school graduates to learn this work. We don't even have to be practitioners to do this work. Because these lay people go out and offer Stillness Touch to a loved one, or with kids. It's not about turning people into practitioners. They know good and well, they're not practitioners when they leave, but they have a new capacity in themselves.

Ryan

Yeah, yeah, good. I have a lot of lay people contact me about wanting to do classes. And they're welcome to come depending on the class. So we'll have them come to a basic one after an interview. But I say listen, you know, don't go out and practice this, you know, a shingle on the door, just you know, this is most people have enough sense to know that they go back into their lives.

Charles

But you know, what it does, as you know, I mean, you can tell by, I can feel when you describe, for instance, your description, your characterization of the tide a little bit before. When I can feel that in me, I know you're on it, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, so I know that you're on it, because I feel it in me when you're characterizing it, you know, with words. That's different than using a term isn't it?

Ryan

Yeah, that's a whole other world. You know, you could say, oh, yeah, fluid tide, and I go, yeah, right. But then you describe what you describe, and you drop into this inner place, and you let this larger field pour into you, and then you allow that to work you through the session. I mean, I know you're in that kind of domain by your description.

Ryan

I was slow learner and a slow grower with this Charles, it took me years of really being fascinated and interested and working to learn how to yield. At some depth in your inner guidance to come to where you understand a felt sense of when your will is engaged, was really crucial instruction for me, then expanding my perception to feel my wholeness and really working with wholeness, wholeness, wholeness, wholeness, that was another big leap for me, to begin to feel is simultaneously emerging and breathing life through me.

Charles

Yes, where there's parts and whole and the cosmos and everything all at once unite, and you're just, you're kind of the fulcrum of it. And even the context, that you are not offering hand contacts to sense any motions, they're fulcrum points (of stillness) that present an opportunity. We're led to different contacts as fulcra - points of stillness - because the breath of life leads us there.

But in Stillness Touch we no longer offer anatomical contacts that are applied to make some kind of change. They're resonance points, tuning forks of stillness, that are fulcra for the potential for the breath of life to emerge and do something with the client that maybe you're having in yourself.

So any kind of a touch agenda is dropped; touch is just opportunity and possibility. And that's why it is important, like you say, to stay true to the simplicity of it, I don't even talk in sessions. I don't talk about anatomy in my classes. I don't name bones, I don't talk about bones, I don't talk about contacts as though they are anatomical contacts like a sphenoid contact. It's not in my software operating system, not even in my capacity anymore. I'd forgotten all that stuff.

The Master Classes are very simplified.

Hand contacts are fulcrum points that are a flesh-to-flesh interface, stillness to stillness. And we just happen to be sitting up. But we uphold principles that we abide by, like 'allow the breath of life to come in if she decides to come in.' And then, the person on the table can relax, because we're touching them, and they're also participating. I give a little bit of instruction to the person on the table, so they can drop inside. I don't use terminology, but I'll use it right now to save words on how to drop into neutral. I say 'orient inside, don't have expectations and be present to whatever shows up inside your inner body. And if you leave your body, or you find that you're fantasizing or going into some other place, just come back inside' They will start syncing with neutral again. Boom. And of course there's the inner body breathing, I teach that along with the innerness. Another thing I've done in my newest (Stillness Touch) writings is I'm connecting up the biodynamic principles with the ancient spiritual practices.

Kripalu invited me to train their entire Health Services body work staff of 52 for two years. The body workers are some of the people that I have been interfacing with in one of my Kripalu classes.

Ryan

Yeah. Oh, good, good. Yeah. So they're good people. And they're very sincere and of course, the Kripalu philosophy is fantastic. They are a Vedic philosophy.

Charles

Right, and here I am in this Kripalu training for the bodyworkers. I'm talking about my principles, and one of the oldest members of Kripalu says 'oh, that's pratyahara.'  'What is that?' I asked. Then, I looked it up and by God, Pratyahara is an ancient Vedic practice of orienting your awareness to your innerness to connect with the divinity within you. Once you unite with the divinity within you, your awareness spontaneously emanates back out, and you're connected with the Divinity both inside and out.

