Q: Tell us a little bit about your history with Rolfing and cranial work.

MS: I began my bodywork career in 1975 as a massage therapist in Florida. At that time there wasn’t any continuing education available except out west, so I went to the Rolf Institute in 1979 to continue my studies. While at the Rolf Institute, I began to study cranial work with various osteopaths who floated through Boulder. I apprenticed with a wonderful osteopath who had been a student of William Sutherland’s named George Nargang. George was retired and he took me under his wing for a couple of years before he passed. Gradually I swung full time into learning, practicing and teaching cranial work. My evolution in cranial work has mimicked the evolution of many cranial practitioners because I learned the biomechanical approach first and then I learned what’s called the functional approach, and then gradually moved into the biodynamic model. That evolution is what I see in a lot of other practitioners.

Q: How do you define the three approaches?

MS: Simply put, the biomechanical approach is about working with parts and looking at how the individual parts are organized and how they come into relationship to each other on a local or regional basis. It’s driven by protocols and techniques. In the functional approach to cranial work, there is still work on the individual parts but then the vision opens up to include the whole. There are different skills used to integrate the individual units that have just been worked into the whole. It’s rather hierarchical, like working the diaphragms from the pelvis up through the head, etc. The biodynamic model starts at the whole and attempts to relate the whole to the nature or totality of one’s environment. It’s more horizontal in the sense that biodynamic works with the whole fluid field of the client which is the same fluid field in all biological systems, whether trees or chimpanzees. That’s the evolution of the work.

Q: This sounds like the evolution that Dr. Sutherland went through.

MS: Absolutely. When you look at Dr. Sutherland’s inspiration starting in 1901, he spent a good 30 years working out the biomechanical approach. It was an awesome amount of work involving experimentation on himself and others. He then evolved into the functional approach. Then in 1948, he had his second major realization that there was something else in the fluids, not just the cerebrospinal fluid, doing the work and making the corrections. This occurred just by his observational and attention skills. At that point in his life, he only had six years left before he passed. He began to explore the use of extremely light touch and used all sorts of different metaphors to describe a force or presence that was located within the fluids of the body. His favorite metaphor for this intelligence was the “Breath of Life.”

The biodynamic model wasn’t fully worked out at the time of his death. Lineage-wise, a small coterie of D.O.’s continued in that vein and the biodynamic model evolved slowly until it began to expand beyond the borders of osteopathy some five or six years ago.

Q: When Gale and I heard our first talk by Dr. Jealous, he said that the forces forming the embryo are the healing forces which are present throughout life. We were totally fascinated by his presentation. It brought to mind a famous quote by Dr. Rolf, “When the force of gravity flows through, then spontaneously, the body heals itself.” Since then we wondered if maybe Dr. Rolf was perhaps intuiting this health that Dr. Jealous was describing but didn’t have the language, or anatomy or deeper knowledge of the formative forces of the human, to more fully understand and communicate to us Rolfers.

MS: There is some truth to that when we look at the embryo and the definition of the word biodynamic. The embryo is a beautiful living being and is essentially all fluid, 98% fluid. Dr. Blechschmidt, the great German embryologist, said that biodynamic means that there are ordering and organizing forces within the fluids of the embryo, which are guiding and creating the structure of the embryo. These ordering forces are oriented to a midline or are the midline in some cases. A midline is a point or state of organization around which structure proportionally and precisely condenses into form. Embryonically the midline begins as a very dynamic fluid entity. One of the things we’re trying to do in the biodynamic approach is get the client’s soma oriented to the organizing and ordering forces that are found in the fluids of the body because these original embryonic tides are still located in the adult body. So, I would say that Ida was really on to something. I believe the biodynamic cranial approach is a further exploration of what she and others began. She observed the effects of the downward pull of gravity on the body and the lift in the fluids when the fascia was aligned around a gravity line. This “lift” is described in Dr. Sutherland’s work.

Q: The line is a central tenet of Rolfing. What is the difference between the gravity line and the midline in the biodynamic approach?

MS: Well, that’s a huge topic. I think that all forms of therapy as well as art either implicitly or explicitly imply a midline. The midline orients the intrapersonal and interpersonal growth and development of living things. There is an ordering current, force or intelligence within living things, whether it’s a human being, a plant, a tree or whatever. Its first function is order and organization. So in identifying a midline biodynamically we have to look at the embryo.

