Listen, It's All About Perception by Franklyn Sills, Autumn 1997
(This is an edited talk which was given by Franklyn Sills to a group of skilled practitioners at the end of an advanced course. It was meant to summarise some important ideas. The concepts were already familiar to the participants.)
Hello. How is everyone? I would like to give a summary of some of the things we have been talking about so far. It is all about perception. Perceptual skills are the ground of this work. Presence, contact, grounding, and the quality of space you hold, is essential for success. Listen don’t look. Listening expands, looking narrows. The purpose of this work is not to release resistance or to process issues, but to liberate the health inherent within the resistance. This can be instantaneous. The treatment plan is inherent within the disturbance. The potency of the breath of life is always centring the disturbance, is always found within the heart of the inertial fulcrum. The state of balance allows it to be expressed beyond the compensation. Health is never lost, it centres our experience. Truth is found in the depths of our listening. Find the stillness that takes you beyond the form. It is from an intrinsic stillness, that is both still and yet dynamic,
that this truth is found. The Breath of Life arises from stillness and returns to that stillness. The Tao is neutral and still. Yet within it are images, the blueprint of eternity. From it all motion arises and to it all returns. It is a dynamic process of generation and creation. It is always in present time. Past and future are holographically enfolded within the present. Healing occurs in this eternal present. Attention and intention are of key importance in the therapeutic relationship. The purpose of this work is not about tissue resistance per se; it is not to release something. Our intention is not to come from this place or that place, not to process issues, though issues will come up and be processed. Our intention is to be present for, and to relate to, the Health that is never lost. The purpose of the work is to access the Health that has centred the disturbance.
The purpose is to liberate the health inherent within the resistance or the disturbance. We help the system to liberate potency so something else can happen beyond the compensations that we normally maintain. Sometimes the system will re-establish compensation as the first step when it has been exhausted. Sometimes the person’s system is ready to shift. Sometimes it is not and that’s OK. It can take ten to fifteen minutes just to settle in and relate to that health. Suddenly there is relationship, and then things start to happen.
Listen, listen, listen. Let images come, but don’t narrow the looking down. Have a spacious sense of listening (spaciousness and patience). As we get closer to the original reference beam it means acknowledging and connecting with the health which is within. Even if the physical body is collapsing, that doesn’t mean all is lost. Death can be a transition and a transmutation. Relate to the health in the system. Listen for it, listen to it. Especially when there is exhaustion at the end of a day in clinical work, shift to acknowledge health. Get out of the way and hold the field. Listen for the expression of health at many levels. Listen for potency and cellular pulsation. Then, when resistances come up, you have a different relationship from the viewpoint of the health in the system. Work from the mid-tide and the Long Tide. This is where the healing forces are expressed.
This is much less tiring. This work is a joint practice of enquiry by practitioner and patient. Come into your fulcrums. Come into a receptive perceptual field. There is vast Intelligence in this process. If order was not inherent, we would fall to pieces and fragment. This is what keeps us together in the midst of our conditions. In the midst of all the shapes and forms generated, there is something that holds them and us. This is the Breath of life and its potency. Centring it all, is this health. All the compensatory shapes and relationships are also intelligent. Listen for the Intelligence centring them. Densification happens in what would naturally be fluid. Within the density, look for what is still fluid. Health is always expressed. Instead of seeing patterns of resistance to get rid of, perceive the Intelligence. Move beyond that other view. Open your perceptual field. Get out of the way.
Learn to negotiate your boundaries. Listen for space, not just the form of things. Do not invade, there is no need to. Do not grab onto any of the three functions (potency, fluids and tissues). Do not lock up the structure and function of the system. Your attention can lock up the system if it is not negotiated or inappropriate. This is very subtle. It is easy to miss this. It is easy to fool yourself here. The system will then react to your presence and you will end up chasing shadows.
