According to The New Webster’s Lexicon of the English Language, embryology is the branch of biology that is concerned with the formation of the embryo from conception through birth.2. This paper explores the science of embryology from the perspective of biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BDCST), and from the embryological research of Eric Blechschmidt.

BDCST attunes to the three major therapeutic forces: “dynamic stillness”, “primary respiration”, and the “mid-tide”/”fluid body” tempos that Dr. William Sutherland (the founder of osteopathy in the cranial field) began working with in his osteopathic practice in the later years of his life. Dr. Eric Blechschmidt, the German embryologist, used the term “biodynamic” to” refer to the forces in the fluids which caused order and organization to occur.”3. A biodynamic approach to embryology is an exploration of the movements, occurring through the fluid body, which sustain, shape and resource the ‘whole’ person. This paper represents my personal understanding and integration of the embryological work of Dr. Eric Blechschmidt, the writing and lectures of Dr. James jealous, the continuing study I have pursued with Thomas Shaver, D.O. and Michael Shea, Ph.D., and the way in which these approaches continue to inform my ongoing education as a Rolfer1M, Rolfing’teacher, and Rolfing Movements” instructor.

Embryology offers the humbling experience of touching a living function. An understanding of embryonic development, differentiation and birthing broadens the scope of structural knowledge and expands the conversation that a body is able to ‘speak’ and that a practitioner can learn to ‘hear’. As a practitioner of structural integration for more than twenty-five years, the realm of embryology has stretched my understanding of human morphology and unlocked a doorway into the dynamic process of life unfolding. My hope is that the following article will inspire embryological inquiry and study and highlight the importance of this branch of science as a means of deepening our knowledge of integration and of the inherent motion within our bodies.

Embryology broadens the conversation and relationship I can engage in with another’s system. An embryological understanding enriches the scope of dialogue. If the body holds memories, it also holds the memory of its beginnings – not through cognitive process and cortical circuitry, but through the instinctual knowing and bio-kinetics that are shaping its form and that continue to move, shape and maintain both function and structure in the adult body. Our experiences are imprinted in the fluids of our bodies as well as tissues, bones, and cellular memory.4. Embryology expands somatic understanding, deepening contact with the pre-conscious impulses and gestures within tissues, bones and physiological systems as well as with the metabolic motions that are directing and shaping the process of growth. Dr. James Jealous, D.O., the foremost teacher-physician of the biodynamic model of osteopathy in the cranial field, speaks of three different bodies. The first is the physical body, which is our soma made up of connective, nerve and visceral tissues. The second is the fluid body, which is the living, instinctual organism. The fluid body permeates and contains the physical body. The fluid body carries ‘lesions’, which can be felt as a hardened and unresponsive density within the tissues. The fluid and physical body both respond to what Sutherland called “primary respiration” or the “tidal body” which transmits or carries the potency of life. The fluid body is holographic – or as Sutherland, is often quoted as saving, “Every drop knows the tide.”5

…All living things were water things, living inside the sea. Then a few hundred million years ago, maybe a little more – just a little while, really in the big history of the Earth – the living things began to be living on the land as well. But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. We carry oceans inside of us.6

It is possible to touch the ongoing process of development and change that is the adult embryo. For many years, I have been a dedicated student of a biodynamic approach to craniosacral therapy. BDCT allows the sensation and lived experience of these formative processes perceived through a dynamic stillness that is at the embryological core of midline formation and through synchronization with the very slow universal tempos that shape and organize the arising of function and structure. These tempos and the embryological imperative that informs anatomy can be touched, through learned processes that cultivate sensorial states of perception. BDCT is a perceptual unfolding, grounded through the lived experience of a practitioner’s body. The disciplined practice of allowing is a whole-body sensation. The art of perceiving certain tempos of growth, the qualities underlying these tempos and the dynamic morphology of the embryo support an acausal way of thinking and being. These sensory states contact the movement of life that vivifies all living things. This movement is undiminished, whether we are ill, aged or healthy. By coming into relationship with the underlying wholeness, it is possible to cultivate a relationship with an intelligence that is bigger than my oftentimes-narrow assumptions about what a body is.

THE SHAPING OF EXPERIENCE

‘The child’s position in the uterus is thus important in its structural development and alignment. Whether the head is to the right or to the left of the knees, where the arms are in relationship to the spine- these factors establish the individual pattern of the vertebral column.’7

It was Ida Rolf’s assumption that this spinal shaping is established as early as the first week of pregnancy.8. Such primary rotations are augmented and compensated by intrauterine limitations during late pregnancy. The threads of embryological understanding weave a three-dimensional tapestry between an individual’s movement patterns, structural design, perceptual preferences and early intrauterine imprints. At one time or another, we have all felt the whole-body moldings, arising from accident, injury and other life experiences, mirrored though the connective tissue. Imagine contacting the origin of these shapes as imprints from the intrauterine environment. An individual’s history of accidents and injuries may actually be a recapitulation of his or her formative embryological and fetal period.

Experiences in life create shapes of experience that express as patterns or perceptual preferences. These patterns or perceptual preferences organize around a center, or fulcrum, leading to a compensated system. Below is a case study illustrating the breadth of experience that meets our hands.

CASE STUDY MICHELE L.

Michele, a 26-year-old woman, came to see me because of what she called “her terrible posture and scoliosis.” She had been receiving a continuing series of advanced Rolfing° over the years to address her postural issues and had benefited greatly from this work. According to her physical therapist, Michele had a 20″ curvature. What I saw was the gestalt of her struggle: her left shoulder rolling forward “into” her sternum (as if being pushed from behind), rotations, compressions and s-curves shaping her spine, a deep concavity in the center of her sternum, the spiraling strain through her right pelvic bones, pelvic floor and legs. She complained of the pain and struggle she experienced while trying to “stand upstraight” and feel aligned with her life and her youth. For many years, she had been battling chronic fatigue..