Biodynamics is absolutely connected to this ancient spiritual tradition. And that gives us - you, me, and other people that are in true biodynamics - so much support. I tired to navigate how vast and deep that support is. For 1000s of years millions of practitioners have mediated for billions of hours ... that is what support us in this work! If you hold that in your consciousness, that there's this massive meditative field of support, while you're just learning how to relax and let go, like you say, yield, then we can sense more comfort, and the ego is soothed 'it's okay, we can relax, we can let go, we can stop being in control, we don't have to know, and we don't have to name and we don't have to talk during a session.' Innerness transmutes that part of us that has to know and control, and fixates, objectifies, and enquires. Instead, we can rest back inside and repose in the arms of the tender mother love, the breath of life, Pure Breath of Love, and she just takes care of everything.

Ryan

I don't know why that helped me so much, while you were speaking of the support you've received from Dr. Jealous other people, is that their spiritual traditions are also our support. Yeah, I very much believe that taking a look at the experiences of spiritual practitioners from the past can be very beneficial for us to understand how to relate to the breath of life, you know, there's people in the field that really lean towards science.

Charles

Yeah. And I think that science has its own place and it can be useful. But I also feel like having a good amount of our developmental energy going towards our own spiritual growth helps us more as practitioners; it is not just about scientific knowledge of this or that, it's both. It's really both, nothing's excluded, is it? It's all included, the both/and, and neither, and some mystery beyond even that … everything is a part of the paradoxical spectrum. Nothing should be, excluded, as long as Pure Breath of Life is in charge, what can't be included, you know what I'm saying? I mean, Pure Breath of Love made science, made the earth, made every molecule of us, it made all our psychology, and made everything that's going on.

The problem arises when we become drawn to one pole over the other. We can go too far into science, too far into control, too far into knowing, too far into the double blind and all that. Or, we go too far into the spiritual and we get lost in the stillness, you know, in Spiritual Bypass, stuck in emptiness, amid the stink of enlightenment, which is epidemic in so-called non-dual circles, right?

Ryan

I've been there. Yeah, me too.

Charles

I mean, exactly. We’ve both been there, stuck in emptiness - as the end all and and be all!

When from an embodied paradoxical non dual perspective, realizing I AM is the half-way point to enfleshment.

I enjoy helping those non dual ‘enlightened' folks to come down a little bit more into the body, into the present, into here. Those people that go - and you did it and I did it - 'I am not my body. I am not my feelings. My thoughts aren't real. My ego is not real. None of this ‘out here’ is real. It's all a fantasy.' 

Asserting that the only thing that's real is Dynamic Stillness or I AM, that is the definition of Spiritual Bypass. Being stuck in emptiness can become an addiction. And guess what, you will remain stuck.

The enfleshed body, is a body that is the quintessential expression of love. Body is the physical emanation of Pure Breath of Love that emanates out of the Dynamic Stillness. And to say, that is not real, is the denying of the entire divine feminine principle.

It's not that we mean to deny the feminine. But pointing that out helps them gain a larger perspective, like you're saying. The feminine principle is "nothing is to be excluded." So science, I love science. I love new science, I love Osmond's work with the ground substance. Science says 'the SA node emanates to infinity.' I love the whole field of scientific discovery, because it just so happens that the CSF and the ground substance is the physical interface for the Pure Breath of Love to communicate to every single cell in the body, and of course, to the nerves, the lymphatics, the blood vessels, and all else that is body. It helps us if we can learn the science of this, if we're practitioners. We can navigate the step down modifications from unmanifest, infinite consciousness that is Dynamic Stillness, to the luminosity, into fluids, into the CSF and ground substance in the body, to physiology, function, and structure,  and all of those that is body. Science helps you segue all the way from within the cells back to the midline and then back to the infinite consciousness of stillness … like a Kirtan. Nothing created is left behind.

