Tag: biodynamics

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Effort vs. Allowing

Doing less. Receiving more.

Devon Hornby LMT

In the last two installments of Biodynamic Living, we explored slowness and rhythm, and then turned toward a different way of understanding health: rather than organizing our lives primarily around deficiency—what is wrong, what needs to be fixed, what needs to be removed—we can learn to orient toward the health that is already present.

This leads naturally to another question:

If health is already present, how much do we actually need to do?

We are accustomed to believing that wellbeing requires effort.

We exercise.

We meditate.

We eat carefully.

We stretch.

We breathe.

We take supplements.

We go to therapy.

We practice.

We optimize.

We work on ourselves.

Much of this can be beneficial. The problem isn’t effort itself.

The question is whether we have become so accustomed to doing something to ourselves that we have forgotten how to receive.

There is another possibility.

Instead of continually trying to make ourselves well, we can begin to create the conditions in which health is allowed to express itself.

This is the movement from effort toward allowing.

The Paradox of Effort

There is a strange paradox in healing.

Sometimes effort is exactly what is required.

If we are weak, we may need to exercise.

If we are injured, we may need to rehabilitate.

If we have a destructive habit, we may need to make a deliberate change.

If we want to learn an instrument, a language, or a movement practice, we need to practice.

Effort has its place.

But effort can also become a habit that continues long after it is useful.

We can become identified with trying.

Trying to relax.

Trying to heal.

Trying to meditate.

Trying to be present.

Trying to let go.

Trying to surrender.

And eventually we encounter the absurdity of trying to relax.

The harder we try to relax, the more effort we introduce into the system.

The harder we try to “let go,” the more tightly we hold onto the idea of letting go.

At some point, healing asks for something different.

Not more effort.

Less interference.

Active Relaxation

This is beautifully expressed in classical Qigong.

Some of the deepest Qigong practices aren’t about producing more energy or accomplishing more with the body.

They are about learning how to actively relax.

This is not collapse.

It is not sleepiness.

It is not simply doing nothing.

Active relaxation is a highly refined form of participation.

We remain present.

We remain aware.

We remain receptive.

But we stop imposing unnecessary effort.

The body is allowed to settle.

The breath is allowed to breathe.

The joints are allowed to release.

The mind is allowed to become spacious.

Rather than manufacturing a particular state, we create the conditions for the body’s own intelligence to emerge.

In this sense, relaxation becomes an activity—not because we are doing more, but because we are actively releasing what does not need to be done.

There is a tremendous amount of effort hidden inside the body.

Effort to hold ourselves together.

Effort to maintain posture.

Effort to anticipate.

Effort to protect.

Effort to control.

Effort to remain vigilant.

Often we don’t even recognize it as effort because we have been doing it for so long.

Active relaxation begins by noticing.

And then allowing.

The Body Knows How to Breathe

Consider breathing.

We can consciously control our breathing. We can deepen it, slow it, count it, shape it, and use it therapeutically.

But we can also notice something remarkable:

We don’t actually have to breathe ourselves.

The body knows how to breathe.

When we fall asleep, breathing continues.

When we stop paying attention, breathing continues.

When we are distracted, breathing continues.

There is intelligence operating that does not require our constant supervision.

This is an important doorway into allowing.

What else might be happening within us that doesn’t require our management?

The heart doesn’t wait for instructions.

Digestion doesn’t require our conscious control.

Wounds begin repairing themselves.

Bones remodel.

The immune system continually monitors and responds.

The nervous system constantly adjusts our relationship with the environment.

We are not machines waiting for conscious direction.

We are living systems.

And living systems have their own intelligence.

Allowing Is Not Passivity

This distinction is important.

Allowing does not mean neglect.

It does not mean refusing medical care.

It does not mean ignoring symptoms.

It does not mean sitting on the couch and waiting for life to fix everything.

Sometimes appropriate action is precisely what health requires.

Allowing means something subtler:

We act when action is needed, and we stop acting when action is no longer needed.

We learn to distinguish effort that supports life from effort that interferes with it.

A farmer prepares the soil, plants the seed, waters it, and protects it.

But the farmer does not pull on the plant to make it grow.

A cook prepares the ingredients and provides heat.

But they don’t force the transformation inside the pot.

A therapist creates conditions for healing.

But they cannot heal another person.

The living system does the actual work.

Sahaja: The Naturally Arising

This brings us to a beautiful idea found in the Mahamudra tradition: sahaja.

Often translated as “innate,” “co-emergent,” or “naturally present,” sahaja points toward something that does not have to be manufactured.

It is not something we create through spiritual accomplishment.

It is something we learn to recognize.

This is particularly important when thinking about practice.

We can spend years trying to become peaceful.

Trying to become compassionate.

Trying to become present.

Trying to become awakened.

But what if some of what we are seeking is already present beneath the activity of trying?

The practice then changes.

We aren’t manufacturing a natural state.

We are learning to recognize and rest in what is already there.

This is closely related to the Mahamudra instruction to rest in the natural state.

Rather than continually manipulating experience, we allow body, mind, and awareness to settle.

Thoughts arise.

Sensations arise.

Emotions arise.

They don’t necessarily need to be fixed.

We notice.

We remain present.

We allow.

And in that allowing, something begins to reveal itself.

Resting in the Natural State

This doesn’t mean that the natural state is some special trance in which nothing happens.

Life continues.

Thoughts come.

Feelings come.

The body moves.

The environment changes.

Pain may still be present.

Pleasure may still be present.

The difference is our relationship to what is happening.

Instead of constantly trying to manufacture a better experience, we learn to rest with experience as it is.

This is one of the profound paradoxes of contemplative practice:

Sometimes the path forward is to stop trying to get somewhere.

We sit.

We breathe.

We listen.

We allow.

And gradually we discover that presence doesn’t have to be manufactured.

It was here before we started trying to achieve it.

Biodynamic Healing

This is also at the heart of the biodynamic orientation.

In Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, we don’t primarily attempt to impose a correction on the body.

We orient toward health.

We listen.

We become still.

We create a relational field in which the organism can begin to reorganize itself.

The practitioner isn’t the source of healing.

The practitioner participates in creating the conditions in which the client’s own resources can become more available.

This is very different from a mechanical model of treatment.

The mechanical model asks:

What should I do to this body?

The biodynamic question is closer to:

What happens when I become quiet enough to listen to what this body is already doing?

That doesn’t make the practitioner passive.

Quite the opposite.

It requires tremendous presence.

But the activity is primarily receptive rather than controlling.

From Doing to Receiving

Perhaps this is one of the most difficult transitions in modern life.

We are very good at doing.

We are much less practiced at receiving.

Receiving nourishment.

Receiving support.

Receiving another person’s attention.

Receiving the natural world.

Receiving silence.

Receiving rest.

Receiving our own experience.

Even when we are resting, we often consume something.

A podcast.

A show.

A book.

A phone.

Music.

Information.

Stimulation.

True rest can be surprisingly unfamiliar.

To simply sit beneath a tree.

To walk without listening to anything.

To eat without looking at a screen.

To lie down and feel the body.

To breathe without trying to improve the breath.

To allow the mind to be exactly as it is.

These may seem like very small things.

But they are practices in receiving.

The Intelligence of Not Doing

There is an intelligence in knowing what to do.

There is another intelligence in knowing what not to do.

A good physician knows when intervention is necessary—and when observation is wiser.

A good gardener knows when to prune—and when to leave the plant alone.

A good parent knows when to guide—and when to allow a child to discover.

A good teacher knows when to explain—and when to let the student experience.

A good practitioner knows when to touch—and when to become still.

And perhaps a mature human being learns the same thing about their own life.

There are moments for action.

There are moments for effort.

And there are moments when the wisest thing we can do is get out of the way.

A Simple Experiment

Try this today.

Lie down or sit comfortably.

Rather than trying to relax, notice how much effort you are already using.

Can you feel the effort in your face?

Your jaw?

Your shoulders?

Your abdomen?

Your hands?

Your eyes?

Your breath?

Don’t try to make these areas relax.

Simply notice them.

Then ask:

What happens if I don’t have to hold this?

Perhaps something releases.

Perhaps nothing happens.

Either is fine.

Then notice the breath.

You don’t have to breathe.

Let the body breathe you.

Notice the subtle movement of life happening without your direction.

For a few minutes, simply rest.

Nothing to accomplish.

Nothing to improve.

Nothing to fix.

Just notice what is already happening.

