by Michael Kern
Engaging the body in a conversation involves a clarity of questioning and an ability to listen to its responses. This kind of subtle inquiry has evolved from what is traditionally called motion testing, but in this approach there is no pushing or pulling into the system, just the offering of particular enquiries and invitations. As with all approaches in biodynamic craniosacral work, this is done with gentleness, spaciousness and a respect for the natural boundaries within a patient’s system.
Dialogue with fluids
Earlier, we noted how inertial fulcra create lateral fluctuations, which are eccentric patterns of motion in the fluids and potency. By observing how lateral fluctuations move, the practitioner can identify the location of the organizing inertial fulcrum. If any clarification is needed, subtle inquiries can be made with the hands to reveal how the fluids behave. The practitioner can gently invite a movement into any lateral fluctuation of fluid with his hands, which are placed on either side of the body part being assessed. This is like softly pushing a swing into the direction it is moving, thereby helping to clarify its motion. If lateral fluctuations are not already obvious, they can be gently amplified by subtly inviting a lateral fluid motion from one hand to the other hand and then back again, observing how the system responds.
Tracking how the practitioner’s inquiries and invitations are taken up by the fluids can pinpoint the inertial fulcrum. For example, do the fluids echo back or become absorbed in the tissues? If the fluids encounter a site of inertia, they will bounce back as they hit the area of resistance, creating a rebound effect that can be felt by the practitioner’s inviting hand. Watching for the place around which any lateral fluctuations, such as eddies or currents, are produced helps to confirm the location of the organizing inertial fulcrum.
Rachel’s story
Rachel, a woman in her late twenties, came for treatment of an acute lower back pain. Her symptoms had started about three weeks before, although she had been experiencing some problems ever since a serious car accident about five years earlier. She had also been suffering from intermittent pelvic pain for a few years, and severe pre-menstrual tension. I found that there was an acute spasm of her lower back muscles, and that the motility of her midlumbar vertebrae was restricted. On palpation of her lower abdomen I found a lot of sensitivity and muscle guarding, particularly on the left side. When I tuned in to the tidal motion of fluid in the region, there was a strong sense of echoing that seemed to bounce back from the area of her left ovary. This fluid motion felt quite disorganized. I recommended that Rachel undergo some further tests to establish the cause of this finding. A couple of weeks later a pelvic scan revealed the presence of a benign tumor of the left ovary.
I suggested that we could try to work with this problem using craniosacral approaches, and Rachel agreed. We started the treatment by facilitating the expression of primary respiration in the tissues of her lower back and pelvis. Her lower spine was very tight and there was a strong pull in the connective tissues of her pelvis, which was causing it to twist. It seemed that this was connected to a compression pattern in her left ovary, restricting its ability to take up the Breath of Life.
I then tried to re-establish the expression of potency in her left ovary. To do this I gently encouraged fluid and potency towards the ovary by facilitating a lateral fluctuation between my two hands, placed either side at the front and back. The encouragement of lateral fluctuations can be used for treatment as well as diagnosis because this helps to bring the ordering principle of the Breath of Life to the area. As I did this, Rachel felt some pulsing in the left side of her pelvis followed by a deep sense of relaxation and opening.
Two months later, Rachel went for further tests to investigate her condition and was told that the tumor had greatly reduced. She has continued to experience an improvement in her back problem, and also no longer suffers from the previously debilitating symptoms of pre-menstrual tension.
Fascial glide
Another skill commonly used for diagnosis is to engage the body’s internal network of connective tissue, the fascia, in a “conversation.” In health, the fascial compartments of the body are able to glide against each other, allowing mobility between all the different organs that they envelop, as well as their inner motility. However, adhesions can form reducing this capacity to glide. Because fascia is relatively inelastic, resistances can easily be transmitted from one area of the body to another. This can be a significant cause of inertia affecting primary respiration.
Due to the unbroken continuity of fascial tissue in the body, it is possible to palpate resistances to motion from one end of this network to the other. To do this, the practitioner places his hands over the body part such as the patient’s feet and senses into the underlying fascial tissues. A light suggestion of traction can be introduced through the hands by subtly inviting an inferior motion of the fascia (i.e., towards the patient’s feet). The fascia’s response is then assessed. If there is no resistance, fascia will easily be able to accommodate for this gentle suggestion of traction and the tissues will glide towards the feet accordingly. However, any inertia is felt as resistance to the fascia’s natural gliding motion.
