Charles is Interviewed
By A Biodynamic Cranial Osteopath
Q — Here is a quote from Dr. Sutherland in his earlier, pre-biodynamic days:
"What we mean by directing the potency of the cerebrospinal fluid, in so doing we are directing not only a potency, but a potency that has intelligence within it, a body of fluid that has the Breath of Life, that has “something” invisible, not only of potency but an Intelligence spelled with a capital 'I'."
Q — That is what Sutherland wrote in Contributions of Thought, in your opinion, what does Sutherland mean by Intelligence?
A — Sutherland is referring to the Intelligence that creates all things. An Intelligence that expresses life, creates our bodies, maintains our bodies, develops our perceptual and cognitive capacities, and evolves our consciousness. This Intelligence also liberates our consciousness from the ego’s controlling grip. The ego traps our awareness and keeps it in a state of separation from all things, which in turn, stops us from realizing a bodily union with the Whole. The Intelligence that creates minerals, plants, animals, and everything else that we recognize as manifest reality — our enfleshed reality — that’s the Intelligence that Sutherland refers to.
His insight about a potency that has an Intelligence within it "spelled with a capital 'I'" is based on his direct experience of the various stages of potency, which continuously evolves. Decades after he wrote the above quote about directing the potency, Sutherland presented to the cranial field a radical biodynamic cranial practice. Radical, because his new version of cranial touch is biodynamic, which is based on a non-doing touch that is transpersonal. No longer is the practitioner the doer, we do not use our hands to feel or treat, because they are our 'erring' physical senses! Instead, we trust the unerring potency to do everything during a session.
Here is a quote from Dr. Sutherland's April 25, 1948 article that he wrote in The AOA Millennium Yearbook that fills out his perspective of non-doing:
We had a visit from a young lady, a ballet dancer whose name is well known on Broadway. In our living room, she gave a dramatic and reverent dance interpretation of the biblical saying 'Be Still and Know that I am God."
In her impressive presentation, we could see that she lost all awareness of the physical senses.
"Be Still" these physical senses, and get as close to your Maker as you can, closer than breathing. Where you realize what is meant by the Breath of Life, not the breath of air, the breath of air being merely one of the material substances which man utilizes in his walkabout on earth.
It has been my endeavor to get as far away from the physical senses as I possibly could, that is, to a point where one begins to experience - to realize "Be Still and Know."
That is why I have so much to say about information gained solely through laboratory tests and experiments and information often gained through the application of erring or unreliable physical senses.
How many of you have the same degree of vision? The same degree of touch?
If you know his biography, it is obvious after reading Sutherland's quote, that his touch evolved in three major stages: It started as a pre-biodynamic medical model approach, first as biomechanical and second a functional method that involved the directing of the potency. His third and final instructions on touch characterized a non-doing, non-medical biodynamic practice that you can read in the above 1948 quote. In essence, here is what happened to Sutherland:
- He ceased being the doer (get as close to the Maker as you can).
- He ceased being efferent (Be Still these physical senses).
- He stopped using his physical hands to sense motion (get as far away from the physical senses as I possibly could).
- He ceased using his erring, unreliable physical senses to gain information.
- He stopped motion testing the speno-basilar joint.
- He no longer directed the potency of the CSF; instead he let the unerring potency be in charge.
- He taught a touch to realize Be Still And Know I AM.
Why was there so radical of a departure from his prior medical approaches to touch? Because Sutherland was dedicated to the evolution of consciousness. He experienced 'the uncanny power' and the 'Intelligence of the unerring potency' and he surrendered to it.
Sutherland said 'the Intelligence belongs to the Breath of Life.' He borrowed it from Genesis:
“And then the Lord God formed man from the clay of the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
The Breath of Life possesses infinite Intelligence, what the Buddhists call the Unborn Buddha Mind, Prajnaparamita, or the Wisdom of the Whole. In the Christian gnostic traditions and in the old testament of the Bible, Sophia was with God from the beginning. She is the Holy Wisdom who takes into account the greater good of everything — the Good of the Whole — before taking any action.
Imagine if we accessed the primordial wisdom of the Divine Feminine Intelligence! We would instinctually take into account the good of everything in creation before we speak or act.
Then Our Speech And Acts Express Divine Will
We become co-creators who contribute to the inherent good of all creation. That’s the Intelligence, I believe, that Dr. Sutherland refers to. He says potency is an invisible fluid within a fluid with an Intelligence that dwells within us, surrounds us, and pervades our atmosphere. There’s a lot more to potency, like many of Dr. Sutherland’s one-liners, that could be expanded into a book.
Q — So you believe Sutherland is saying the potency has Intelligence and the fluid has Intelligence?
A — Yes, the potency is what powers the Intelligence, which transmutes into the wisdom of the body; and the fluids - the CSF and ground substance - transmit primordial wisdom to every cell. Even though the potency, Intelligence, and fluids are distinct aspects of the Breath of Life, they are not separate.
For example, inside my body's potency is a fluid intelligence - a subtle fluid within a fluid - that pulses inside my body and emanates into the beyond. Personal potency is not as vast as the cosmic luminous potency, which can expand my consciousness to the horizon (the horizon is the edge of my capacity for knowing). Luminous consciousness can continue to expand my consciousness beyond the horizon of my known into the domain of of a tonal cosmic luminous Intelligence. If my consciousness spills over the edge of my know, I enter Dynamic Stillness or I AM.
It is obvious that the transpersonal vast luminous potency is more powerful than the personal fluid potency inside my body, because the luminous potency suffuses (co-breathes) both personal and transpersonal cosmic Intelligence. You can say that luminous potency operates on a higher level of coherence because it encompasses a greater expanse, a more inclusive domain of consciousness than my personal fluid potency. Going deeper, let’s look at the infinite potency of Dynamic Stillness, or I AM.
I AM, infinite potency, the full void, the Self, Purusha, Dynamic Stillness, the Absolute, are interchangeable names for the state of consciousness that is the end of the road for all the expressions of potency. This is where the tides emanate from and where they disappear into. So I AM is a major fulcrum, right?
What that means is at Dynamic Stillness, or I AM all tides dissolve in the infinite potency of the midline.
However, there's a mystery here: if we want in a Sacred Repose at I AM, it creates in the SA Node a vacuum that draws the tides into our midline where they dissolve! However, this mystery self-resolves when we take into account that when I AM descends, it suffuses infinite consciousness into the midline that then absorbs all the tides.
At this evolutionary stage, we integrate the tides so we will no longer perceive them.
Remember, Dynamic Stillness or I AM is unexpressed potency ... it is pure potential. It is prior to, primordial, or the not yet emanated, and therefore, it is unexpressed infinite pure consciousness. Jung calls I AM the Self, the Higher Self, or Purusha, which is the Vedic term for the God in us.
If we are capable of waiting (Be Still) within infinite stillness at I AM for no reason ... we just wait ... this becomes a Sacred Repose ... eventually, the infinite potency of the Absolute, or Dynamic Stillness is pulled inward by the SA Node of the heart and infinite consciousness descends and implodes into my midline, which in turn, implodes the infinite potency of consciousness within all my cells. This is known as enfleshment.
I then enjoy enfleshment, which is a whole body-felt all-cell realization that reunites the so-called two infinities, the vast cosmic infinity and the infinitesimal cellular infinity become one infinity. I say 'reunites' because the moment we suffered our first Core Wound, it created in us a sense of separation from wholeness. This is how the ego emerged, and then it separated us perceptually from infinity, or wholeness. The sense of separation left our consciousness fragmented into a 'me' that feels separate from I AM - which is the infinity of consciousness.