As we began working, I casually inquired about her mother’s pregnancy and her birth process. Michele quickly answered that she had been a large baby and was born two and a half weeks overdue. Her mother opted for a C-section. The way the baby lies within the uterus determines the ultimate pattern of the spine.9

As I worked with Michele, I entertained the possibility that the compressive forces arising between the walls of her mother’s womb (the environment) and her growing fetal body (the formative experience) contributed to her structural discomfort. Her body did not end at the edges of her skin. Rather, I perceived a fluid membrane extending beyond the edges of her physical boundary. My current understanding of the fluid body involves that part of us that does not stop at the edges of our skin but permeates into the space around us. The fluid body feels like a viscous-filled membrane, enveloping and permeating the physical body. The compressive forces arising between the uterine walls and the growing embryo imprinted these malleable tissues. Protoplasm is the first moldable substance of life that can be imprinted with an image.10. The imprints or lesions held within an individual’s structure are also held within the fluid body. Within the intrauterine environs, we begin as an undifferentiated mass of protoplasm, about the size of a mulberry.

Throughout the sessions, my hands were passively receiving the embryological imprints her system revealed. Through an afferent recognition of the origins of her spinal patterns, and by perceiving these beginnings via a ‘slower-than-slow’ tempo of not-doing, Michele’s system began to express its history. The felt-reality of her early uterine confinement, which seemed to be at the core of her structural issues, expressed itself through a variety of shape changes and internally sensed pressures. By recognizing these shapes, and listening to the release of the corresponding connective tissue holding, her structure began to change.

After a few sessions, Michele reported that it was easier for her to stand up straight and that her feeling of being upright was sustained between sessions. She reported that her chronic sense of being “compressed from behind” had diminished greatly and was no longer a source of discomfort.

In the fourth session of our Rolfing series I held the spiraling shapes of her tibia, fibula, leg tissues and feet. By the fifth session, I began working with the concavity in the center of her sternum. The delicate function and early shaping of heart and pericardial tissues rose into my hands. I was not looking or searching her system for this history. A felt-reality of this movement arose as if to be seen and acknowledged as a process occurring in time that was now able to complete itself.

Presently, the concavity in the center of her sternum has begun to soften. Her clavicles now appear to support the emergence of her thorax through their subtle yet essential response to breath and movement. In all of these sessions, it was as if we were working within a non-linear time capsule, touching the beginnings of functions developing into a form and echoing Michele’s embryonic journey.

Our work allowed direct feedback about the nature of the forces that sustain and maintain present-time structures. Through an understanding of embryology, and with a felt-sense of working within the slow tempo of primary respiration and stillness, I was able to dialogue with her system’s memory of its beginnings. These early embryological imprints are functional patterns; when acknowledged, they transformed and mobilized the structural shifts necessary for integration and balance. “We are embryos throughout our lifetime.” As the developmental arrests within a client’s system are recognized by the practitioner, the reality of what we might imagine a body to be is turned around, upside down and inside out. Yet as these embryological functions are ‘worked with’, a coherent maturity emerges throughout the individual.

‘Biodynamic Principle: One’s embryonic journey does not stop at birth. The potential for change and differentiation continues throughout a lifetime.’

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher (486 BC), said “you can never put your foot in the same river twice”. Knowledge of embryonic development broadens and enriches the ‘river’ of contact. Structural issues are often directly related to the intra-uterine environment or a difficult birth process. The organizing patterns initiated at that moment in time continue through our lives. They are whole-body patterns that shape every nook and cranny of the body, including the fluid space around it, and yet, the body is always at potential to change.11.

‘Biodynamic Principle: The tempo of your work supports an individual’s system opening (in time) to the potency of life moving through it.’

According to biodynamic theory, embryonic growth is carried by the rhythm and wave of primary respiration – the pulse that carries life.12 This tempo continues throughout a lifetime and carries us through to death. When I contacted Michele’s system from this very slow pace, her adult embryo emerged. I did not search for these imprints. They arose and I recognized the shaping. The tempo of primary respiration allows for the differentiation of these embryonic imprints to arise from an individual’s system.

How slow is slow? Primary respiration has a 100-second cycle. And what does a 100second cycle feel like? If you haven’t a clue, then the following experiential exercise may be helpful. This exploration will give you the sense of the pace of ‘slowing down’ that needs to occur within your own system in order to perceive these movements. Primary respiration is not a technique. It is a state of consciousness. The tempo of primary respiration is a superficial way to sense it. The quality of sitting in primary respiration is a deeper, dimensional, and whole-body experience and brings within it a state of mind.

‘Somatic Exploration
Set a tea timer for fifty-second intervals that will repeat for about five minutes. Sitting with the palms of your hands together, let your hands open slowly for fifty seconds, then come back together slowly for fifty seconds, continuing this for five minutes. First notice the timing, and then notice if your mind begins to wander. Notice what, if anything, arises as you slow to this pace of primary respiration.’

‘Biodynamic Principle: The space surrounding the body is as much a part of the body as our physical matter.’

The semi-permeable membranes of our cells exchange information with the interstitial spaces around them .13 In much the same way, the body as a unified and holographic structure exchanges information with its surrounding environment. Our bodies cannot be viewed as separate from the environment in which they live and breathe. There is a mutual exchange, whether we acknowledge it or not.

A fluid body permeates the physical body. The fluid body is different than the physical body:

A patient’s physical body is actually inside the fluid body. … The thing is that when we are healthy, the fluid body and the physical body commingle, so they feel like one substance and so you could say when a person is healthy you can’t feel an acute boundary at the edge of the skin.14

We do not stop at our skin boundary. There is a resonant field surrounding the body that is continuous with the permeating matrix of wholeness. This resonant field is as real – as much a part of the body – as the physical matter of our anatomy. It is not empty space but alive and vital. The fluid body is not just the electromagnetic field of auric studies. The fluid body is not a water body. It is not watery at all, but rather a kind of viscous substance that can be viscerally sensed. The fluid body cannot be relegated to the interstitial fluids or extracellular matrix. It is not that. This ‘body’ is perceiving, intelligent and responsive. In cultivating a sense of my fluid body, a sense of connection to something other than my small self emerges. Perhaps health is a reflection of the coherence between our physical and fluid bodies.