Potency, fluids and tissues will speak to you if you hold respectful and negotiated space. Listen, do not look for anything. Remember – no expectations - not for yourself, not for the work, not for any results. Let go of the need to do anything, to have anything happen, and listen. Listen, please, it is about perception. What is the patient’s system saying to you? Can you allow the inherent treatment plan to arise in its own time? Let your hands be buoyant and go beyond the bounds of palpation to truly listen. Listen with a caring interest and space, not with need.
All tensions are reciprocal in nature. Even fluids express reciprocal tension motion. Both longitudinal and lateral. Even potency is a tensile field of action. Potency is a tensile field of action, fluid is a tensile field of action and tissues are a tensile field of action. All three express reciprocal tension motion around suspended automatically shifting fulcrums. Fulcrums are energetic in nature. They are points of potency – a stillness within a larger field of action. Listen - all three functions are organised around automatically shifting fulcrums and all three functions will speak to you. They will show you their story with precision as the Breath of Life centers everything with precision. Individual tissue structures express reciprocal tension motion as part of a unified dynamic - as part of a whole tensile field of action. Do not get lost in the parts, always hold an awareness of the whole.
The parts will speak to you more precisely then. When you palpate/sense the whole of someone, that whole will speak to you. The treatment plan will clarify over time and the whole tensile field will express it. You may sense the whole tensile tissue field distort around a fulcrum, as the potency expresses the treatment plan from within. You do not need to do anything to find what needs to happen. You do not need to motion test, to analyse, to figure it out – this only gets in the way. Listen within a wide field of awareness and it will clarify.
Bone, membrane, tissues, fluids and potency are a unit of function. They are a unified dynamic. They are whole. Potency is the motive force, fluids are the medium of exchange, and the cellular and tissue world organises around its action. Motility is generated by the action of the potency within the fluids and this is all one thing, a unit of function. Units of function are whole and are organised by fulcrums. A fulcrum is a still place, a point of potency which has the power to organise and move. Listen for its action within the heart of the form. All reciprocal tension motions are organised around fulcrums, both inertial and natural. Automatically shifting fulcrums shift with the intentions of the Tide. Remember that inertial fulcrums are not automatically shifting fulcrums. They do not shift with the intentions of the Tide. The whole tensile field will lead you to its action.
A fulcrum is a still place, in essence - a point of condensed potency around which organisation is generated. Natural fulcrums, like Sutherland’s fulcrum, are distinct points of potency which organise the reciprocal tension motion of fluids and tissues, and which shift with the intentions of the Tide. They are suspended automatically shifting fulcrums. They are suspended, so to speak, within the whole tensile field of action, be it potency, fluid or tissue, and organise and move that field. Inertial fulcrums are expressions of unresolved experience, even of genetics if they overlay and distort the organising field of potency. Inertial fulcrums are centered within the whole field of action. As this occurs, suspended automatically shifting fulcrums will shift in their action in order to center the conditions present. The whole field distorts to accommodate this. The inertial fulcrum then becomes an organising factor within the whole tensile field.
Distortions occur at every level. Tissue and structural distortion, fluid distortions, and distortions in the unified field of potency, the bioenergy field. The Osteopathic lesions results. It is an affect, not a cause or origin. All are organised around inertial fulcrums which are sites of inertial potency. These inertial sites have the potency, or power, to organise. Stasis, inertia, and loss of motion results- this is the first movement to disease states. Inertial forces generate inertial fluids and tissues and vitality is lost, disorder sets in.
But remember - within the heart of every inertial fulcrum there is Health at work centering the unresolved forces which generate the disturbance within the system. Remember Dr. Becker’s concept here. At the heart of every inertial fulcrum there is potency, the biodynamic potency of the Breath of Life, centering the inertial, or added, forces present. This is crucial to understand. Potency becomes inertial in order to center and contain the un-resolvable forces present. There is biodynamic potency at work centering the unresolved forces of experience, trauma and disease states. The inertial forces within the system are centered in precise ways. They will also be attended to by the Breath of Life in precise ways and in a precise order. Dr. Becker said that the treatment plan is inherent within the conditions present. The treatment plan lies hidden within the very fulcrum organising the disturbance within the system.