When we look at the embryo, we see that there are two things happening regarding a midline. First, there’s just a point of orientation or a fulcrum located somewhat in the middle of the early embryo. A fulcrumis a synonym for a midline. There is an original fulcrum, one could say, present in the first two weeks of the embryo. That means that this original fulcrum or midline is a functional automatic shifting point of orientation for growth and development. Embryologists call this phenomenon “radial symmetry.” The embryo grows and develops in symmetrical proportion to an organizing point in the middle which happens to be in its fluids. Radial symmetry can be seen in the adult body with the upper extremities for example and their mechanical fulcrum at C7. Secondly, something really interesting and wonderful happens at the beginning of the third week post-conception, which is the development and upward arising of a cellular midline that ultimately becomes the notochord.

The notochordal midline is pretty interesting because it has to arise in the middle of the embryonic disc in between the ectoderm and endoderm. A midline is essential for embodiment. To this point you don’t have cellular differentiation of the future body in the embryo yet. You have cellular differentiation of visceral functioning in the formation of the big fluid cavities – yolk sac, amniotic sac and chorion. You don’t have the cellular beginnings of the body proper, i.e., muscles, bones, etc., until that midline appears. Of course, we’re talking about mesoderm. So embodiment occurs with the formation of a mesodermal midline. It’s really incredible. In the adult body, the cellular midline starts around the coccyx and goes up the intervertebral discs to the apical ligament between C1 and C2 and then becomes the basiocciput and basisphenoid. Those are the remnants of the notochordal midline.

The important point around this business of the notochordal midline is that Dr. Blechschmidt said that because of its position and stillness, the developing structure of the body orients all of its growth to this midline. Another way of saying it is that the midline induces the precise unfolding of the whole body plan in almost perfect proportion unless of course some noxious substance interferes. Our growth is all proportionally oriented to this midline. I think Dr. Rolf was really on to something in terms of her insistence that we organize bodies around a gravity line. She didn’t have the current knowledge and so her “line” was an external line imposed upon the body. I believe the remnants of the embryonic notochord and fluid midline were what she intuited from her incredible observation skills because that’s how the tissue fields condense into form in the embryo. Although the gravity line and the embryonic midlines are different, they are related.

Q: The more I learn about embryology, the more I appreciate how the Ten Series addresses the re-establishment of a midline orientation and development begun in the embryo.

MS: Let’s go back and look at how an embryo orients. The first orientation in the embryo is called radial symmetry. Radial symmetry precedes axial symmetry. What does that mean? Radial symmetry goes on for the first two weeks and then remains as a template for life. That means that the first week of development is cellular proliferation and the orientation is inward because the growth is internally directed. The embryo is just making multiple copies of itself as in stem cells. We have an outside-in growth orientation around the original fulcrum.

The second week we have something incredible happen which is the implantation of the blastocyst in the uterine wall and the whole orientation changes at that point. It changes to an inside-out orientation. The embryo expands outward to connect with the uterine vascular supply. The first orientation of embryos is in for a week and then out for a week. Then axial symmetry (the development of the notochord) begins to arise at the beginning of the third week. What axial symmetry and the notochord give us is the orientation of right to left, front to back and top to bottom. Thus, you have two templates within the human body both in the embryo and the adult – the possibility of radial symmetry and axial symmetry.

The lateral line is really important. It’s one of the most elegant, artistic hours in Rolfing. The current modeling in neuroembryology is around using the term median plane, which is the mid-sagittal plane, to describe primary growth parameters in the neuroendocrine systems. What I think biodynamic work brings to Rolfing is working both the lateral line and the mid-sagittal plane from front to back. I could see a whole advanced series around it. It’s an orientation to the notochord or the fluid movement along the notochord and the whole median plane from the front of the gut tube to the back of the neural tube. That’s a plane of orientation caused by the notochord and includes very specific structures like the nucleus pulposus of the intervertebral discs. The median plane is seen most clearly in how the neuroendocrine system develops, such as between the pineal and pituitary glands, etc.

Q: I have a clarifying question. What seems to be missing is that the notochord as it ends up in the adult isn’t just a straight line up the spine but it then comes up into the cranium and out through the third eye, essentially. Rolfers limit themselves if they think of the midline as just up the spine.