‘Somatic Exploration
Recall a time in your life when you experienced a deep connection with something in nature (a place, an animal, a tree or cave, etc.). Remember that time. Remember the sensations that you experienced. Can you name some of those sensations? Through this connection, do you remember having a sense of communion with something bigger than yourself? – intelligence, a presence? This sense of ‘other’ or presence is non-personal.’

‘Biodynamic Principle: The fluid forces that shaped the embryo are dynamic and function in the maintenance of structure throughout a lifetime.’

The embryo grows by varying pressures, gradients and concentrations of proteins and genetic materials along with the interaction and formative movements of metabolic fields. The embryo is shaped by pressure gradients from within and without interacting with its protoplasmic fluid nature. We are mostly fluid and the embryo is 99% fluid.

Protoplasm means the first moldable substance. It’s the first substance of life, which can maintain an image, which can sustain an image, which can imprint with an image …. So we have this kind of jello-like elastic protoplasm that can take in an idea and express it as a form.15

A therapist can learn to have a sensorial experience of the movement of protoplasm being shaped by the interaction of the metabolic fields and the morphogenic forces of tensegrity. Primary respiration is initiating the shaping, and moving the field. Embryonic growth synchronizes with this rhythm. Growth is a function of the external world shaping the internal world and vise versa.

Detecting the fluid body surrounding and permeating the physical body requires both discipline and the cultivation of a listening and receptive contact. As practitioners of structural bodywork, we have developed skill of an efferent quality. Structural change is effected through our hands. Essential to the sensing of the fluid body and the kinetic movements that are shaping the embryo is afferent contact and perceptual receptivih-. It is an afferent, or allowing, hand that senses the subtle shifts and movements within the fluid body.

‘Somatic Exploration
Picture yourself within a gelatinous egg that permeates to the center of your core and extends around you about eight to twelve inches. The fluid body is breathing right out through the skin. Without effort or will can you develop a sense of this body. Can you sense a vitality, a wholeness and breath? Can you sense this body sensing you?’

‘Biodynamic Principle: “Life is matter in motion.” (Andrew Taylor Still, founder of osteopathy)’

The embryologist Blechschmidt used the phrase “metabolic field” to describe the mechanism by which fluids ‘behave’ to both form and differentiate the growth of the developing embryo. The submicroscopic movements that these fields direct are ordered and precise in their tempo and direction. In Blechschmidt’s understanding, these metabolic forces are moving at a slow tempo, this growth all occurs according to a pulse – the natural rhythm of the developing organism.16. According to biodynamic theory, the tempo of embryological development is found to have a 100-second cycle.

Is it not a striking phenomenon that in the midst of flowing movement forms arise, not through any differentiation of substance, but simply through the interplay of currents and their forces?17

Blechschmidt identified different metabolic fields that order the kinetic development of the embryo. He elaborated nine different fields of motion by which fluids behave internally, creating function, out of which emerges structure: corrosion, contusion, distusion, dilation, retension, detraction, densation, loosening and suction. These mechanisms are driven by the metabolism of cellular tissues.

Biokinetics is the study of how the fluid body (as a moving system of metabolic fields) congeals, solidifies and differentiates into the structural components of the embryo, whether the blood, lymph, bone, muscle, nerve tissue, etc. This stepping down into form and the refining of structures and functions from the biodynamic self-organizing whole, defines the embryonic process.

The entire embryo functions as a whole unit to maintain its metabolism. The various metabolic fields dance together all at once. Restraint in one area is countered with growth in another area, and vice versa. Flexion of the embryo occurs as a result of the dorsal branches of the aorta tethering the neural tube to the more ventrally located, and more slowly growing, aorta. The more rapidly growing neural tube bends forward as a result. The aorta and dorsal aorta branches restrain while the neural tube grows.18

These metabolic fields can be experienced moving the adult ’embryo’: shaping, maintaining, and sustaining the health of the organism.

The developmental motions and relationships between the fields are important considerations in the healing process as the embryo in the adult continues to generate its form, maintain its form and repair its form moment to moment. Healing would then be considered to be … synchronized with Primary Respiration, containing the original function of the metabolic fields so that any imprinted memory of stress or trauma that occurred at that time could be uncoupled and resolved into the process of stillness and reoriented to midline (function).19

‘Somatic Exploration
Find a comfortable place to lie down, supporting your body as needed. Settle into a felt-sense of the weight of your body being supported by the table, bed or floor that you are lying upon. Breathe. Imagine the inside of your body to be fluid filled’and contained by the limiting boundary of your skin. Place your hands on your lower abdomen. Slow down and allow your perception to open to the quality and tempo of primary respiration. Sense the viscosity of your fluid body enveloping you, with its natural potency. Notice the vibratory aliveness of the space around you… You may begin to sense long, slow wave-like motions moving from the space surrounding your body, through your body.’

Through biodynamic study, I have been able to expand my appreciation of the body’s inherent motility to include the possibility of tissues and systems being moved by something from outside the body, specifically primary respiration shaping both function and structure.

CASE STUDY KAREN B.

Karen, a forty-five-year-old mother of two, came to see me about the severe wrist pain she was experiencing. She works as a computer programmer. Initially, I thought her complaints stemmed from her work, and possible carpel tunnel or thoracic outlet syndrome. However, she did not complain of any of the nerve impingement symptoms that usually occur with these presenting conditions. Instead it was the ligamentous tissues in her wrist that were chronically inflamed, and aggravated by an uncommon stiffness in her arms.

