In this modern world of doing, achieving, obtaining and searching, how do we rest? What does stillness even mean in this context? How can we experience it? And why might we want to?
That we might even be asking these questions underlines the necessity. In our rush to complete that internet search, to buy that latest model of whatever, to make more contacts on the latest social media, we forget.
We forget who we truly are. We forget where we have come from. Our source. Our beginnings. We emerge at conception from a ground of stillness. In Craniosacral Biodynamics we call it “dynamic stillness,” a term inspired by early osteopath Rollin Becker’s description of “an alive and dynamic stillness.” This is a state of suspension, where motion pauses or becomes unimportant. In dynamic stillness, we are infused by a sense of potent aliveness. We are presence without the need for action. We simply are.
States of Stasis
Dynamic stillness differs from the more static, turgid stillness we may sense in our clients or ourselves when associating with unresolved past traumas, generating a parasympathetic freeze or dissociative state. In these trauma states, we sense a dullness, a vacancy, a lack of aliveness. Beginner practitioners often begin to doubt their own skills when encountering such states of stasis. They were sensing so much happening a moment ago and suddenly it has all disappeared. They feel nothing. We may also experience sleepiness or sluggishness as we resonate with these states. This may be an echo of anaesthesia administered during surgery or given to the mother during birth.
For those in a dissociative freeze state, communication can become difficult. It can be hard to think clearly. They may feel foggy, dreamy, disembodied. For the practitioner it may feel like nobody is home in the client’s body, or like part of the body is uninhabited. Muscular tone may be flaccid and limp. The individual may feel like they can’t do anything. They can’t speak. They can’t move. They may feel like a victim, reflecting what may have been true at an earlier time in their lives.
For those with developmental trauma, who learned as children to “play dead,” to withdraw and dissociate in order to survive in an intolerable environment, this disembodied state may be habitual. It is not unusual for multiple health problems to accompany this chronic state of static stillness.
Dynamic stillness is very different. It is important for practitioners to be able to differentiate between these two states of stasis vs. dynamic stillness. It is not helpful to support staying in a state of stasis, which may reinforce old trauma patterns in the nervous system.
Meeting the client where they are at with unconditional acceptance and enhancing presence within stasis can reduce the need for such a protective stance. Mistaking it for dynamic stillness often involves both client and practitioner dissociating into their own private dreamlands where there is no relationship and therefor no healing relational safety. In contrast dynamic stillness is nourishing and healing, and usually enjoyed by client and practitioner together.
An Alive and Dynamic Stillness
When we settle deeply in what we perceive as a safe, respectful relational field, our history, our traumas, our protective nervous systems can begin to soften. My dear mentor, Emilie Conrad who developed Continuum, often spoke of “softening the inhibitors.” We begin as very fluid resonant beings, open and receptive, ready to learn. As we adapt to the world we are born into, we begin to coalesce into forms acceptable in our culture, our family and our time. In the process, tissues become denser and harder. We protect ourselves and our soft core by hardening on the outside.
In Biodynamics, we perceive specific inertial fulcrums developing in response to conditions we meet that are too much to fully process at the time they arise. These inertial fulcrums serve as organisational points, generating protective tissue density.
Softening the inhibitors and the density involves slowing down, allowing ourselves to discover rest and safety in present time. Biodynamic practitioners support this settling by settling ourselves, establishing a respectful, safe relational field with our clients, and orienting to what is prior to the inertial patterns and fulcrums presenting.
Beyond the patterning is something slower, deeper, wider, softer. We perceive more universal states of wholeness and fluidity. We sense slow, subtle tidal rhythms generated by a mysterious presence we call the Breath of Life and more primary, universal organising fulcrums. Slowing down and resting even further, we encounter dynamic stillness, the ground of all being. Here even the subtle movement of the slowest tides recedes into the background. Stillness is like the pause between breaths. Beyond movement. When we listen for the stillness it emerges.