MS: That’s accurate, and a really good clarification. Remember that axial symmetry in the embryonic plate begins at the future coccyx and ends at the future mouth! If we just do the spine then we’re still orienting people to cellular structures and to connective tissue and fascia.

What Dr. Sutherland and his students discovered is that there is a simultaneous movement that occurs up and around the notochordal midline and out rostrally through the face, it brings new meaning to the mouth as the top of the midline. It has to do with the movement in the entire unified fluid field of the body. It’s called the longitudinal fluctuation. Fluid fields have self-generating midlines. Living fluids do that naturally. But then along comes the notochord. Then the fluids use the notochord as a point of orientation for their movement. Now there are two midlines and all of a sudden the embryo becomes more complex in its differentiations. In biodynamic practice, we’re not always attending to the cellular or structural component of the notochord; we’re also attending to two functions: the ordering movement via its tempo within the fluids, and the stillness.

Q: The lengthening and lift, and palintonicity we see in our Rolfing clients tell us that our interventions have been effective. Is it possible that some of that may be the original expression of the embryo in the adult body? Are you saying that this lift may be the result of the expression of the embryo?

MS: Yes. Dr. Sutherland called it the “direct current.” The development of the notochord is preceded by a very strong upward-rising movement from the future coccyx of the embryo straight up the middle and out three-dimensionally. It is an upward-rising, lifting, spreading, permeation of embodiment within the fluid body of the embryo and the adult. It has come to be known as the longitudinal fluctuation. At one level he said it was the cerebrospinal fluid but current understanding is that the longitudinal fluctuation is the middle of the whole unified fluid field of the body, as Franklyn Sills has so aptly said. I think that’s actually what we are seeing in Rolfing, the manifestation of lift and length that is the original force inducing the notochord to differentiate, which in turn induces geometry and proportion in the developing body.

Q: Is it also that feeling of the fountain coming up and spilling over? Would that expression of the midline be the same as longitudinal fluctuation and direct current? Is this a description of the lift you have mentioned?

MS: Yes, they are all aspects of the same thing. The language evolved over years in the osteopathic community but the different terminology more or less refers to the same thing. Whether it is longitudinal fluctuation, direct current, fluid drive, potency, or what Franklyn Sills calls the Mid Tide. They are all within that range of the experience of lift in the midline from the pelvis up. It’s been called the fluid drive. That is why Dr. Sutherland called it “direct current.” It is cascading as it comes up through the foramen magnum, intersects at Sutherland’s Fulcrum at the great Vein of Galen at the posterior third ventricle, and then pours out and around the body. This is because the unified fluid field of the body extends slightly outside of the skin of the body. It happens rhythmically. It is rhythmically strong for twelve to 15 seconds, then there is a lessening or a slowing, then it surges again.

It is a constant tidal breathing type of movement. The surging happens in twelve- to 15 second phases. It can be palpated as an inhalation or an exhalation in the median plane of the body. I think there is another important consideration for Rolfers here; the longitudinal fluctuation causes a lateral fluctuation in the cranium. The lateral movements in the cranium are secondary to the midline movement. So the movement or lack of movement in the cranium becomes an assessment skill for inferring blockages on the midline.

Q: Integration is what distinguishes Rolfing from just about every form of somatic therapy. We are always integrating, as the goal of the whole series and within each session. This integration is most often to the axial is this the same as integrating to the midline?

MS: From what I learned back then, that is accurate. I’m compelled to offer a definition of integration here. Integration implies midline and midline implies integration. To me it means that we’re becoming coherent somatically and re-related to nature as we differentiate throughout the life span. I’m lumping the world of spirit in with the world of nature here as part of integration. There is a very dynamic somatic morphology happening 23 times in the embryo and across the life span. It doesn’t stop when we become a fetus or a newborn. This requires an awareness of midline, because in essence the midline doesn’t change; so we have to find the unchanging in the body – first to be able to orient to sensation, then for integration after change process, and also for the maintenance or remembering of our original wholeness, so to speak.

I think over the years I practiced Rolfing, I noticed that as bodies got closer to being aligned on the gravity line anterior to the notochord, some clients could access the lift along the notochordal midline. I had a lot of questions about the ones that couldn’t. I think the reason that many Rolfers are coming into biodynamic craniosacral therapy training is because the biodynamic work explores working with the fluid system and getting it better organized because it is the “lift” system. Consequently, that would enhance and support the integration that is occurring with Rolfing in the fascial system. Both works continue to be exploratory because the midline is functional more than a structure so to speak.

