Category Archives: body

I dreamed I was pregnant

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I dreamed that I was pregnant, and that I was preparing to go into labor with lots of support, even from people far away whom I didn’t know.

I am preparing to teach Biodynamic Meditation, and this is a good omen!

My Biodynamic Meditation this morning started with my posture, then breathing physiological sighs (sniff sniff ahhhh) until I yawned.

Radiance at my face. Then sensing the Tide ascending and descending my central energy channel.

Spacing out (heard the first mockingbird of the year singing outside — joy!).

Noticing the Tide had gotten swirly and was investigating various areas: abdomen, sacrum, throat without settling long anywhere.

I decided to pose a question to the healing energy: If you could find the most optimal place for healing in my system today, the place that’s most ready to heal, where would you go?

It settled in my spine in the mid-thoracic region and stayed there.

It was still there when my timer went off after 45 minutes, but it didn’t feel “done” so I waited 5 more minutes until it felt done.

Sometimes “done” is clearly done, and sometimes it’s “done for today”. I will find out which as the day progresses.

I have a slight reverse S curve in my spine, and this is a place where the vertebrae shift directions. I’ve been doing PT exercises for months to straighten my spine…

Yes, you can communicate with the healing energy. In my experience, it takes time to build energetic rapport with it, to develop trust and familiarity.

Even now, when I ask it a question, sometimes it doesn’t answer, and sometimes it consents…by simply doing.

It doesn’t speak English, but it understands intent.

It’s mysterious! So much more to learn! This communication comes after a lot of listening.

It might be Biodynamic Meditation 201 or 301. I’m focusing more on preparing to teach 101 now.

Change your bias toward what’s going wrong, toward what’s going right.

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What’s going right in your body-mind system?

Many of us, myself included, have a bias toward noticing what’s wrong, what hurts, is tense, stiff, sluggish, numb, dysfunctional.

We may even make up stories about what’s wrong, feeling ourselves deficient, flawed, less than, unworthy.

I’m motivated to get over that!

You know, if you’re not on life support in a hospital, there’s a lot that’s going right.

A LOT.

You’re breathing.

Your heart is beating.

You’re viewing this post and reading these words.

You very likely are hearing sounds, if you direct your attention there.

The many sensations of body awareness…

Your weight pressing down into whatever you’re sitting or standing or leaning on.

The sense of where you are in space, how your body is arranged, your posture.

Warmth or coolness.

Balance.

Emotions.

Your many systems that keep you organized and alive: cardiovascular, pulmonary, nervous, lymphatic, digestive, immune, etc.

Also, your mind. Your memories and imaginations, beliefs, motivations, identity, skills, preferences and avoidances, etc.

Underlying all is your life force. Yogis call it prana. Daoists call it qi (chi, ki).

I feel it when I do Biodynamic Meditation, doing yoga or qi gong, walking in nature, having a great conversation with someone, hugging a friend, practicing Craniosacral Biodynamics, and just at random times.

I feel grateful for being alive.

That’s what this is all about. This comes even before sensing the Tide in the central energy channel.

This is Day 90 of these posts.

Swirliness is healing intelligence at its finest!

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Wow! Today’s Biodynamic Meditation was mostly swirliness!

I had again awakened early and listened to a Yoga Nidra recording on YouTube. I’ve been sampling them. Still like Liam Gillen and also now Kristyn Rose Yoga who has one with some focus on the heart chakra.

I also gave 5 mini-sessions at last night’s Community Healing Circle after being unable to work this past week. Power outage at my office due to ice storm. (It’s back on now.)

I was primed for a really good meditation.

I breathed a few physiological sighs until I yawned (parasympathetic sign).

Felt radiance at my face and then my entire head.

Tide.

No stillpoint unless it was brief.

I wonder if the healing energy, after 3 months of daily meditations, doesn’t need stillpoints any more because it knows my system well by now.

When I work on others, a stillpoint seems like a pause when the healing energy is assessing their system and gathering resources before it starts swirling.

Swirliness happens when the healing energy of the Tide changes its action from regulation (ascending and descending the central energy channel) or stillpoints (gathering resources) to healing whatever is ready to be healed (swirling where it’s needed), as best I understand it experientially.