The Effort to Allow

Eventually, even allowing can become another project.

We can become very serious about surrender.

We can work hard at being effortless.

So perhaps the final instruction is even simpler:

Don’t try to be effortless.

Notice.

Listen.

Feel.

And when you notice yourself trying to make something happen, see if there is an opportunity to soften the effort.

Sometimes the deepest form of practice is not learning how to do something better.

It is learning how to stop interfering with something that already knows how to happen.

The body knows how to breathe.

A wound knows something about repair.

A seed knows something about becoming a plant.

The seasons know how to change.

And somewhere beneath all of our striving, there may be a similar intelligence within us.

We don’t have to manufacture it.

We can learn to recognize it.

And then, perhaps, we can begin to trust it.

Doing less. Receiving more. Allowing health to arise.

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Living from Health Rather Than Deficiency

Devon Hornby LMT

What if healing began not with asking what is wrong, but with asking what is already alive?

In our last installment of Biodynamic Living, we explored rhythm—the movement between activity and rest, effort and recovery, engagement and withdrawal.

Rhythm gives us another way of understanding health.

A living system is not healthy because it is free of every fluctuation, tension, or imperfection. It is healthy because it has the capacity to respond, adapt, recover, and reorganize.

This points toward a different way of approaching healing.

Instead of beginning with deficiency, we can begin with health.

Instead of asking only:

What is wrong?

we can also ask:

What is working? What is alive? What is available? What can we strengthen?

This may seem like a subtle distinction.

It isn’t.

It changes the entire orientation of healing.

The Culture of Cleansing

We live in a culture fascinated with purification.

Detoxes.

Cleanses.

Fasts.

Elimination diets.

Juice cleanses.

Gut resets.

Heavy-metal protocols.

“Clean eating.”

Thirty-day challenges designed to eliminate something from our lives.

There can be legitimate therapeutic uses for some forms of fasting, elimination, or dietary restriction. Sometimes the body does need a period of reduction. Sometimes something genuinely needs to be removed.

But there is something worth examining in our almost compulsive attraction to these practices.

Why is purification so appealing to us?

Part of the answer may be cultural.

Western religious traditions have often associated purity with goodness and contamination with wrongdoing. The body, appetite, sexuality, pleasure, and material existence have frequently been placed on the side of temptation or impurity, while restraint, abstinence, discipline, and purification have been associated with virtue.

Our contemporary wellness culture can reproduce this pattern in secular clothing.

We may no longer speak about sin.

Instead, we speak about toxins.

We may no longer confess our impurities.

Instead, we eliminate sugar, gluten, dairy, alcohol, carbohydrates, lectins, seed oils, or some newly identified threat.

And sometimes the underlying emotional message remains remarkably similar:

There is something wrong with me, and I need to get rid of it before I can be well.

This can become an exhausting way to inhabit a body.

We can become preoccupied with what we should not eat, what we should eliminate, what we should cleanse, what we should fix, and what we should protect ourselves from.

Health becomes a process of subtraction.

But living systems don’t survive through subtraction alone.

They also survive through nourishment, relationship, adaptation, and growth.

Medicine and the Problem of the Problem

There is a parallel here with modern medicine.

Modern medicine has accomplished extraordinary things by becoming exceptionally good at identifying and treating disease.

In an emergency, this orientation can be lifesaving.

A broken bone needs to be stabilized.

An infection may require treatment.

A tumor may need to be removed.

A dangerous physiological process sometimes needs to be stopped.

There is enormous value in knowing how to identify pathology and intervene effectively.

But there is a limitation when the disease model becomes our primary way of understanding the human being.

We can become so focused on identifying the problem that we forget to ask about the organism in which the problem is occurring.

A diagnosis tells us something important.

But it doesn’t tell us everything.

Two people can have the same diagnosis and very different capacities for adaptation, resilience, relationship, recovery, and healing.

The question becomes:

What is the health of this person doing, even in the presence of dysfunction?

That is a very different question.

Health Is More Than the Absence of Disease

If we define health simply as the absence of pathology, then health becomes a kind of empty category.

You are healthy if nothing is wrong.

But what if health is something more substantial?

What if health is an organizing intelligence?

The capacity to regulate.

To adapt.

To recover.

To orient.

To connect.

To respond appropriately to changing circumstances.

To mobilize when mobilization is needed and settle when settling is possible.

To repair.

To grow.

To rest.

To relate.

This is much closer to how living systems actually behave.

A healthy organism isn’t motionless.

It is responsive.

It isn’t perfectly balanced.

It is constantly finding balance.

And it doesn’t necessarily eliminate every challenge.

It develops the capacity to meet challenge.

Tonification: Building What Is Already There

This is where an older idea from Asian medicine becomes particularly interesting: tonification.

Tonification is not simply treating a symptom.

It is strengthening and nourishing the body’s existing resources.

Instead of asking only:

How do we get rid of this?

we can ask:

What does this organism need in order to become more capable?

More nourishment.

More rest.

More warmth.

More circulation.

More stability.

More vitality.

More capacity.

More connection.

The goal isn’t to create health from nothing.

It is to support the health that is already present.

This is an important distinction in body-centered healing.

Sometimes the organism needs something removed.

But often it needs something supported.

Sometimes we need to interrupt a pattern.

But sometimes we need to strengthen the capacity underneath the pattern.

Sometimes the most profound intervention is not another intervention.

It is stabilization.

Stabilization Before Transformation

In many forms of healing, there is a temptation to go directly toward transformation.

We want to release the trauma.

Open the restriction.

Break through the pattern.

Clear the blockage.

Get to the root.

But living systems often need something simpler first.

They need enough safety to settle.

Enough nourishment to sustain themselves.

Enough stability to reorganize.

Enough resource to meet what is difficult.

This is one reason that stabilization can be profoundly therapeutic.

A person who has spent years mobilizing against life may not need another experience of intensity.

They may need to discover that nothing needs to happen right now.

A depleted organism may not need to be pushed into another cleansing process.

It may need food, sleep, warmth, connection, and time.

A body that has been fighting may need to discover that it can stop fighting.

Health doesn’t always arrive through greater effort.

Sometimes it arrives when the organism finally has enough resources to let go of the effort it has been using to survive.

The Biodynamic Orientation

This is one of the places where Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy offers such a beautiful perspective.

In BCST, we aren’t primarily trying to impose a correction upon the body.

We orient toward health.

As my teacher Anna Chitty describes it, there is a distinction between the blueprint and the imprint.

The imprint is what has happened.

Injury.

Adaptation.

Compensation.

Trauma.

Illness.

Habit.

The ways life has shaped the organism.

But underneath and alongside all of that is the blueprint—the deeper organizing potential of the living system.

The practitioner doesn’t have to manufacture health.

The work is to create the conditions in which the organism can reconnect with its own inherent organization.

This is a radically different relationship to healing.

Rather than becoming fascinated with the problem, we learn to remain oriented toward the health that exists even within the problem.

The restriction is real.

The pain is real.

The trauma is real.

But it is not the whole person.

There is something more.

And our work is to help the person discover their relationship with that “more.”

The Wisdom of Slow Food

This principle extends far beyond clinical work.

Consider cooking.

Industrial food culture tends toward speed.

Fast food.

Instant meals.

Highly processed ingredients engineered for convenience.

Food becomes fuel delivered as quickly as possible.

Slow cooking offers something different.

A pot simmers.

Flavors develop gradually.

Fibers soften.

Ingredients interact.

Something changes through time and relationship.

The cook isn’t forcing the transformation.

They are creating the conditions for it.

This is not unlike healing.

We provide nourishment.

We create appropriate conditions.

We apply warmth.

We allow time.

And something happens that we cannot entirely manufacture.

Farming Knows This

The same principle becomes even clearer in farming.

A farmer does not manufacture the growth of a plant.

They cannot command a seed to become a tree.

They can prepare the soil.

Provide water.

Provide nutrients.

Protect the plant.

Manage competing influences.

Attend to the seasons.

And then they wait.

The intelligence of the seed is not created by the farmer.

It is supported by the farmer.

This is a beautiful model for healing.

And perhaps also for parenting.

For teaching.

For leadership.

For relationships.

For our relationship with ourselves.

We often assume that helping means making something happen.

But sometimes helping means creating the conditions in which something can happen by itself.

From Fixing to Cultivating

This is the larger movement I am interested in when I speak about Biodynamic Living.

We can spend our lives trying to fix ourselves.