Biodynamically we’re building a function that structure can have an orientation to. That happens in the fascia as well, since it’s 70% fluid. Now we have an opportunity to explore the reciprocal interrelationship of structure and function with these two bodies of knowledge.

Dr. Sutherland began to develop a technology that was able to integrate the fluids. It’s taken 30 years to find a language to describe the phenomenology of that discovery. Now there are enough practitioners who know that it actually works to be able to shift the focus and intention of a session into the fluids and work exclusively in that domain. It’s a wonderful adjunct and complement to Rolfing.

Q: There are a lot of Rolfers who have been learning Craniosacral Therapy and are quite adept at feeling the CRI, the Cranial Rhythmic Impulse, and its rhythms of six to 14 cycles per minute. How does that rhythm differ from what we feel with the expression of the fluid rhythms?

MS: Many people will realize that they have felt those rhythms, but may not have realized what they were feeling. The palpation and sensory acuity necessary is a function of the state of consciousness of the practitioner first and foremost. I think what we are looking at is an evolution of the type of practitioners that are coming into the field these days. They have a background with meditation, with yoga, with the ability to slow their minds, to slow down the tempo of their inner experience and in that state one opens up to a whole new perceptual experience within the client. The neurological literature says that if the caregiver has a slow tempo internally, that will create a resonance between the neurological systems of both the practitioner and the client. The client will then start to slow down physiologically as well.

Daniel Siegel’s book, The Developing Mind, is a really good primer on this literature. This is not some sort of a fancy new age idea. If the practitioner makes contact with a slower tidal rhythm in the client’s body and isn’t in a slower tempo themselves, it may or may not have any therapeutic value or relevance. That being said, to describe what these slower rhythms tend to feel like in the client, we’d have to use metaphors like “a slow breathing.” It’s not a linear process even though it has timing. All of a sudden we notice while we have our hands on someone, that underneath our perception there is something slower happening. It feels like an inhalation and an exhalation, a welling up and receding or a rising and falling, but it’s not necessarily connected to the respiratory diaphragm. I would have to say that the slow tempo is another key to your question about integration earlier.

Q: But it is not necessarily connected to the tissues. It doesn’t feel like anything that is involved with anatomy.

MS: Correct. Dr. Sutherland said, “within the fluids, but not of the fluids.” In my own personal experience when I used to tune into the CRI, I began to notice that my hands were being pulled in certain directions at a certain tempo which was pretty quick. The slower tempo, however, is the hallmark of deeper tidal forces trying to express themselves to the client. The health is in the slowing down. It’s a polyrhythmic system, and speed is seductive and possibly disintegrating at lots of levels, especially emotionally. So, you’ve got the breathing, the inhalation and exhalation tidal cycles within the fluids. You have vectors or currents within the fluids and then you have another phenomenon that occurs quite dramatically sometimes. That is the sense of a stillness that permeates the treatment room, as well as the inner consciousness of the practitioner.

All of a sudden, wherever our dissociation has taken us to, we come back and open our eyes and notice that there is a clarity in the room. There is a stillness in the room that is palpable and we notice that there is also something different happening in the client as a result of that stillness. Basically, we might notice there is something slower moving within the client. It’s like: stillness was in the background and movement was in the foreground. Now the stillness has come into the foreground. It’s beautiful. It may be a reciprocal motion, a breathing type motion that’s on the midline or lateral of that midline. But it has to do with the coperception of stillness when our attention is evenly suspended inwardly and outwardly.

Stillness is the key at any level of healing within the biodynamic system. Just introducing stillness to the CRI, just introducing stillness to the fluid body and Mid Tide or introducing stillness to Primary Respiration or the Long Tide is what creates cohesion and healing. That stillness is very palpable.

Q: The Rolfing community has really embraced Peter Levine’s work. Some of what you were talking about seems to have a lot of correlation with his work; can you talk about that a little bit?

