Celebrating 52 years circa 1973
The History of the Dynamic Stillness School & Press
In 1973, I was actively on a spiritual path of meditation. One of my fellow meditation practitioners told me about cranial work. Hearing the word cranial was intriguing so I went to the doctor he recommended to receive a cranial session. The results were life changing.
After one biomechanical sutural session
I realized I AM
One session expanded my consciousness to infinity, and I enjoyed the constant bliss of an infinite presence of stillness for 30 days. Note: Presence of Stillness was the original title of my first book Stillness that was published 33 years later.
After one month of abiding in infinite consciousness, it evolved into Sacred Repose. This state recapitulated the consciousness I enjoyed until I was 4 years old, which I longed to regain. As a toddler, I had a constant felt-sense of wholeness as a bodily union with everything, but it suddenly left after a Core Erotic Wound.
The life-changing impact of a single biomechanical cranial sutural session was the seed that gave birth to the Dynamic Stillness School three decades later.
After the Sutherland-based cranial sutural session, I became a devout student of osteopath Dr. DeJarnette who was a direct student of Dr. Sutherland.
I studied and practiced Sutherland's pre-biodynamic medical cranial approaches - biomechanical and functional work - for 23 years. Then, Dr. Sutherland's non-medical biodynamic tides spontaneously emerge in 1995 during cranial sessions. That was the moment I ceased my medical-model cranial practice and teaching. No longer did I offer or abide by the medical code of ethics. Why?
Stillness Touch is a spiritual path that evolves consciousness. By definition, Stillness Touch is not a medical practice because we do not treat people. Hence, the title of my book Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Practice And The Evolution of Consciousness.
Having no prior exposure to biodynamics in 1995, my spontaneous encounters with the tides were overwhelming. I experienced the entire range of the biodynamic path: the neutral as a whole-body stillness, the fluid tide, long tide, and Dynamic Stillness. All this occurred spontaneously during sessions, meditations, and classes with a mutual group field. To integrate these bewildering states of consciousness, I daily sat in meditation with my crown and heart field open toward Dr. Sutherland's essence. I wrote everything down.
You can read the fruits of my meditations, cranial sessions, and teaching of classes in two books:
Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Practice And The Evolution of Consciousness
And e-book Beyond Stillness: Practices For Practitioners.
Both books contain Stillness Practice meditations that I developed from my study of Steiner and ancient spiritual traditions.
My writings convey experiences that occurred in our mutual group field during sessions and classes I taught. Despite having meditated for 25 years prior to 1995, I needed deeper embodiment practices to help me to ground, center, and strengthen my will so I could be with and eventually integrate the unbearable intensity that arose when I contacted the tides.
I subsequently wrote an eBook Beyond Stillness Stillness: Practices For Practitioners to help practitioners embody consciousness as it evolved while practicing Stillness Touch. This eBook contains descending current Stillness Practices that were inspired by Rudolf Steiner, the ancient Vedas, Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, Kashmir Shiva-Shakti Tantric practices, Carl Jung, Saniel Bonder, and Neil Cohen. I combined all their practices into one in e-book Beyond Stillness.
An "Aha" Moment
One morning while sitting in meditation, it dawned on me that
"biodynamic cranial practice evolves consciousness."
That is how the subtitle of my first book Stillness emerged.
It is obvious in 2026 that consciousness evolves whenever we fall from pratyahara into a Sacred Repose inside while enveloped in the biodynamic neutral as whole-body stillness. This is the classic definition of a biodynamic neutral in osteopathy, yet the insight that the neutral evolves consciousness and that the tides and Dynamic Stillness are states of consciousness had 'not yet' permeated the biodynamic cranial field in 1995. I introduced this in the book Stillness Chapters 5-9.
My tidal experiences, along with encounters shared by students, clients, and session exchange partners confirmed that the neutral, the tides, and Dynamic Stillness are specific states of consciousness.
In Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Practice And The Evolution Of Consciousness Chapters 5-8 documents these pre-biodynamic and biodynamic states of consciousness. In Chapter 9, I introduced a post-biodynamic domain. Click here for a CHART.
As mentioned, before its publication in 2006, the material in Stillness came from my biodynamic experiences that I wrote down beginning in 1995 when the tides first emerged. The encouragement of North Atlantic Books Publisher, Richard Grossinger inspired me to publish. But three other events inspired me to craft a book out of my biodynamic class notes.
The first event that inspired my writing of Stillness occurred in the mid-1990's during a pivotal session exchange with a biodynamic osteopath who was a teacher for Dr. James Jealous. Mid-session, we were immersed in a vast luminous radiance, when the D.O. blurted “Charles I’m panicking right now. I don’t know what’s going on or what to do!”
It was obvious that her ego was afraid and was recoiling her away from her powerful encounter. Most likely this was due to a fear of the unknown while she was basking in the vast radiance of long tide. I suggested that she orient her awareness inward without any expectation and sense what is arising within from the neutral disposition of repose. She was also a meditator on the same spiritual path as I, so she was easily able to relax and let her heart open to her overpowering encounter while in Sacred Repose. As the session continued, I enjoyed a life-changing direct inner contact with my Inner Divine Child that has never left me. Jung says that this Divine Child encounter is an experience of the Christ.
My session with the osteopath mentioned above, demonstrated that there was a need for a book like Stillness.
Regardless of one’s biodynamic cranial training or meditation background, the overwhelming power of a tidal encounter can challenge us. When the written word is based on direct inner body-felt experience, it carries the power of a direct oral transmission, which can support a practitioner with being fully present amid intense encounters with neutral, potency, Breath of Life, and Pure Breath of Love.
I cannot count the number of emails I have received from people who profusely thank me for the words in my books. They say, in essence, that my written words reflect their exact inner experiences that they had no words for.
The second thing that inspired me to publish Stillness is the rampant confusion outside of the field of cranial osteopathy. Namely, in the Biodynamic Cranial Approach (BCA) generally and specifically the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) school curriculum.
The BCST school curriculum unforgivably overlays an efferent medical-model upon an explicitly non-medical non-efferent approach that Sutherland gave to osteopaths as biodynamics.
Regardless of what they advertise or what the teachers tell you, the BCST school curriculum is not derived from Sutherland's biodynamic cranial osteopathy. It is the opposite.
I felt an obligation to name that fact in Stillness, and to clarify in one book the precise osteopathic terms and definitions of Dr. Sutherland's three types of cranial practice that were crafted by his inner circle of 15 osteopathic colleagues over many years. Unfortunately, the osteopathic definitions were spread though dozens of books and articles, so I gathered them and put in one place all the definitions with references in Chapter 3 in Stillness.
Finally, I wanted to emphasize in the book Stillness that realizing the biodynamic neutral - as a whole-body stillness - is the fulcrum that opens the portal for embodying biodynamics. I offered specific inner practices to embody the neutral, which deepens to become Sacred Repose. This is not only a spiritual practice, it is a lifestyle, which defines a post-biodynamic journey.
Touch for spiritual evolution is Sutherland's biodynamics, which is the foundation for the Dynamic Stillness School.
Clarifying the precise osteopathic definitions of the three types of cranial practice became more urgent after I participated in an advanced post-graduate biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BCST) workshop for teachers in Maui in the mid 1990's. This class consisted of certified BCST teachers who, as a group, managed to destroy all of Dr. Sutherland's biodynamic principles. The contents of that class, demonstrated a complete medical overlay onto Dr. Sutherland's non-medical biodynamics.
Besides me, three other seasoned biodynamic cranial practitioners participated: a biodynamic cranial osteopath, a Rolfer, and a chiropractor. We were the only outsiders who participated in that class; all four of us had been cranial practitioners for decades, and we each regularly experienced the tides in our practices at home.
In that class, amid a contrived virtual biodynamic field, the four of us observed all the BCST teachers participated in an unconscious collusion.