During our second session, I had the impression that I was holding the arm of a fragile bird. The bones felt as if they had not fully formed even though her arms looked ‘normal’.

Karen had a difficult time finding weight in her arms, and there was very little sense of direction/ orientation in her elbow. Her arms did not swing when she walked. Both arms felt tethered to an encapsulating tension around her heart. It seemed that in order for Karen to experience the relief she was seeking, she needed to develop a sense of weight through the bones of her arms and an easing in what I sensed as tension in the center of her chest. Another curious note: Karen often spoke of feeling tiny and small, although her image of ‘being small’ was not my experience of her. I imagined that somewhere in time, the development of the bones of her arms had been arrested. Without looking for any specific cause, I stayed open to the felt-reality of the development of the embryonic limb buds. With a contact that allowed this possibility, the metabolic forces were momentarily engaged and ‘something’ began to change. I began with her right arm and cradled her elbow and forearm with my right arm. I contacted her thoracic spine (T4+T5) with the palm of my left hand. Both hands were engaged yet transparent in their contact. I waited and settled more into myself. I made a note that the sense of weight coming through her bones was negligible. Very slowly, Karen’s elbow began to drop into my palm. I waited, challenging my curiosity and desire to direct the result. I waited as a slow, spiraling gesture of her ’embryonic’ elbow began to lengthen and orient toward the back of her body. I began to sense subtle shifts in the density and weight of her bones. When she returned for her third session, her arms seemed more lively and hung in a different way. At this time, Karen still experiences a degree of wrist pain, but it seems to ‘come and go’ rather than be a chronic companion.

CONCLUSION

‘Life is that calm force sent by Deity to vivify all of nature.’
Andrew Taylor Still, D.O.
(founder of Osteopathy)

Sensing the arrested development within adult tissues has turned inside-out my reality of structure, function and what it is possible to perceive. Touching an embryological process is a humbling experience requiring an attitude of allowing ‘something’ to unfold within its own time. It is through a cultivated and whole-body receptivity to a permeating wholeness and vitality of the potency of life, moving through my hands, unobstructed by (my) personal directives or intentions, that this process reveals itself. The mind always wants to take a closer look because it is so amazing. However, that kind of curiosity seems to close the system. It is like watching an animal in the forest or a bird in a tree: with gentle awareness (without thought), and a wide peripheral sight, the animal or bird will remain in a human’s field of vision. Similarly, with the cultivation of a perceptual state that reaches to the horizon, the embryonic expression of embedded history might have the safety and space to be expressed.

As I explore the far reaches of a biodynamic state of perception, there is an allowing of the wholeness of life, this “breath of life”, this potency that moves life, and which moves through me, my hands, my client, and is undiminished. I have to get out of the way. Usually it is with the recognition of the embryologic field that a client’s system is released from an arrested pattern, and evolves from that point. There is also a systemic response in the client’s field, which verifies to me that ‘yes’ that was somewhat important for the organism. At the same time, my own mind will go through a shift in consciousness. Sometimes a client will tell me that something is different but they can’t name it specifically. In Karen’s case, I no longer heard her describe herself as child-sized, and her arms began to swing more naturally as she walked.

The secrets and stories embedded within the many dimensions of our bodies carry our personal histories in the layered wrappings of tissues, cells and fluid imprints. The forces that shape the embryonic body continue to sustain, shape and heal the ‘adult embryo’. These are the expansive, thrilling and transformative moments in my practice that leave me both awed and inspired by the incredible complexity and intelligence of this living process we call a body.

Our bodies are a central focus for our experiences as human beings. Therefore, it is important to carefully examine what typically makes up our conception of a ‘body’-for the ‘typical’ is taken for granted all too often. A fresh perspective, grounded in ‘felt-reality’, thus may emerge from a kind of experiential review and challenge of our usual pre
conceptions. 20

‘Carol Agneessens, is a longstanding member of the Rolfing community, and Rolf Institute’ faculty, teaching both Roling@ Structural and Movement Integration. She is also a certified instructor of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy trainings. For more information: [email protected]’

ENDNOTES

1. Feitis, Rosemary, D.O., and Schultz, Louis, Ph.D. The Endless Web, North Atlantic Books, 1996, pg. 3.

2. The New Webster’s Dictionary. Encyclopedic Edition. Lexicon Pub., 1987, pg. 308.

3. Shea, Michael, Ph.D. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, North Atlantic Books, 2007, pg. 447.

4. Emoto, Masura, The Hidden Messages of Water, Beyond Words Publishing, 2004.

5. Jealous, James, DO. The Fluid Body, lecture series, 2003.

6. Roberts, Gregory David, Shatarmn, St. Martin’s Press, 2003, pg. 373.

7. Feitis, Schultz, op.cit., pg. 15.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., pg. 12.

10. Jealous, James. DO., Dural Sacs, lecture series, 2007.

11. Feitis, Schultz, op.cit., pg. 3.

12. Seifitz, William, Ph.D., Protoplasm of a Slime Mold: The Stuff of Life, video.

13. Varela, Franciso and Frenk, Samy, “The Organ of Form”, Journal of Social Biology,1987,10, 73-83.

14. Jealous, James, D.O. The Fluid Body & Rebalancing, CD lecture series, 2006.

15. Jealous, James, D.O., Dural Sacs, lecture series, 2006.

16. Paoletti, Serge, The Fasciae, Eastland Press, 2006, pg. 14.

17. Schwenk, Theodore, Sensitive Chaos, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1965.

18. Hoelscher Sharalee, “Understanding the Embryo”, unpublished paper, 2006.

19. Shea, Michael, Metabolic Fields: Palpation and Sensory Experience, 2007, pg. 2.

20. Tulku, Tarthang. Time, Space and Knowledge, Dharma Publishing, 1977, pg. 21.[:de]According to The New Webster’s Lexicon of the English Language, embryology is the branch of biology that is concerned with the formation of the embryo from conception through birth.2. This paper explores the science of embryology from the perspective of biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BDCST), and from the embryological research of Eric Blechschmidt.