Fix our bodies.

Fix our relationships.

Fix our habits.

Fix our minds.

Fix our lives.

There is certainly a place for change.

But what happens when our primary orientation shifts from fixing to cultivating?

We begin asking different questions.

What is already working?

Where is there vitality?

What gives me energy?

What helps me recover?

What makes me feel more connected?

What strengthens my capacity?

What environments support my health?

What relationships nourish me?

What practices help me become more present?

What can I do less of?

And perhaps most importantly:

What can I give more attention to?

Attention itself is nourishing.

What we attend to tends to become more organized in our experience.

If we continually attend to deficiency, we can become experts in finding what is wrong.

If we learn to attend to health, we become more sensitive to subtle signs of vitality.

This does not mean ignoring suffering.

It means refusing to let suffering become the only thing we can see.

Health Within the Problem

Perhaps this is the deepest principle.

Health does not necessarily exist on the other side of our difficulties.

It already exists within them.

The body that has developed a compensation is still trying to organize itself.

The person experiencing anxiety is still attempting to protect something.

The chronic pain response may contain an extraordinary history of adaptation.

The tired person may not be failing.

They may be signaling that a resource has been depleted.

This doesn’t mean that every symptom is secretly beneficial or that every illness should simply be accepted.

It means that we can become curious about the intelligence that exists alongside dysfunction.

What is this organism trying to do?

What is it protecting?

What capacity is asking to be strengthened?

Where is the health?

Those questions can lead us somewhere very different from endless correction.

A Practice of Orientation

For the next week, try an experiment.

When you notice something you want to change about yourself, pause before immediately asking:

How do I get rid of this?

Instead ask:

Where is the health here?

If you are tired:

What would nourish me?

If you are anxious:

What would help me feel more resourced?

If you are physically weak:

What would strengthen me?

If you feel disconnected:

What would support genuine connection?

If you are overwhelmed:

What could be simplified?

This isn’t positive thinking.

It isn’t pretending that problems don’t exist.

It is a shift in orientation.

We acknowledge what is difficult without making difficulty the center of our relationship with life.

The Living System

Perhaps this is what biodynamic living ultimately asks of us.

Not to become perfect.

Not to become purified.

Not to eliminate every problem.

Not even to become permanently healthy.

But to develop a relationship with the living intelligence that is continually working toward greater organization.

Sometimes that means intervention.

Sometimes it means elimination.

Sometimes it means effort.

And sometimes it means doing absolutely nothing.

Sometimes we need to clear.

Sometimes we need to cleanse.

But sometimes we need to feed the fire.

Strengthen the roots.

Prepare the soil.

Let the soup simmer.

Allow the body to rest.

Give the nervous system time.

Stay close to what is alive.

Because healing isn’t only the art of removing what doesn’t belong.

It is also the art of cultivating what does.

And perhaps the question beneath all healing is not simply:

“How do I get rid of what is wrong?”

but:

“How can I create the conditions for health to express itself more fully?”

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Living Rhythmically

Devon Hornby LMT

Slowness teaches us to listen. Rhythm teaches us when to move and when to rest.

In the previous post, we explored slowness as a way of life.

We considered how the increasing speed of modern life can separate us from our bodies, our surroundings, and one another. When everything is accelerated, we lose the opportunity to feel what is actually happening. We become increasingly dependent upon stimulation to tell us what to do, where to go, and how to feel.

Slowness creates something different.

It creates space.

And when we have enough space, we begin to notice something that was there all along:

Life has rhythm.

The body has rhythm.
The breath has rhythm.
The heart has rhythm.
Sleep and waking have rhythm.
The seasons have rhythm.
Relationships have rhythm.
Learning has rhythm.
Work has rhythm.
Even our lives themselves have rhythm.

Perhaps one of the great difficulties of modern life is that we have become increasingly skilled at overriding these rhythms.

We expect ourselves to work at the same intensity every day. We expect ourselves to exercise without adequate recovery, to learn without allowing what we have learned to settle, to remain socially available without solitude, and to remain productive regardless of what our bodies or circumstances are telling us.

We try to make life continuous.

But life isn’t continuous.

Life pulses.

The Rhythm of the Day

Consider the simplest rhythm: waking and sleeping.

We wake. We become active. We engage with the world. Our attention moves outward. Eventually, energy decreases. We become quieter. We sleep. And during sleep, an enormous amount of activity takes place beneath our awareness.

Then we wake again.

The new day isn’t simply a continuation of yesterday. It is a renewal.

There is something profound about this rhythm.

We don’t have to earn sleep. We don’t have to accomplish something before we are allowed to rest. Rest is not a reward for productivity.

It is part of the process that makes productivity possible.

The same is true throughout the day.

There are times when attention is naturally outward and active, and times when it wants to turn inward. There are periods of concentration and periods when the mind needs to wander. There are times for conversation and times for silence.

We can cooperate with these movements, or we can continually override them.

Many of us have learned to override them.

Coffee when we’re tired. Screens when we’re restless. Stimulation when we’re bored. Food when we’re depleted. Work when we’re exhausted. Entertainment when we’re lonely.

None of these things are inherently wrong.

The question is whether we can still feel the rhythm underneath them.

The Rhythm of the Month

The rhythms of life aren’t limited to the twenty-four-hour cycle.

There are longer cycles as well.

Our bodies change across the month. Energy, mood, motivation, creativity, and capacity can fluctuate. The natural world changes in ways that are subtle from day to day but unmistakable when observed over longer periods.

We tend to think in terms of isolated moments.

Biodynamic awareness invites us to think in terms of cycles.

A difficult day may not mean something is wrong.

A period of low energy may not be a problem to solve.

A quiet period in our lives may not be evidence that we have lost our way.

Sometimes we are simply in a different phase of a cycle.

This doesn’t mean that every difficulty should be romanticized as “natural.” Sometimes something genuinely needs attention. But there is a difference between responding to a problem and assuming that every change in our experience represents a problem.

When we begin to recognize cycles, we develop another possibility:

We can learn to participate rather than constantly correct.

The Rhythm of the Year

The seasons make this especially obvious.

Spring moves toward emergence.

Summer toward expansion.

Autumn toward maturation and release.

Winter toward withdrawal, dormancy, and restoration.

We can see these movements in the natural world, but we can also recognize them within ourselves.

There are times in our lives when we want to begin things, explore, expand, and create.

There are times when we want to consolidate what we’ve learned.

There are times when things naturally fall away.

And there are times when we need to become quiet.

Yet our culture often asks us to live as though it were always summer.

Always growing.

Always expanding.

Always producing.

Always improving.

We are encouraged to treat rest as a temporary interruption of productivity rather than as one of the movements of life itself.

But a tree does not apologize for winter.

A field does not consider dormancy a failure.

And the body does not become unhealthy simply because it needs to rest.

Dormancy is not the opposite of life. It is one of the ways life continues.

Activity and Rest

This becomes particularly obvious in exercise.

We know that training stresses the body.

But the adaptation we seek doesn’t happen simply because we exercise.

It happens through the relationship between stress and recovery.

We challenge the body.

Then we recover.

The organism reorganizes itself.

It becomes capable of meeting a similar demand with greater capacity.

Without recovery, training becomes depletion.

The same principle applies far beyond exercise.

Work and rest.

Effort and recovery.

Learning and integration.

Speaking and listening.

Giving and receiving.

Engagement and solitude.

Expansion and contraction.

These aren’t opposing forces.

They are partners in a rhythm.

Learning Has a Rhythm Too

We often approach learning as though more information automatically produces more understanding.

Read another book.

Take another course.

Listen to another podcast.

Learn another technique.

But there is a point at which adding more information actually interferes with learning.

Something needs to settle.

We need time to digest experience.

There is a rhythm between learning and doing.

We learn something.

We try it.

We discover what we actually understood.

We make mistakes.

We return to the learning.

We try again.

Eventually, knowledge becomes embodied.

This is particularly important in body-centered work.

There is a profound difference between knowing something intellectually and having it become part of our way of being.

Integration requires time.

The organism needs space to reorganize.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do after learning something new is stop learning for a while and live it.

The Rhythm of a Lifetime

And then there are the larger rhythms.

Our lives have seasons too.

Childhood.

Adolescence.

Adulthood.

Parenthood.

Maturity.

Aging.

And eventually, death.

Each stage asks something different of us.

One of the difficulties of aging, for example, is not simply that the body changes. It is that we live within a culture that continually tells us that decline is something to resist.