By holding any one part of the fascial network, the whole system is contacted, making it possible to locate the site of any resistance even in distant areas of the body. One old-timer who had been doing cranial work for many years was able to feel and accurately locate cranial restrictions through the continuity of fascial tissue in just the few seconds it took to shake your hand!41
PERCEPTION
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST
Perceptual viewpoints
In the biodynamic approach of craniosacral work, there is an appreciation of different tidal expressions of the Breath of Life, the three tides. Relating to each of these unfoldments for both diagnosis and treatment requires different perceptual processes. When tuning-in to a patient’s system, what is actually perceived is determined by the “glasses” that are being looked through. As with a radio, the practitioner can listen to different frequencies or unfoldments of a person’s system by adjusting his “tuning-in button.” For example, if the practitioner’s perception is tuned in to how the cranial bones float like corks on the tide, then he will probably notice their patterns of flexion and extension. If he tunes in to the motility of tissues, he will perhaps notice their inner breathing. If he is able to drop his attention into the forces beneath these tissue patterns, he may notice the motion of one of the slower tides. What we see is what we get. If a person’s inherent health is tuned in to, it will surely be found. However, if we focus on problems and pathologies, that is what we will see.
A story from China illustrates this principle. A wise old woman lived just outside a large town. Every day she would take her goats and sheep out to pasture in the hills. While her animals grazed, she liked to sit on a rock overlooking the path to the town. One day when she was on this rock, a traveller came along the path. Looking up, he noticed the old woman and asked her if he was heading in the right direction for the town. He then inquired, “What are the people like in this town?” The old woman answered, “What were people like in the town where you have just come from?” The traveller said, “Oh! They were terrible! Everybody was fighting, there were awful jealousies and people were very unfriendly. That’s why I’m thinking of moving to a new town.” The old woman replied, “Well, unfortunately I think you will find people are pretty much the same here, too!”
A few hours later another traveller passed along the path and he, too, looked up at the old woman to ask for directions. He then asked, “What are the people like in this town?” The woman again replied, “What were people like in the town where you have just come from?” “Oh!” he said, “They were wonderful! Everybody was very friendly and took great care of each other. You could feel their warmth and generosity.” The old woman answered, “Well, I think you will find people
are pretty much the same here, too!”42
Observer and the observed
To some degree craniosacral work is always subjective, as it is based on what arises within the particular relationship formed between patient and practitioner. In all of our human relationships we can see how different people bring out different qualities within us. In quantum physics, it is well recognized that the observer of an experiment can affect its results. The experimenter is an inextricable part of the experiment, and cannot be separated from what is being observed. The observer’s choices about how and what to measure will determine what is found.
To give a classic example, there are different experiments in physics that can investigate whether light is composed of particles or waves. Some of these experiments inarguably prove that light is composed of particles. However, others clearly show that it is composed of waves. Either can be proved, according to how light is observed. The nature of light can thus be described as either a wave or a particle, depending on the machine that is measuring it. Therefore, whether light is seen as a particle or a wave is totally dependent on the intention of the experimenter.43
Patient and the practitioner
If different practitioners operate with exactly the same diagnostic criteria, they will no doubt concur in their findings.44 However, some individual variables are almost bound to enter because both the practitioner and the patient are subjective parts of this process. This is why ten different practitioners can all put their hands on the same patient and perceive the patient’s condition from a different perspective. Consequently, each one will probably get a different result from treatment, according to how the patient’s system is met. None of these practitioners is necessarily wrong, but each one may be operating from a different perceptual field.
Wide perceptual field
Imagine that you are standing at a bus stop, waiting for a bus. As you look down the road you may put out the question, “Is there a bus coming?” In the distance you see your bus approaching. “Yes, it’s coming!” With a wide perceptual field, you ask a question and information comes back. How you hold your field of awareness will determine what you notice. However, let’s say you are late for an interview and starting to get anxious, you may then miss the fact that it’s a sunny day and the birds are singing. Alternatively, if you hold no focus because you’re daydreaming, or if you are preoccupied with looking at the bus timetable, you may even miss the fact that the bus has arrived.45 It is the same when a practitioner palpates a patient’s primary respiratory system. For example, if he becomes focused only on bones, he may miss the qualities and motion of fluid. Furthermore, if he makes a perceptual shift by widening his field of view, different information about the patient may become available.
Shifting perceptual fields
The practitioner can develop the ability to make intentional shifts in his perception in order to sense the different aspects of the primary respiratory system. This process of expanding or narrowing the field of perception can facilitate the ability to tune in to each of the three tides. With a relatively narrow perceptual field, the faster rhythmic rate of the cranial rhythmic impulse is more likely to be sensed. The slower tides of the Breath of Life are generally only palpable when the practitioner is operating with a wider field of perception. This involves an expansion of awareness, instead of focusing just on a particular part. When his perceptual field is widened to include the whole sense or whole “biosphere” of the patient, the practitioner may be able to sense the slower mid-tide.46 From this perspective, it is easier to sense the underlying forces that organize the tissues.