The Buddhists characterize Sutherland's Intelligence as the Unborn Buddha Mind, Prajnaparamita, The Great Black Mother, and the Mother of All Buddhas. She takes into account the Good of the Whole because she is the Wisdom of the Whole. This is from the Heart Sutra:
Body is nothing more than emptiness
emptiness is nothing more than body
The Levels of Potency As Stages of Stillness
If potency did not exist, the intelligence would not influence any domain of consciousness. Here is a formula for potency:
‘x’ amount of potency equals 'y' depth of stillness, that envelopes ‘z’ amount of space, which can influence a particular domain of consciousness
The degree of strength and the influence of the potency of stillness determines its coherence. In other words, coherence defines how expanded and inclusive stillness is, which in turn, defines how vast our consciousness is in which the Intelligence operates.
Let's bring this down in to the practical: my body's potency is personal and limited; yet it’s also connected to infinite transpersonal potency. However, my body doesn’t need infinite transpersonal potency to function, I only need my personal life forces to live 'my' life. Even so, I can access the transpersonal potency whenever I can Be Still.
If we mapped the 5-stages of stillness, which are stages of neutral, here's how the map might look:
The Pre-biodynamic Neutral
This Neutral is a specific local tissue still point.
The Biodynamic Neutral has three stages1. When stillness expands to fill the whole body space and the auric field around the body.
2. When Stillness grows beyond the body & it auric field to the edge of the horizon, which is our known.
3. Then, over the horizon there is infinite eternal stillness - Dynamic Stillness - THE Neutral - I AM.
Post-biodynamic NeutralThis neutral includes THE Neutral - Dynamic Stillness. A post-biodynamic Neutral emerges after I AM implodes infinite consciousness into all our cells. Then, we can sense the SA Node emanate a Sacred Pulse of the Spanda (Becker), which we call Pure Breath of Love that is emanated by every cell in tandem with the SA Node emanation. In other words, with every SA Node emanation, the Love that creates all that is pulses in every cell.
Q — For a lack of better descriptive terms, is the long tide the first degree of separation of consciousness from the infinite potency of Dynamic Stillness?
A — Yes, the long tide emanation is the beginning of our separateness from our Source Potency, Dynamic Stillness, I AM. Long tide is the luminous domain of the Archetypes, which Jung says is the realm of the higher, transpersonal Self. The long tide therefore, is an Archetypal, cosmic, transpersonal, luminous domain of the Deity — I AM, Self, Purusha, Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Virgin Mary, Sophia, Prajnaparamita, Sacred Geometry, Music of the Spheres, and so on.
The Deities are universal Archetypes that possess the blueprint templates for creation - the luminous geometric shapes and tonalities that are responsible for creating all form that is manifest in creation. These archetypes contain specific qualities that are necessary to create whatever form that is being manifest. Keep in mind, that the Infinite Absolute Potency of Dynamic Stillness is 'not yet' manifest - it is primordial, or prior to manifestation. In the Vedas, it is 'The One' with nothing yet manifest.
To create any form, such as a human body, Dynamic Stillness emanates infinite potency as step-down modifications of separation. First, the un-manifest infinite stillness emanates a step-down that is cosmic - as tonal archetypal luminous geometric shapes that we call the template of wholeness or the blueprint in long tide. This is the first emanation, or, as you say the first separation from the wholeness of infinity, which is the domain of the Self, I AM, infinite Pure Un-manifest Consciousness. Here, in this first emanation, is a luminous-tonal domain where the blueprint template create all things in our universe. Long tide emanates tonal, cosmic, luminous, archetypal, geometric shapes, which posses corresponding tones, colors, and qualities that self-modify in a 'step-down' manner to create the formative forces. Which then creates all the specific fluid-metabolic forms of function that, in turn, manifests the specific physical creations of anatomy. Blechschmidt, the embryologist, discovered and characterized this fluid realm as the domain of the biodynamic processes that create function that then create the anatomy. He sank the "structure creates function" boat.
Let's go back to the Archetypes. They hold the Original Idea - the original template - of each created form. The Sacred Geometry emanates the tonal template information for the creation and manifestation of a particular form, such as a human being. Again, to do this, the template self-modulates in a step-down fashion. Swedenborg mapped this step-down modification process quite well, which deeply influenced Dr. Sutherland and shaped his and Becker's biodynamic transmission (See Stillness Touch p 220).
Let's recycle and put this another way. First there is the un-manifest Absolute Dynamic Stillness, and then there's a transpersonal emanation of the luminous-tones that carry the original templates, which become personalized into a fluid tidal breathing subtle body. Here, the fluid potency creates a fluid body that contains the fluid within the fluid, which creates all the metabolic fields of function that create all the anatomy of the human body.
Let's briefly dive into the creation of the personal body based on Blechschmidt's findings, using som of his biodynamic terminology (in italics).
After conception, the potency of the subtle body emanates and suffuses the fluid body that manifests what Sutherland calls the fluid within the fluid, which then becomes the formative forces inside the embryo. The formative forces create and direct the developmental movements that create the forming functions that create the metabolic fields that create the anatomy, which is highly influenced by the 'given.’
What is the 'given?' It is a combination of everything in our personal history/biography that 'colors' the unerring potency along its journey of step-down modification into form. For example, my 'given' includes my environment, my metabolic, genetic, parental, dietary, social, and cultural ancestral lines - all that combines, and in nine months it becomes "Charles."
Sometime before or after my birth, a pivotal event can crucially modify my sense of bodily union with the potency. When this occurs it is known as my first Core Erotic Wound (Eros is a term in depth psychology that means life force, or will).
The Core Wound is an event that we suffer that is so painful it creates our first core sense of separation from our potent life forces (Eros) and from the infinite potency. What separated off? An aspect of our being fragmented to become a sense of a separate self, my ego, ... 'me.'
Depth psychology defines the Core Erotic Wound as anything we experience that is so painful that we feel separated from our potency, life force, chi, or Eros. Separation from our Eros marks the moment that the ego-based personality emerges, which is shaped by our specific Core Wound event.
The ego is my separate sense of a self
that feels forever disconnected
and separate from Eros & I AM
The ego then traps and limits our consciousness, preventing it from expanding, and that is how we get into trouble: we get stuck in the endless cycles of suffering (samsara) because after our first Core Wound, the ego vows to never again surrender control to the infinite Intelligence, the I AM. Ego also prevents us from walking our Grail Journey to integrate our shadows that emerged from our Core Wounds. The Grail Journey can lead us back to Wholeness. Why does the ego refuse to surrender control?
Because the ego’s job is to separate, so the ego is terrified of union. Also, since the ego is a reactivity, it expresses recoils anytime life does not go ‘my’ way.
In other words, when the Tao - the universal way that all of life unfolds - manifest in a way that is at odds with the way that my ego thinks life should express, I feel discomfort, and the ego avoids discomfort at all costs by recoiling us away from it.
The ego co-opts the nervous system to marshal its fight, flight, and freeze recoils to control our consciousness. Then, the ego directs our will (Eros) to get whatever we can from life for selfish gain.
Ego behaves opposite to what the Buddhists call right action, which is based on an inner guidance that comes from the felt-sense of the Good of the Whole.
When under the control of the ego, I behave only for the good of me.
Our modern apocalyptic times seem to be a wake-up call to 'walk your Grail Journey' and 'integrate your shadows' to free consciousness from the control of the ego, the nervous system, and the Superego.
We begin our walk on this journey by strengthening our consciousness that empowers our will ... for as long as it takes ... because how important is it to realize utter freedom, as our second birth into an utter reunion with the All?
So back to your point, the long tide is the first emanation from infinite stillness and therefore, it is the first degree of a sense of separation from I AM, the Dynamic Stillness, which is un-manifest, infinite Pure Consciousness.