MS: I think Peter Levine is a remarkable person. He shifted a huge therapeutic paradigm from one of release-based cathartic therapy to a model of containment. Cathartic therapies have such a focused intention. More often than not, catharsis does not support long-term change and self-regulation, according to the literature. Containment means I have some choices about how I experience myself when my autonomics are up. This was a major contribution to the somatic therapy field. He asked us to slow down our input and to begin to pace our work more slowly. When we begin to decelerate and pause, we are more in tune with a restorative rhythm for the autonomic nervous system. That of course lends itself to biodynamic practice, whether you and working with shock/trauma or not. We are trying to synchronize with a much slower tempo in the fluids. He is a real pioneer it that sense.

The next evolution of his work is emerging from the field of pre- and perinatal psychology. What the pre- and perinatal people are telling us is that these so-called imprints, which is the term used now for a stress and trauma schema, originate in the pre- and perinatal time of life. That means anywhere from pre-conception throughout the embryonic and fetal periods, during the birth process, and the first two years post-birth. The primary stress and trauma imprints occurred in that time period. They happened at a time that was preverbal, so there is nc conscious recollection until you go into regressive therapy, have flashbacks or dreams, retrieve memories, etc.

The evolution of trauma resolution therapy is moving back to the imprints that occurred pre- and perinatally when the nervous system actually developed embryonically. Conception shock was actually named in the early 1940’s. Remember that the nervous systems hold imprints and so do the fluids. This is what Dr. Sutherland said in the 1940’s. The central nervous system is the only system of the body to be mapped out in all 23 stages of the embryo so far. Embryology is still a very young science and it’s a big story right now.

The human central nervous system develops in relationship with a caregiver. Now we all know that. In the embryo, the fetus, during the birth process and the first two years, this is when the human central nervous system is developing its set points for self-regulation, especially within the autonomic nervous system, for managing stress as well as joy throughout the life span. Animal studies show that if these developmental states are interfered with and stress is introduced into the neurological system, it is highly likely that the brain of the animal will be damaged and that that damage is permanent.

The human studies show that, yes, there can be damage, but it is not permanent. That is the beauty of love and compassion, they heal these early imprints. There’s a precise neurobiology with it. That’s one key to the evolution of Peter Levine’s work, looking at how the brain grows in relationship. It’s called affective neuroscience and it describes the attachment and bonding sequence. Unfortunately, the majority of those sequences between the infant and mother person are insecure. The disregulation occurring after birth is frequently a recapitulation of something that happened prenatally, and then it doesn’t show up behaviorally until later in life. It’s a big paradigm shift we’re in.

What happens in many cases is that the autonomic nervous system will uncouple. The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system will begin working independently of each other and the autonomic nervous system will lose some or all of its reciprocal capacity for selfregulation. This is what the literature is saying.

What we are doing in the biodynamic world right now is looking at how to come into relationship with that period of the life span, sensing and palpating these imprints and how to contain activation if it occurs. Essentially you have a very light touch intended to be neutral and being receptive to sensing the deeper healing rhythms of the body, and surprise – instead the contact sometimes triggers autonomic events. The autonomic events that are triggered are most likely related to the pre- and perinatal experience of the client. Consequently they may need to be re-related to a functioning midline. It requires knowledge of the fluids. This is what I see as the next evolution of Peter’s work.

Q: Right now some in the Rolfing community define “core” as the visceral space from pelvic floor to roof of mouth including the interosseous membranes. Sleeve is everything outside of that. Can you comment on that?

MS: I think we could all look again at what the embryo is teaching us about core and sleeve. I said earlier that the first week of the embryo is cellular proliferation of the same cells, the original stem cells, and they are all pleuripotent. Every cell can become a complete human being. At the end of the first week the first differentiation of two different types of cells results in a structure called a blastula. The blastula is composed of an outer cell lining called the trophoblast, a fluid cavity, and an inner cell mass called the embryoblast located at the polar end of the fluid cavity.

What happens is the formation of what embryologists call a central body and a peripheral body. The embryo actually bifurcates into two separate and distinct but interrelated structures or bodies. The embryo forms its extra embryonic membranes and associated structures. This includes the formation of the yolk sac, the formation of the chorion and the formation of the amnion These are huge fluid-filled cavities with tensile lining, and represent the periphera body. The other cluster of cells at one end of the yolk sac will differentiate into an ectoderm, then into a primary and second any endoderm and then into a primary and secondary mesoderm. This is the central body. It will be a couple of weeks yet be fore we have cellular differentiation of < mesoderm or embodiment in that central body.