We are encouraged to remain young, productive, attractive, active, and endlessly capable.

But perhaps maturity asks a different question.

Not:

How can I remain the person I was?

But:

What is life asking of me now?

The capacities that served us in one stage may not be the capacities required in another.

There is a time for building.

A time for striving.

A time for discovering.

A time for caring for others.

A time for teaching.

A time for letting go.

And eventually, a time for surrendering the structures through which we have known ourselves.

The biodynamic perspective doesn’t ask us to control these transitions.

It asks us to become sensitive enough to recognize them.

Listening for Rhythm

So how do we begin?

Perhaps we begin very simply.

Slow down enough to notice.

Notice when you have energy.

Notice when you don’t.

Notice what happens after exertion.

Notice what happens when you rest.

Notice when you want to reach outward and when you want to withdraw.

Notice the rhythms of your work.

Notice the rhythms of your relationships.

Notice the seasons.

Notice how your capacity changes over weeks, months, and years.

And most importantly, begin to notice what happens when you stop fighting the rhythm.

This doesn’t mean becoming passive.

Quite the opposite.

There is tremendous intelligence in knowing when to act.

But there is equal intelligence in knowing when not to act.

A farmer does not pull on a plant to make it grow.

An athlete does not train every moment of every day.

A musician does not play every note continuously.

Music requires silence.

The body requires rest.

Learning requires integration.

Relationships require space.

Life requires death and renewal.

Rhythm is the movement between these things.

A Simple Practice: Finding Your Rhythm

For the next week, experiment with observing rather than changing.

At three points during the day—morning, afternoon, and evening—pause for a minute.

Ask yourself:

What is my energy like right now?

Does my body want activity, rest, connection, or solitude?

What happens if I listen to that rather than immediately overriding it?

You don’t have to obey every impulse.

You are simply learning to listen.

At the end of the week, look back.

What did you notice?

Were there predictable periods of energy and fatigue?

When did you tend to push beyond your capacity?

When did you rest?

What happened when you did?

You may begin to discover that your life already has a rhythm.

The invitation is not to create one.

It is to learn to live in relationship with the one that is already there.

From Slowness to Rhythm

Slowness and rhythm are closely related.

When we slow down, we become capable of perceiving.

When we perceive, we begin to recognize patterns.

And when we recognize patterns, we can begin to participate in them.

This is one of the fundamental movements of biodynamic living:

from controlling life toward listening to life.

The goal isn’t to become perfectly balanced.

Living systems aren’t static.

They continually move.

They expand and contract, rise and fall, awaken and sleep, emerge and dissolve.

Health may have less to do with remaining in some ideal state of equilibrium than with maintaining the capacity to move through change without losing our relationship with ourselves, one another, and the larger field of life.

That is rhythm.

And perhaps learning to live rhythmically is one of the simplest ways we can begin to come home to the living world.

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The Practice of Slowness

Devon Hornby LMT

We live in a culture that has made speed into a virtue.

Faster is better. Faster communication. Faster food. Faster transportation. Faster work. Faster decisions. Faster results. We speak of saving time as though time were something that could be accumulated, stored, or won.

And yet, somewhere along the way, we have begun to confuse speed with aliveness.

We hurry through meals, conversations, work, exercise, relationships, and even our own thoughts. We move from one thing to the next before we have fully arrived at the thing we are doing. We answer before we have listened. We react before we have felt. We decide before we have perceived what is actually happening.

The consequence is subtle.

The faster we move, the less contact we have with the world through which we are moving.

We begin to live slightly outside of our own lives.

Speed separates us

Imagine walking through a forest very quickly.

You will see the forest, but you will experience very little of it.

You may notice the large trees, the path, perhaps a bird flying across your field of vision. But you will miss the subtle changes in temperature. You will not notice the particular quality of the air beneath one tree and in the clearing beyond it. You may not hear the small movements taking place beneath the larger sounds. You will miss the smell of damp earth, the texture of bark, the gradual transition of light.

The forest has not become less alive.

We have simply become less available to it.

The same thing happens in our relationships.

When we are moving too quickly, we don’t really encounter another person. We encounter our idea of them. We listen just enough to formulate our response. We anticipate what they are going to say. We try to solve their problem. We defend ourselves before we have actually heard what has been said.

Speed creates distance.

And when we are sufficiently disconnected from our surroundings, from other people, and eventually from our own bodies, something very human happens:

We look for stimulation.

We look for something to fill the gap.

Sometimes that stimulation takes the obvious forms: alcohol, drugs, compulsive sexuality, gambling, shopping, or other addictive behaviors.

But addiction does not always look like addiction.

We can become addicted to work.

We can become addicted to productivity, achievement, exercise, news, social media, entertainment, television, or the constant stream of information arriving through our phones.

Some of these things are socially rewarded. Some are even called virtues.

But underneath them there can be the same movement: an inability to remain present with the unfilled space of our own experience.

We reach for something because we have forgotten how to simply be here.

Slowness creates contact

Slowness offers another possibility.

To slow down is not merely to do everything at half speed.

It is to allow ourselves enough time to perceive.

This is the distinction that matters.

When we slow down, we begin to notice.

We notice the body.

We notice our surroundings.

We notice other people.

We notice the subtle movement of our own minds.

And eventually we begin to notice something even more fundamental: life is already moving.

We do not have to make it move.

The heart beats. The lungs breathe. Digestion occurs. The seasons change. Plants grow. Wounds heal. Children develop. Relationships evolve. Thoughts arise and disappear.

Life is profoundly dynamic without being hurried.

This is one of the central insights of a biodynamic way of living.

Biodynamics does not mean doing nothing.

It means learning to participate in movement rather than constantly imposing movement.

There is a profound difference.

Living as if convalescing

There is an image from the Mahamudra tradition that has stayed with me: the instruction to move through life as though one were convalescing.

The image is extraordinarily practical.

When we are recovering from an illness or an injury, we understand something that our ordinary lives tend to make us forget.

We don’t rush.

We become careful.

We pay attention to how much energy something requires. We rest when we are tired. We eat deliberately. We move gently. We notice what helps and what doesn’t. We allow the body time to recover.

We become intimate with our own condition.

Wangchuk Dorje, the Ninth Karmapa and one of the great masters of the Mahamudra tradition, gives us a particularly beautiful touchstone for this kind of practice in The Ocean of Definitive Meaning. The text is concerned with recognizing mind’s nature, but the spirit of the instruction points beyond the meditation cushion: practice is not something we do by force. We learn to relax our habitual grasping and recognize what is already present.

The image of convalescence gives this principle a body.

What if we moved through ordinary life with some of the tenderness and attentiveness of someone recovering?

What if we didn’t assume that everything needed to be accomplished immediately?

What if we allowed ourselves to recover our sensitivity?

What if we treated our attention as something precious?

This does not mean becoming fragile or passive.

It means becoming responsive.

Slow food

Consider cooking.

There is a profound difference between food that has been assembled quickly and food that has been allowed to develop.

A broth simmering for hours.

Bread slowly fermenting.

Vegetables growing in healthy soil.

Beans soaking overnight.

Sauerkraut fermenting over weeks.

These processes cannot be bullied into completion.

They have their own timing.

Slow cooking teaches something that is easy to forget in a culture of immediacy:

development requires time.

The same is true of us.

We cannot hurry ourselves into wholeness.

Slow farming

The same principle appears in agriculture.

Healthy soil is not manufactured overnight.

A field becomes fertile through relationships between microorganisms, roots, minerals, water, fungi, insects, animals, sunlight, and time.

Good farming is fundamentally relational.

The farmer does not simply impose an outcome upon the land. The farmer learns to observe, respond, cultivate, protect, and cooperate.

There is intelligence in the system that exceeds the intelligence of any individual participant.

This is very close to the meaning of biodynamic living.

We are not separate from the systems in which we participate.

We are expressions of them.

Slow eating

Try eating slowly enough that eating becomes an experience rather than an interruption between other activities.

Taste the food.

Notice texture.

Notice temperature.

Notice the impulse to take the next bite.

Notice when enough becomes enough.

Notice the people sitting across from you.

Notice the conversation.

A meal can become a practice of relationship.

And this is important because embodiment is not simply an experience of being inside one’s own body.

Embodiment reconnects us with the world.

The body is where relationship happens.

Slow walking

Walking slowly changes walking.

The foot touches the earth.