Q — Is our journey back to wholeness and oneness, then, to be more in connection with this infinite stillness as the Source potency?
A — Exactly, and the challenge we face is how to not be controlled by the strategies of the ego and Superego? Our sense of a separate self also can dwell in the cosmic luminosity as a Superego. Remember when you asked is the long tide the first degree of separation? Well, the Superego accompanies that first emanation out of the Dynamic Stillness!
Even in the transpersonal domains, we have a Superego that can co-opt the infinite potency that emanates in the luminous realms of our subtle consciousness.
The Superego recoils our transpersonal consciousness - the Self - away from our union with Wholeness.
When the Superego becomes megalomaniacal, we believe 'I am God' when we have not realized it!
This is not a lived body-felt realization, it is a virtual realization created by the Superego inside the ascending planes of consciousness.
This classic Superego misperception is taught by the Biodynamic Cranial Approach schools.
Let's return to the personal ego, to understand that it recedes in the background when we dwell in the luminous domains, but ego is in the forefront in the fluid domains and into the tissues. It is obvious that personally we do not have as much strength of potency as does the cosmic luminous potency. In the cosmic ascending domains of consciousness, rather than the ego being in control, it is the Superego that co-opts our transpersonal powers (Siddhis) and misuses them for its own self-serving purposes.
If you ask ego & Superego
'for whom does the Grail serve?'
Its answer is 'me.'
Going deeper into separation, we can appreciate that the potency of the everyday 'me,' the ego, is diminished in its influence relative to the potency of the transpersonal Self.
The way out of this predicament is to go within and repose there, which is an ancient spiritual practice called Pratyahara.
Pratyahara is the practice of consciously dwelling within amid a deep inner repose. When we practice dwelling within regularly, it liberates our subtle body from the ego's control. Consciousness will naturally expand - as potency - from the midline that then suffuses the potency into our flesh, which extends potency around the body and slightly beyond into our auric field as a whole unit. This liberates our consciousness and returns the body to its natural state, which is called Criatura.
Criatura is the state of the body that existed prior to any Core Wound events that we endured as young children. Our Core Erotic Wound is a microcosmic event that reflects the macrocosmic fall of human consciousness that banished all humanity from accessing Criatura, our original state of Edenic bodily unity with The All.
Core Wounds are so painful that they separate consciousness from our body, our Eros, nature, infinity, and love.
Subsequent recoils that arise from our Core Wound create a stronger ego that vows to maintain its separating recoils to keep us from realizing oneness.
Ego is afraid it will get hurt again
if it gives up control and surrenders
Details of the process of transmutation that arise by navigating your Grail Wound are in my book Stillness Touch Union of Body and Love Chapter 7.
After we experience a Core Wound, the ego will maintain an unconscious psycho-somatic vow, something like "I vow to avoid feeling the excruciating pain of my Core Wounds."
This vow expresses specifically according to our 'given' in each of us. By example I might say "I’m never going to surrender into infinity because that is where the horrible, painful wound occurred to me when I was three. I vow to do everything I can to make sure that the wound is not going to happen to me ever again."
The vow is not verbal, it is a subconscious subtext that is always running in our psycho-physical background. It manifests as a hypervigilance by which the ego maintains control over our will by using strategies that recoil our consciousness from infinity (the potency). Recoils cause unnecessary suffering, which the Buddhists call Samsara.
Recoils are held somatically in the deep unconscious wordless layers of our flesh. Recoils are survival mechanisms that protect us as young children. However, as adults, these subconscious recoils keep us separate from the Whole.
To become free of the recoils, we have to bring them to our inner consciousness.
If we desire to evolve consciousness beyond the separating strategies of the ego’s recoils, we have to be willing at each stage of the evolution of consciousness to be present to the intense pain amid any of the recoils, even if they seem unbearable!
Recoils are reactivities of a narcissistic ego
Recoils are held by the soma deep in the cells
For example, unwinding is a Recoil
Q — What is unwinding?
I know ... osteopaths have no idea what unwinding is because I ask osteopaths in every class I teach, and they do not know what it is. Osteopaths do not learn unwinding, neither did I. Unwinding was not even mentioned during my decade of Sutherland cranial trainings. Then, in the early 90's I took the Upledger's Somato Emotional Release (SER), and later the Milne training.
Unwinding (SER) is a series of visible tissue motions in the body. Tissue motion reveals our personal akashic record of the past, our history or biography. Just like the circles of a tree, or the carbon dating of minerals, our past can be 'read' in the cranial wave motions that dwell inside our tissues.
Unwinding is a recoil that discharges potency from the body
Unwinding is not therapeutic; it is a subconscious, visible bodily re-enactment of our history of the recoils we expressed in the past as our cranial wave motion patterns in reaction to stress. If we carefully observe unwinding, we can see exactly how a person's body is being neurologically-driven by the ego to express - as visible discharges - the various unconscious recoil patterns that repeat themselves over and over. The typical recoils to stress are fight, flight, and freeze.
For example, we might see unwinding in a person who avoids feeling discomfort, intensity, intimacy, to avoid the potency, to avoid the tides, to avoid union with I AM, to avoid the descent of consciousness, to avoid our Grail Journey, and most importantly to avoid the tender love of Divine Feminine Presence in our body.
As mentioned, Upledger introduced unwinding to the cranial bodywork field. Hugh Milne also teaches it. I say bodywork field.
I have never met a DO who has experienced or seen unwinding!
Prague Unwinding
That is why I was so horrified to see unwinding in my Prague 2022 classes.
Even the group's organizer, a cranial teacher was unwinding during Stillness Touch session exchanges!
I asked some students 'why is there unwinding in class?' I learned that the teacher, who organized my Prague classes, teaches her students to unwind to realize a "second birth."
Four people unwind one person to simulate going through the birth canal and realize a second birth!
Unwinding is a pre-biodynamic functional cranial wave technique
It has no place in a biodynamic group field,
and in a post-biodynamic group field
unwinding amounts to unethical conduct
Q — Why is unwinding unethical in biodynamics and post-biodynamics?
A — Because of practice boundaries. Let's put practice boundaries into a perspective relative to unwinding as a medical, therapeutic modality.
Unwinding is appropriate in a medical pre-biodynamic functional cranial group field.
In a non-medical biodynamic session, unwinding uses up the potency to fuel its motions, which shuts down the neutral, so that's the end of a biodynamic session.
If unwinding occurs in a post-biodynamic session, it is unethical conduct on behalf of the practitioners' Superego.
Such behavior delves into the dark mysteries of the Psychotic Core, which is a complex in each of us that is connected to our Core Evil. Without going into detail of the dark mysteries that are practiced by people who are driven by Core Evil - which Steiner beautifully characterizes - I'll just share a couple examples of the misuse of the dark mysteries.
I know of a Guru who instructed his villagers to notify him when someone was dying. Once notified, he would go and sit by the bedside of that dying person and drink their potency that was being discharged during the death process!
If you sense deeply into what unwinding is, you will know it is a similar process. Unwinding is a series of bodily recoils that discharge the potency out of the body. Unwinding, therefore, discharges the Divine Feminine Sacred Energy of Love. This Kundalini can be appropriated by a needy practitioner during unwinding. That is why it is unethical to unwind in post-biodynamic session.
Another example is when a cranial teacher pretends to be a guru. The same phenomena occurs in the group field: the teacher, like a vampire, drinks up the potency as Eros that is discharged by the students' adoration of the guru-cranial teacher. Why? Because the "disciples" project their life force or Eros onto the "teacher-guru" who drinks it!
Steiner characterizes that this kind of behavior originates from the Beast, which emerges whenever someone has given over the control of their Soul to the dark side.