The peripheral body begins to function viscerally right away. The embryo operates it function prior to structure. What does that mean? It means that these fluid-filled cavities of the peripheral body take on viscera function. For instance, during the very earl) stages of the extra-embryonic membrane development, you see that these membrane linings have liver enzymes and liver function occurring even in the second week – when there is no liver! It means that the visceral functioning of the embryo is projected out into the periphery first and develops it the peripheral body.

The second great thing that occurs in the peripheral body is the formation of blood and connective tissue. Before you haveheart, before you have a cardiovascular sys. tem in the central body, you have the formation of blood and the precursor element., of the connective tissue tubes that the blood is going to be circulating in later on. The peripheral body of the embryo is where this primary mesoderm circulates, until the central body has enough space and structure to bring that function in. So the connective tissue, the blood, the liver, the kidney and other visceral functions are placed in the peripheral body where they begin to function before there is even a central structure available.

Function is only brought into the central body when there is enough space and structure to support it. It gives me goose bumps in studying this. We place our function outside in the periphery until we can bring it back in. This has psychological implications as well as structural implications, but what it means is: function precedes structure.

The central body provides the raw material from its stem cells for differentiation into function and then structure. There are three theories about all of this business it terms of what is controlling the differentiation. The prevailing theory is that the central body is at the core of the differentiation of the embryo. It makes sense to me that the function present originally in the peripheral body becomes the sleeve and the function originally present in the central body becomes the core in the adult. I’m suggesting that the core also includes the longitudinal fluctuation of the fluids and the notochordal midline.

The embryo teaches us that the sleeve was originally the visceral space and the precursors to the viscera itself by way of the peripheral body. But we don’t know for sure what’s inducing these differentiations, except Dr. Blechschmidt’s observation that the ordering movements of the fluids are the ultimate cause or inducer. “The fluids make the words, the genes make the letters” he was fond of saying. The movement of the fluids “is cause” according to Dr. van der Wal. The importance of the peripheral and central bodies and their relationship to the fluids can’t be stressed enough. If you have a core and you have a sleeve, you have to be able to orient; and to be able to orient you have to have a midline. This is what the little embryo teaches us.

Q: Why would learning biodynamic work be valuable for Rolfers?

MS: We basically have two types of clients who come to us. We have those who want symptom relief so we do palliative work trying to help people decompress their compensations as best we can and we have some incredible skills to do that. Then we pray that they have the skills to self organize. We also have those who are coming for exploratory work because they’re doing some self-differentiation work as part of their life process. They want to look at their body phenomenologically and explore its potential. Ida Rolf’s work to me is about the exploration of human potential.

I think that biodynamic work is the next great work, and there are many great works besides Rolfing and biodynamic craniosacral therapy work. It is the evolving paradigm that allows that type of exploration that Ida and other early pioneers started. We have so much capacity and so many skills that have been developed over the years to help people explore as well as reduce symptoms. That would be one reason why one would want to study this work, is to continue both the exploratory and palliative aspects.

We have to look at the movement of the consciousness in our culture. We ‘re going back. The newspapers are full of embryo research, stem cells, and cloning for the last five years. The study of embryology now happening within the biodynamic and Rolfing communities is taking us back to our origins to connect with our original wholeness This is a demand of the unconscious. In depth psychology, it is said that for deep, true healing to occur we have to go back to the moment of our conception and be reconceived in our original wholeness in order to move forward in right relationship. Before you can be reborn, you must first be reconceived. I believe that this is the promise of biodynamic craniosacral therapy because of its orientation to the slower tempos that occur in the fluids of the adult, which were present before, during, and after our conception.

If I wanted to do the next piece of my exploration, I would want to find a well-qualified, biodynamically-oriented craniosacral therapist to explore this possibility or this demand that our unconscious has that we go back to our moment of conception. That is a possibility within biodynamic craniosacral therapy.

We can actually sense and palpate the original forces that were present at conception. We can actually feel conception occurring. As Dr. Sutherland said, this is not an “idle dream.” This is a sensory experience we are all capable of having. Dr. Jealous says we are all capable of experiencing our own divinity. This is another reason why people are moving towards biodynamic practice. The unconscious demands that we go back to that moment of origin, to rediscover or re-member, so to speak, our original wholeness, and move forward in right relationship with our totality. These are some of the conscious and unconscious reasons that I see that people are moving toward this work.