And we're in the catbird seat of this whole mystery, not from a self-important 'I am enlightened so I have the best seat in the house and you do not' guru perspective. But in the sense that we have a midline that's filled with infinite consciousness - as stillness; so there's infinite stillness in the cosmos and the inner infinity in me. These so-called two stillnesses interface through the different tidal expressions, and we're in the middle of all that - the fulcrum - the seat - So we are a co-creative participant on a personal-cosmic process. And, the cosmic process is also us.

Ryan

And it's a marvelous.
I'm feeling good just hearing you talk about this.

Charles

It’s a love fest, if that makes sense. You just drop into this infinite space, and you just be in Pure Breath of Love that pulses in every cell with the pulse of the Sa node. And words come out, or they don't come out. Sessions happen and it's, it's quite a beautiful.

Ryan

I am so grateful when I'm able to be in a biodynamic space with people who understand how to move to this type of level of what the work is. What it gives me is so incredibly valuable, this fullness in a luminosity and a clarity, openness, courage, love. It's just such a special environment that we create, I think a good biodyamic class does a better job than many churches, or religions, filling people up.

Charles

I happen to agree. Religion means bind, reunite, doesn't it? That's what the breath of life does, it unites. Love is not in the business of separating.

Anytime that we get caught up in efference, separating, objectifying, or making the whole into parts, we're out of the Pure Breath of Love, and we're in our ego. Declaring that "emptiness - infinite consciousness - is the only thing that’s real" is a great example of disembodiment, which defines Spiritual Bypass.

When that disposition is declared, it gives us information about certain seekers, doesn't it? To single out one aspect - consciousness, and exclude another, all things body, is a signal that I need to drop back into my body.

Perhaps inner body breathing will bring me back into the body, or I need to orient inside a little bit more deeply toward the pelvis. And get back into silhouette, you as you call it, the Wholeness. Because the wholeness is the place where all the so-called parts are, but parts are not the orientation. Parts get to dwell inside - I don't even use the word parts, you know, I use the word aspects. Aspects of the wholeness get to be individual and distinct and discernible, all at the same time, but they're not separate. This is the paradox, right?

That's the rub with spiritual bypass, because nothing is really separate. It just appears that way to an ego structure whose job description is a separate things. Me and Ryan, we're separate. We are defended. Well, in biodynamics, that's gotta go. That's what the work is, to drop all that, and to yield … we even yield our infinite consciousness to love.

Ryan

Some of my richest work was really trying to find this interfacing point between movement of the tide and my sense of self. And it can manifest in different ways. But learning how to soften and allow it to permeate into aspects that I thought were me but really aren't and it washes through them and washes them out and find more and more of a healthy sense of emptiness of transparency. That keeps my ego at bay. And that was a real interesting line of study and work for me when I begin to really start to feel the wholeness and the movement of the whole.

Charles

The gift of post-biodynamics is Wholeness takes over. You realize that even though you thought you're in control, when you were an alleged separate self, you never were in control. And that's the definition of suffering. As soon as you yield, and acquiesce, repose, and allow the Wholeness just to be what it is, it unites everything it creates. You’ve seen the paintings of Krishna with the Gopis and they're reposed in this bliss, this innate bliss of Pure Breath of Love. They don't have anything to do, anywhere to go, they're just being held by this beautiful Wholeness that is Love. And that's, that's our, who can call this work, right? But that's our work, is to learn to repose into this Wholeness, and allow it to be completely in charge, and all we're doing is being present. When we're not present, we receive that as information that we need to go back to the practices, you know, the pratyahara the orienting inside, and, letting whatever's here to be what it is, to not name, and not change to not manipulate, we might want it to be different, but we're willing to let it be as it is.

Ryan

Yeah. So question you say you've been doing some some writing? Are you going to be reissuing Stillness? Are you working on another book?