The BCST teachers arrogantly boasted that they were in contact with the neutral, the potency, the tides, and Dynamic Stillness without having any actual contact with any of them.
Imagine experiencing a virtual group field that was permeated by medical practices that create an empty void which is bereft of the living potency of the Breath of Life and calling it biodynamic (See Stillness p 61-63).
The experience of the empty void was so disturbing to the chiropractor that he wept at lunch; and my biodynamic cranial osteopath friend quit practicing cranial after that class. The negative impact that the class had on four seasoned biodynamic practitioners was so profound that it inspired me to reveal the truth.
I chose from then on to clearly distinguish between Dr. Sutherland's osteopathic types of cranial work: biomechanical, functional, and biodynamic, and then contrast it with the BCST definitions, which are efferent. Their curriculum and practice is medically based; it is not derived from Sutherland's osteopathy, but rather it is based on Upledger's work. I finally understood why Dr. Jealous was so enraged by the founding of the BCST schools.
When biodynamic principles are contaminated by efferent medical principles and practices, here's what happens. There is no contact with the neutral, there is no potency, no fluid tide, no long tide, no primary respiration, no Breath of Life, no Dynamic Stillness, and no Pure Breath of Love. However, there is a lot of 'talk' misusing powerful biodynamic terms, but there is no biodynamic 'walk' that is based on experiencing what Sutherland taught.
The group field that BCST/BCA teachers contrive is permeated by an empty void, therefore, bypass is the classic sign that indicates we are in the medical model.
Out of this empty void, a virtual biodynamics emerges.
Again, despite what their marketing tells you, BCST is derived from Craniosacral Therapy (Upledger) and Polarity Therapy (Stone). Today, the BCST institutions falsely market that their impulse came from Sutherland. This false assertion is contrived as a reaction to my book Stillness published in 2006.
Any discerning student who reads the osteopathic definitions that I reproduced in Stillness, can easily discern exactly what type of practice a particular curriculum is being offered - whether it is biomechanical, functional, (medical), biodynamic (medical or non-medical), or post-biodynamic.
This is important because even though the international BCST organization call their work biodynamic, they are in fact teaching a functional medical curriculum. Based on the founding osteopath's definitions, their curriculum is functional cranial, which by definition is a medical approach. This is a fact, and it not an arguable point. You can now see why the BCST organizations boycott me and my writings. Search ... you will not find my books listed on any of their websites, but, of course, that strategy backfired.
The institutional boycott of my work is so pervasive that BCST graduates and teachers have to hide from their BCST colleagues that they attend my classes!
Since the founding of my Dynamic Stillness School thousands of brave BCST graduate practitioners have taken my school's courses. I say brave because a BCST practitioner has to buck the official international BCST boycott of Charles Ridley, which continues today in 2026.
BCST practitioners, and especially its teachers, have to hide from their collogues that they take my classes!
Another reason that I say it is brave for a BCST graduate to take my class is the potential for disappointment. After spending $12,000 for a 2-year biodynamic training, graduates have no contact with the biodynamic neutral, or the living tides. If a BCST practitioner wants to contact the biodynamic neutral, the potency, the tides, and Dynamic Stillness, they have to stop all the efferent medical practices that they were taught in their BCST curriculum.
Despite taking a 2-year 'biodynamic' training, nearly all BCST graduates I have met have no real contact with the neutral, the tides, or Dynamic Stillness. BCST practitioners who think they have contact, cannot characterize their encounters. Instead, they are trained to use vague, almost meaningless, biodynamic jargon to describe their non-experiences.
A confession that BCST failed to teach biodynamics is revealed: The most popular post-graduate BCST course in the US is based on How to Contact the Tides.
The failure of their so-called biodynamic curriculum is epidemic: I cannot count the number of emails I continue to regularly receive from sincere BCST graduate practitioners and teachers who say they feel bereft and confused because they have no contact with the neutral, the potency, the tides, the Breath of Life, or Dynamic Stillness. Even today, I witness only a rare BCST teacher who actually experiences the neutral, the tides, or Dynamic Stillness.