BDCST attunes to the three major therapeutic forces: “dynamic stillness”, “primary respiration”, and the “mid-tide”/”fluid body” tempos that Dr. William Sutherland (the founder of osteopathy in the cranial field) began working with in his osteopathic practice in the later years of his life. Dr. Eric Blechschmidt, the German embryologist, used the term “biodynamic” to” refer to the forces in the fluids which caused order and organization to occur.”3. A biodynamic approach to embryology is an exploration of the movements, occurring through the fluid body, which sustain, shape and resource the ‘whole’ person. This paper represents my personal understanding and integration of the embryological work of Dr. Eric Blechschmidt, the writing and lectures of Dr. James jealous, the continuing study I have pursued with Thomas Shaver, D.O. and Michael Shea, Ph.D., and the way in which these approaches continue to inform my ongoing education as a Rolfer1M, Rolfing’teacher, and Rolfing Movements” instructor.

Embryology offers the humbling experience of touching a living function. An understanding of embryonic development, differentiation and birthing broadens the scope of structural knowledge and expands the conversation that a body is able to ‘speak’ and that a practitioner can learn to ‘hear’. As a practitioner of structural integration for more than twenty-five years, the realm of embryology has stretched my understanding of human morphology and unlocked a doorway into the dynamic process of life unfolding. My hope is that the following article will inspire embryological inquiry and study and highlight the importance of this branch of science as a means of deepening our knowledge of integration and of the inherent motion within our bodies.

Embryology broadens the conversation and relationship I can engage in with another’s system. An embryological understanding enriches the scope of dialogue. If the body holds memories, it also holds the memory of its beginnings – not through cognitive process and cortical circuitry, but through the instinctual knowing and bio-kinetics that are shaping its form and that continue to move, shape and maintain both function and structure in the adult body. Our experiences are imprinted in the fluids of our bodies as well as tissues, bones, and cellular memory.4. Embryology expands somatic understanding, deepening contact with the pre-conscious impulses and gestures within tissues, bones and physiological systems as well as with the metabolic motions that are directing and shaping the process of growth. Dr. James Jealous, D.O., the foremost teacher-physician of the biodynamic model of osteopathy in the cranial field, speaks of three different bodies. The first is the physical body, which is our soma made up of connective, nerve and visceral tissues. The second is the fluid body, which is the living, instinctual organism. The fluid body permeates and contains the physical body. The fluid body carries ‘lesions’, which can be felt as a hardened and unresponsive density within the tissues. The fluid and physical body both respond to what Sutherland called “primary respiration” or the “tidal body” which transmits or carries the potency of life. The fluid body is holographic – or as Sutherland, is often quoted as saving, “Every drop knows the tide.”5

…All living things were water things, living inside the sea. Then a few hundred million years ago, maybe a little more – just a little while, really in the big history of the Earth – the living things began to be living on the land as well. But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. We carry oceans inside of us.6

It is possible to touch the ongoing process of development and change that is the adult embryo. For many years, I have been a dedicated student of a biodynamic approach to craniosacral therapy. BDCT allows the sensation and lived experience of these formative processes perceived through a dynamic stillness that is at the embryological core of midline formation and through synchronization with the very slow universal tempos that shape and organize the arising of function and structure. These tempos and the embryological imperative that informs anatomy can be touched, through learned processes that cultivate sensorial states of perception. BDCT is a perceptual unfolding, grounded through the lived experience of a practitioner’s body. The disciplined practice of allowing is a whole-body sensation. The art of perceiving certain tempos of growth, the qualities underlying these tempos and the dynamic morphology of the embryo support an acausal way of thinking and being. These sensory states contact the movement of life that vivifies all living things. This movement is undiminished, whether we are ill, aged or healthy. By coming into relationship with the underlying wholeness, it is possible to cultivate a relationship with an intelligence that is bigger than my oftentimes-narrow assumptions about what a body is.

THE SHAPING OF EXPERIENCE

‘The child’s position in the uterus is thus important in its structural development and alignment. Whether the head is to the right or to the left of the knees, where the arms are in relationship to the spine- these factors establish the individual pattern of the vertebral column.’7

It was Ida Rolf’s assumption that this spinal shaping is established as early as the first week of pregnancy.8. Such primary rotations are augmented and compensated by intrauterine limitations during late pregnancy. The threads of embryological understanding weave a three-dimensional tapestry between an individual’s movement patterns, structural design, perceptual preferences and early intrauterine imprints. At one time or another, we have all felt the whole-body moldings, arising from accident, injury and other life experiences, mirrored though the connective tissue. Imagine contacting the origin of these shapes as imprints from the intrauterine environment. An individual’s history of accidents and injuries may actually be a recapitulation of his or her formative embryological and fetal period.

Experiences in life create shapes of experience that express as patterns or perceptual preferences. These patterns or perceptual preferences organize around a center, or fulcrum, leading to a compensated system. Below is a case study illustrating the breadth of experience that meets our hands.

CASE STUDY MICHELE L.

Michele, a 26-year-old woman, came to see me because of what she called “her terrible posture and scoliosis.” She had been receiving a continuing series of advanced Rolfing° over the years to address her postural issues and had benefited greatly from this work. According to her physical therapist, Michele had a 20″ curvature. What I saw was the gestalt of her struggle: her left shoulder rolling forward “into” her sternum (as if being pushed from behind), rotations, compressions and s-curves shaping her spine, a deep concavity in the center of her sternum, the spiraling strain through her right pelvic bones, pelvic floor and legs. She complained of the pain and struggle she experienced while trying to “stand upstraight” and feel aligned with her life and her youth. For many years, she had been battling chronic fatigue..