If you are silent and maintain a wide field of listening, this treatment plan will begin to express itself. It is inherent within the conditions being centered within the body as a whole. The treatment plan arises within the field of potency from ever deeper sources. It moves through the fulcrum. Listen and you will sense things clarifying – a particular fulcrum, and a particular shape of altered reciprocal tension motion will clarify, and the Tide will focus its intentions precisely within the fulcrum at the heart of it all. Please recognise the precision of all this. You must listen for this treatment plan, for this precision, and clinical work becomes much less tiring and more efficient.
All reciprocal tension motion expresses a precise proportionality of form. Dr. Randolph Stone use to say "God geometizes, man congnizes". We cannot approach this precision by thinking – only by listening within a wide and neutral field of awareness. All reciprocal tension expresses boundaries. It is the fulcrum which organises these motions which establishes the boundary. Palpate the limits and then let them go. Sense the fulcrum which organises the shape, sense the heart of the motion, not the poles of its expression. Remember that all tension is reciprocal, even altered tensions due to the presence of inertial forces. States of balance occur within reciprocal tension fields. These are states of dynamic equilibrium. The state of dynamic equilibrium reorients the potencies and inertial forces present to natural automatically shifting fulcrums, and to the primal midline. Fulcrums reorient to the midline.
Midlines are expressions of the organising intentions of the Breath of Life in action. Look for reorientation to midline phenomena and naturally suspended automatically shifting fulcrums. This gives you much clinical information. The Breath of Life is the Tide within this midline. It is eternally primal and primary. It acts to center our existence.
The state of balance initiates a process of easing into receptivity. It is a receptivity to Originality, to origin. The state of balance is like a mysterious gateway into something beyond the conditions being centered. The state of balance, a dynamic equilibrium, resonates with the Stillness at the heart of all form and all natural organisation. Appreciate this. It is the heart of clinical practice. Wait for this neutral to appear, listen for it, don’t miss it. It is a settling within all of the potencies and forces present. It is a settling of the conditions present. It is a gateway to the deeper organising forces within the human system.
Listen for expressions of Health. It is relatively easy to palpate resistance and disorder. But can you sense the Health which centers it all? This is your challenge. Can you sense the potency centering the inertial forces present? Can you sense the bioelectric, epigenetic matrix, the blueprint of form? Can you sense the action of the Long Tide, the ordering winds of the human system? Can you sense the Stillness at the heart of it all? All is at work, always acting in the eternal present. Don’t be led by conditions, only by expressions of Health. Center on the deeper healing resources of the system, not just on the results and affects of suffering. Stillness is at the heart of the fulcrum. Deepen into Stillness. Don’t get lost in stillpoints. Like Dr. Becker mentioned, there are thousands of stillpoints, but only one Stillness. Let the stillpoint be a gateway to the deeper experience of Stillness. The Dynamic Stillness is a ground of emergence and is known only in silence and unknowing.
Do not try to change the disturbance, leave it be. Let suffering be. Attend to the health which centers it always. It wants to tell its story without interruption or intervention. Listen to the story and access the health. Do not worry about results and affects. Lesions will take care of themselves once the potency is accessed. The Breath of Life and its potency is at the heart of the healing process. It is unconditional health in action. It is self-correcting and self-balancing. The Breath of Life arises form the Dynamic Stillness. This is only known in unknowing. Your mind cannot grasp this, only your heart. Settle into the Stillness and the Health will take over. Originality will emerge. Listen within the silence.
Remember that all of your classical skills are conversations, not demands. They are skills, not techniques. Learn the primary relationships. Let them lead you to the heart of things. Osseous to membrane, membrane to fluid, fluid to potency, potency to the Breath of Life and Breath of Life to the Dynamic Stillness. Discrete phenomenon, yet totally interconnected, all mutually arise and are inter-dependently originated. All lead back to Origin and Source, not to causes. All are mysterious gateways to the truth of things, but only if you listen. Simply listen, it is all about perception. Be still and present and the essence of Originality will emerge.
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