Some BCST teachers offer a "secret" curriculum so students can contact the neutral and the potency.
BCST practitioners genuinely 'think' they feel the tides, but it is a virtual, mental experience. It is not possible to encounter the tides if we employ efferent practices, such as 'orienting to neutral' because that dualistic practice creates a tad pole neutral - not a biodynamic neutral (see Chart that compares the two neutrals).
It is not until we cease dualism and stop all efferent medical practices that we experience an authentic biodynamic neutral and its unerring potency. In my classes, practitioners learn for themselves the difference between a virtual medical biodynamic practice and an authentic biodynamics that Sutherland gave us. He taught touch as a spiritual practice to realize I AM, which involves contact with a living neutral and the living tides.
I have been severely criticized for naming the following 'secret' BCST shadow:
BCST graduates have no contact with neutral, the tides, the potency, or Dynamic Stillness.
Why? Because BCST teaches functional work, not the biodynamics that Sutherland taught.
Again, I share the above because I have personally witnessed it in thousands of BCST students and teachers many thousands of times in my classes over the last 30 years.
For an in-depth insight into a virtual biodynamics that occurs when "biodynamic craniosacral therapy" is offered as a medical approach in an empty void amid a mixing of different cranial approaches:
Click Here Death of Biodynamics Blog
Neutral
When Immersed In Neutral, Amid Not Knowing, Profound Insights Arise Retrospectively
When I look back to a particular biodynamic class in 2002, I realize that a new enfoldment of consciousness had emerged in our mutual group field that was off the biodynamic map:
Pure Breath of Love manifest in 2002 during an Ithaca, NY Mentor Class.
For my characterization of that post-biodynamic non-tidal enfoldment, see Chapter 9 Stillness & Chapter 9 Stillness Touch.
In that class, our mutual group field first realized I AM at Dynamic Stillness. Then, Stillness imploded within, opening to a sublime Divine Feminine Magma-like Presence of Love that emerged, which escorted our group field consciousness across the threshold, off the biodynamic map, and into a black magma-like non-tidal super substance of love.
After 7 years, experiencing this enfoldment, it began to self-clarify. By 20o9 Pure Breath of Love emerged as a whole-body pulse of love that emanated in tandem with the heart's SA Node. Even though it is funny now, I first called this pulse the 'fish mouth.' Why? Because when every cell in the body is pulsing in unison with the heart beat, it felt like how a fish mouth looks: the fish opens and closes its mouth to breathe and its whole body moves in tandem.
Twenty four (24) years have now passed since that encounter, and I can assert with confidence that Pure Breath of Love is 'off the biodynamic map.' Why? Because the biodynamic tides are gone. They disappeared in Dynamic Stillness after realizing BE STILL AND KNOW I AM, which is the culmination of Dr. Sutherland's path of biodynamic cranial touch.
The key to realizing Pure Breath of Love is have the strength of will that gives the capacity to wait in Dynamic Stillness ... for nothing ... in nothing ... for as long as it takes ... then, THE FULCRUM emerges from within Dynamic Stillness: I AM descends to implode into all the cells of the body, suffusing them with Pure Consciousness out of which emerges the pulse of Pure Breath of Love.
A Sacred Pulse emanates an all-cell, whole-body, non-tidal pulse of love that is in tandem with the heart's SA node.
The Descent and Cellular Implosion of I AM
is THE FULCRUM
for realizing Pure Breath of Love
Your body unites with a love that is stronger than death
BE STILL AND KNOW I AM LOVE
Pure Breath of Love re-spiritualizes matter
and you realize your Body As Love
(See Stillness Touch Chapter 9).
A 'Not Yet' Event in NOW
It turns out, in retrospect, that the Divine Feminine Wisdom by Grace revealed to our 2002 group field a non-tidal post-biodynamic domain of consciousness that we now call Pure Breath of Love.