Weight shifts.

The pelvis responds.

The spine organizes itself.

The breath changes.

The visual field expands.

We begin to feel gravity rather than merely moving through space.

This is one reason slow movement appears again and again in contemplative and martial traditions.

Slowness reveals information that speed hides.

Slow speaking

Speaking slowly can be even more revealing.

Before speaking, there is often a moment when something is not yet a word.

There is a felt sense.

An impulse.

A movement.

Perhaps the beginning of an emotion.

If we speak immediately, we may never encounter it.

We translate experience into language before we have actually experienced it.

Slowness gives that moment room.

It allows speech to arise from experience rather than replacing experience.

And sometimes, when we slow down enough, we discover that we don’t need to say anything at all.

Slow breathing

Breathing is perhaps the most intimate place to encounter this principle.

We cannot force the breath into becoming biodynamic.

We can interfere with it.

We can manipulate it.

But eventually the body teaches us something simpler.

There is an inhale.

There is an exhale.

There is a pause.

There is movement.

There is stillness.

And beneath all of this, there is a living intelligence organizing the whole process.

When we slow down and listen, breathing becomes less something we do and more something we participate in.

Slow reacting

Perhaps the most important practice is learning to slow our reactions.

Someone says something we don’t like.

We feel the contraction.

The body prepares to defend.

The mind begins constructing an argument.

And there is a tiny space.

Usually we rush through it.

We react.

But what happens if we don’t?

What happens if we feel the contraction?

What happens if we take one breath?

What happens if we allow the other person to finish?

What happens if we discover what is actually happening before deciding what it means?

This is not repression.

It is not passivity.

It is not avoiding conflict.

It is developing enough space to respond rather than simply react.

That space is one of the great gifts of slowness.

The paradox of Tai Chi

There is a wonderful paradox in Taiji.

The movements are slow.

And yet the practitioner can develop extraordinary power.

To someone unfamiliar with the art, this can seem almost contradictory. How could moving slowly create speed and power?

But the slow movement reveals what speed conceals.

At slow speed, the practitioner can feel every unnecessary contraction.

Every imbalance.

Every interruption.

Every place where force is being generated locally instead of being transmitted through the whole body.

The practitioner learns to relax without collapsing, to root without becoming rigid, and to coordinate the whole body as a single continuous movement.

Slowness develops sensitivity.

Sensitivity develops coordination.

Coordination develops efficiency.

And efficiency can become power.

This is not merely a metaphor. Contemporary scholarship on Asian martial-arts pedagogy has described slowness as a means of developing kinesthetic sensitivity and movement efficiency, distinguishing ordinary slowed-down movement from a deeper quality of slowness in which action becomes guided by immediate perception.

Taiji offers us a beautiful lesson:

Power does not necessarily come from doing more.

Sometimes power comes from removing everything unnecessary.

Slowness and biodynamic living

This is why slowness belongs at the beginning of Biodynamic Living.

The purpose is not to create a lifestyle in which everything takes longer.

The purpose is to recover our capacity for relationship.

When we slow down, we become more available to the intelligence already moving through our lives.

We can feel when something is ripe.

We can sense when something needs attention.

We can recognize when to move and when to wait.

We can hear what another person is actually saying.

We can feel our own body’s yes and no.

We can notice the subtle changes in an environment.

We can sense the difference between an impulse that comes from fear and one that comes from genuine vitality.

Slowness gives us access to the space in which discernment becomes possible.

And this is why slowness is not an escape from life.

It is an entrance into life.

We begin to discover that the world is much more alive than we had imagined.

The food tastes different.

Walking feels different.

Conversation feels different.

The body feels different.

Other people feel different.

Even silence feels different.

The world has not changed.

Our relationship with it has.

Perhaps this is what it means to begin living biodynamically:

not to impose ourselves upon life,

but to become quiet enough,

slow enough,

and present enough

to participate in the life that is already happening.

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Biodynamic Living: Embodiment as a Way of Life

Devon Hornby LMT

In the wellness world, embodiment has become something of a buzzword. We are told to “get into our bodies,” to become more mindful, to feel our emotions, or to practice self-care. While all of these things have value, I have often found that they leave an important question unanswered:

What is embodiment actually for?

Is embodiment simply a tool for feeling better? Is it another form of self-improvement? Or is it something much more fundamental—a way of inhabiting ourselves and participating in life?

Over the years, through my study of Asian healing traditions, meditation, martial arts, and Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy, I have come to appreciate embodiment as something much richer than a collection of techniques or practices. Embodiment is not merely a therapeutic goal. It is a way of being that changes how we meet the world.

When we are embodied, we become more compassionate—not because we are trying to be compassionate, but because we are no longer consumed by the endless effort of managing ourselves. We become more effective because we are no longer fighting against our own structure. We become more resilient because we are no longer leaking energy through unnecessary tension and reactivity.

Embodiment allows us to move through our day with integrity.

I don’t mean integrity simply in the moral sense, although that is certainly part of it. I mean integrity in its most literal sense: wholeness. Physical integrity. Emotional integrity. Relational integrity. Spiritual integrity.

Our bodies are remarkably honest. Whenever we abandon ourselves in an attempt to please others, whenever we become overwhelmed by stress, or whenever we are caught in resentment, anxiety, or self-importance, our bodies reflect it. We lose our center. We become fragmented. We tighten against life.

Most of us are living slightly disconnected from ourselves. Not enough to notice immediately, but enough that it slowly depletes us.

What if embodiment was not something we practiced only during meditation or on a treatment table? What if it became the way we stood in line at the grocery store, spoke with our children, listened to our clients, or sat quietly with a friend?

The question becomes less, “How do I become embodied?” and more, “How do I remain at home in myself while participating fully in life?”

One of the simplest and most profound practices I have ever learned came from my Kung Fu teacher, Sifu Fong Ha. It is so simple that it is easy to overlook.

Simply sit or stand comfortably.

Allow your feet or your sitting bones to make contact with whatever is supporting you. Let your shoulders soften. Relax your jaw. Let your breathing happen naturally.

Now do something that may seem strange at first: stop trying to hold yourself together.

Allow your body to settle into itself. Rather than lifting yourself up or collapsing downward, simply relax into your own structure. Allow yourself to be supported from within.

There is nothing to achieve. Nothing to visualize. Nothing to fix.

Simply become available to yourself.

Over time, you may begin to notice something surprising. As the unnecessary effort falls away, a sense of fullness begins to emerge. Not heaviness. Not dullness. Not collapse.

Fullness.

A sense that your body is occupied by your presence.

This fullness is alive. It is spacious and dynamic. It has tremendous potential within it while remaining completely at rest. In the Asian traditions, stillness has never been understood as the absence of movement. Rather, stillness is movement in perfect balance—a dynamic equilibrium from which appropriate action naturally arises.

This experience comes through diligent practice. It is not a one-and-done kind of thing. Sifu Fong encouraged us to devote at least one hundred hours to this simple practice. There is something profoundly countercultural about that suggestion. We live in a world that promises transformation in minutes or days. Embodiment asks something different of us. It invites us to return to ourselves again and again until fullness becomes less of an experience and more of a way of being.

When we rest in this fullness, we do not become less capable of engaging with the world. We become more capable.

We listen better.

We respond more skillfully.

We become less reactive and more available.

We stop wasting tremendous amounts of energy holding ourselves together or defending ourselves against life.

Most importantly, we discover that embodiment is not a private experience. It is relational. The way we inhabit ourselves profoundly affects everyone around us. A relaxed and embodied person naturally creates space for others to relax and embody themselves. Presence is contagious.

In Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy, we often speak of health as something that is always present beneath dysfunction. In much the same way, I believe embodiment is not something we manufacture. It is something we allow. It is our natural condition when we stop interfering with it.

This simple practice can be done for thirty seconds before walking into a meeting, while waiting in traffic, before speaking with your partner, or before sitting down to meditate. It is less about adding another practice to your life and more about remembering how to live from yourself.

Biodynamic living begins here.

Not with becoming someone better.

Not with becoming more spiritual.

Simply by becoming more fully here.

Relax into your structure. Allow yourself to discover the fullness that is already here. Then carry that fullness with you into the world.

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Making Space: The Foundation of Healing

Devon Hornby LMT

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
— Tao Te Ching

One of the most profound lessons I’ve learned over more than three decades of working with the human body is surprisingly simple.

Healing needs space.

When people come for treatment, they usually describe what they want to get rid of.

