Dynamic Stillness on LA Talk Radio!

In deepest gratitude to one of our dedicated Midline Meditation participants, information about Dynamic Stillness, Biodynamic Cranial work and the the Midline Meditations was broadcast into the airwaves this last Wednesday on LA Talk Radio. Here is the link to the program:

We invite you to listen to this interview. It truly gives a wonderful overview of this work, and its intention to bring us back into our heart -centered awareness, connectedness to Source,  and restful embodiment.

Here is an excerpt: “The intention (in this meditation and cranial work) is for all of us to bring our awareness down and into our bodies where our deep, rich connectedness to that Stillness and our evolutionary consciousness resides.”

It’s not all Bliss and Light on the Path of Stillness…

“I began to quiet down, and I noticed all of this anxiety in my stomach”

“My mind wouldn’t stop thinking about the argument I had this morning”

“I had to really work to not leave my body and to stay present during the meditation”

“What’s going on? How come some people are relaxing into deep quiet and relaxation

during the meditation, and I am so uncomfortable?”

The process of the Midline Meditations is to gently and slowly begin to quiet the nervous system, allow the brain and Central Nervous System and The Mind to become a RECEIVER, rather than a TRANSMITTER. This sounds easy, but it is, in fact, an enormous energetic shift in the body.

The mind is hard wired into the nervous system. The mind, with all of its strategies and ‘to-do’ lists, has worked hard to keep us surviving our lives, to get us out of harmful and challenging situations, and activate the “fight/flight/freeze” response to get us to “do something”.

When we settle into these meditations, we are inviting this entire system to come to rest. For some of us, this is an enormous relief, and we feel the fatigue and heaviness in our bodies when we relax, maybe for the first time. The relaxation feels welcome, and pleasurable.

For others, as we quiet down (and the group field amplifies this process) we begin to encounter everything that is NOT stillness. Everything- feelings, body sensations, thoughts, memories, ‘spacing out’, traveling to other galaxies, rather than staying in the body- that has kept us separate from our bodies and our midlines.

The Midline is our direct connection to Source, and Dynamic Stillness is inherent in the Midline. The warm, liquid, radiant, flowing honey of Stillness that is with us from the moment of conception, and is with us until we no longer need our bodies, is available to us at every moment.

As we quiet down in these Midline Meditations in the support and amplification of the group field, this Stillness begins to infuse these separate parts of ourselves (the pain, the thoughts, the disassociation) and merge them back into Oneness in the Midline.

This is a unification that happens energetically, emotionally, mentally, physiologically, spiritually: every aspect of our Being is reintegrated back into wholeness- and we are reconnected to the Source of our lives. The True Source of our lives, which is inside of us, not outside of us.

This is truly a path of Homecoming, reuniting with our Primary Relationship- Source- which is also the Source of our innate Wisdom, Health, Love, Radiance and Presence.

Each time we offer ourselves to this process, no matter what arises during the meditation, if we can simply BE with the process, allowing those separate parts to arise, treat them gently (like a toddler stepping off the sidewalk!) and come back to the infusion of the midline with Stillness.

The group field helps us, like a magnetic field, to stay with the process. And week by week, time by time, we are that much more available to this Homecoming, we then begin to more easily bask in the relief and calm that arises. Our Inner Knowing deepens as we are able to receive the direct, clear messages for us from Source: they are “given” to us in this Stillness.

Resting in an ocean of Love….

The Midline Meditations offer us the opportunity to descend into our inner Stillness, and discover that we are also resting in an ocean of shimmering Stillness, extending out beyond infinity, at every moment….

In your heart is a mysterious portal that interconnects the infinite ocean of Love to the consciousness in your body. … Paradoxically, by descending inward to heart we contact our inner ocean, which is one with the outer shimmering, pulsing oceanic heart of mother earth. And since the heart of mother earth is one with the infinite heart, we directly realize ourselves as Love – all that is – expressed as body.”

Charles Ridley Stillness Practices

Health Benefits to Midline Meditations….

”How can something so subtle make any difference in my health??”

The Midline Meditations support us in relaxing into a deep state of neutral, a term used in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy to denote the state when the ‘busymind’/’hamster on the wheel’ cranial wave mental activity ceases, allowing the nervous system to relax and become a receptor, rather than a transmitter. This then allows Stillness to infuse our midlines (source of our innate Health and wisdom, our connection to Source).

As this unfolds, there are profound health benefits that are ignited: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Each of these aspects of ourselves are interwoven and reflections of one another, and any and all of those ‘bodies’ can become fixed and rigid!

Here is a description of this process, known as transmutation: turning one substance into another (like lead into gold)……

The Breath of Life Heals the Body

“The Breath of Life is 3.5 billion years old. It is the universal intelligence that has created all living organisms since the beginning of life on this planet. Certainly it can resolve a client’s inertia*(pain) without my help.

“Though it seems paradoxical, the power in the Breath of Life is why any treatment modality heals, regardless of its degree of invasiveness, whether it is surgery, drugs, nutrition, manipulation, bodywork, homeopathy, acupuncture, movement, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, spiritual healing, prayer, or meditation. However, the less invasive the treatment, the more potential there is for dynamic healing. If you can be present, and remain neutral, you may be granted the privilege to witness this miraculous process that is already built into our systems.” (Charles Ridley Stillness)

The process of transmutation…

The practitioner waits, immersed in the stillness of your heart, through resonance you will connect to the stillness that organizes the dysfunction or trauma in your client.

When these 2 stillnesses unite- fulcrum to fulcrum- the traumatized areas then become still, which quiets the destructive interference patterns in the client’s body.

