Lately I have been watching a powerful video series from a young man who healed himself from serious cancer, after being given unlikely odds for living. He was diagnosed in 2004 and today presents as very alive, present and generous with his information. While not that much of it is new to me, I have been receiving it as a reminder of the wake up call I experienced ten years ago. (Click here to learn more about this series.)
I had a mole, a birth mark, that had suddenly grown much larger and darker. When I received the diagnosis of malignant melanoma, the dermatologist called me herself to tell me the news and ask what time I could be at her office that morning to have the margins removed. This was a few days after the initial surgery to remove the mole. When, in my shock, I stuttered, “I’m teaching a class this morning,” she declared, “No! This is important!” I did manage to teach my class before driving the two hours to her office for her final appointment of the day.
The dermatologist was an unusual one. She was an osteopath who had chosen to specialize in dermatology in order to, as she put it, see her children grow up. She didn’t want to spend time rushing off to do operations and work with orthopedic patients in hospital. She wanted time at home with her family. Now, however, she had an emergency in her hands. As she cut into my skin, she surprised me by exclaiming, “Look at this beautiful, healthy skin!”
Orienting to Health
As a Craniosacral therapist, I was aware that she was speaking from her osteopathic background. I was grateful for her focus on health, even as she was performing surgery to remove dis-ease! This orientation to health is a major feature of Craniosacral Biodynamics.
Craniosacral therapy emerged from osteopathic practice. Founder of osteopathy, A. T. Still, stated, “To find Health should be the object of the physician. Anyone can find disease.”
This orientation to health can be a challenging intention in our modern, western world. As a cancer patient, I was aware of the cultural terror of cancer. My parents used to express their fear of some ache or pain being “the C word.” How could one ever be safe with cancer always lurking in the background?
Fear is quite different from orientation to and appreciation of health. Health is always present. In Biodynamics, we appreciate how the embodied life energy, or “potency,” acts to protect when there has been trauma, overwhelm, or shock.
My dermatologist appreciated that, even with a giant melanoma attempting to invade my system, health was preventing it from taking me over. Health in my life had brought my attention to it. When I asked her why this would have happened to me when I had followed an anti-cancer, Macrobiotic diet and lifestyle for many years, she wisely replied, indicating that it could have been much worse. I could have been undergoing much more serious surgery for one or more of my organs. She suspected that my healthy choices had helped curb the cancer’s growth.
In Biodynamics, we often find ourselves guided by a profound Intelligence in the person’s system, to work with a specific area of holding we call an inertial fulcrum. A fulcrum is a point of stillness around which movement is organized. For example, the elbow is a fulcrum for movement of the arm. The center of a seesaw is the fulcrum for movement of the seesaw. In healthy attachment, a parent is an important fulcrum for a small child.
In our bodies, we have what we call “natural” fulcrums, which shift easily with the subtle breath-like motions of what we call primary respiration. This subtle respiration is an expression of a mysterious presence founder of cranial osteopathy, William Sutherland, termed “The Breath of Life.” Primary respiration precedes the breath of air, which begins with our first breath at birth. This subtle filling and emptying motion is reminiscent of a tide in the ocean. Natural fulcrums, generally located along an energetic midline of the body, slightly move with each inhalation and exhalation of primary respiration, as in the image at the top of this post.
Life Conditions and Inertia
Inertial fulcrums are places where history and conditions of life have affected us, bringing conditional forces into our system. Inertial fulcrums tend to feel dense, and counter the natural cellular-tissue movement, or motility, which otherwise occurs with primary respiration. There is inertia in an inertial fulcrum, resulting in less movement there.
Cells and tissues affected by the inertial fulcrum move in relation to it, as well as the natural fulcrums. Thus, we may sense a fuller movement on one side than the other with primary inhalation and exhalation. Or we may have a sense of everything being pulled in towards the inertial fulcrum, including our awareness.
Rather than trying to diagnose the situation and do something to fix it, Biodynamic practitioners settle themselves further, orienting to the health that has enabled the system to protect itself with this inertial fulcrum, and to the dynamic stillness and potency present. We are aware that potency is holding the fulcrum in a protective mode. As we join it in holding the fulcrum within a wide field of awareness, as if it is suspended within vast energetic fields of support, we tend to sense the system settling with us.
The forces within the fulcrum may seem to be seeking a state of balance or equilibrium, pulling back and forth, until they, too can settle and deepen. Within the state of balance, there may be a sense of conditional forces discharging. We may sense this as intense heat, pulsation, burning, or buzzing. As these forces are released, we sense a softening, spreading, enlivening, and then a re-organization often of the entire body. As this inertial fulcrum has been resolved and no longer serves as an organizing center, the cells and tissues can orient more fully to the midline and health can be expressed in its fuller, more natural state.
Where is Your Health?
Beautiful, healthy skin is one expression of health. Our ability to respond to change with awareness and resilience is another.
Cancer, like other conditions, can be a powerful wake up call. Have we strayed from our orientation to health? Have we forgotten who we are? Have we made life’s little daily episodes more important than our deeper purpose and nature?
What is most important to you just now? How does your body and breath respond when you consider this? What would support you in deepening more fully into an awareness and embodiment of the health that you are?
Please note: The images of natural and inertial fulcrums are my art work, which will appear in my forthcoming book, The Breath of Life: An Introduction to Craniosacral Biodynamics, due out April, 2018. Pre-order the book now here!