As we began working, I casually inquired about her mother’s pregnancy and her birth process. Michele quickly answered that she had been a large baby and was born two and a half weeks overdue. Her mother opted for a C-section. The way the baby lies within the uterus determines the ultimate pattern of the spine.9

As I worked with Michele, I entertained the possibility that the compressive forces arising between the walls of her mother’s womb (the environment) and her growing fetal body (the formative experience) contributed to her structural discomfort. Her body did not end at the edges of her skin. Rather, I perceived a fluid membrane extending beyond the edges of her physical boundary. My current understanding of the fluid body involves that part of us that does not stop at the edges of our skin but permeates into the space around us. The fluid body feels like a viscous-filled membrane, enveloping and permeating the physical body. The compressive forces arising between the uterine walls and the growing embryo imprinted these malleable tissues. Protoplasm is the first moldable substance of life that can be imprinted with an image.10. The imprints or lesions held within an individual’s structure are also held within the fluid body. Within the intrauterine environs, we begin as an undifferentiated mass of protoplasm, about the size of a mulberry.

Throughout the sessions, my hands were passively receiving the embryological imprints her system revealed. Through an afferent recognition of the origins of her spinal patterns, and by perceiving these beginnings via a ‘slower-than-slow’ tempo of not-doing, Michele’s system began to express its history. The felt-reality of her early uterine confinement, which seemed to be at the core of her structural issues, expressed itself through a variety of shape changes and internally sensed pressures. By recognizing these shapes, and listening to the release of the corresponding connective tissue holding, her structure began to change.

After a few sessions, Michele reported that it was easier for her to stand up straight and that her feeling of being upright was sustained between sessions. She reported that her chronic sense of being “compressed from behind” had diminished greatly and was no longer a source of discomfort.

In the fourth session of our Rolfing series I held the spiraling shapes of her tibia, fibula, leg tissues and feet. By the fifth session, I began working with the concavity in the center of her sternum. The delicate function and early shaping of heart and pericardial tissues rose into my hands. I was not looking or searching her system for this history. A felt-reality of this movement arose as if to be seen and acknowledged as a process occurring in time that was now able to complete itself.

Presently, the concavity in the center of her sternum has begun to soften. Her clavicles now appear to support the emergence of her thorax through their subtle yet essential response to breath and movement. In all of these sessions, it was as if we were working within a non-linear time capsule, touching the beginnings of functions developing into a form and echoing Michele’s embryonic journey.

Our work allowed direct feedback about the nature of the forces that sustain and maintain present-time structures. Through an understanding of embryology, and with a felt-sense of working within the slow tempo of primary respiration and stillness, I was able to dialogue with her system’s memory of its beginnings. These early embryological imprints are functional patterns; when acknowledged, they transformed and mobilized the structural shifts necessary for integration and balance. “We are embryos throughout our lifetime.” As the developmental arrests within a client’s system are recognized by the practitioner, the reality of what we might imagine a body to be is turned around, upside down and inside out. Yet as these embryological functions are ‘worked with’, a coherent maturity emerges throughout the individual.

‘Biodynamic Principle: One’s embryonic journey does not stop at birth. The potential for change and differentiation continues throughout a lifetime.’

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher (486 BC), said “you can never put your foot in the same river twice”. Knowledge of embryonic development broadens and enriches the ‘river’ of contact. Structural issues are often directly related to the intra-uterine environment or a difficult birth process. The organizing patterns initiated at that moment in time continue through our lives. They are whole-body patterns that shape every nook and cranny of the body, including the fluid space around it, and yet, the body is always at potential to change.11.

‘Biodynamic Principle: The tempo of your work supports an individual’s system opening (in time) to the potency of life moving through it.’

According to biodynamic theory, embryonic growth is carried by the rhythm and wave of primary respiration – the pulse that carries life.12 This tempo continues throughout a lifetime and carries us through to death. When I contacted Michele’s system from this very slow pace, her adult embryo emerged. I did not search for these imprints. They arose and I recognized the shaping. The tempo of primary respiration allows for the differentiation of these embryonic imprints to arise from an individual’s system.

How slow is slow? Primary respiration has a 100-second cycle. And what does a 100second cycle feel like? If you haven’t a clue, then the following experiential exercise may be helpful. This exploration will give you the sense of the pace of ‘slowing down’ that needs to occur within your own system in order to perceive these movements. Primary respiration is not a technique. It is a state of consciousness. The tempo of primary respiration is a superficial way to sense it. The quality of sitting in primary respiration is a deeper, dimensional, and whole-body experience and brings within it a state of mind.

‘Somatic Exploration
Set a tea timer for fifty-second intervals that will repeat for about five minutes. Sitting with the palms of your hands together, let your hands open slowly for fifty seconds, then come back together slowly for fifty seconds, continuing this for five minutes. First notice the timing, and then notice if your mind begins to wander. Notice what, if anything, arises as you slow to this pace of primary respiration.’

‘Biodynamic Principle: The space surrounding the body is as much a part of the body as our physical matter.’

The semi-permeable membranes of our cells exchange information with the interstitial spaces around them .13 In much the same way, the body as a unified and holographic structure exchanges information with its surrounding environment. Our bodies cannot be viewed as separate from the environment in which they live and breathe. There is a mutual exchange, whether we acknowledge it or not.

A fluid body permeates the physical body. The fluid body is different than the physical body:

A patient’s physical body is actually inside the fluid body. … The thing is that when we are healthy, the fluid body and the physical body commingle, so they feel like one substance and so you could say when a person is healthy you can’t feel an acute boundary at the edge of the skin.14

We do not stop at our skin boundary. There is a resonant field surrounding the body that is continuous with the permeating matrix of wholeness. This resonant field is as real – as much a part of the body – as the physical matter of our anatomy. It is not empty space but alive and vital. The fluid body is not just the electromagnetic field of auric studies. The fluid body is not a water body. It is not watery at all, but rather a kind of viscous substance that can be viscerally sensed. The fluid body cannot be relegated to the interstitial fluids or extracellular matrix. It is not that. This ‘body’ is perceiving, intelligent and responsive. In cultivating a sense of my fluid body, a sense of connection to something other than my small self emerges. Perhaps health is a reflection of the coherence between our physical and fluid bodies.

