The Fluid Body: Metaphors of Interrelatedness – Part 2

More recently in the evolution of understanding the fluid body, is the work of Gerald Pollock at the University of Washington. His book called: The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid and Gas is very informative and refreshing. This is not only because it verifies what Dr. Blechschmidt was seeing in human embryos, but because it gives us access to a way of sensing and feeling the fluid body as it exists in all of us. Pollock’s work involved the discovery of what he called an exclusion zone. This is a zone along or on top of every membrane in the body in which water is flowing longitudinally. Actually, it’s more like water molecules that are flowing. This is remarkable in itself since his research states that 99% of the molecules in the human body are water molecules. This is another beautiful metaphor for a part or layer of the whole.

In addition, his research showed that biological water manifests its own electricity and infrared heat. This is something that can be palpated in the client and used as a barometer for therapeutic progression. The terms potency and ignition contain within them these qualities and meanings associated with biological water. Thus the biodynamic teachings on integrating zone A and B are vitally important (the space above and below the skin). I like to say that there is a warm, wet, electrically charged cloud of water vapor around the body that is in direct relationship with that below the skin. The charged cloud around us is breathing with PR.

The further evolution of understanding and sensing the fluid body as embodied experience comes from Emily Conrad. She developed a system of movement therapy called Continuum. It took her many years to evolve this paradigm shift in understanding the human body. The most basic principle is that the human body is a moving fluid body. It is constantly moving and requires a shift in perception away from traditional understandings of what a body is. We have been misled by a corporate, industrial approach to the body as something exclusively made up of anatomy and physiology which can only be repaired by someone outside of ourselves who knows more about our body and we do. Emily’s work shows that anyone can access the spontaneous rippling and undulating fluctuations of the fluid body for the purpose of healing. I sometimes like to say that we have to stand on the edge of the neural synapse or on the membrane of the cell and simply jump into the interstitial fluid or in the case of the cell, into the cytoplasm.

Franklyn Sills has done a lot of beautiful work describing a layer of experience in the fluid body that he calls fluid drive and fluid potency. These terms also relate to the way in which the fluid body holds and processes stress and trauma. Sometimes these collective terms are described as the mid-tide which differentiates it from the so-called Long Tide (PR) in biodynamic practice. The Long Tide (PR) does not hold stress and trauma and may or may not be in relationship with the traumatic forces at all which means that trauma issues may not be the core issue that PR is relating with. Trauma repair is a direct function of the mid-tide model of work and is dependent on the practitioner’s awareness of psychophysiological issues in the client and applying trauma resolution skills. So these are different layers of experience or potential within the same fluid body. Both the mid-tide and PR levels require different skills of communication, perception and palpation.

Based on the evolution of perception and understanding of a fluid body, it is simply a metaphor for a way (phenomenologically) that anyone can experience the totality of their own body that includes mind, emotions, consciousness and perception. In this case, the totality is fluid or liquid in nature. Since we have very little knowledge of the human body from this perspective, the method of investigation is through the three fold path of embodied wholeness:

• First, establishing contact with the total surface or shape of our physical body. This includes a wide variety of body scan practices.
• Second, de-densify and soften the musculoskeletal system with a willingness to jump off the edge of the cell into the swimming pool of cytoplasm. This allows for the subtle perception of micro movement in the body, much like seaweed in the ocean undulating and moving in constant response to the ocean tides and currents. The experience of the seaweed and de-densification allows an investigation of sensation and fluid movement found in all of the teachings mentioned above. Fluids move constantly longitudinally along all membranes in the body. Fluids move perpendicular to all the membranes and fluids can move through the membranes. These are the three basic aspects of fluid movement in the body as first described by Eric Blechschmidt.
• Third, the practitioner contacts PR in his or her own bodily perception. PR or its synonym, the Long Tide, moves through the body as well as intersecting with the three major embryological fulcrums of the third ventricle, the heart and umbilicus. With these principles of movement, shape and structure, it is possible to experience the human body in a completely different way. This fluid body perception involves a more thorough integration of the mind and body. It is the basis of the therapeutic relationship and the therapeutic process as I teach it.

In conclusion, it is important to name another metaphor that describes the fluid body. The fluid body is simply the natural world. We typically perceive the natural world as everything that is outside of us in nature whether it’s trees, the sky, the wind, the ocean and the animal kingdom. But under the skin there is also a natural world. It is a world dominated by the elemental forces of air, heat, water and tissue. It is alive and interacting not just at a metabolic level as described in cell biology, biological water or protoplasm but rather as an intelligence as old as this planet and perhaps as old as the cosmos. Recent research has more than demonstrated that the human body contains the basic elements necessary for life which astrogeophysicists have begun to find scattered throughout the cosmos. Indeed those elements necessary for life scattered throughout the known universe live directly under our skin. That is the fluid body. It is home to the universe, all within us. The direction home is within the human body and its fluid nature speaks a language that we can no longer hear. It is a forgotten language and its voice is called Primary Respiration. The direction in is the direction down to the earth. The earth is our home where we are firmly planted with our feet on the ground. Welcome to your fluid body.

I would like to invite all of you to attend a course I am doing in London, November 5-8 called The Face, The Base and Embodied Compassion.  This is a very specialized in working with the arteries of the face and cranial base. It will provide a new understanding and set of skills in working with cerebrovascular drainage and the enhancement of lymphatic flow from the brain.  This course is part of the 300 hour diploma program.  Click HERE for more information.