In 2002, the characterization of Pure Breath of Love had never before been articulated in writing in the osteopathic biodynamic cranial field. I had only briefly characterized it in Stillness Chapter 9. However, my sequel, Stillness Touch Union of Body & Love thoroughly articulates and characterizes Pure Breath of Love as a non-tidal, post-biodynamic enfoldment of consciousness.
The Biodynamic Ascending Tides
Lead To:
BE STILL AND KNOW I AM
⇓
The Post-Biodynamic Descending Non-tidal Pulse
Leads To:
BE STILL AND KNOW I AM LOVE
Pure Breath of Love is a whole-body all-cell pulse
that is emanated by the SA Node.
The Importance of the Descending Current
As mentioned in Stillness Touch, Dr. Becker's spiritual path is Kashmir Shaivism. This path emphasizes a sacred pulse that is called the Spanda, or the Sacred Tremor. Swedenborg called it tremulation.
Meanwhile, the Tibetan Buddhists consider the realization of this pulse to be a 'completion stage'. A Completion Stage realization grants the practitioner a ferocious-hearted presence and strength of will that can bear any intensity encountered while we face everything that is splits us off and prevents contact with the Neutral, the Potency, and the Tides, all of which leads to Wholeness.
During the completion stage, we integrate all our recoils to love, one-by-one until we realize that our Whole body emanates love from our infinite inner-cellular space.
The Dynamic Stillness School explicitly offers this unique spiritual path to practitioners of any modality.
(Read the book Stillness Touch)
THE FULCRUM
Between
Biodynamic & Post-Biodynamic
Is The Cellular Implosion Of I AM
At Dynamic Stillness, I AM emerges, while the tides disappear in the midline, and our biodynamic journey ends.
When I AM changes its direction and descends as a spiritual current of consciousness: this is THE FULCRUM for Pure Breath of Love to emerge.
Now, instead of consciousness being guided by the ascending biodynamic tides, our consciousness descends into the cells and is guided by a non-tidal sacred pulse of love. This begins our post-biodynamic Grail Journey that is guided by love.
Post-biodynamic realizations emerge after consciousness descends and I AM implodes into all the cells that emanate the Sacred Pulse of Pure Breath of Love.
Not only is Pure Breath of Love a non-tidal, all-cell whole-body pulse, it also escorts consciousness on a mapless Grail Journey that asks for our total surrender to Love.
A surrender that includes our body as consciousness.
If we choose to surrender to Pure Breath of Love, our Completion Stage Grail Journey of descent begins.
The Grail Journey Of Love
At the Dynamic Stillness School, we first called Pure Breath of Love, Pure Breath of Life. Now, 25 years later, the Divine Feminine presents us with a new challenge:
The time is NOW:
Strengthen Your Will
Take Up Your Bed And Walk' Your Grail Journey
Do We Bypass And Avoid Our Grail Journey?
Mustering the will to walk our Grail Journey is not easy, because habitual efference can become recoils in our chakra fields that weaken our will, which creates multiple forms of bypass that has trapped far too many Mentor graduates. Let's explore this.
Enquiry into Tides, Stillness as Bypass, Teacher Co-Dependance, and Hatred of Pure Breath of Love
Hyper-Enquiry Into Tides As Spiritual Bypass
Clinging to the biodynamic tidal map by hyper-enquiry into the myriad of ascending tidal phenomena (that is created by enquiry!) keeps consciousness held high in ascent, which prevents the realization of I AM. This Bypass stops the descent of consciousness from imploding into the cells of the body.
Stillness As Bypass
Stillness as bypass holds your consciousness hostage in the empty void of ascent rather than surrendering into I AM.
Codependance As Bypass
Codependency arises when a narcissistically wounded teacher, covertly acts like a God or Guru by transmitting a dysfunctional parent-child dynamic to their students. The teacher takes on the role of the 'good parent' or the Guru who is 'always there for you'
(Subtext: 'I am available to rescue the poor broken child.'), which obviously weakens the will of any adult.
