What is Stillness?

This is written by a Juliana Gee a certified biodynamic craniosacral therapist from Vancouver Island. She explores the deep healing space that is available for us to rebalance and integrate our traumas. It is helpful to share our experiences of this state of being as it helps all of us put into words what we are feeling. Stillness is a very powerful but often forgotten place of healing and regeneration. A biodynamic craniosacral therapy session brings you in contact with this level of being and is infinitely relaxing. More info and where to find a therapist here.

What is Stillness?

There is a settling, the mind is calm. Tensions melt and surrender to gravity. There is a neutrality here, a presence. It is not a stillness that is lazy. It is a resting that is truly restorative, for here, life is breathed into the spaces that need it most. In this resting, there is an openness into the core of our cells, a spaciousness which allows the forces of health to flow and to fill us.

This vibration of health, of life force or potency, inspires movement from within our deepest layers affecting profound change: a complete reorganization of deep patterns, rippling out through all surrounding tissues and fluids. True transformation from within. Creation or a new way of being.

It has been said that, out of stillness, arises all of Creation. For thousands of years, the beautiful simplicity of this has been understood by many different cultures. Such ancient philosophies/cultures as Taoism (Chinese), Buddhism (Tibetan), and Ayurveda (Indian) have been formed around an experiential knowledge of this concept.

In these traditions, there is an emphasis of an absolute reality: an emptiness, a groundswell, which has enfolded within it essentially infinite potential. Below, the process of stillness manifesting into form, is explained:

Stillness to form.

Out of emptiness emerges stillness: the essence of our true nature. A being-ness that is intrinsically still, but alive and teaming with potential, just like a seed ready to sprout.

From this vibrant stillness arises motion. This motion is driven by the inherent intention of life, which is to LIVE.

There is an interaction with the natural world, where form and intention bond to make manifest pure creation.

This is essentially the basis for Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, where this process is an awe-inspiring, palpable experience. In cranial terms, the groundswell is called the “Breath of Life”. Its deepest expression is stillness, from which emerges motion, called the “Intention of the Breath of Life”. This generates a force called “Potency”, which bonds with our fluid body, affecting change of immense possibility throughout our entire system.

How interesting it is that something so simple and primal, and yet so powerful, is such a foreign concept to so many. There is so much busyness and so many wasteful, useless distractions, that there always seems to be a reason to avoid finding stillness in our lives.

I too, find myself as I enter into stillness, so quick to fill that space with something, be it a sound, a word, a thought, a movement, anything to fill the emptiness. Recently, I was jamming with a friend. We were playing soft meditative music with singing bowls, bells, and flutes. I became so aware of the spaces, the gaps where stillness could permeate. I was aware of the tendency to want to quickly fill those gaps, perhaps afraid of their power?

It seems a real surrender to allow the stilling, ahh but what a wonderful feeling, every time. The constant chatter stops. I feel myself floating in fluid suspension, supported by the earth, centered in a safe place. Profound insights and messages arise, as do previously hidden sensations and stories within my makeup. Without attaching to these, settling deeper yet, there is simply a pulse of life which permeates, which I become. It is neutral, peaceful, and so satisfying. Upon arising from such an experience, my focus is clear. I feel motivated and enthused to take the next step in my day, aware of serving my higher self with each inspired step.

Self induced meditation is an obvious way to drop into this powerfully restorative space. Thankfully we also have nature to remind us of our own inherent nature. For instance, the incredible patience and peaceful calm of a tree mirrors to us a powerful stillness bursting with creative life force. We have little choice but to be affected by such a presence.

Thankfully too, there are modalities such as Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, where inviting/allowing stillness is the order of the day.

In cranial work, I have discovered that when a stubborn pattern persists, if I, as a practitioner, can drop deeper into stillness in my own system, my clients system can then move ahead with resolution. The stillness offered provides a sturdy (yet fluid) and safe platform for the deep healing they are eager for. It doesn’t always mean that they will drop into stillness, but something fascinating happens, where there is a merging, no separation between us, so the stillness I offer becomes part of their experience. It provides the ground for all possibilities of expressions of health to emerge.

It is amazing to witness that how, when stillness does arise in a client’s system, even brief moments of it can effect enormous change in how things are. In just a few seconds, there can be an immense increase in potency/life force, which previously may have barely been present, and suddenly whole new processes/reorganizations are underway.

It is an undeniably powerful event. One must trust this healing space. The mind sometimes resists, thinking that it needs more, not realizing that it is in stillness that the deepest healing can finally take place. In this deepening presence, the roots of our own suffering are at once revealed, and in a moment released, as we return to the source of pure health and deep intelligence that lies at the core of our being. It is here that we are free.

2 Comments

  1. jeanine says:

    What a fantastic article….thankyou!

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