It is then possible for the practitioner to keep widening his perceptual field to include the whole of the room he’s in, or even the whole district. Widening the perceptual field even further—right out towards the horizons—enables easier access to the subtle rhythm of the long tide. This is the realm of environmental and universal forces in which we live and have our being. This is also the domain of the mythic and the region of our imaginal experience.47 With a wide field of perception, the unknown can more easily make itself known.
Larger context
Even though a wide perceptual field may be used in craniosacral diagnosis and treatment, it is still possible to perceive what is happening at particular places in the body. However, the context of this information becomes larger. Working with this sense of space is not the same as spacing out. It is about remembering the universal, while not losing sight of the particular. There is an old Sufi saying, “Remember the Infinite, but don’t forget to tie up your camel!” Essentially, this is an interplay between attention and awareness. Awareness is our sense of the whole, and attention is our recognition of the specific. Gabrielle Roth explains, “Ideally, attention should be a point of consciousness moving around inside the field of awareness. Awareness is the forest, attention is the trees.”48
A perceptual exercise
In a seated position, with your eyes either open or closed, establish your practitioner fulcra as described in an earlier section. Imagine a line continuing from the base of your spine down into the ground beneath you, as though you are dropping an anchor into the earth. Then imagine another line going from the back of your head diagonally down into the ground behind you, at an angle of about thirty-five degrees. Let yourself settle with these fulcra for a few moments.
Notice the qualities and motions of your lung respiration, without trying to change anything. Place your attention into the sensations of your body as you breathe in and breathe out. Do you breathe in more easily, or breathe out more easily? Are there particular sensations that you notice in your body as you breathe? These may be pleasant, or there may be places that feel uncomfortable—simply notice them.
Notice what takes you away from being aware of your breathing and your sensations. Maybe you start thinking about what you are going to eat for dinner, or about something you have to do, or you start noticing sounds in the room, or from outside. When you become aware that your attention has wandered, gently bring it back to your breathing and your sensations. See if the coming and going of your attention settles somewhere—that is, finds a point of balance, your “practitioner neutral.”
Now widen your field of perception by allowing your awareness to take in the whole sense of yourself. What do you notice as you include your whole body and the field immediately around you in your awareness?
Gradually expand your awareness even further to include the whole of the room you are in. Pay attention to what you notice within this wider perceptual field. How does this change the sense you have of yourself?
Let the domain of your awareness spread out beyond the room, into the surrounding area and out towards the horizon. This does not mean that you have to leave your body; you can still remain grounded and centered. You are simply paying attention within a wider and wider context. As you let your awareness expand towards the horizon, what do you notice?
Slowly bring your awareness back into the room by narrowing your perceptual field, and then bring it back into particular sensations in your body. Finally, take a little time to notice the rhythm of your breathing once more.
We will now look at how this skill of shifting perceptual fields can be used in craniosacral work.
Perception of the mid-tide
The mid-tide is expressed as a rhythmic movement that can be palpated as a tensile field of motion throughout the body. It is the realm of our embodied forces. It is an expression of the uptake of our biodynamic potency in the body and has a relatively stable rate of about two-and-a-half cycles per minute. This potency is taken up in the fluids of the body, especially cerebrospinal fluid, and produces their longitudinal fluctuation. It is the force that directly underlies the cranial rhythmic impulse. A patient who perceived the mid-tide during a treatment described the sensation as, “Like being held in the palm of a hand and gently rocked by the life force.”49 The mid-tide can most easily be perceived with a perceptual field that includes the whole body and the sphere
immediately around the body.
A mid-tide exercise
Sit comfortably and place your hands lightly on the upper surface of your thighs. Begin by simply listening to any impressions that come into your hands. Then, start to feel any qualities in the tissues directly underlying your hands. Let your fingers rest on these “corks floating on the tide” and see if you can sense the subtle motion of the cranial rhythmic impulse in your legs. You may need to narrow your field of attention into the tissues under your hands in order to feel their particular pattern of motion, but this should be done in a very relaxed way and with a soft focus.
Once you have a sense of how the tissues are expressing their craniosacral motion, start to tune in to the fluid under your hands. Imagine that your hands are resting on the surface of a balloon filled with fluid, and see if you can palpate its fluctuating motion as the fluid moves longitudinally into inhalation and exhalation.
