By Mary Reis
In the Touch of Presence® School for Biodynamic Studies, the Biodynamic Cranial Approach is a specialized form of craniosacral education. Giorgia Milne teaches here in the United States as well as in Europe, Australia, and Taiwan, with Gainesville being one of only 2 US locations. The approach emphasizes learning from the inside out rather than learning anatomy and treatment protocols. It lays the groundwork for deepening into Presence and a feeling/sensing orientation. Stepping out of a top-down thinking model of symptom-diagnosis-treatment, this school approaches “the work” from a purely sensation-based model. It requires a willingness to let go of what we think we know, and allows us to reconnect with our inherent nature — essentially exploring the natural world within and around us.
The teaching is experientially based, rather than didactic. Students learn by immersing themselves in PresentAwareness and sessions. We never leave this inward sensing as we approach our clients — we include them in our sensing without focusing on them, intending an outcome, or intervening with an agenda. In classes, we become familiar with a palpable landscape as we dive into sessions and discuss our experiences. With time and practice, we build a catalog of sensation and become intimate with an invisible world that is rich with substance and intelligence. We enter a new way of “knowing” that grows from direct experience. It informs us and our very beings.
I have been involved with this school since 2011, and I have become more and more aware of an interesting sense of communion in this work. Over the last few years, the quality of Presence that is showing up in classes seems to be evolving. It is as if our willingness to be present and feelingly engage seems to be met with a Presence that is growing and shifting with our attention to it. It is alive, it is intelligent. What is showing up in classes is changing and evolving. And the more we let go and deepen into the principles of the work, the more deeply we all transform.
The more I am in these classes and practice the work, the more I want to be “in the field” — I feel a sense of communion that I don’t feel anywhere else. The more I sit in meditation or do sessions, the more I recognize that Presence will come and find me. I don’t have to “make” myself be present or make a session start — simply taking the disposition of sitting quietly and letting my mind go, my mind will eventually settle and grow quiet. And then at some point, without thinking this into being, I can feel the quiet presence arrive. There is a palpable and distinct sensation that I have come to know and trust. This is how the work happens — slowly it seeps in over time. Presence comes in and takes over — I don’t have to direct or control it in any way. And it feels like a gift.
“One can only say that the pure “I” that represents me is my Silent Partner. It is the same Silent Partner as yours, the same SP that is in this room, and the same SP the insect I saw walking around has. It’s all the same SP, and accepting and surrendering to it has to become a conscious experience. The SP is not anthropomorphic, it is itself. It has to become a conscious awareness or knowing, but just the second you’ve got something that you can put your mental, intellectual finger on, that isn’t it. But still it is something that is. I contact my inner self first, then I contact the person’s.”
Dr. Rollin Becker, DO
I recently returned from a assisting a Biodynamic Cranial Approach advanced training in Louisville, Kentucky with Giorgia. This was my 5th go-round in the year-long Intensive, and my experience in the Touch of Presence® School simply deepens with each cycle. As one of our students remarked recently, the thing she loves about this work is that it is not a destination. We don’t simply reach “the end” and achieve a goal — we continue to deepen further and further into presence, into ourselves, and into the work.
If this approach sounds interesting to you, come join me when I teach the Biodynamic Cranial Approach Introduction July 27th-29th here in Gainesville. And those who want to explore this work further can join the year-long Intensive with Giorgia Milne which begins the following week. Please click this link for more information on both classes.
Wishing you ease and coolness as the heat of summer settles here in Gainesville. I hope to see you in class!