Charles

I'm actually working on another book, and I'm probably going to self publish this time, mainly because it was so excruciating going through the publishing process. Stillness is already out there. I'm pretty sure I'm going to call it Beyond Stillness. Even though right now my meditation practices workbook with all the meditations is called Beyond Stillness for practitioners, but I'm gonna, I may shift that title, because there will be meditations in this new book. And I'm taking it from chapter nine, where Stillness left off at the Pure Breath of Love; that's where the book starts (The book is called Stillness Touch).

I spend a lot of time characterizing Pure Breath of Love, the quality inside you, when you're in contact with Pure Breath of Love. It is like the tender mother love that takes into account every single molecule in the body snd in the universe, and tries to harmonize all of it is inside you. This moves you in a Stillness Touch session. I've spent quite a bit of time characterizing that, and I put in aspects of the blog, The Death of Biodynamics. I'm going to have an entire section on the facing the shadow (Grail Journey), because ultimately, as you know, if we don't deal with our shadow material inside of us, we're holding ourselves back from being, from allowing, from yielding totally, without any reservation to the mystery, the wholeness and love.

Every one of us has had some some type of an event in our lives that separated us from that union that we originally had. And in depth psychology, that's called the Core Erotic Wound. Why is it called core erotic wound? Because as a tender youth we have events that feel like a wound that separates us from our Eros, our life-force, or will, the wholeness, our own connectedness to life, and to love, and to everything in the world, as other people. Something happens to every single one of us that created a kind of a recoil that created the separate sense of a self, an ego, and a personality structure that then spent has been spending all of our Eros (will force) on not going back to that wounded place, that interface that severed our bodily connection to the love.

Because our ego is afraid that the wound is going to happen again.

That needs to be navigated, so we have to have enough courage to allow ourselves to feel the pain of that wound when we were three, or seven or whatever age we were, usually it was young. I've got a couple of beautiful YouTubes for people to listen to and a chapter 6 & 7 in Stillness Touch characterizes the Core Erotic Wound. Another name for it is the Grail wound. Which has to do with the Parsifal story where the king was wounded in his generative function, which paralyzed his will. So the King just laid in bed completely collapsed in his will, and he couldn't run the kingdom. He had to have someone help him to restore that vitality back back to himself. It was possible that a young fool could it for him, by his presence, by his aliveness by stumbling into the Grail castle. And… finally … asking the Grail question, and answering the Grail question. And the Grail question is ‘For whom does the Grail serve?’ The Grail and Pure Breath of Love are interchangeble terms. The narcissistic ego' answer is 'Oh, the Grail serves me.' Right? We know where that leads, and that it does not lead to wholeness. We realize that finally, when we get the courage to ask the Grail question of ourselves, and also, to acquiesce to the answer ‘for whom does the Grail serve?’ then the core erotic wound or the Grail wound actually opens up this entire vista into Pure Breath of Love that yields us, until our capacity to separate from love permanently ends.

Connection to love becomes non-revocable; who's going to complain about that or if you're forever in your Tao? No matter how angry or upset or tweaky, or whatever happens in your life, because life happens, right? We're not gonna say life is, you know, a big happy feast after this occurs. But you no longer are driven into reactivity by those things - they just are. Then it passes, and it's over. You have continuity with love, even amid something that may feel terrible, you know, or painful and uncomfortable.

But that takes extreme courage, an extremely fierce heart, and extreme presence, to say, like the Buddha. The Buddha was tempted by Mara whose evil forces of fear and desire tempted the Buddha ... terror of the demons, and desire for the beautiful Dakinis, who wanted to make love with him. Finally to both he said said ‘I will not move.’ Meaning he is going to be still and stay right here in his midline. 'I vow I’m not going to be driven and pulled and moved by these things' and poof! We have the Buddha and everything that's come from that vow.

