Biodynamic Meditation: awareness of internal sensations

The three most basic skills of meditation are posture, internal awareness, and returning to internal awareness when the mind wanders.

Many meditation practices begin with breathwork to bring awareness into the body and to cultivate a state of calm.

In Biodynamic Meditation, the next step is awareness of sensations, without any judgment or story, just simple awareness, nerves transmitting sensations to the brain.

Some people are internally oriented, and it will take less practice to maintain awareness of their sensations.

Others, like me, have worked at it for a long time. It does get easier with practice.

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Try this breathwork technique: Sniff. Sniff. Ahhhhh.

I’m switching to another type of breathwork when I start my daily Biodynamic Meditation.

Brand new research published in the prestigious journal Cell shows that 5 minutes of cyclic sighing is more effective at improving mood and reducing anxiety than 20 minutes of mindfulness meditation.

Cyclic sighing, also called the physiological sigh, was first brought to public attention by the Huberman Lab podcast from the Stanford University neurobiology lab.

To do cyclic sighing, you inhale quickly and then inhale quickly again to fill your lungs, and then exhale slowly. Repeat.

It’s like this: Sniff. Sniff. Ahhhhhhhh.

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When healing is incremental

This morning I woke with a twinge in my sacrum. It’s the area affected by multiple old injuries.

I did some movement that helped.

After I started my Biodynamic Meditation session, I sensed a couple of sweeps of the Tide, and then it settled into a sacral stillpoint.

I’m not sure exactly when that stillpoint became swirliness, because the swirliness only made small swirls with lots of pauses in the tissues on the back of my sacrum for the rest of my 30-minute session.

Old injuries are often complex. They can affect muscles, fascia, ligaments, tendons, nerves, blood flow, bones, etc.

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Every human has a central energy channel

“We are exploring what we’re exploring with.” ~ Gabrielle Roth

I’ve been looking for an image showing the central energy channel through which the Tide flows in Biodynamic Meditation (and Craniosacral Biodynamics). (This post is one in a series of posts on practicing Biodynamic Meditation, on Instagram, this blog, and Facebook.)

This one is closer to what I experience than most of the images.

There are maps…and then there’s the territory, conceptual information and felt experience.

IMO, we need maps to show us where we’re going. The territory is what we’re exploring.

In yoga anatomy, the sushumna nadi is the channel that connects the crown of the head to the pelvic floor.

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The swirliness of healing energy

My Biodynamic Meditation today was to the point and sweet: 10 bhastrikas, Tide, pelvic stillpoint, then swirliness of healing energy.

This after about 5 hours sleep, but not feeling tired, so far. Did a sleepover with a friend and stayed up really late watching two movies about men that I’d never seen before, Die Hard and Godfather II, a fantasy of a hero and a character study of a tragic life.

Much to ponder about humanity today.

And now, off to a waiting hot tub.

Art by http://www.lupiart.com

Day 60: The Tide, regulation, well-being

My Biodynamic Meditation this morning started with 7 Bhastrikas, sukhasana, and radiance at my face.

Then, sensing the Tide, mixed with monkey mind, until stillness prevailed.

The Tide seems to be a fundamental part of our well-being.

It’s so close, yet most of us don’t know about it until someone tells us, and even then it takes motivation to deepen our perception and discover it in ourselves.

There’s no science on it (yet), but it seems obvious that something so regular is actually regulating something.

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Seeking, finding, losing, refinding the Tide

This morning in my Biodynamic Meditation, the Tide was elusive.

I did 12 Bhastrikas, settled into sukhasana, and tuned into my body.

I sensed my midline, seeking the rising and falling sensation of tidal motion.

Nothing.

Was I in a stillpoint? I couldn’t tell! I didn’t feel a pooling of energy at either my cranial or sacral areas.

I remember when I first started getting acquainted with Biodynamics 10 years ago, seeking the tide and not finding it.

Then, one day I found it, or part of it, in my abdomen along my midline or central channel.

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Boundary, no boundary

This morning’s Biodynamic Meditation went like this: 5 Bhastrika breaths. Settling into sitting posture, propped up in bed with a pillow at my back, legs crossed in sukhasana (sweet pose).

Monkey mind. Stillness. Monkey mind. Stillness. Until stillness (mostly) prevails.

Radiance at my face.

Not feeling tide. Oh, am I in a stillpoint? Stillness.

Tide.

Stillpoint.

Tide.

Stillpoint.

At some point I sense that my energy body is bigger than my physical body.

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Biodynamic Meditation posts on Instagram

I started studying craniosacral therapy in 2011 while still a massage student, after receiving it monthly for 3 years and understanding its sometimes-subtle but cumulative benefits to my health and well-being.

I started studying craniosacral biodynamics in 2013. Three days after learning it existed and hearing it described, I was in a class.

It’s a passion of mine. I’ve taken dozens of classes since, in both biodynamic and directive, Upledger-style CST. I’ve taken several classes multiple times and been a teaching assistant.

Craniosacral biodynamics works quite a bit with interoception, the “felt sense” in oneself.

A lot of the language in my classes was highly conceptual even though referring to felt states. There’s a big gap between concept and experience, between the map and the territory. It was frustrating!