This shadow dynamic so weakens our will that we regress emotionally, which devolves our consciousness!
You can witness this regression in cranial classes where students who adore their teacher; while amid unfamiliar potency in the group field students display gross bodily motions such as, convulsive activity, vibrations, coughing, unwinding, etc. These unconscious visible bodily recoils are covertly designed get us away from the midline and block the potency.
Observing this is so fascinating to me that I repeatedly ask biodynamic osteopaths in my classes 'have you ever seen gross bodily expressions on your table or in a class?" And the answer is always 'no.' It is simply not a phenomena that manifests in osteopathic biodynamics, nor have I ever seen it in my Dynamic Stillness School's classes (See Unwinding in Stillness p 210).
Chronic Bypass Weakens The Will And Prevents Pure Breath of Love's Enfleshment.
Chronic bypass triggers the Beast who harbors a Psychotic Core that expresses hatred of the body as Pure Breath of Love and it sabotages the spread of practices to realize the Sacred Tremor.
To address efference in the form of chronic bypass, teacher codependency, and Psychotic Core hatred of Pure Breath of Love, I offer Master Classes 2 & 3, respectively called The Grail Journey and Practitioner Unethical Conduct: Enquiry, By-Pass, & Co-Dependency.
Witnessing far too many Mentor graduates who are unconsciously stuck in chronic bypass was another 'not yet' moment that grew into an urgent call to any practitioner who longs to inwardly meet our times in full consciousness, I founded the Dynamic Stillness Press to publish my books.
The first book, Stillness Touch Union of Body & Love thoroughly documents the post-biodynamic, non-tidal, Grail Journey. It is the source book for all the Master Classes.
The Master Class is for anyone who hears the inner call to carry-on Sutherlands impulse, which requires the Grail Journey:
Click Here For Grail Journey Details
Your Body Is A Sacred Vessel Of Love: Body As Love
Pure Breath of Love Is A Post-biodynamic Enfoldment Of Consciousness
Pure Breath of Love is the quintessential enfoldment that emerges after you realize I AM at Dynamic Stillness:
When I AM implodes within, it suffuse all your cells, it frees your consciousness from the ego's controlling strategies of bypass that recoil you from love. Once your consciousness is free, Pure Breath of Love emanates a Sacred Pulse of Love that is known as the Spanda in Kashmir Shaivism.
Stillness Touch
A Stillness Touch practitioner surrenders the body as infinite consciousness and lets Pure Breath of Love take over.
Pure Breath of Love Is The Guiding Presence
For Stillness Touch Sessions And In Your Life
When a practitioner realizes the depth of neutral called Sacred Repose in the presence of stillness that dwells inside the heart's self-existing radiance connects to the pelvic floor amid your inner oriented, free-flowing attention.
While offering Stillness Touch, you do not efferently leave your ‘seat’ inside or orient to stillness or a tide 'out there.' Nor do you efferently enquire into the tides to derive meaning, which by-passes the Unerring Potency.
There is no feeling with the hands the anatomy or nervous system, no tracking, no visualizing primary respiration as an outside force, no looking for cranial wave inertial motion patterns or tides, no seeking midlines or zones
Also, you do not name events, or dialogue with a recipient about what is unfolding during the session. All these are efferent practices that create inertia, which not only leads to practitioner-induced treatment reactions in the recipient, it also blocks the Template of Wholeness.
Dr. & Mrs. Sutherland’s last words implored us to:
BE STILL AND KNOW I AM
And there's more:
After Realizing I AM
The Tides Dissolve
And The Biodynamic Map Ends
Then, When I AM Implodes
Your Post-Biodynamic
Grail Journey To Love Begins
BE STILL AND KNOW I AM LOVE
One student said the quiet part out loud in class:
"Stillness Touch isn’t biodynamic cranial work anymore, is it?" (See Stillness Touch p 174)
To continue click: Home