We can do that, too. Because now we're in the place of evolution - it doesn't look like it, if we read the news - but we're in the place in our evolution where people are crossing over into freedom. And we're so fortunate, Ryan, to have biodynamics as a path for this. I believe Dr. Sutherland knew it. I believe he was completely aware of it. But as you know, he didn't talk very much. He was very tight lipped about everything. Becker knew it. And that's another thing I'm sharing in the new book Stillness Touch: that Becker practiced a descending current spiritual tradition. I've practiced Kashmir Shaivism for decades, and I've done quite a bit of research and discovered that Becker was steeped in a deeply enfleshed spiritual tradition that highly influences osteopathic cranial biodynamics. Dynamic Stillness is a part of that tradition that Becker was connected to. Dynamic Stillness is a translation of the word Spanda, which is a Kashmir Shaivite term (Trika yoga). I don't know if you ever read the books, they're a good read: Swami Chetanananda’s Dynamic Stillness. Have you? Well, he dedicates those two books Volume One and Volume Two to Dr. Becker. Dr. Becker and he hung out together in Oregon at the ashram Dr. Becker gave sessions there quite regularly and he trained the Swami in cranial osteopathy for 18 years. He and his wife's ashes repose at the ashram in Portland under the mobius strip in the garden.

Ryan

Okay. I found it right here on Amazon. I'm ordering it as we speak. Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading that I was not aware of this relationship or this little story. So that's Yeah.

Charles

The thing about the osteopaths being mom about their spiritual practice, the American Osteopathic Association does not allow Do practitioners to talk about their spiritual paths, ever. I don't know what that's about or why, except to say that it is not scientific (Listen to James Jealous' Death of Biodynamics CD) but I got that information about Becker from a spiritual master who was living at the ashram, and he got sessions from Becker. He now runs an ashram in Berkeley called Rudra Mandir?

Ryan

Oh, yeah. I'm gonna be teaching there in two days.

Charles

Oh, that's fantastic. Well, the teacher Swami Nathaji, who runs the Rudramandir ashram, was up there in Oregon with Swami Chetananda. In the old days Nathaji met and received sessions from Dr. Becker. His son, Rudy, also received sessions from Dr. Becker in the old days. And Nathaji came to me some number of years ago (1990's) for sessions.  After the first session, he said ‘your session reminds me of Becker's work.’ That was a high compliment for me. We established a deep connection from then to now. Tell him 'Hi' when you go see him. My love to Sonia, his wife.

Ryan

Cool. Yeah, it'd be my first time there. I don't know who all the major players are gonna be. But I'll keep an eye out, then. Yeah, he'll be there.

I had one other thing I wanted to one other topic of conversation. If you got time. I wanted to ask about your relationship with Giorgio Milne. I know you guys have worked together pretty closely for quite some time. And often you two guys are both mentioned in the same sentence. So I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how you got connected. I'm assuming it's back from the Milne Institute days, and yeah, how what has unfolded for you and how you're working together?

Due to a pivotal shift in 2021, I have an update if you are interested, CLICK

Charles

Yeah, it's very beautiful. I remember seeing Georgia the first time that she and Hugh had a date. It was at the end of a C-7 class in his house in 1998. And I could not see her, I only saw her hair because she met Hugh upstairs, so I could only see the top of her hair and they went to a dinner. And that was the first the first I knew about Georgia, Milne.

And then while assisting classes in Claremont I met Georgia, and I really saw her: I recognized her and she saw me and recognized me. And in fact, she was very instrumental in inspiring Hugh to invite me to teach my biodynamic course Beyond Stillness. So I taught Beyond Stillness courses for the Milne Institute for a bit before I left the Milne Institute, and Georgia continued teaching them. She was instrumental in that because she really saw biodynamics and really got it.