Q — Can you take me on Sutherland's cranial journey?
A — Sure. As my book Stillness characterizes it, Sutherland's impulse led him on an evolutionary journey from a medical pre-biodynamic to a non-medical biodynamic cranial practice.
Pre-biodynamic
The brain creates a holographic script that records of all our interfaces with many aspects of our existence: infinity, the cosmic luminosity, the fluids, our Core Erotic Wounds, and all life events that affected our body's functioning. The limbic system records each psycho-emotional component of every painful event we endure and by encoding them digitally. This encoding weaves holographic inertial patterns into our body’s ground substance and flesh. The phrase ‘biography becomes biology’ refers to the process by which the cranial wave patterns are an exact digital recording of our past. So, practically speaking, anytime life does not go ‘my way’ that event is an interference pattern that is recorded into our flesh as the cranial wave (CW).
Biodynamic
In contrast to the cranial wave, in the fluid flow are the fractal patterns of life force that unfold in the present moment. When the fluid flow interfaces with the digital record of the past (CW), this is called the given. To access fluid flow, the ego has to give up its terror of ‘what’s going to happen if I give up my controlling strategies of recoil?’
The challenge is to remain present amid the particular recoils within each domain of consciousness. However, this practice is unbearably uncomfortable to the ego.
People who say that accessing the ebb and flow of fluid tide is no big deal are suspect; I doubt they have enjoyed an actual living encounter.
It is a big deal for an ego who is terrified to give up control. When the ego lets go of the steering wheel of control, takes the foot off the gas pedal and brakes, and hands over the keys to something it has no idea about, meaning the ego does not know what it is, or what’s going to happen, that degree of letting go of control takes an act of faith, and a real heart courage for the ego to surrender to the unknown.
But after the ego surrenders, the whole body shifts and Criatura is born — and here is the analogy that Dr. Sutherland used to characterize this process: when all the fulcra are in synchrony, the body enjoys a sensuous seamless fluid like free-flow in which the anatomy moves in synchrony with the fluids like seaweed in the ocean that wells and recedes amid the tidal activity from the potency of the entire ocean.
Literally, everything in the body expresses synchronous motion. This state is called the neutral, which is the door - the fulcrum - that allows the infinite Intelligence inside our body, which significantly influences and harmonizes the body's functions, which then shifts the structures of the body to more balanced relationships.
Infinity knows the exact sequence that will bring the 'next' separated part back to the next aspect of the whole. I am referring to the parts that fragmented and were separated from the whole, due to the unbearable pain of the core wound, whatever the core wound event is.
The Intelligence goes about its “inherent treatment plan” without the practitioner being involved in the treating. Whole-making is a fluid conversation without words. This is a big deal.
Q — Why?
A — Because this neutral is the portal that frees the spirit, giving it ultimate freedom from the ego’s strategies of control and recoil.
One crucial aspect to take into account while offering Stillness Touch is we do not orient to anatomy.
Q — I don't understand what you mean, why would I not orient to anatomy?!
A — First, anatomy contains mostly inertia and too little potency. And second, anatomy is at least five-steps removed from the Source Potency.
The Source is the un-manifest Dynamic Stillness, and next, there is the potency of the cosmic luminosity, and then the potency of the fluid flow, and its functions, and finally, there’s the potency in the anatomy, which is diminished and distorted in various degrees by the given of our biography.
From the point of view of a post-biodynamic offering of Stillness Touch, orienting to anatomy is an efferent act that recoils our awareness away from the potency of Wholeness.
In other words, if we feel the anatomy with our hands and let that information guide our Stillness Touch sessions, then we depend on the inertial forces from the given to be in charge, which automatically recoils our awareness from potency and wholeness!
That is why in Stillness Touch we are guided by Dynamic Stillness, the source potency that contains 100% potency and zero inertia.
The subsequent step down modifications of the infinite potency contains increasing degrees of inertia ... with the most inertia in the anatomy. Swedenborg, Russel, Blechschmidt, Becker, and many other osteopaths who carry the flame of Sutherland’s non-doing biodynamics thoroughly understand this step-down process (Read Stillness Touch Union of Body and Love Appendix 3).
Q — Do you believe there is a potent and intelligent nature in the body. And if yes, then how is this potent and intelligent nature transmitted in the body?
A — Am I happy you asked that question. Emanation arises during neutral touch. Stillness Touch is the medium by which potency and its intelligence convey the template of wholeness that suffuse fractal formative forces of health into the body's flesh.
The fluid flow fractals impact the ground substance in our bodies. The ground substance is a liquid crystal connective tissue matrix in our bodies that is intelligent and living. The CSF and Ground substance are the mediums by which the fractal information emanated from the source potency reaches the cells.
Local fluid potency arises from the intelligence that is inside the body and surrounds it, which then conveys fractal information from the ground substance to every cell in the body and organelle inside the cells.
Then, every organelle inside each cell responds to the fractal information. The response is by emanating specific information through the smallest nerves, vascular, and lymphatic channels that are the connecting units throughout the whole body. The whole body intercommunicates through these units via the ground substance, which is a living, liquid crystal fluid matrix. Blechschmidt, Pischinger, and Oschman have written magnificent treaties on the interface between the body and the ground substance. Buhner, Chilton-Pierce, and the Vedas credited the heart field as the conductor of this entire process.
The ground substance is our personal physical matrix of the non-physical ‘not yet’ substantive ground substance matrix that pervades our environment. The atmospheric matrix is the Gaia that permeates our surroundings and which receives the potency of the infinite ground substance of Dynamic Stillness. All emanation in creation occurs by a kind of ground substance, except there’s no flesh involved in infinite potency.
Flesh becomes increasingly more substantive and material after the cosmic luminosity emanates the template of wholeness that, in the fluid domain, becomes the forming functions that create the physical body. The infinite, invisible fluid within a fluid substance becomes literally, a substantial, physical, measurable, nameable substance inside the body that is called the ground substance, which the mother of the body.
Q — So this is a continuum.
A — A seamless continuum, yet with a self-reflective consciousness that gives us the capacity to discern each step-down stage of creation that begins from a nothing to a body that has suffered karma, or a biography. When consciousness expands beyond the physical ground substance and our physical flesh, we encounter a subtle fluid ground substance, that we call the fluid body potency that then evolves until it can meet the vast, cosmic luminous tonal ground substance, which touches infinity and spills into an utter union with the nothingness. This is the Absolute Potency of Dynamic Stillness.
Once Dynamic Stillness descends our midline and implodes into our cells, Pure Breath of Love arises as a mysterious fluid magma-like, black, blazing substance that unites all things on a higher order of coherence, which means it is infinitely more inclusive because it is spiritualized matter. This is the second birth.
After the infinite potency of Dynamic Stillness implodes into all the cells of our bodies, which occurs after we utterly surrender everything, including the higher Self, then we enter the Mystery.
This is the domain of freedom, where matter is re-spiritualized. Body permanently returns to Criatura, its original Edenic state before the fall. This is an indescribable paradoxical domain that unites the infinite potency-luminous-fluid-material as one. The quality we sense is lava or magma-like, a super-substance that is simultaneously infinite, boundless, never ending, not mappable, and it is limited and personal.
When this mysterious infinite, luminous, fluid, black-magma substance connects to the physical ground substance, it will enflesh Pure Breath of Love into all the cells.
Here, you realize that every cell in your body is an absolutely conscious, seamless, transparent vessel that is not separate from infinity, your consciousness, or anything in creation. You feel completely and irrevocably reconnected from beyond infinity to each organelle of every cell. But the CSF and the ground substance, for us, is our medium for this enfleshment of Pure Breath of Love that emanates from beyond as a cellularly-imploded Dynamic Stillness.
