Devon Hornby LMT
“A human being is not an isolated thing, but a living process in continuous relationship with everything that sustains it.”
Throughout this series, we’ve been learning to listen.
We’ve learned to settle beneath habitual thinking.
To observe how beliefs shape our experience.
To feel into possible futures.
To remain with sensation before explaining it.
And, at the very beginning, we learned to notice something even more subtle:
The spaciousness in which all of this appears.
Each of these practices has quietly cultivated the same capacity:
The ability to meet experience directly.
Now I’d like to invite you into perhaps the deepest inquiry of all.
Not,
“Who am I?”
But,
“Can I actually find the independent self I assume myself to be?”
This is not a philosophical puzzle.
Nor is it an invitation to abandon your identity.
It is simply an experiment in perception.
Looking for the Self
Most of us carry a strong sense that there is a solid, independent “me” somewhere inside.
It feels obvious.
And yet, when we begin looking carefully, the picture becomes less certain.
Let’s begin with the body.
Your bones.
Your muscles.
Your skin.
Your heart.
Your lungs.
Your blood.
Which one is you?
Perhaps all of them together?
But every cell in your body depends upon air, water, food, sunlight, gravity, bacteria, and countless relationships that continue every moment of your life.
Your body is not a finished object.
It is an ongoing conversation with the world.
The oxygen that is “outside” becomes “inside.”
The food that was once soil and sunlight becomes flesh.
Even the atoms that compose your body are continually exchanged with your surroundings.
The body is less a possession than a process.
The Mind Is Also a Relationship
Perhaps, then, the self lives in the mind.
Consider your language.
Who taught you to speak?
Your values.
Where did they come from?
Your sense of right and wrong.
Your preferences.
Your fears.
Your ambitions.
Your understanding of love.
Every one of these has been shaped through relationship.
Parents.
Teachers.
Friends.
Books.
Music.
Culture.
Joy.
Loss.
Even the thoughts passing through your mind are expressed in a language you did not invent.
This doesn’t make them any less meaningful.
It simply reminds us that the person we experience ourselves to be has been formed through countless relationships extending far beyond the boundaries of our own skin.
Looking More Closely
Modern physics has revealed that what appears solid is, at another scale, an astonishing dance of relationships.
Matter is not quite as solid as it first appears.
Nor is it as separate.
At the same time, contemplative traditions have spent centuries inviting practitioners to investigate experience directly rather than relying solely on appearances.
Although science and contemplative practice ask different questions and use different methods, both encourage us to look more deeply than our first impressions.
Rather than drawing metaphysical conclusions, let us simply continue observing.
Where does your body end and the surrounding warmth begin?
Where does your breath stop being the atmosphere and become “you”?
Where is the exact boundary between hearing and sound?
Between seeing and light?
Between awareness and the world that awareness knows?
And what about space itself?
Where does the space within your mouth end and the space of the room begin?
Where does the spaciousness in your chest end and the openness around you begin?
Where is the boundary between the space that holds your thoughts and the space in which those thoughts arise?
These are not questions to solve.
They are invitations to perceive.
An Embodied Contemplation
I’d like to invite you into one final practice.
Begin as we have throughout this series.
Sit comfortably.
Feel the support beneath your body.
Allow your breathing to become effortless.
Take your time.
First
Before turning toward the body itself, notice the space within and around it.
Feel the openness in the mouth.
The hollow of the throat.
The spaciousness of the chest.
The room inside the abdomen.
The intervals between the joints.
The subtle distances between sensations.
Notice that your body is not only substance.
It is also space.
A living field of openness.
If it feels helpful, remember the ether element here—not as an abstract idea, but as the felt sense of spaciousness that allows everything else to appear.
Pause.
Notice what happens as you rest in this awareness of inner space.
Second
Now bring your attention to your body.
Notice its weight.
Its warmth.
Its aliveness.
Then quietly reflect:
This body has been built from food.
Food grown in soil.
Nourished by rain.
Warmed by sunlight.
Its breath depends upon forests, oceans, and the atmosphere.
Its cells are continually changing.
And within it, there is space.
Space for breath.
Space for movement.
Space for sensation.
Space for life to unfold.
Pause.
Notice what happens in your body as you contemplate this.
Third
Now turn toward the mind.
Notice your memories.
Your hopes.
Your opinions.
Your name.
Your personality.
Then gently ask:
How much of this have I received from relationship?
From family.
Teachers.
Friends.
Books.
The people I have loved.
The people who have challenged me.
And what is the space in which all of this appears?
The quiet openness that knows thought without becoming thought.
The spacious awareness that holds experience without needing to grasp it.
Pause again.
Feel into the body.
What changes?
Fourth
Finally, allow all of this to rest.
No conclusions.
No philosophy.
Simply experience yourself sitting here.
Breathing.
Aware.
Connected.
Supported.
Not isolated from life.
Participating in it.
Rest in the space within you.
Rest in the space around you.
Rest in the space that seems to hold both.
Remain there for a few quiet minutes.
Notice what emerges without forcing it.
What I’ve Observed in Practice
One of the quiet gifts of body-centered work is that people often become less preoccupied with fixing themselves.
Instead, they begin experiencing themselves as participants in something much larger.
Their breathing no longer feels like an individual achievement.
It becomes part of a larger rhythm.
Their healing no longer feels like a solitary struggle.
It becomes something supported by relationships—with practitioners, loved ones, communities, nature, and the inherent organizing intelligence of life itself.
And often, they begin to notice something else as well:
That there is space within them.
Space that is not empty in the ordinary sense.
Space that is receptive.
Holding.
Allowing.
A spaciousness that makes room for sensation, feeling, memory, and change.
I’ve come to believe that this shift is one of the deepest forms of healing.
Not because it answers every question.
But because it softens the burden of believing we must carry life alone.
Embodied Knowing
Throughout this series, I’ve suggested that the body is not merely something we inhabit.
It is an organ of perception.
This final contemplation invites us one step further.
Perhaps embodied knowing is not simply about becoming more aware of ourselves.
Perhaps it is about discovering that ourselves have always been expressions of relationship.
And perhaps relationship is not only between things.
Perhaps it is also the spacious field in which things arise, meet, and transform.
As this understanding deepens, compassion becomes less an ideal and more a natural consequence.
Gratitude becomes less an obligation and more a recognition of reality.
Life is no longer something happening to us.
It is something we are continually participating in.
Looking Ahead
This concludes our exploration of Biodynamic Intelligence.
We began by learning to listen beneath thought.
We discovered discernment.
We explored possibility.
We learned to remain with sensation.
We returned to the spaciousness within.
And finally, we investigated the relational nature of our own existence.
The next series, Biodynamic Living, asks a new question.
If we begin to trust this embodied knowing…
How might it change the way we live?
Further Exploration
Contemplative Traditions
- Buddhist teachings on dependent origination and interdependence.
- Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings on “interbeing.”
- Taoist reflections on harmony and participation in the Tao.
Philosophy
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception
- Martin Buber — I and Thou
Science
- Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch — The Embodied Mind
- Antonio Damasio — Self Comes to Mind
- Contemporary work on embodied and enactive cognition.
Clinical Perspectives
- Franklyn Sills — Craniosacral Biodynamics
- Randolph Stone — Polarity Therapy
- Anna Chitty — teachings on Health, relationship, and the perceptual field.