She was in the first course on biodynamics in the US and also in Europe. She took to this work. I could see how she and I recognized each other. In that biodynamic sense, I recognized her and she recognized me. And even though she was involved in the Milne Institute, really beyond neck deep. She was also on fire about biodynamics. It took her a while to take the full year-long Mentor training, because of her scheduling. God, you know how much she taught for Hugh? It is crazy how much she teaches with Hugh in every class. And so it took her a quite a few years, 8 years, before she took my mentor course in 2008. It was kind of all over, I could tell that she got it fully, and I could tell that she could teach it easily.

And so after graduating (and assisting classes for a year), I  said go ahead and start teaching classes. And she started, and has been now, you know. I retired from teaching Mentor Courses in 2010, and Georgia took over all the Mentor Course teaching responsibilities internationally. She teaches all over the planet, ya know, she's everywhere. And she is incredible at teaching to work. And I feel completely like I can die right now, and I would know that this work, the way I teach it in this fashion, just, you know, the approach with the principles will continue on as long as she's got it going.

And hopefully, we'll find some other people that want to join because she's at her limit of capacity, and I'm not gonna go back to teach Mentor Courses, I can't do it. I'm just teaching the postgraduate classes. So she is, I would say, as good as it gets, I mean, there, as far as my school goes; I had other teachers, but they slowly fell off, you know, the fell off of the work, you know, and they fell off of the teaching and the scheduling. And, you know, that's what happens when you become a teacher.

The classes are yours. I mean, as a teacher you'd have to build the practice of teaching classes, you get the students, all that's your business. And so she was the one that completely survived all that I had, at one time, I think five additional teachers. And they all kind of fell by the wayside over time. And Georgia is who's left, and because I retired, so to speak, I haven't been active with teachers at all, and Georgia's almost too busy.

So we're in this intermediary place where now it's the time to get some more help, and there and people are showing up, incidentally, they're showing up, they have to go through several classes, the mentor classes, and then they start assisting and doing things on their own. And we're just beginning that process, again, with what we call an Immersion Program. And, and she's going to be in charge of that. And, of course, they'll (the assist teachers) come to my post graduate classes whenever they can in Europe, or Kripalu. And, as you know, it's just simply the exposure in that field that you mentioned, how the juicy depths of the biodynamic field over and over and over again until it becomes nature until it doesn't even go away when you walk out of the class.

Yeah, right. It's life. It's your life, Ryan's life, it doesn't change just because your door shut out of the session room or the classroom. And so she's really got it, I'm so happy that she's in the school, basically, now, I just get the credit.

Ryan

Well, I was drawn to Georgia way back in the Milne Institute and had many great experiences with her. And actually, finally, we have been going back and forth for almost a year trying to set up an interview and looks like we've got to find a time now. So

Charles

She has, she's very steeped in the deep spiritual tradition and has, you know, her own medical training, and all the human work and the biodynamic work. And so she's got this vast spectrum. This background, that's such a such a gift to this work.

Ryan

So what is the best place for people to go to find out more about the school what website is best?

Charles

 dynamicsstillness.com is the place to start, with my website. On that website is George's link and her schedule of classes. But my website is where you can actually read about the courses, and read about the biodynamic principles. And there's some articles there. And I think that's the best place to start.

Ryan

Okay, dynamicstillness.com. I will put a link through in the show notes. I'll put a link through to stillness people to buy to thank you. Thank you, when you get some new stuff release, Charles, please let let me know and I'll let everybody know that your new book is actually here and we'll get some people check it out. I'm excited. I'm inspired. Just hearing you talk about some of these types of hobbies looking for.

Charles

Good, good. Well, thank you so much for this interview. I'm happy that you let me come out with this in a way that people can hear me because when they read this stuff, it looks it looks like I've got an axe to grind. But I really don't. I don't really have an axe to grind. I just have a point to make.

Ryan

Right? And I knew that there was a difference on how you really are, and how you came across in the article. You know in print, there's just so much that it doesn't tell us. And so, I'm really glad that we got people from the bottom and community and other communities to be able to hear your position more. I think it's very healthy for us to hear it, and I'm really glad that you're doing the work that you're doing. Thank you.