Pain.

Stress.

Anxiety.

Tension.

Fatigue.

These are real experiences, and they deserve our care and attention.

But over the years, I’ve come to believe that healing is rarely about removing something.

More often, it is about creating enough space for something deeper to emerge.

That simple shift has transformed the way I work, and perhaps more importantly, the way I understand what it means to be well.

The Wisdom of Space

In Polarity Therapy, Randolph Stone described ether as the first and most subtle of the five elements. Rather than being “empty,” ether is the field in which all the other elements arise and remain connected. It is possibility itself—the openness that allows movement, relationship, and transformation.

This understanding has deepened for me through my studies in Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy.

One of the central insights of the biodynamic tradition is that Health is always present, even when we are ill or injured. Our symptoms may dominate our attention, but beneath them there remains a profound organizing intelligence continually moving toward greater coherence.

Our task is not to manufacture that intelligence.

It is to make enough room for it to express itself.

This is why Biodynamic practitioners spend so much time learning how to listen.

Before changing.

Before correcting.

Before intervening.

We begin by creating space.

More Than Physical Space

When most people hear the word “space,” they think of flexibility or range of motion.

Certainly, that matters.

A joint that moves freely experiences less strain.

A diaphragm with room to descend supports easier breathing.

Fascia that glides without restriction allows movement to become more effortless.

But space is not only anatomical.

The nervous system also requires space.

If every unexpected event immediately triggers a familiar survival response, we lose the freedom to choose how we respond.

Our past begins living our present.

Contemplative traditions have understood this for centuries.

Mindfulness creates space between experience and reaction.

Not to suppress emotion.

Not to escape difficulty.

But to allow awareness to become larger than our habitual patterns.

Space Allows New Possibilities

Think about a forest after a fire.

At first glance, it appears devastated.

Yet the newly opened landscape allows sunlight to reach seeds that may have waited years for the opportunity to grow.

What appears to be emptiness becomes the condition for renewal.

Something similar happens within us.

When we create space around a painful sensation, rather than immediately resisting or explaining it, something unexpected often emerges.

Not because we have solved the problem.

Because we are no longer completely identified with it.

A thought arises.

But there is now space around the thought.

An emotion moves through us.

But there is space around the emotion.

A familiar story begins.

But it no longer fills the entire field of awareness.

This spaciousness does not remove our humanity.

It restores our freedom.

Space in the Treatment Room

One of the questions I’m asked most often is what makes Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy different from other forms of bodywork.

The answer is not a particular technique.

It is an orientation.

Rather than asking, “How do I fix this?”

We learn to ask,

“What is already moving toward health?”

Sometimes the most therapeutic thing we can offer another person is not another intervention.

It is the experience of being deeply listened to.

Of not being hurried.

Of not being reduced to a diagnosis.

Of discovering that their organism possesses a wisdom of its own.

This perspective has quietly transformed every service I offer.

Whether I am working with an athlete recovering from an injury, someone living with chronic pain, or a person navigating emotional transition, my intention remains the same.

To help create the conditions in which greater coherence can emerge.

Making Space in Daily Life

Fortunately, this isn’t something reserved for the treatment room.

Each of us can cultivate spaciousness.

Not by withdrawing from life.

But by participating more fully in it.

We make space every time we pause before reacting.

Every time we listen more carefully than we speak.

Every time we allow ourselves to feel a sensation without rushing to explain it.

Every time we breathe deeply enough to remember that we are larger than the story currently occupying our attention.

These small moments gradually reshape the nervous system.

They also reshape our relationships.

When we become less crowded by our own reactivity, there is more room for curiosity.

More room for compassion.

More room for creativity.

More room for joy.

Space Is Not Absence

There is one final misunderstanding worth addressing.

Space is often mistaken for emptiness.

But in every tradition that has influenced my work, space is profoundly alive.

In Taoism, the usefulness of a cup lies in its empty center.

In Buddhism, spacious awareness is the ground from which wisdom and compassion arise.

In Polarity Therapy, ether provides the field that unites the other elements.

In Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy, spaciousness allows the deeper ordering forces of Health to become perceptible.

Space is not the absence of life.

It is the condition that allows life to unfold.

Perhaps this is why healing so often begins, not when we try harder, but when we become quiet enough to make room for something larger than ourselves.

A Practice: Creating Space

Find a comfortable place to sit.

Allow your attention to settle into your breathing.

Notice where your body meets the chair or the ground.

Rather than trying to relax, simply become aware of the space around your experience.

Notice the space surrounding your thoughts.

The space surrounding your emotions.

The space surrounding any tension in your body.

If a difficult sensation arises, don’t ask what it means.

Simply notice that it exists within a larger field of awareness.

Remain there for five minutes.

Nothing to achieve.

Nothing to fix.

Simply allowing awareness to become a little more spacious.

Further Reading

Polarity Therapy

  • Randolph Stone — The Polarity Process

Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy

  • Franklyn Sills — Craniosacral Biodynamics
  • Anna Chitty — teachings on Health, potency, and perceptual awareness.

Contemplative Traditions

  • Tao Te Ching
  • Chögyam Trungpa — writings on basic goodness and space.
  • Thich Nhat Hanh — mindfulness and interbeing.

Neuroscience

  • Stephen Porges — Polyvagal Theory.
  • Daniel Siegel — Mindsight and integration.
  • Antonio Damasio — embodiment and consciousness.
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Biodynamic Intelligence, Part V: Interdependence – Discovering Ourselves in Relationship

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.
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Biodynamic Intelligence, Part IV: Listening Without a Story

Devon Hornby LMT

“The most precious thing we can offer another person—or ourselves—is our presence.”

One of the most common questions I hear in clinical practice is remarkably simple.

“What does this mean?”

Someone notices tightness in their chest.

A heaviness in their stomach.

An ache in their neck.

An emotion they can’t quite explain.

Naturally, they want to understand it.

So they begin searching.

Perhaps it’s childhood trauma.

Perhaps it’s repressed anger.

Perhaps it’s stress.

Perhaps it’s something deeper.

Our minds are remarkably skilled at creating explanations.

Sometimes those explanations are insightful.

Sometimes they’re even accurate.

But over the years I’ve become increasingly interested in a different question.

What happens if we don’t explain our experience quite so quickly?

The Habit of Interpretation

Human beings are storytellers.

Stories help us make sense of our lives.

They organize memory.

Create meaning.

Allow us to communicate with one another.

There is great beauty in that.

But stories also have a shadow.

They can become so immediate that they replace direct experience.

Before we’ve fully felt the tension in our shoulders, we’ve already decided why it’s there.

Before we’ve listened to the sadness in our chest, we’ve explained it.

And sometimes our stories do something even more troubling.

They can keep us trapped in the very moment we long to leave.

A painful memory may be replayed again and again.

The same fear.

The same shame.

The same helplessness.

The same tightening in the body.

Without any discernible way through the experience, we may find ourselves reliving it rather than truly meeting it.

This is one of the reasons I believe our stories can sometimes retraumatize us.

Not because story itself is the problem.

But because when we repeatedly return to an experience without moving through it, we may continue to reactivate the wound instead of allowing it to complete.

Experience has taught me that if we do not move through an experience or memory, we will continue to relive it.

This understanding is powerfully supported by the groundbreaking work of Peter Levine, whose observations in trauma healing have helped many of us recognize that the body often needs a pathway through experience, not merely an explanation of it.

The explanation may be correct.

Or it may quietly prevent us from discovering something far richer.

Experience Comes Before Explanation

One of the great gifts of phenomenology—the philosophical tradition explored by Maurice Merleau-Ponty—is the invitation to return to experience before our concepts about experience.

This same movement appears throughout contemplative traditions.

In mindfulness practice, we are invited to observe thoughts without becoming entangled in them.

In Taoism, we learn not to impose ourselves upon the natural unfolding of life.

In Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, practitioners are taught to orient toward Health with receptive awareness, allowing the tissues to reveal their own story rather than imposing one upon them.

Although these traditions differ in language and purpose, they share a common discipline:

Listen first.

Interpret later.

Sometimes much later.

And when trauma is present, this discipline becomes even more important.

Because if we rush too quickly into meaning, we may bypass the very process that allows the organism to complete what was interrupted.

The Wisdom of Sensation

Our bodies are constantly communicating.

Not in sentences.

Not in explanations.

But through sensation.

Pressure.

Warmth.

Coolness.

Movement.

Stillness.