‘Somatic Exploration
Recall a time in your life when you experienced a deep connection with something in nature (a place, an animal, a tree or cave, etc.). Remember that time. Remember the sensations that you experienced. Can you name some of those sensations? Through this connection, do you remember having a sense of communion with something bigger than yourself? – intelligence, a presence? This sense of ‘other’ or presence is non-personal.’

‘Biodynamic Principle: The fluid forces that shaped the embryo are dynamic and function in the maintenance of structure throughout a lifetime.’

The embryo grows by varying pressures, gradients and concentrations of proteins and genetic materials along with the interaction and formative movements of metabolic fields. The embryo is shaped by pressure gradients from within and without interacting with its protoplasmic fluid nature. We are mostly fluid and the embryo is 99% fluid.

Protoplasm means the first moldable substance. It’s the first substance of life, which can maintain an image, which can sustain an image, which can imprint with an image …. So we have this kind of jello-like elastic protoplasm that can take in an idea and express it as a form.15

A therapist can learn to have a sensorial experience of the movement of protoplasm being shaped by the interaction of the metabolic fields and the morphogenic forces of tensegrity. Primary respiration is initiating the shaping, and moving the field. Embryonic growth synchronizes with this rhythm. Growth is a function of the external world shaping the internal world and vise versa.

Detecting the fluid body surrounding and permeating the physical body requires both discipline and the cultivation of a listening and receptive contact. As practitioners of structural bodywork, we have developed skill of an efferent quality. Structural change is effected through our hands. Essential to the sensing of the fluid body and the kinetic movements that are shaping the embryo is afferent contact and perceptual receptivih-. It is an afferent, or allowing, hand that senses the subtle shifts and movements within the fluid body.

‘Somatic Exploration
Picture yourself within a gelatinous egg that permeates to the center of your core and extends around you about eight to twelve inches. The fluid body is breathing right out through the skin. Without effort or will can you develop a sense of this body. Can you sense a vitality, a wholeness and breath? Can you sense this body sensing you?’

‘Biodynamic Principle: “Life is matter in motion.” (Andrew Taylor Still, founder of osteopathy)’

The embryologist Blechschmidt used the phrase “metabolic field” to describe the mechanism by which fluids ‘behave’ to both form and differentiate the growth of the developing embryo. The submicroscopic movements that these fields direct are ordered and precise in their tempo and direction. In Blechschmidt’s understanding, these metabolic forces are moving at a slow tempo, this growth all occurs according to a pulse – the natural rhythm of the developing organism.16. According to biodynamic theory, the tempo of embryological development is found to have a 100-second cycle.

Is it not a striking phenomenon that in the midst of flowing movement forms arise, not through any differentiation of substance, but simply through the interplay of currents and their forces?17

Blechschmidt identified different metabolic fields that order the kinetic development of the embryo. He elaborated nine different fields of motion by which fluids behave internally, creating function, out of which emerges structure: corrosion, contusion, distusion, dilation, retension, detraction, densation, loosening and suction. These mechanisms are driven by the metabolism of cellular tissues.

Biokinetics is the study of how the fluid body (as a moving system of metabolic fields) congeals, solidifies and differentiates into the structural components of the embryo, whether the blood, lymph, bone, muscle, nerve tissue, etc. This stepping down into form and the refining of structures and functions from the biodynamic self-organizing whole, defines the embryonic process.

The entire embryo functions as a whole unit to maintain its metabolism. The various metabolic fields dance together all at once. Restraint in one area is countered with growth in another area, and vice versa. Flexion of the embryo occurs as a result of the dorsal branches of the aorta tethering the neural tube to the more ventrally located, and more slowly growing, aorta. The more rapidly growing neural tube bends forward as a result. The aorta and dorsal aorta branches restrain while the neural tube grows.18

These metabolic fields can be experienced moving the adult ’embryo’: shaping, maintaining, and sustaining the health of the organism.

The developmental motions and relationships between the fields are important considerations in the healing process as the embryo in the adult continues to generate its form, maintain its form and repair its form moment to moment. Healing would then be considered to be … synchronized with Primary Respiration, containing the original function of the metabolic fields so that any imprinted memory of stress or trauma that occurred at that time could be uncoupled and resolved into the process of stillness and reoriented to midline (function).19

‘Somatic Exploration
Find a comfortable place to lie down, supporting your body as needed. Settle into a felt-sense of the weight of your body being supported by the table, bed or floor that you are lying upon. Breathe. Imagine the inside of your body to be fluid filled’and contained by the limiting boundary of your skin. Place your hands on your lower abdomen. Slow down and allow your perception to open to the quality and tempo of primary respiration. Sense the viscosity of your fluid body enveloping you, with its natural potency. Notice the vibratory aliveness of the space around you… You may begin to sense long, slow wave-like motions moving from the space surrounding your body, through your body.’

Through biodynamic study, I have been able to expand my appreciation of the body’s inherent motility to include the possibility of tissues and systems being moved by something from outside the body, specifically primary respiration shaping both function and structure.

CASE STUDY KAREN B.

Karen, a forty-five-year-old mother of two, came to see me about the severe wrist pain she was experiencing. She works as a computer programmer. Initially, I thought her complaints stemmed from her work, and possible carpel tunnel or thoracic outlet syndrome. However, she did not complain of any of the nerve impingement symptoms that usually occur with these presenting conditions. Instead it was the ligamentous tissues in her wrist that were chronically inflamed, and aggravated by an uncommon stiffness in her arms.