Swirliness is so mysterious and magical! It has its own agenda for healing that is extremely intelligent!

I believe it’s way more intelligent than any of us could possibly be. After all, it has known us deeply and intimately, from the inside out, since shortly after our conception.

Sometimes it moves really fast, zipping around. Sometimes it slows down and lingers in an area.

Today it touched on all my chakras and did some more realigning of my cranial bones.

Usually it feels really good! Sometimes, like today with my frontal bone, there was a brief, slight sense of discomfort until the bone was aligned with its neighbors.

Photo: wave receding from lava tube, with whispering stones, at Wai’anapanapa State Park, Hana, Maui.

Locating and healing stuck fear in my body

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I woke early, not sure when, still dark, though.

It happens.

I’ve listened to multiple Yoga Nidra/NSDR meditations on YouTube to help me get back to sleep, enough to improvise one for myself.

So I did! I included my chakras and central energy channel as well as breath and body parts, and indeed, went back to sleep until daylight.

Hmm. New idea for teaching Biodynamic Meditation in person!

So when I did my own Biodynamic Meditation, I was already primed.

By the second physiological sigh, I sensed radiance at my face. By the third, my central energy channel with Tide.

A cranial stillpoint came on. Then swirliness.

Then I felt a steady sensation of coolness in my abdomen. At first it was larger, and as I stayed with it, it became smaller.

I don’t know what’s going on, except that there is a holding pattern there that feels old that I haven’t noticed before.

Our bodies hold so much history.

It seems related to fear. Stuck fear.

It didn’t unwind or dissolve today, but the healing energy showed it to me and gave it more healing resources.

I’m wondering if this will be a new focus in future sessions, the way my cranial bones and pelvis — sites of multiple injuries — have.

This is day 87, practicing Biodynamic Meditation. The sun is shining on a lot of tree damage in the Austin area, and power is coming back on for many. My office park is without power or water… I look forward to working when it’s restored.

Photo of Florida sunrise by Eric Towler, photographer and Zen friend.

We are all miracles. Appreciate yourself!

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Today I heard a cardinal chirping when I first awoke, a sign that spring is coming. They nest here every year. I love hearing and seeing them.

I went to work on my business website, editing and updating my offerings, before I even remembered to meditate.

Staying at home during this Texas ice storm has thrown my rhythms off.

Radiance came first, then third eye, solar plexus, heart, and root chakras, followed by a little bit of tide and a lot of swirliness.

Swirliness moved through my upper back, shoulders, and neck, reminding me to use better posture, because when I get into a writing trance, I can easily forget I have a body until it reminds me.

Swirliness also addressed issues in my upper abdomen, in the middle where stomach and liver abut.

It could have been my omentum, too, the layer of adipose tissue that moves to cuddle needy abdominal organs, bringing them extra resources.

We are simply fascinating! Every single one of us is a walking miracle.

Radiance at my face

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My Biodynamic Meditation this morning:

Set Insight Timer for 40 minutes.

Physiological sighs.

Radiance at my face.

It felt strong today and kept my attention the whole rest of the time, except for a few check-ins of my central energy channel, where I felt the Tide ascending and descending.

This radiance is different from a stillpoint at the cranial end of the central channel.

It’s different from sensing cranial chakras, although they may also be open while my face feels radiant. Today they were open but not strong.

The radiance involves my whole face.

When I first began to sense it, it was only across the middle of my face.

Over time the radiance has spread.

Discerning sensations is part of knowing thyself.

Then, the age-old human question is, “But what does it mean?”

I don’t really know, except that it feels life-affirming.

It is also a sign of healing for me. Because of an early trauma, I wanted to hide, to be invisible.

This radiance has found my face and put a shine on it.

Cold spell in much of the U.S. No snow so far in Austin, Texas. I love the stillness in this random online photo.

May you be warm and safe.

Developing flexibility with the 12 states of attention helps with Biodynamic Meditation, and more

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One of my influential teachers, Nelson Zink, investigated the 12 states of attention, which I first learned of in 2010.

We have three primary ways through which we perceive: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

We have locations in which to place our attention, internal and external. The skin is the boundary.

Our attention has range, narrow to broad.

