a biodynamic educational paradigm / margaret rosenau

Posted January 31, 2023 by Margaret Rosenau in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Biodynamic Paradigm, Craniosacral Therapy 2356

Bio = Living, alive

Dynamic = Moving, changing, growing

Biodynamics = The doctrine of vital force or energy (1938), Honoring the dynamism and connection in all life’s forms and processes.

A Biodynamic educational paradigm honors, orients to, and amplifies the aliveness in each subject matter studied and emphasizes deepening of relationship with ourselves and others as essential to the learning process.

At the School of Inner Health, all of our courses are taught within this paradigm. We teach and practice practitioner skills that orient us to ourselves, each other, and the material so that we can both understand the theory and embody the knowing in ourselves.

There is a place of not doing in Biodynamics, a sequence of letting the body’s wisdom lead. Cultivating the ability to follow and respond in our I want what I want now world means deepening and widening and returning to an earlier sense of listening and responding. A cultivating of the natural dialogue between life forms that supports and strengthens their mutual sense of belonging to and being respected by something bigger.

There are a lot of skills that go into being a practitioner of this craft.

Below is a partial list of the skills we teach in our Biodynamic Craniosacral Practitioner Certification Training.

Skills of Orienting to Self and Other

• Knowing where you are as a practitioner, in time and space, and in relationship to your history.

• Staying in relationship to the ground within you and below you while in contact with another.

Skills of Relationship

• Authenticity, Presence, Attunement, Acceptance

• Pausing. Waiting.

• Boundaries: Empathy and Resonance while maintaining sense of self as Practitioner.

• Negotiating Proximity and Distance to find the “sweet spot,” a place where Client and Practitioner choose to meet.

Skills of Presence

• Knowing where you are in time and space

• Staying in the present while a Client revisits the past

Skills of Recognition

• Recognizing where in the body a story is being told during a session, recognizing relevant anatomy.

• Recognizing and understanding the details that the body reveals.

Skills of Attention

• How to recognize where you are placing your attention.

• How to create and maintain a deep and wide sense of wholeness.

Skills of Receptivity

• How to create and maintain receptivity to the life in every body.

• The ability to request rather than demand; the actual willingness NOT to proceed.

Skills of Felt Sense

• Recognition of Sensations in yourself and your client.

• Resonating with a client’s sensations without taking them on.

• The ability to track connection between sensation and changes in sensation.

• Full body knowing: the embodied sense of knowing where you are.

• Recognizing when something you are sensing is your story rather than your client’s.

• Recognizing states of Embodiment and states of Disassociation.

Skills of Neutrality

• How to let what you know inform the process rather than directing it.

• How to walk out in the middle of the movie rather than getting drawn into the most compelling moments of a client’s process.

• How to grow your capacity so you can stay present during client’s activation.

Skills of Differentiation

• How to differentiate your material from your client’s material.

• How to differentiate past from present.

• How to differentiate activation from potency.

Skills of Precision

• Building a capacity with anatomical details without tunneling in or the client feeling invaded or compressed.

• Teaching a variety of touches and perceptions of qualities within fluid, tissue, and nerves to support the client’s needs and meet them where they are with a pressure that meets them where they are.

There are endless refinements of these skills and more always to learn. Again, this is a partial list of the deep exploratory training environment we create together in each class.

Biodynamics is a doorway to ever-unfolding possibilities of perception and awe. And one thing I hear often from students is that these skills help them in all aspects of their life to recognize and respond to situations, choices, and challenges in real-time.

An education that helps in all aspects of life through a lens that honors and amplifies life - that’s quite an education!

Tags: biodynamics, craniosacral, relationship