During our second session, I had the impression that I was holding the arm of a fragile bird. The bones felt as if they had not fully formed even though her arms looked ‘normal’.

Karen had a difficult time finding weight in her arms, and there was very little sense of direction/ orientation in her elbow. Her arms did not swing when she walked. Both arms felt tethered to an encapsulating tension around her heart. It seemed that in order for Karen to experience the relief she was seeking, she needed to develop a sense of weight through the bones of her arms and an easing in what I sensed as tension in the center of her chest. Another curious note: Karen often spoke of feeling tiny and small, although her image of ‘being small’ was not my experience of her. I imagined that somewhere in time, the development of the bones of her arms had been arrested. Without looking for any specific cause, I stayed open to the felt-reality of the development of the embryonic limb buds. With a contact that allowed this possibility, the metabolic forces were momentarily engaged and ‘something’ began to change. I began with her right arm and cradled her elbow and forearm with my right arm. I contacted her thoracic spine (T4+T5) with the palm of my left hand. Both hands were engaged yet transparent in their contact. I waited and settled more into myself. I made a note that the sense of weight coming through her bones was negligible. Very slowly, Karen’s elbow began to drop into my palm. I waited, challenging my curiosity and desire to direct the result. I waited as a slow, spiraling gesture of her ’embryonic’ elbow began to lengthen and orient toward the back of her body. I began to sense subtle shifts in the density and weight of her bones. When she returned for her third session, her arms seemed more lively and hung in a different way. At this time, Karen still experiences a degree of wrist pain, but it seems to ‘come and go’ rather than be a chronic companion.

CONCLUSION

‘Life is that calm force sent by Deity to vivify all of nature.’
Andrew Taylor Still, D.O.
(founder of Osteopathy)

Sensing the arrested development within adult tissues has turned inside-out my reality of structure, function and what it is possible to perceive. Touching an embryological process is a humbling experience requiring an attitude of allowing ‘something’ to unfold within its own time. It is through a cultivated and whole-body receptivity to a permeating wholeness and vitality of the potency of life, moving through my hands, unobstructed by (my) personal directives or intentions, that this process reveals itself. The mind always wants to take a closer look because it is so amazing. However, that kind of curiosity seems to close the system. It is like watching an animal in the forest or a bird in a tree: with gentle awareness (without thought), and a wide peripheral sight, the animal or bird will remain in a human’s field of vision. Similarly, with the cultivation of a perceptual state that reaches to the horizon, the embryonic expression of embedded history might have the safety and space to be expressed.

As I explore the far reaches of a biodynamic state of perception, there is an allowing of the wholeness of life, this “breath of life”, this potency that moves life, and which moves through me, my hands, my client, and is undiminished. I have to get out of the way. Usually it is with the recognition of the embryologic field that a client’s system is released from an arrested pattern, and evolves from that point. There is also a systemic response in the client’s field, which verifies to me that ‘yes’ that was somewhat important for the organism. At the same time, my own mind will go through a shift in consciousness. Sometimes a client will tell me that something is different but they can’t name it specifically. In Karen’s case, I no longer heard her describe herself as child-sized, and her arms began to swing more naturally as she walked.

The secrets and stories embedded within the many dimensions of our bodies carry our personal histories in the layered wrappings of tissues, cells and fluid imprints. The forces that shape the embryonic body continue to sustain, shape and heal the ‘adult embryo’. These are the expansive, thrilling and transformative moments in my practice that leave me both awed and inspired by the incredible complexity and intelligence of this living process we call a body.

Our bodies are a central focus for our experiences as human beings. Therefore, it is important to carefully examine what typically makes up our conception of a ‘body’-for the ‘typical’ is taken for granted all too often. A fresh perspective, grounded in ‘felt-reality’, thus may emerge from a kind of experiential review and challenge of our usual preconceptions. 20

‘Carol Agneessens, is a longstanding member of the Rolfing community, and Rolf Institute’ faculty, teaching both Roling@ Structural and Movement Integration. She is also a certified instructor of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy trainings. For more information: [email protected]’

ENDNOTES

1. Feitis, Rosemary, D.O., and Schultz, Louis, Ph.D. The Endless Web, North Atlantic Books, 1996, pg. 3.

2. The New Webster’s Dictionary. Encyclopedic Edition. Lexicon Pub., 1987, pg. 308.

3. Shea, Michael, Ph.D. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, North Atlantic Books, 2007, pg. 447.

4. Emoto, Masura, The Hidden Messages of Water, Beyond Words Publishing, 2004.

5. Jealous, James, DO. The Fluid Body, lecture series, 2003.

6. Roberts, Gregory David, Shatarmn, St. Martin’s Press, 2003, pg. 373.

7. Feitis, Schultz, op.cit., pg. 15.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., pg. 12.

10. Jealous, James. DO., Dural Sacs, lecture series, 2007.

11. Feitis, Schultz, op.cit., pg. 3.

12. Seifitz, William, Ph.D., Protoplasm of a Slime Mold: The Stuff of Life, video.

13. Varela, Franciso and Frenk, Samy, “The Organ of Form”, Journal of Social Biology,1987,10, 73-83.

14. Jealous, James, D.O. The Fluid Body & Rebalancing, CD lecture series, 2006.

15. Jealous, James, D.O., Dural Sacs, lecture series, 2006.

16. Paoletti, Serge, The Fasciae, Eastland Press, 2006, pg. 14.

17. Schwenk, Theodore, Sensitive Chaos, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1965.

18. Hoelscher Sharalee, “Understanding the Embryo”, unpublished paper, 2006.

19. Shea, Michael, Metabolic Fields: Palpation and Sensory Experience, 2007, pg. 2.

20. Tulku, Tarthang. Time, Space and Knowledge, Dharma Publishing, 1977, pg. 21.