We come to favor a few of these states. Practicing the ones less used gives us more attentional flexibility.

Since the quality of our attention is important, I thought I would share this here.

When I settle my body into my sitting posture, I am using Kinesthetic, Internal, moderately Broad attention, K I B — moderately broad because I’m attending to my whole body and the surrounding biofield.

I tune into my central energy channel, K I N.

When I feel radiance at my face, it’s K I N. When I sense energy moving from far away, it’s K I/E B.

Stillpoints are K I N.

Monkey mind/internal chatter is A I N.

I don’t often get visual input when I’m meditating or receiving a Craniosacral Biodynamics session, but a few people who have received sessions from me have had visions, such as being showered with golden light (V/K I B).

When I give sessions, I open my eyes, looking out the window into the woods and sky outside. That would be V E B, while I’m sensing with my hands and field, K I/E N/B.

If you are curious about this, Google “navaching” and “12 states of attention” to access Nelson’s website and some blog posts I wrote years ago.

If you are challenged trying to sense the Tide, stillpoints, or other aspects of Biodynamic Meditation, you may find it helpful to access states of attention you don’t usually use.

This can be very powerful!

Today’s meditation was all about my central energy channel

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Today’s Biodynamic Meditation went like this:

Physiological sighs to shift my autonomic nervous system more parasympathetic

Settling into my cross-legged upright posture, left hand cradling right hand, palms up, in lap

Bringing awareness inside my body

Noticing sensations in my central energy channel

Noticing radiance at my face and my third eye and crown chakras open

Notice heart and throat chakras open

Noticing the Tide ascending and descending in a cycle of about 18 seconds in each direction

Noticing the radiance at my face become stronger, pressing inward

Being curious about my lower chakras, checking in with them, sensing solar plexus, sacral, and root chakras open

Staying with the Tide, chakras open, radiance at my face the rest of the 30 minutes

Photo: San Solomon Springs, Balmorhea State Park

Experiencing gravity and levity and balance

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I dreamed I was dancing, able to leap high enough to touch the branches of trees, and to descend to the earth safely, only to do it again and again and again, higher, higher, almost floating back down, with buoyancy.

How exhilarating!

So… We were talking about the Tide, about sensing the Tide ascending and descending in your central energy channel.

How to be still and bring your awareness to that channel, the channel that is home to and connects your chakras.

The cranial pole of the channel (crown, sahasrara chakra) opens upward, to heaven, the cosmos, the universe, spirit.

That upward direction is called levity.

The sacral pole of the channel (root or muladhara chakra) opens to the earth.

That direction is called gravity.

Gravity and levity. Grounded and open to Spirit: balance.

My dream was about levity.

Who needs a dream like this?

Someone who is growing a private practice in Craniosacral Biodynamics, exploring Biodynamic Meditation with you :-), teaching, making 5 trips this year for training and personal growth, who is now also looking at a new location after 12 years in the same place.

Lots going on. Balance needed.

Today’s Biodynamic Meditation was about breathing, posture, sensing Tide. I invited a cranial stillpoint. Ajna chakra, radiance at my face, crown chakra. Swirliness in my cranium, then in my abdomen at manipura chakra, then in pelvis, ending with sacral stillpoint.

Balanced.

We are exploring what we’re exploring with ~ Gabrielle Roth

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Yesterday I wrote about discovering the Tide in you.

It may take a few efforts to discover the sensation that ascends and descends in your central energy channel.

That sensation forms the basis of our inherent healing process, aka swirliness.

It’s there, working for us, maintaining life, all of the time, in various forms: Tide, stillpoints, swirliness.

The founder of this lineage called it Primary Respiration.

Bio (life) + dynamic (power).

It was pouring rain during this morning’s Biodynamic Meditation.

Like the solid sound of hard rain, my meditation felt solid and full.

Breathing, ajna chakra, Tide, sit bones, radiance at my face, abdomen, cranium.

A sensation I’ve occasionally felt before, of something like pressure on my body.

This time, pressure surrounding my cranium.

Is it shaping me somehow? Is it trying to get inside me?

Mystery.

Photo from Big Bend National Park: Rio Grande. Mexico on left, Texas on right.