Pulsation.

Density.

Expansion.

Contraction.

These experiences are often subtle.

Yet they form the language through which the organism continually expresses itself.

The invitation is not to decode them.

It is to become intimate with them.

Just as we would never interrupt a dear friend before they had finished speaking, perhaps we need not interrupt the body with premature conclusions.

And perhaps we need not keep returning to the same painful story as though repetition alone will somehow resolve it.

Sometimes what is needed is not more analysis.

Sometimes what is needed is a way through.

An Experiment in Listening

Choose one area of your body that calls for your attention.

Not necessarily where the pain is greatest.

Simply somewhere that feels present today.

Perhaps your jaw.

Your throat.

Your chest.

Your abdomen.

Your lower back.

Rest your attention there.

There is no need to change anything.

No need to relax.

No need to breathe differently.

Simply accompany the sensation.

Notice its qualities.

Is it sharp or diffuse?

Heavy or light?

Warm or cool?

Does it move?

Does it remain still?

Can you become curious without needing an explanation?

As thoughts arise…

“This must be because…”

Gently acknowledge them.

Then return to direct experience.

Again and again.

You may discover something surprising.

When explanation relaxes, perception often deepens.

And when perception deepens, something in us may begin to move.

Not away from the experience.

But through it.

Interoception: Learning the Language of the Body

Contemporary neuroscience has given us a word for our ability to perceive the internal state of the body: interoception.

Researchers increasingly recognize that this capacity plays a central role in emotional regulation, decision-making, and our sense of self.

The more clearly we perceive the subtle signals arising within us, the more skillfully we are able to respond to life’s changing conditions.

Yet interoception is not simply the accumulation of information.

It is the cultivation of relationship.

Like any meaningful relationship, it deepens through patient attention rather than force.

And in the context of trauma, this patient attention may be what allows an experience to finally move through rather than remain frozen in repetition.

What I’ve Observed in Practice

Over the past three decades, I’ve watched something remarkable happen.

A client begins describing a painful sensation.

Almost immediately, they begin explaining it.

Then, together, we return to the sensation itself.

The story gradually becomes quieter.

The body begins speaking more clearly.

Sometimes the sensation changes.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes an unexpected memory arises.

Sometimes there is simply a deep sigh.

Sometimes there are tears with no obvious reason.

Sometimes there is trembling.

Sometimes warmth.

Sometimes a sense of spaciousness where there was once constriction.

None of these outcomes are the goal.

The goal is presence.

Again and again, I’ve found that the organism seems to possess its own rhythm of revelation.

It rarely appreciates being hurried.

And it rarely benefits from being trapped in the same story over and over again.

When we stay with sensation long enough, something often begins to organize itself.

Not because we force it.

But because we finally allow it to move.

The Difference Between Story and Wisdom

Stories are valuable.

They help us understand our lives.

Wisdom is different.

Wisdom often arrives before language.

As a subtle shift.

A feeling of relief.

A quiet knowing.

An unexpected sense of direction.

These moments rarely announce themselves with certainty.

More often, they emerge because we remained present long enough for them to appear.

Perhaps the deepest listening is not the search for answers.

Perhaps it is the willingness to accompany experience without asking it to become something else.

Perhaps it is the courage to let a memory move through us rather than relive it endlessly.

Looking Ahead

Throughout this series, we’ve been learning to perceive more deeply.

In our next article, we’ll take one final step.

We’ll explore how this growing capacity for embodied knowing begins to transform our understanding of ourselves—not as isolated individuals, but as expressions of an intricate web of relationships that extends through our bodies, our histories, one another, and the living world itself.

Further Exploration

Contemplative Traditions

  • Buddhist mindfulness practices emphasizing direct observation before conceptual elaboration.
  • Taoist writings on effortless awareness and natural unfolding.

Philosophy

  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception
  • Eugene Gendlin — Focusing

Neuroscience

  • A. D. (Bud) Craig — research on interoception.
  • Sarah Garfinkel — interoception and emotional awareness.
  • Antonio Damasio — The Feeling of What Happens

Clinical Perspectives

  • Franklyn Sills — Craniosacral Biodynamics
  • Anna Chitty — teachings on perceptual skills and orienting toward Health.
  • Peter Levine — pioneering work on trauma, somatic experiencing, and the importance of moving through experience rather than remaining trapped in it.

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Biodynamic Intelligence, Part III: Listening to the Future

Devon Hornby LMT

“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke

In the previous articles, we’ve explored two simple but profound ideas.

First, that the body is more than something we inhabit—it is an organ of perception.

Second, that when we become more embodied, we can begin to notice how our beliefs shape our experience. Rather than arguing with our thoughts or replacing them with more positive ones, we learned to observe how the whole organism responds when a belief is held gently in awareness.

This week I’d like to extend that practice in a new direction.

Instead of bringing our attention to beliefs about the past or present, we’ll begin listening to the future.

Not the future as prediction.

The future as possibility.

We Are Always Living Toward Something

Whether we realize it or not, much of our lives are organized by the futures we imagine.

We imagine conversations before they happen.

We rehearse success and failure.

We anticipate rejection.

We dream about new beginnings.

Some of these imagined futures inspire us.

Others quietly shape our lives through fear.

Often, these possibilities exist only as thoughts.

But something remarkable happens when we become more embodied.

The body responds to possibility.

Simply imagining a difficult conversation can tighten the jaw and shorten the breath.

Thinking about spending time in nature may soften the shoulders before we’ve even stepped outside.

The organism does not wait for events to occur before it begins relating to them.

It is already participating.

The Body as a Compass

One of the great gifts of embodiment is that it allows us to notice this participation.

This is not about deciding what is “right.”

Nor is it about assuming that every feeling of comfort is wise and every feeling of discomfort should be avoided.

Growth often asks us to move beyond what feels familiar.

Fear is not always a sign to turn away.

Excitement is not always a sign to move forward.

Discernment asks something quieter.

It asks:

What brings greater coherence to the whole of my being?

This question cannot always be answered by logic alone.

Nor can it be answered by emotion in isolation.

It asks us to include the wisdom of the whole organism.

Feeling Into Possibility

Throughout contemplative traditions, there is a recurring invitation to become deeply present before acting.

In Taoism, this is reflected in wu wei—action that arises in harmony with the unfolding of life rather than from force or struggle.

Within Buddhist practice, mindfulness creates the space to respond rather than react.

In Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, practitioners learn to wait, to listen, and to sense the direction in which Health is already moving before attempting to intervene.

Although these traditions differ in language and philosophy, they share a profound respect for receptive awareness.

Rather than imposing our will upon experience, we learn to listen before we act.

Perhaps our own lives deserve the same patience.

A Practice of Imagining Futures

I’d like to invite you into another experiment.

Begin by settling into the embodied awareness we’ve cultivated throughout this series.

Feel the support beneath your body.

Notice your breathing.

Allow your attention to widen until you feel a quiet sense of presence.

Now bring to mind a genuine possibility in your life.

Perhaps you’re considering a new job.

Beginning a relationship.

Starting a creative project.

Having a difficult conversation.

Or simply saying “no” where you have always said “yes.”

Imagine that possibility unfolding.

Not as fantasy.

As though it were happening.

Notice your body.

What happens to your breathing?

Your chest?

Your belly?

Your posture?

Does your attention become clearer or more fragmented?

More settled or more agitated?

Now allow that possibility to dissolve.

Rest for a few breaths.

Then imagine a different path.

Observe again.

There is no need to decide today.

You are simply becoming acquainted with the language of your own organism.

A Word of Caution

Practices like this require humility and radical honesty.

Our bodies carry history.

Trauma.

Conditioning.

Habit.

Anxiety can make a wholesome path feel threatening.

Old patterns can make familiar suffering feel strangely comfortable.

The purpose of this exercise is not to find immediate certainty.

It is to cultivate sensitivity.

Over time, as we become more embodied and more familiar with the quiet coherence beneath habitual reactivity, we often begin to distinguish between fear that arises from genuine danger and fear that accompanies growth. We are not seeking comfort, we are discerning wholeness, coherence, integrity.

These distinctions are rarely obvious. They reveal themselves in an environment of openness and curiosity. They develop through practice.

What I’ve Observed in Practice

Over the years, I’ve noticed that some of the most meaningful decisions people make don’t arrive as moments of dramatic certainty.

Instead, they unfold gradually.

Someone begins speaking about a new direction in life.

At first, their words are hesitant.