What does the Breath of Life feel like? How do you distinguish the different tides? What does a still point feel like? How do you track potency? What about the different stages? What the heck is Dynamic Stillness and how do you get there?

I started experimenting with trying to sense these concepts in my meditation practice and had some pretty profound experiences, such as feeling like I was in the ocean and currents were flowing through and around me, experiencing a me-shaped hole of emptiness surrounded by dense energies holding me in place, the sense of being breathed, and the like.

But they were random experiences and I still didn’t know the names for them or how to get there. Hence pursuing more training.

Sequencing is important in a yoga class. You prepare carefully with easier poses and work up to the harder poses you didn’t think you could do — and then, wow, you’re doing them! It’s important in teaching and learning Craniosacral Biodynamics, too, guided by carefully considered preparation.

All of these states and experiences have helped me become more whole and healthy, wise and compassionate about our common human experience. They help me heal, and I do have experiences to heal from, still.

Samsara can be so rough.

I am an investigator, an Enneagram 5. I am driven by curiosity and learning and compassion. I came into this world to make a difference, and although side-lined by early difficulties, I’m doing it now.

Where I am now is this: I have a private practice in West Lake Hills, an old Austin suburb, where I offer two specialties: Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

I also offer the same specialties in downtown Austin, at West Holistic Medicine.

And, I’m doing an experiment on Instagram. Every day I do a #biodynamicmeditation and post about it on Instagram. I choose images and music to accompany my words. It’s fun and growing, gaining followers, including teachers of Craniosacral Biodynamics.

If you want to follow me there, I’m @mareynolds. These posts also appear on my Facebook business page and on Tumblr and LinkedIn.

What’s behind this new endeavor? Well, if I could receive a Biodynamic session every day, I would! But I can’t afford it and don’t always have time.

However, I do have time to meditate every day. So do you, most likely, on most days.

So I practice Biodynamic Meditation and post about it, with an eye to eventually teaching it as a recognized form of meditation where the focus is on self-healing and restoring vitality. You can follow my progress.

Whatever we couldn’t process at the time gets contained energetically. Sometimes we experience releases and may or may not be aware of it. We feel more ourselves, more centered, grounded, vibrant, confident, resourceful.

Craniosacral Biodynamics greatly augments the body-mind’s ability to heal itself of dysregulation, stuckness, inertia.

When that energy is released, it returns to our overall vitality and well-being.

It accelerates wellness.

I’ve been practicing Biodynamics in meditation, in classes, and with clients for almost a decade. I am far from enlightened, though I have moments of deep presence and clarity about who I am, why I’m here, and what I want.

I am much healther, grounded, centered, aware, bigger minded, and bigger hearted than I used to be. And people who have known me for that long or longer have noticed.

This is where I am now, and I appreciate you reading about my process. There will be more to come, I’m sure. If you have questions, please ask!

The three ignitions, plus some great questions

It’s been a good long while since I’ve posted anything here, and I have a free Monday morning, so here goes!

I just got back last night from a 3-day retreat on Biodynamics and Spiritual Embodiment taught by my colleague Christian Current. (If you don’t know already, I practice craniosacral biodynamics in Austin and Taos. Professional website: maryannreynolds.com.)

The setting was a private rural acreage 25 miles away from my home — with only the sounds of birds, wind, wind chimes, and running water from bubbling pools and fountains. No noise from traffic, sirens, planes — lovely. There were cabins, an Airstream, and a Winnebago for sleeping, and a talented young cook provided fresh healthful tasty food for the 12 of us. A pool and hot tub and gardens rounded out the amenities.

The retreat centered around the three energetic ignitions that occur in every living human before and right after birth: the conception ignition, the heart ignition, and the birth ignition.

Please note that the locations of these ignitions correspond to the upper, middle, and lower dantiens in Taoist energy physiology, to the three bony compartments of our bodies, the cranium, rib cage, and pelvis, and to three major energies we experience as humans, the energies of being, of relating, and of autonomy.

I learned a lot! Did you know that there’s a flash of light at conception, and that after the invited sperm embeds in the ovum, the sperm head dissolves and 20 minutes of complete stillness follow?

Maybe that’s why so many meditation guidelines recommend 20 minutes once or twice a day.

Did you know that the place where the sperm enters the egg becomes the third eye/ajna chakra/third ventricle of brain?

Did you know that blood is the first organ (it’s connective tissue) and it forms the heart? Not, as one might think, the container forms first and then fills.

Did you know that when the umbilical cord stops pulsing (on its own — it’s frequently severed too soon) and the first breath is taken, an ignition occurs that where the baby separates as an entity from its mother?

There was so much more. Some of it I’ve learned in previous trainings, but not in this much depth.

Oh, and it was full of great questions:

  • Who am I?
  • What do I want? What makes me happy?
  • What power(s) do I wield? What effects do I see I make in the world or myself?

I wanted to find the clearest truth possible in each of my answers:

  • I am loving awareness, which is always present as a baseline.
  • What I want and what makes me happy are the same: fulfillment.
  • My greatest power is choice.

How would you answer these questions?