Q — When we are in the infinite and it’s coming towards us, is it more in an electromagnetic matrix or in the electric field realm?
A — Are you speaking about the long tide, or are you talking about the Pure Breath of Love, which emanates after the realization of a cellular-imploded Dynamic Stillness?
Q — Both, from what you are saying, it sounds like there is a condensation where you begin with something and it condenses down into something else.
A — Exactly, it is a step down modification process that condenses consciousness and shifts it in stages of descent that condensates toward becoming matter as the body. This process originates as a Mysterious ‘something’ that is infinite, and through a co-breathing process, or suffusion between the cells and beyond infinity and back ad-infinitum, the body is made.
You are the fulcrum for this entire process of whole making
You are not the center, that’s how the ego and Superego co-opts infinite consciousness, but we co-participate in a co-breathing manner in the evolution of consciousness, what I call the enfleshment of Pure Breath of Love.
In Chapter 9 of my book Stillness, I called it Pure Breath of Life; years later I changed to Pure Breath of Love. Pure Breath of Love is an emanation that creates and includes everything: matter, fluidity, cosmic luminosity, absolute potency, and there's something additional that remains a Mystery.
There is no way for the ego to understand the Mystery because it is a uniting substance that, literally, unites everything. When your consciousness is trapped by and under the control of the ego, the self-sense separates everything. In contrast, when consciousness ascends, expands past infinity, and then chooses to descend into the body's cells, consciousness encompasses the Whole.
This is what is meant by the body is whole at infinity
At infinity, consciousness appreciates its entire spectral nature, ranging from a limited recoiling ego, to beyond infinite potency, both of which are aspects of the mysterious substance of Pure Breath of Love.
In Dzogchen "the view" is our seat, or disposition, which includes not only Pure Breath of Love, the infinite, unnamable Dynamic Stillness, the cosmic luminous, and the fluidic, it also includes the body, and the given with a limited ego and all its recoils.
Paradoxical inclusiveness is a fundamental characteristic of Pure Breath of Love
The felt-sense of Pure Breath of Love its experienced as a spectral range of paradoxical qualities such as exquisite subtlety and density; for example, a pulsing, flowing, lava-like liquid molten rock, or magma. Meanwhile, our consciousness is reposed in a cellular infinity amid imploded black Dynamic Stillness that is a permanent seal of protection, ... and all this is realized simultaneously. We realize seamlessness unity, or wholeness when consciousness knows its full spectral nature as the Consciousness of the Whole.
Q — Pure Breath of Love is like the glue.
A — Yes, the glue, the continuity that unites us with the All. Beyond infinity is the paradox: nothing is substantive, yet it all has substance. Jung uses the Gnostic term Pleroma for this domain. Pure Breath of Love is a paradoxical realization that is substantive and nothing, and yet it is everything, as well as none of that ... all at once.
When our consciousness dwells here, we see no problem with paradox, but when consciousness is intoxicated by the ego, this disposition is infuriating because the ego can’t go here, and the brain can’t either. The brain can’t even truly appreciate the neutral, the fluid flow, or the domain of cosmic luminosity where the mind is kind of gone.
When I say brain, I mean the efferent vigilant nervous system that does not possess the coherence to access the domains of consciousness that are beyond the digital patterns of inertia, such as the neural, the fractal fluid flow, the cosmic luminous space of the Archetypes, which emanates from the infinite Dynamic Stillness to manifest creation.
Q — From the Pure Breath of Love descending into more substantial form, at what point do we create photons and phonons?
A — I think these particles begin in seed, or causal form, in the cosmic luminous domain that emanates the music of the spheres, which are the pure tones that become the luminous Platonic solids, which are the original, geometric, archetypal seed shapes of the elements that form all the fractal patterns of life.
Q — The Sacred Geometry.
A — Yes, Sacred Geometry, the luminous tonal emanations of Plato’s solids, which are the five fundamental geometrical shapes that represent each of the five elements. Geometric Archetypal vibratory emanations possess luminous, electro-bio-magnetic qualities. Its spectral aspects include tone, luminosity, geometric shape, color, polarity, and multidimensional micro-fractals that combine as one to sensuously impact anything they interface with, for example, my body.
The realm of the Archetype holds the blueprint Template that manifests the luminous, the fluid, and material realms
Tonal, luminous emanations exhibit primordial shapes that interface with the subtle fluidic realm to create a more substantive matter. The subtle fluid within the fluid domain receives the Template as an energetic blueprint. This blueprint contains the precise geometric tones and shapes necessary to become the metabolic forming fields that, as developmental movements, become functions, which, in turn, creates the anatomy. If the template could speak, it might say ‘I am the template of wholeness and perfect health; I also have this being’s 'given' so now I will combine them together to make Charles.’
The templates are in the long tide domain which interfaces with the subtle fluidic realm, that then becomes the fluid tide that creates the developmental movements. This interface may be the point at which the protons, electrons, and neutrons arise, condense, and mix to form chemicals. The chemistry is a polar mix of genes, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins, and all else, that alchemically combine to create substances. The substances combine and become functions. Anatomy then arises to serve those functions — as organs, structures, and tissues that make a human body.
Backtracking, ... at conception there are influences that pour in from the mother, father, and ancestors, along with the cultural history that condition the body-making process at the genetic level, which becomes the unique emanation of creation, called Charles. Conditioning may happen before conception, but I don’t know anything about that. In nine months, Charles pops out of the womb, and after 19 years of life on earth, he receives a single cranial session that expanded his consciousness for 30 days and studies cranial work for the rest of his life.
Q — This is so awesome!
This is almost exactly my meditation last weekend.
I was looking at how we have a blueprint in the electromagnetic realm that starts as this universal Qi, and as it comes closer, it starts to condense down to become my auric envelope, which is a bit denser than the Qi of the world, and then it goes through the layers of my auric envelope as a potential. The first form that it creates is water, and water is the purest, primal form of the potential of the Qi that has now been turned into potency. Everything created in our body is a further densification or condensation of this water. I think the first substance created from the water is the cerebrospinal fluid. If there is any way we could go back to the embryo and look at the first fluid that was created in the embryo, I wonder if it is cerebrospinal fluid. From there, the cerebrospinal fluid densifies a bit more and makes the blood. As the blood starts to flow, it flows in a vortical pattern and collects mesenchyme around it to create vessels. The pressure inside the vessels increases, and they start to turn on themselves to make the heart. It’s the blood that pumps the heart, and the heart perpetuates the vortex flow of the blood.
A — That’s brilliant! I feel that you’re spot on because the heart isn’t just a muscle that pumps blood, the heart’s pacemaker cells emanate a pulsing field that orchestrated the process that makes the body before the physical heart was created! Blechschmidt taught that function creates the structure, not the other way around. The eBook Missing Glossary goes into this process in detail, but here’s a synopsis:
In the early stages of the embryo before anatomy has formed, the pacemaker cells from the splanchnic mesoderm migrate to corona radiata in the periphery of the embryo and surrounds it. Once the first pacemaker cell starts to pulse, the remaining pacemaker cells entrain to its tempo and they all pulse in synchrony as one pulse. The cumulative emanation from all the pacemaker cells creates a single potent pulsing field into the embryo that emanates from the periphery toward the center. The vortical movement in the protoplasm emanated from the periphery carve channels in the protoplasm, and in those channels a circulation system develops before there are blood vessels. You characterized the process so beautifully, I won’t say anymore, but details on the SA Node are my eBook The Missing Glossary.
It’s not necessary to retain the anatomical in the forefront, we let it repose in the background, because visualizing anatomy becomes an impediment while offering Stillness Touch, so we don’t orient to any anatomy. The study of anatomy provides a context through which we can peer into how consciousness journeys from infinity into the cells and back to infinity to create a human body. We can appreciate this seamless process that begins as nothing, becomes something, and returns to nothing.