Then, almost without noticing, their breathing deepens.

Their posture changes.

Their face becomes more animated.

The body begins expressing something before the mind has fully caught up.

I’ve also seen the opposite.

A person carefully explains why a decision makes perfect sense.

Yet throughout the conversation, their shoulders remain tense.

Their breathing becomes shallow.

Their body quietly expresses a different story.

Neither response provides an answer.

But both invite a deeper conversation.

The organism is participating.

The question is whether we are listening.

Living Toward Coherence

Most of us have been taught to make decisions by weighing advantages and disadvantages.

This remains an important part of wise decision-making.

But perhaps we can expand the conversation.

Perhaps our choices can also include the quiet intelligence of the body.

Not replacing reason.

Not replacing careful reflection.

Completing them.

As our lives become more embodied, we may discover that the future is not something we conquer through control.

It is something we enter into relationship with.

And like every meaningful relationship, it begins with listening.

Looking Ahead

In the next article, we’ll explore an equally important practice.

Rather than asking our sensations to explain themselves, we’ll learn how to remain present with the body’s experience without immediately turning it into a story.

We may discover that some of our deepest insights arise, not from interpretation, but from the quiet willingness to simply stay present.

Further Exploration

Contemplative Traditions

  • Taoist teachings on wu wei and alignment with the unfolding of life.
  • Buddhist teachings on mindfulness, intention, and wise action.

Philosophy and Cognitive Science

  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception
  • Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch — The Embodied Mind
  • Antonio Damasio — The Feeling of What Happens

Clinical Perspectives

  • Franklyn Sills — Craniosacral Biodynamics
  • Anna Chitty — teachings on orienting toward Health and perceptual awareness.
  • Stephen Porges — Polyvagal Theory and neuroception.
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Biodynamic Intelligence, Part I: The Wisdom Beneath Thought

Devon Hornby LMT, BCST

“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”
— Ram Dass

After spending the last several months exploring Biodynamic Embodiment, I’d like to begin a different kind of conversation.

The first series was concerned with how we return to the body. Through the five elements of Polarity Therapy—Ether, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth—we explored practices that cultivate spaciousness, movement, transformation, emotional flow, and grounding.

Those practices were never meant to be an end in themselves.

They prepare us for a more interesting question:

What becomes possible when we are truly embodied?

For centuries, philosophers, contemplatives, physicians, and healers have suggested that the body is far more than a biological machine. It is a living participant in perception itself.

Modern neuroscience is beginning to echo this insight. Philosophers have explored it in depth. Contemplative traditions have built entire systems of practice around it. In my own clinical work over the past thirty years, I have watched it unfold in hundreds of treatment sessions.

Together, these perspectives point toward a possibility that I find both practical and profoundly hopeful:

The body is not merely something we inhabit. It is an organ of perception.

A Different Kind of Intelligence

When most of us hear the word intelligence, we think of reasoning, memory, and problem-solving.

These capacities are remarkable, but they represent only one form of intelligence.

Long before the analytical mind evolved, living organisms were already exhibiting extraordinary wisdom.

A cut heals.

A fractured bone remodels itself.

The immune system distinguishes between friend and foe.

The heart continually adjusts its rhythm in response to changing demands.

Every moment, trillions of interactions unfold without our conscious direction.

Biologists describe these processes through concepts such as homeostasis and allostasis—the remarkable ability of living systems to maintain stability while continually adapting to changing conditions.

From another perspective, these are expressions of a deeper organizing principle.

Within Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, teachers such as Franklyn Sills, James Jealous, Michael Shea, and my own teacher, Anna Chitty, describe an inherent ordering principle sometimes referred to simply as Health—not the absence of disease, but the intrinsic tendency of living systems toward organization, repair, and coherence.

Similarly, Randolph Stone, the founder of Polarity Therapy, viewed life as an ongoing movement toward energetic balance and expression.

Although these traditions differ in language and philosophy, they converge around a shared observation:

Living systems possess an extraordinary capacity for self-organization.

Our task is often less about imposing order than learning how to cooperate with it.

The Body as an Organ of Perception

This idea extends beyond healing.

It suggests that the body itself participates in knowing.

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is fundamentally embodied. We do not first think about the world and then experience it. Rather, our bodies are our primary means of encountering reality.

Decades later, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch expanded this conversation by bringing together cognitive science, phenomenology, and contemplative practice. In The Embodied Mind, they proposed that cognition is not confined to the brain but arises through the continuous interaction between body, mind, and environment.

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has similarly argued that feeling and bodily awareness are not secondary to thought—they are foundational to consciousness itself.

These thinkers arrive from very different disciplines, yet they invite us toward a common insight:

Perhaps thinking is not the whole story.

Perhaps the body is continually participating in perception long before thought begins interpreting what is perceived.

If this is true, embodiment becomes something far more significant than relaxation.

It becomes a way of refining perception itself.

The Peace That Is Already Present

Many people begin meditation or body-centered practices hoping to create peace.

My own experience has gradually become something different.

I no longer think peace is something we manufacture.

I think it is something we uncover.

Across contemplative traditions, we find surprisingly similar observations.

In Taoism, practice often emphasizes returning to our original simplicity and living in harmony with the natural unfolding of life.

In Zen, practitioners speak of discovering one’s original nature.

Within the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, teachers point toward an innate awareness that is not fabricated through practice but recognized through increasingly direct experience.

These traditions differ profoundly in their metaphysical frameworks, and it would be misleading to collapse them into a single philosophy.

Yet many share a practical observation:

As striving relaxes, something fundamentally stable becomes easier to recognize.

Our embodiment practices serve precisely this purpose.

Not creating peace.

Removing some of the conditions that obscure it.

An Invitation to Observe

Rather than asking you to believe any of this, I’d like to invite you into an experiment.

Find a place where you can sit comfortably for ten or fifteen minutes.

Allow your body to be supported.

Notice your breathing without attempting to change it.

Let your awareness widen to include both the space around you and the sensations within you.

There is nowhere to arrive.

Nothing to achieve.

Simply notice.

As thoughts arise, allow them to pass without following them.

Then gently ask yourself:

What remains when I stop trying to improve this moment?

Don’t look for an answer.

Look for an experience.

Perhaps you notice more softness in your jaw.

Perhaps your breathing becomes quieter.

Perhaps nothing obvious happens at all.

The practice is not to manufacture a special state.

It is to become increasingly familiar with whatever quiet coherence may already be present beneath the surface of habitual effort.

This quietness becomes important—not because it is an escape from life, but because it offers a reference point.

As we become more familiar with this embodied sense of coherence, we gain a way of recognizing when our thoughts, actions, and relationships move us toward greater integration—or away from it.

What I’ve Learned in Practice

One sentence has stayed with me throughout my years as a therapist.

After a session, clients will sometimes pause, smile gently, and say,

“I feel like myself again.”

Rarely do they say,

“I feel fixed.”

Or,

“I feel transformed.”

Instead, they recognize something deeply familiar.

A quality of being that feels both ordinary and profoundly nourishing.

That observation has shaped my understanding of healing.

Perhaps healing is not always the creation of something new.

Perhaps it is, at least in part, the gradual removal of whatever obscures our innate capacity for organization, presence, and connection.

If that is true, then our work is not to manufacture wholeness.

It is to become increasingly available to it.

Looking Ahead

In this article, we’ve explored the possibility that the body is not only a vehicle for life but also a way of knowing.

In the next post, we’ll begin exploring what happens when this embodied awareness meets the beliefs we carry about ourselves and the world.

Rather than asking only, “Is this belief true?”

We’ll ask another question:

What happens to my whole organism when I hold this belief in awareness?

That question, I believe, opens the door to a lifelong practice of discernment.

Further Exploration

Classical and Contemplative Sources

  • Randolph Stone — Polarity Therapy
  • Franklyn Sills — Craniosacral Biodynamics
  • James Jealous — writings on Biodynamic Osteopathy and Primary Respiration
  • Ryokyu Endo — writings on Tao Shiatsu and Ki
  • Tao Te Ching
  • Zen teachings on original nature
  • Mahamudra and Dzogchen teachings on innate awareness

Philosophy and Cognitive Science

  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception
  • Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch — The Embodied Mind
  • Antonio Damasio — The Feeling of What Happens
  • Iain McGilchrist — The Matter with Things

Physiology

  • Research on homeostasis, allostasis, interoception, and predictive processing in contemporary neuroscience.

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