Within this neutral (as it is called), stillness emanates from the client’s midline (core), and relaxes the contracted ground substance (see below) in her body (the protoplasm which is the building block of tissue)

Levity, which is inherent in stillness, creates buoyancy that expands space, slows time and disengages the dysfuntion created by the hardened body matrix (contracted areas)

At this point, the resonance of primary respiration and the Breath of Life (the field which created the body) synchronizes with the matrix, and turns it from a gel to a fluid that can freely flow with the motion of health.

The fluid motion of primary respiration carries the healthy information to the cells.

The cell’s membranes then receive this signal and instructs the cell to perform a particular function (let nutrition in, let it out, release a hormone or a neurotransmitter, etc)

The effect of stress on health……

When stress turns the ground substance**/liquid matrix to rigid gel, the corresponding ‘stuck’ motion alters the healthy signals sent by primary respiration, distorting the transfer of information to the cell: healthy tone is altered, and the cell membrane becomes confused by the disorganized signals.

To protect itself, the cell membrane closes its gates.

This response not only diminishes the cell’s perceptual capacities, but also creates dysfunctional cellular activity and distortion.

The effect of primary respiration on health…

When the ground substance gel returns to fluid (after the client neutral), the accurate transfer of healthy motion between the metabolic fields and the cell membrane is restored.

This enhances metabolic function, which in turn restores healthy function to the cells.

After functional balance is established, the cells physically change shape, and reorient themselves back to the source of the bioelectric field- the midline.

This places the cells back into direct contact with primary respiration, so they now express healthy fluid motion that does not repeat itself.

Increased cellular health also enhances the coherence of the heart field (the energetic center of our Being), and thereby improves its ability to orchestrate healthy function throughout the bodymind.

When dysfunctional motion becomes healthy motion, disintegration, disease and cell death return to organized wholeness- this is the power of transmutation.

Original healthy function, shape, and position of cells, organs and structures is restored. This will increase nutritive function, raise energy levels, promote mental clarity, strengthen immune function. Additionally, all systems of the body are brought into greater balance, including cardiovascular, nerve, hormonal, as well as increasing the coherence of the heart.

In biodynamics, as we rest in neutral and allow primary respiration to infuse the bodymind, we are allowing health to reestablish itself in stillness.

**Ground substance:

Around and between all cells is a liquid connective tissue ground substance that is the medium for permitting the vital functions of nutrition into and waste removal from the cells, and therefore promotes healthy immune, vascular, and neuro-hormonal function. The ground substance, or metabolic fields, behaves like a liquid crystal matrix through which your whole body communicates. Ground substance is remodeled within minutes when exposed to very weak signals of stress; even if only one infinitesimal part of a cell is subject to stress the entire cell acts as a coherent whole. Since each cell is coherent with all other cells, any change in one cell thus affects all the cells in the whole body.

Reference: Charles Ridley Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness

Bringing the midline into everyday life….

Each  day brings a new awareness of how important this practice is in my everyday life, and how potent it is to have a circle of fellow travellers who are actively deepening their own inner Stillness. I am learning that this is not an esoteric pratice at all, but as I step out into the world with all of its challenges, demands, constant change (out of MY control!) I feel this growing sense of calm  inside of me: a place within me where I can return: Home. Rest. Allowing my nervous system to be the receptor, not the transmitter…trying to manage, judge and manage everything out there. Instead….resting in my midline, allowing Life to be as it is, engaging as I am called to engage, letting go when it’s time to let go, and yet being fully in my heart.

I am learning that our group field, and the Biodynamic training and practice over the last few years, is assisting not only the relaxing into the heart and belly/midline….but the presence of others really helps us all to stabilize this practice in a safe, sacred way. Certainly it is an enormous journey to release our identification from the head/brain/ego, dropping into the heart and body. The next step is stabilizing ourselves…getting comfortable in this new territory, and then speaking and living from this place!

The heart in its unshielded state is strong: it is the choreographer of our entire Being and all of its bodies. (see Heart Inspirations)It is the ultimate sensing mechanism, knowing what is healthy for us, what nourishes us, and what does not. We are all learning to trust this new Home, inside of us, in our midlines, with one another.

Welcome to the Midline Meditations….

Thank you for arriving in this sacred (internet) space! This is intended to be a place of exchange and shared experience among those of us who are allowing Stillness to reside in our hearts and midline.

In spiritual and shamanic traditions we speak of each of us being “Luminous/Spiritual Beings residing in human bodies”, or that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience”. In these Midline Meditations, many of us are discovering what these concepts truly FEEL like in our own bodies. This is a “technology” that I feel truly assists in this embodiment.

Unlike many other wonderful meditation practices, this path is about coming back ‘Home’ to our own bodies, hearts and bellies: reinhabiting what many of us know to be this ‘last frontier’. How do we relax and settle into our own inner Stillness when the body has been such a source of wounding, pain and discomfort?

What many spiritual traditions have taught, and the foundation upon which Biodynamic Cranial work is based, is that the essential nature of our Being is Stillness. Our midline- the very pristine ‘primitive streak’ that appears out of nowhere when we are conceived- is a vibrating center of our innate core, which is Stillness. Dynamic Stillness.

This Stillness in the midline is in every biological form: leaf, mountain, human, jaguar. When we connect to this midline deep in the center of our Being, we truly come Home. Our group field enhances and accelerates this return, and I am grateful to all who come together to take this journey. From this place of  Presence, we remember our true nature, and we take this body-felt awareness out into the world with us, enhancing all of our relationships, work, play and creative endeavors.

I welcome you to join us in this journey.