Again, the Buddhist Heart Sutra characterizes this process as follows: "Body is nothing more than emptiness, emptiness is nothing more than body."
The study of anatomy on the level of detail can ignite Intuitions that emerge as flashes of insight during a meditation, dreams, or sessions. When an Intuition emerges, I would dig into the ancient spiritual traditions and the new science to find support for the inspirations. Not that I think religion or science is the end all and be all. Yet, spiritual study helps to verify that the ancient cumulative wisdom backs you up. On the other hand, if we speak from this non-science spiritual domain exclusively, it might not make sense to a person who does not have access to the subtle domain of consciousness. To make it accessible, we have to put some clothes on these non-physical inspirations, dress them up with a little outfit so it fits in a context that a brain can understand, because the realization of the non-physical domains is far beyond the brain’s capacity.
For example, both Swedenborg and Russel developed a step-down modification model of creation that helps the ego relax, which, in turn, opens a portal for transmission from the infinite to the body (For details read Stillness Touch Union of Body and Love 218-224).
The Qi aspect of your question is answered by the original ancient Chinese acupuncturists who offered non-medical acupuncture. In the book Rooted in Spirit: The Heart of Chinese Medicine, the author introduces Shen, which translates to Spirit. This is the highest Qi in the human body, and it connects to the infinite Qi that creates all things. The Shen emanates essence from our heart field into the world.
In my eBook Beyond Stillness, I offer some ancient spiritual tradition practices that recognize the SA Node, or pacemaker, as the source point that emanates an infinite field of self-existing radiance. Stillness Touch practitioners who repose in the SA node are supported by the ancient spiritual traditions along with the millions of meditators who practice Pratyahara and have meditated for billions of hours over thousands of years. That means we’re not alone as an isolated group of crazies who practice Stillness Touch as a spiritual path for the evolution of consciousness.
Dr. Sutherland transmitted his spiritual insights using Biblical analogies. Dr. Still was inspired to create osteopathy after he felt a strong sensation of being struck by a fist in his back between his shoulders after which three Egyptian Rishis appeared to him and transmitted the holy wisdom of hands-on healing.
I experienced a similar phenomenon twice, once in 1995 and in 2005.
In 1995, while meditating at night after a class in Toronto, a baseball sized space exploded open a doorway in my back between my shoulder blades, which revealed the domain of the Flaming Sacred Heart of the Christ. I had no previous relationship or knowledge of this phenomenon.
Then in 2005, again in the middle of the night, I was abruptly awakened by a loud overwhelming inner tone that possessed a physical density so powerful that it opened the back of my heart that led into an infinite inner-field that conveyed to me Pure Breath of Love, which became Chapter 9 in Stillness Touch.
Dr. Still, the founder of osteopathy, was steeped in the ancient spiritual traditions. Some of the connection was conscious, and some was as an innocent vessel, like his auspicious visit by the Egyptian Holy Rishis.
Many osteopaths teach the perennial wisdom. For example, the Sutherlands expressed the Christian perspective, and they left phrases on their headstones “Be Still And Know I AM” that contains a lifetime of study that epitomizes the biodynamic practice disposition in osteopathy.
There is more to it than the mere understanding of the phrase Be Still and Know I AM, we have to embody the essence of what that phrase really means. What does the capital ‘I AM’ represent, and what does ‘Be Still’ mean ... from both ends of the telescope?
If you ask me about my inquiry, I would extend the Sutherland's phrase to 'Be Still And Know I AM Love' which refers to a Mystery that emanates from midline to beyond infinity and back, which is a glue, a uniting fluid substance that we have been discussing, which I call the Pure Breath of Love.
Q — By saying “I AM” is that not engraining the separation?
A — Yes, only slightly so, but it would be separating if the ego is saying it. Yet, if you say ‘I AM’ as that realization within the long tide — as long tide, then IT speaks as you.
However, the ego must in the background, like a tiny point immersed in an infinite ocean of bliss, ... happy as a pig wallowing in the vast cosmic ocean of luminosity amid unconditional love that is inherent to the long tide. If the ego rears up its separating self-sense and takes over, that's when the Superego can co-opt this process. That occurs when, without the actual realization, I think 'I am God.' Therefore, my disposition is that everything is here to serve me. This is the megalomaniac of the Superego.
Within the domain of I AM, Pure Consciousness, there’s no danger as long as we are mindful that Superego can co-opt it.
‘I AM’-ness is an aspect of who we are, yet it is not the end realization. I AM initiates the possibility of a reborn consciousness, which some traditions call the 'second birth' — which reminds me of Dr. Still who said that the body is the second placenta. It is astonishing how accurate that is, because the second birth occurs inside the body as an implosion of Pure Consciousness in the cells so deep that the body unites with consciousness. The second birth day is when body as consciousness reunites with love in the body and as body: Body As Love
If the Superego co-opts I AM, it will do what it wants to anyone.
I am reminded of the time when Trump asserted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him, that's a great example of the Super ego as megalomaniac.
We see megalomania in politics, in any world leaders, and in religion with the priests, and sadly, we see it in cranial teachers who act like gurus to their students, in classes, and in their cranial schools.
The lack of ethics and the degree of abuse in the biodynamic cranial schools is shocking and horrifying. Therein lies the absolute critical requirement that we drench our realization with ethics and morality, and I don’t mean that from a Bible perspective, but from the perspective of taking into account the good of the whole before we speak or act.
For everything that we desire to do, before we do it, we ask 'is this for the good of the whole or the good of me?'
If we desire to remain steeped in a silent inquiry, we ask ourselves ‘is what I am about to do or say going to serve the whole, or does it serve me (Charles’ ego), who is acting out his wounds to hurt someone else so I can recoil myself further from wholeness?’
If it serves me at the expense of harming others, then I need enough strength of will, Eros, Qi, stillness, neutral, unerring potency, or the Pure Breath of Love to not do or say things that harm others.
It is crucial to remain mindful that all my acts of will impact people, animals, nature, places, situations, even the subtle atmospheric substance of the Gaia in our atmosphere is affected and she can be harmed by my actions. I need the courage to not engage recoiling actions or speak in ways that injure myself or others.
The power of the potency gives us the capacity to be moral beings
In other words, the capacity to take into account the good of the whole, or the good of everybody and everything involved, before we speak or act ... that strength of will is available when we let the potency all the way in until it suffuses our will. Potency is Qi, life force, Eros, which all are words for the will, the power that drives the movement in our body and in our metabolism, which translates into our doing. I appreciate this definition
Love is the unrestricted flow of life force in the body
Love doesn’t only mean the personal, it also includes universal consciousness that can take into account everything.
Q — That’s beautiful, it’s like a fractal of the whole. Do you believe there is a specific tissue, fluid, or field that expresses this potent and intelligent nature in the body?
A — All are included in a specific measure, the potency, breaths, subtle fields, fluids, functions, and the anatomy that is created to serve the functions, are interconnected. Perhaps the specific physical medium where the intelligence transmits the template of the whole to each cell of the body is the ground substance. And if we go deeper into the subtle fluid that impacts the ground substance, we have to explore the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
The CSF is the quintessential physical fluid that emanates a subtle breathing field that distributes the potency, as the fluid within the fluid, from the midline throughout the body.
The source field of the absolute potency is stillness that is beyond infinity that emanates a spiritual fulcrum, an invisible midline that touches the CSF midline, which suffuses a field of potency throughout the body into the fluids, functions, and tissues. The field of potency and its intelligence emanates from the invisible midline of stillness, which impacts the cerebrospinal fluid midline.
Infinite potency of stillness emanates from the SA Node to within the invisible midline, to the cerebrospinal fluid midline, that then emanates a field of potency, which disseminates intelligence to the ground substance. The intelligence possesses the fractal blueprint template information of wholeness that the ground substance then conveys to all the cells into each cells’ midline that inform the organelles.
Based on the information that the intelligence disseminates to all the cells and how each cell responds, it colors the information, which emanates back to the ground substance, which re-informs the fluids, functions, tissues, and the structures.
The function shifts first, and then the form changes to serve the new function, which is classic Blechschmidt.
The ancient spiritual traditions call the invisible midline Sushumna, which correlates with the first physical midline, the notochord, which is the neutral mesoderm. The positive ectoderm and negative endoderm midlines are physical representatives of the Pingala and Ida, respectively. Before mesenchyme becomes mesoderm, it can become any tissue because it is omnipotent.
When the infinite substance of potency touches the personal me, as Charles, it first enters the invisible midline and rays to the cerebrospinal fluid, which then transmits the field of potency with its intelligence as a template of wholeness to the ground substance as fractal information.
The ground substance, if it is still in a liquid state, accurately transmits all the fractal intelligence of the whole to the inside of all the cells. The cells, that are newly informed by the emanation of the potency, respond to the ground substance with information from the cells that re-inform the cerebrospinal fluid midline, to the invisible midline, that in turn, emanates information conveying the status of the cells back to infinity.
The re-informed infinite potency returns to the invisible midline in the body with adjusted information, and so it goes like this as a back and forth suffusion process, which is the co- breathing that creates the mutual evolution between infinity and the body.
This continuous process of co-evolution is infinite, it has no end, so there’s no moment where I’m done evolving
As a brief overview, a co-evolutionary suffusion looks like this:
Infinite potency emanates in a step-down modulation process to inform the cosmic luminous and then the fluid domains that touch my invisible midline, which then rays into the cerebrospinal fluid midline. From there, the potency emanates into the ground substance, which transmits fractal intelligence — the template of wholeness and health — to the cells of my body. The cells, in turn, inspire a response from each cell that re-informs the infinite potency which emanates into the beyond to Pure Breath of Love. The subsequent response from Pure Breath of Love returns to the absolute potency, now re-informed it emanates to my midline, and finally suffuses my cells.
That’s what I meant earlier when I said we are the fulcrum for this co-evolutionary process. The potency of Pure Breath of Love is conveyed to us by the SA node with every heartbeat, that creates an infinite field for this co-evolutionary suffusion process. Kashmir Shivaism calls Pure Breath of Love the Pulse of the Spanda, or the Sacred Tremor, and Swedenborg calls it Tremulation.
With every heartbeat, the pulse of Pure Breath of Love emanates from beyond infinity while simultaneously touching my invisible midline that then rays to the cerebrospinal fluid midline into ground substance to each cellular midline to its organelles.
The cumulative cellular response influences the cerebrospinal fluid midline and the ground substance, all of which changes the fluids, substances, function, and structures of the body, which again touches into the midline of the cerebrospinal fluid ... and the back and forth suffusion within the body occurs inside my heart field emanated by the pulse of the SA node that radiates to beyond infinity as Pure Breath of Love, the Sacred Tremor.
This continual back and forth breathing from infinity to the cell and back .... is intra-personal and transpersonal simultaneously. While reposed in a certain domain of consciousness, let’s say the fluid domain of consciousness or the cosmic luminous domain, these processes have a particular timing, a degree of expansion of consciousness and stillness that is specific to the suffusion process in that domain.
The fluid domain suffuses the whole body and emanates a fluid field that surrounds the body as a fluid within a fluid, whereas the cosmic luminous domain emanates a larger envelope as a cosmic field of consciousness that extends to a particular edge of the known based on each person’s capacity that is determined by their history.
The luminous domain envelopes each person’s known horizon, beyond which the capacity for knowing ends. What you are capable of knowing is based on who you are, and that depends on your history, which enhances your capacity to appreciate expanded fields of consciousness, or not.
Not everybody’s luminous consciousness is the same, and everybody’s fluid flow consciousness differ, nor is everybody’s ground substance the same, and so it goes with the nervous system, brain, spinal cord, cerebrospinal fluid, and the heart — the whole body.
As I said, everything co-breathes in way that is specific to each person, which is exactly how Pure Breath of Love operates in us, so it is a co-evolution (See the 'cake mix analogy' in Stillness Touch Union of Body and Love, page 8).
The capacity to realize the spectrum of consciousness is individual, until we realize infinite Dynamic Stillness in which we are all one consciousness. At Dynamic Stillness, where the first emanation occurs, there’s not a lot of personalization; it’s a transpersonal realm of the Archetype that holds the template of the human form.
It’s individualized but not personalized, there’s a difference between those two terms. Once Dynamic Stillness implodes into the cells, the enfleshment of Pure Breath of Love ignites a process by which infinite beingness unites with our personal qualities and forms a unique expression of love, Charles. The transpersonal Self, that we realize in the cosmic luminous domain, shifts and becomes increasingly more personal amid the step down modification process into the personal fluid domain. The personal domain is colored by our ancestral biography and all the core-wounds that we’ve endured, which marks the point where the condensation of the ego structure occurs. Now we touched into the personal.
Q — How do you work with potency and intelligence in your Stillness Touch practice?
A — I repose with my awareness inside my body space. I back up inwardly toward my invisible midline - but I am not looking for a midline, it’s invisible! I’m not rooting around looking for anything. I inwardly repose with free attention in open space and I wait ... for nothing.
Let’s compare and contrast a medical model practice with Stillness Touch by using an analogy.
When I operate from the normal ego, the separate sense of myself as a 'Charles' who is ego driven, all my senses - eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch, and body-felt sense - direct my awareness efferently recoiling attention outside myself to project onto whatever I objectify. The efferent act of orienting awareness outward objectifies and separates everything into parts.
During a medical-model session, efference separates me from the patient that I am treating. I’m going to do to something to the patient - a cranial contact - to heal them. If my activity is directed by my ego, I first break the wholeness into parts and proceed to treat each part that is not functioning the way I think it is supposed to function, based on my training.
I use efference, objectification, and separation to treat. Like it or not, all that is self-serving. Either it fulfills my desires, or I avoid my fears (See Chart by Kylea Taylor Caregiver Vulnerabilities to Ethical Misconduct on page 250 in Stillness Touch). There are tons of recoils that a practitioner has to watch out for that block our contact with the potency.
There are two glaring examples in osteopathy. 1) Osteopaths are 'doctors' and that is difficult to give up. Also, 2) the DO's hands are highly skilled sensing devices, right? However, do you recall that Sutherland said to get as far away from the physical senses as we can?!
The biodynamic cranial field that is - outside of osteopathy - is not based on the cranial osteopathy that Sutherland taught that I quoted above. The biodynamic craniosacral therapy bodywork founders were trained by Upledger, hence the name. So, their principles, definitions, and practices are a medical treatment model. All these schools teach the same curriculum, which consists of numerous efferent practices that are actually recoils away from the neutral and the potency.
This chart, modified from Stillness Touch Chapter 3, lists the most common practitioner recoils I have observed: CHART
I added more recoils to the chart recently, based on what I witnessed in my Prague classes in May 2022 - these were post-biodynamic Stillness Touch classes, mind you. I saw a lot of people unwinding during sessions! I have not seen unwinding since the late 1990's when I was teaching Hugh Milne's functional cranial sacral work. Unwinding was created by John Upledger, and it is a functional method that efferently discharges energy out of the body under the control of the cranial wave and the nervous system.
When I asked some of the Prague students about the unwinding I saw in the classes, I learned that the Prague 'biodynamic' teacher who organized my classes uses unwinding to rebirth her students.
Four people Unwind one person to simulate going through the birth canal to their second birth!
The other thing I observed in that Prague class was the biodynamic cranial teacher encouraged a co-dependent guru-disciple dysfunctional dynamic that reeked of megalomania.
By contrast to efference demonstrated by the two above examples, if we want to access Wholeness, it requires that our awareness stays within.
In the Vedas, the practice of innerness is called Pratyahara. With Pratyahara, our awareness stays inside our body to connect with the inner Divinity and we commit to reposing inside forever, if necessary ... until there is an implosion in the cells that unites our consciousness with the Divine within.
When consciousness naturally wells and expands, we connect with the so-called outer Divinity. Whereas, there’s no separation in Divine consciousness, it is all unity. That’s the practice I’ve taught since the beginning of my Dynamic Stillness School, and I use the term Pratyahara to key people into keeping the awareness inside, which is an ancient practice that’s at least ten thousand years old. The innerness in Christianity is called the Sophia, the wisdom of the body, that reunites the parts with the whole.
When I orient my awareness inside, I’m not a separate ‘me’ who is looking outward to find something separate from me 'out there' to gratify me, or to recoil me away to avoid my discomfort with potency. Instead, my awareness withdraws from the periphery, stays inward, and reposes in my central core midline of stillness - however large that inner-body space may be, which is based on where my consciousness might be abiding, i.e., what domain I repose in. I sense the qualities that are inside my inner-body space. That's all. The qualities inform me to remain on a contact or move to another.
Remember, I consider that the body extends from the midline to past infinity and back. So it could be that the domain in which I am reposing inwardly is beyond infinity or, it could be that I am suffering a Core Wound memory in my tissue-self at this moment as a narcissistic ego. Either way, the practice is the same: BE STILL.
In a Stillness Touch session, regardless of the domain of consciousness that is present, I repose in my inner body space, inward towards the midline, and sense what’s here. Repose means I give up any need to know or control anything, and I refrain from naming events, or objectifying the person I am touching.
I also am not doing anything ‘to’ the recipient, such as treat, heal, eliminate symptoms, or assist them with the evolution of consciousness. Instead, I leave that to the presence of stillness, ... all I 'do' is Be Still and let be whatever is happening as it is. I leave it as it is. That disposition, is what characterizes the neutral that occurs because I’m being still, (Be Still), which lets the Pure Breath of Love be in charge of the touch.
When Dr. Sutherland asked us to Be Still, he means as a practitioner I’m not controlling the session, I’m not trying to give a treatment, which is an outside force. My presence is aware of the recipient - their breathing and their status yet, I allow the process that’s occurring inside me to guide me to the places I touch, how long I stay there, when I come off, where I touch next. Like that, for the duration of the session.
However long the session is, sensations arise inside me that inform my inner-body space, which instinctually guides me to particular places to touch, not diagnostically, but instinctively. After the session is over, the recipient may choose to share their experiences, if they so desire. Thai is how I gain insight into why the 'Mystery' led me to touch places in a particular sequence. That's what I mean by the last phrase of the fundamental disposition of neutral 'in don't know'
I don’t know the sequence of touch ahead of time, the place I touch comes while I’m touching. In the old days, when I was doing biomechanical or functional work, I thought I knew what was going on when I touched someone. I had a treatment plan, for example, a sutural sequence, or I had a cranial wave sequence, or whatever.
In the biodynamics that Sutherland left us, we don’t use our hands to sense, there is no motion testing, no treating, or using of a sequence, and ... we have idea of what we’re doing next.
Not that you don’t know what you are doing; you just don’t have any idea ahead of time what you are going to touch next.
You know how to be present in the now and Be Still.
It’s in the now-ness of Be Still, and your willingness to not engage efferent activity that objectifies and separates yourself from the potency and from the client, and then you yield the ego and surrender it to the Pure Breath of Love to let it be in charge.
This entire process occurs naturally when you orient inside, which connects with the inner potency inside you. It is the inner potency and intelligence that moves you to touch places. Each time a person reports their experiences, you get to appreciate the incredible intelligence that is beyond your own that led you to touch the areas that you touched.
That's Sutherland's unerring potency, which possesses Intelligence that Dr. Sutherland considered to be uncanny because it manages the session by itself without my adding any outside force.
Returning to the medical model, by engaging efference I am the outside force who is adding something to a patient!
If I want to practice biodynamics the way Dr. Sutherland taught, then I let the Pure Breath of Love do everything.
Sutherland publicly presented this radical non-doing, non-medical approach to touch in 1948. He said that we do not have to motion test the sphenoid, or pre-determine a treatment plan.
Stillness Touch honors Sutherland's respect for the Mystery that is in charge of a session. The Mystery is most potent when the session is a mutual process in which the person on the table and I behold the session time as a communion, that through neutral touch, ignites the entrainment process. Entrainment is a silent conversation without words that occurs between the client's inner-body potency and intelligence and the inner-body wisdom and potency inside me. If I stay inward, rested back, and reposed in my inner body wisdom, then I am led along a series of contacts that do not arise from training, treatment skills, or agenda.
Q — If it is not intuitive work, we can land in the separate ego state, whereas if we sit in repose in the universe it’s just all there. Have you explored fluid research in any of the scientific disciplines?
A — I studied the ground substance work by Pischinger Matrix and Matrix Regulation, Oschman Energy Medicine, Joseph Chilton Pearce The Psychology of Transcendence, Buhner’s Secret Teaching of Plants, Abrams Spell of the Sensuous, and many others ... all those books are excellent. I’ve read hundreds of abstracts, and all of Blechschmidt’s books. He wrote a classic embryology book similar to the ones we’ve all used to study classical embryology.
Blechschmidt observed that the intelligence in the fluids initiates motion as a biodynamic activity. He called the motion in the protoplasmic fluids the developmental motions, which are organized by the tonal templates that end up creating the metabolic fields that create function, not physical forms yet, but the outline or template of the forms, the tonal bioenergetic fluid forms. After the metabolic forming fields fill-in with substances, they materialize to become a particular organ or structure that serves the function that is already there. I studied Blechschmidt, Larrsen, and other embryologists deeply to give me a context for this mystery that we’ve been talking about.
Q — In the end, the mystery has no words.
A — It doesn’t have words, but some want words. Especially students, so we’ve need something to say to them that points to it, this invisible mystery without words. Of course, words are not it, but they point in the direction of it within the listener. When words are spoken from and as the lived experience they become an emanation that can ignite someone to go on their inner journey. Accurate outer research based on phenomenological observation can provide support for sharing the mystery without words.
Q — There are two main schools of thought on how water transmits information — via the structural arrangement of the water molecules or by chemicals that the water carries. Which do you believe to be true?
A — I believe both are partially true and, something mysterious, invisible, and non-physical is the medium for the transmission of information to the water: the potency’s intelligence — what Sutherland called the invisible fluid within the fluid that fills us and pervades the atmosphere. The intelligence of the potency and the intelligence in the water's molecules have a secret conversation without words, which transmits information that affects the behavior of the chemicals. But talking about molecules and chemicals may be putting the horse before the cart: it’s the potency, the invisible potency that powers the intelligence in the water. That’s the same process for anything that’s created, isn’t it? First the potency and then the emanation move the molecules that inform the chemicals to become specific substances that make the particular functions that create structures. Structures emanate information on their status, which re-informs the potency, the invisible fluid within the fluid. It is a call and response dynamic that maintains the harmony.
Below is the Heart Sutra, which is now obvious to you why I put it at the end of my book Stillness Touch:
