Space and Form by Franklyn Sills, 1998
Transcribed with thanks by Sarah Delphont.
Let’s take a breath together. Settle into stillness. Let the silence take you. Simply let your mind settle. There is nothing to do in that..... Now feel the space for a minute, in the room. Just take a minute, come into your centre and let your awareness extend out and sense the space in the room that we inhabit. As you sense that space, notice that it is the space which allows your awareness to move. Notice how we inhabit space.....
Now coming into your midline, the centre of yourself, almost sense that you’re a coalescence within the space. Something that has coalesced, that has condensed, that has intended to inhabit this space. Just feel yourself, in the very present moment, coalescing and inhabiting this space. And just notice that it’s the space which allows things to unfold. And just bring your awareness to the whole of the space you’re in and sense now the other people in the room inhabiting that space, coalescing, condensing, intending to be here together in this space. Extend your awareness out so you’re holding everyone, your perceptual field is holding the whole building. Just sense us all for a moment inhabiting this space together….. Now take another minute staying within this space and very slowly open your eyes and see if you can maintain an awareness of co-inhabiting this space together….. So let’s come into relationship within this space we are inhabiting just now.
Know that the work we do is about space more than about form. It is space which allows things to move, to change, to grow. The natural world is based on space. The Breath of Life organises space in order to organise form. And we’re part of that, literally, as a coalescence in space…If you just work with the form of things, and in this work the tendency might be to just work with the resistance, the pain, the results of experience; then you’ve lost the opportunity of re-connecting to what allows that to unfold, which is space. The significance of the room we’re in is in its space. Isn’t it? It’s nice to look at the walls and the things hanging on them but the usefulness of the room is in its space. What allows us to use the room is its space and its doors and windows. Doors and windows are functions of space, they open to space. What would this room be without doors and windows? It would be hard to inhabit, wouldn’t it?
So there is something about the permeability of the space and the ability to move through space which allows form to unfold.
So the work we do is really about space and the space between things; what inhabits that space. And what inhabits the space between things is very much about intention. We are here as a direct intention to be a human being. And that intention is a movement through space. The spaces in our body are full of fluids. Dr. Sutherland gave a talk in which he said there is an ocean of cerebrospinal fluid in this very room. And it’s the fluids within the spaces that support that intention to be here as a human being. And that’s the heart of the work, re-establishing that connection. From the space, to what supports that intention to be here. And, what allows that, what really inhabits space, and is perhaps the essence of space, is what Dr Sutherland called the Breath of Life. It is this Breath of Life which organises order out of chaos, form out of space.
Space in essence is emptiness. And it is emptiness which supports the unfoldment of all form. Stillness imbues emptiness with meaning and potential. Within the space, if you’re all tuned into it, there is this palpable quality of Stillness. Stillness is the ground of emergence from which the Breath of Life acts. Stillness connects, it maintains integrity. It’s a universal. Life is whole, it is not separate.
When we look at each other, we look like very separate beings, and there is that aspect. I have a particular form, and I’ve become conditioned to believe I’m a "Franklyn". (I don’t quite believe that but… -laughter) It’s very easy to see each other through the separateness, through the differences. And we all get very involved in our lives and it’s very easy to feel, within that, disconnected from the whole. We get caught up in the particulars of our life. But they are like the waves on the ocean. You see separate waves. But they’re all part of the Tide and they rise and they pass just as we will. Just as this body will arise and pass. But there is something else there also. So being a discrete person is sort of like being a wave that has become rigid for a period of time. Like we’re kind of frozen in time, and then all we see are the waves and we relate to each other like separate wave forms.
We lose touch with the whole, with the Tide we are all part of. We lose touch with the fluidity of what’s possible and the mutual arising and passing of the waves. We’re all mutually arising from the same tide. That’s how the natural world is. It is whole. Things are totally interconnected and co-arise. And when you’re there holding or palpating someone’s system you’re both separate waves and yet you’re part of the same Tide. So in the relationship of the waves, there is clarity of boundaries, there is clarity of form, there are roles and all of that, but at the level of the Tide there is the WHOLENESS, there is the mutual arising nature of two human beings. There is interconnectedness.
And when you’re there, these things that we’re teaching aren’t arbitrary. When you’re there, holding someone’s head, or their big toe, or any body part, and you’re holding this wide perceptual field that we encourage you to hold, within that field, within the holding of that field, there is a possibility to sense the universality of your relationship to the whole. And within that universality, within that possibility of wholeness there is a conversation that starts, in a way, tide to tide. And in that conversation, as you’re holding your attention, your perceptual field in relationship to that person, that ‘seemingly other’, if you like, something else can happen beyond the form, beyond the suffering within that spaciousness that you’re holding. It’s almost like a reminder; there is space here. And within the space, moment to moment, there is the possibility of something else beyond our conditioning to re-establish itself.
That which holds everything together. When you go down to the depths of this work there is a highly spiritual quality to it. Without calling it anything. Without having to make it into a thing. Spiritual by the very fact we’re here in relationship. Without having to call it a religion or anything. So the early practitioners of this work, and many current ones, have an incredible reverence for the work. Which really means that have a reverence for our relationship as human beings together. That there is something within that possibility of contact and relationship which can re-establish the whole. That calls upon the potential beyond the conditioned forms we hold.
What we usually do in our relationships is come from our conditioning and our particulars. But in having a relationship here, with another human being, holding spaciousness and presence, something else becomes possible. When I’m in the still centre, where I’m appreciating space, this allows some other conversation to take place, beyond "I’m a Franklyn". Beyond you’re a Jim or a Jane, or whatever. Something deeper which is quite magical. And no matter how much you want to rationalise and analyse the work you do- this lesion pattern does that; and this pathology shifts, these emotions are expressed, and CV4’s do this, and all that, no matter how we want to rationalise or understand whatever kind of healing work we do, whether you give pills, whether you stick needles in people, whether you do adjustments, it doesn’t matter; what heals is something which is very mysterious.
No matter how much we understand the immune system, the neuroendocrine immune system and all that, underlying it all, there is something which is beautifully mysterious. And as healers if we forget that, if we lose touch with that, if we got lost in the form, then we have lost a lot.
And within all that, it’s also really important to have the particular knowledge you need to help the person in their suffering. You need to know how to be in relationship to suffering in specific ways that are helpful. And that’s the other side of what we learn, the other side of the coin, so to speak. We learn how to be very precise and specific and efficient in meeting suffering. In meeting places that have become frozen, distressed, abandoned. And that’s about an awareness of clinical issues, of anatomy and physiology, so you can work within any level that’s appropriate, where that person’s system needs to work as a reflection of the inherent treatment plan and of the Breath of Life and its intentions. And to be able to reflect the Health within all of that. Not just to reflect the pain and the resistance. Not just to release the symptoms, but to touch the Health which is never lost again. Many people learn this work in ways that just reflect resistance.
And you can get a certain level of change in that. But what I encourage you all to do, no matter what form your work takes, is to learn how to reflect the Health.
And in order to do that you have to be in relationship to it in some way. You have to learn how to sense it, to palpate it, to feel it. It has to be a perceptual experience, a felt sense. Not just in your mind, but in your body, a felt experience. And when you can reflect Health to that person’s system, it is one of the most powerful things anyone can do. I am not saying this is the only way to do it, but I find this a very powerful way to work. And that’s really where I want to start from. That this work is about the perception and reflection of Health. And within that is the ability to reflect how we’re holding our suffering to acknowledge "Oh this is what it’s like". "This is how bad its been". In the acknowledgement of a pattern, of inertia and pain, there can be a deep recognition. An acknowledgement of suffering. So we must hold both the Health and the suffering. Carl Jung wrote elegantly towards the end of his life about what he called the transcendent function.
He said that it is the role of the therapist to hold both the universal and the conditional. As the therapist does this, the possibility for a balance between these poles arise and it is in this balance that the transcendent function naturally arises. Then something else can happen beyond the conditions present. Sound Familiar?
So in that there can be a deep acknowledgement of suffering as you meet another’s process, as a practitioner in that reflective process. There is something here about acknowledging "Ah, this is how it has been for you". And in that there may be an "Ah, someone can see how it’s been". It is heard. Then, "You’ve done really well, you’re really holding this together. As desperate as the situation may be, you’re still here. You’re still holding it together in some way. How do you do that?" That’s the next level of conversation. "How does your Health centre this disturbance? And can that Health be expressed in another way, beyond the conditions and compensations that we have to hold right now". So the conversation shifts from "Aha, so this is how it is" to "Wow! So this is how it can be!" "What centres this? What is holding this together? What allows yourself to remain an integrated human being. What is whole and never lost.
How do you express this Health to centre this disturbance, this distortion in your system?".
In many ways we’re not really working with the distortion. We’re relating to the Health that’s centring it. We go under the distortion. And that’s the beauty of this work. And that has to do, coming back to where I started, with space and spaciousness. That is what maintains life. The forms we create are important because that is how we generate our sense of self and our sense of joy and suffering. All those forms are important to acknowledge and to meet, but the essence of the work is what holds that, what integrates that, what is whole within that? Where is the Health? How is that expressed?
And that is a really good lead in to what I want to talk about, which is how Health is expressed from the moment of conception. How we actually organise ourselves around Health. It may not seem like that. And our minds do a lot of funny things with our lives, don’t they? I can only speak for myself, I’m sorry, my mind does funny things! (laughter)
But you know, the body never lies. When you’re meeting a person and palpating in this way, truth is naturally communicated. The body will tell you "This is how it’s been and this is how it is now". The body will show you how it’s compensated, its defensive strategies, its suffering. The body never lies. The mind does all sorts of funny things with it. So as we’re learning to palpate in deeper and deeper ways, we’re meeting truth. We’re meeting that person’s truth. This is so important to understand.
I have this wonderful little sign on my roll-top desk, that says, "TRUTH IS TRUTH, WHEREVER YOU FIND IT". It may be in all sorts of guises and shapes and forms, and when you meet that person’s system, and you’re meeting it through the anatomy and physiology, through the subtle physiology of that system, through its energies, you’re meeting the truth of that person. Their history, their life, how it’s been. Their joys, their sorrows. Their neutral places. Their hopes, their fears. You’re meeting that directly. The shape and form of the truth of who that person is. And that’s a very privileged thing to be able to do. And we must hold that quality of respect. We learn to be very deep listeners to a person, their story, and it’s totally non-verbal. It doesn’t have to have any words attached to it. The body holds the story and it tells it. The mind may do all sorts of funny things with the story and distort it.
And within that, in that clinical relationship, we’re also holding the truth of what organises all that. The Health that allows that to unfold.
As compensated and shaped as I am, there is still that which is allowing all that to unfold and holding things together. And that’s the essence that we work with. It starts from the moment of conception. It becomes a midline phenomenon. Initially within the embryo, which we’ll see. That truth, that Breath of Life, that neuter essence, that blue-print energy. And the cellular and tissue world unfolds as it needs to in order to maintain an intention of being a human being.
So that one cell at conception starts dividing and dividing and dividing and dividing, and it’s driven to complete an intention. The intention of being a human being. And that may mean that a certain number of those cells complete in the intention of becoming a liver. Certain other number of cells complete in becoming an intention of lungs. But that intention is still whole. The intention of the human being as a whole. The particular has to be there. So that functions can arise, so we can be here. But those functions which we tend to separate out., this is the digestive system, this is the cardiovascular system, this is the musculo-skeletal system, they’re all still that one cell carried through an intention to be particular functions. The are all still whole and never truly separate. Even when there are billions of cells, there is the whole human being, never fragmented, never lost. So we’re still always whole at any particular time.
It takes a still and wide perceptual field to begin to appreciate that. And that’s another thing in our work - holding that wide perceptual field. Holding the whole, allows that awareness of the whole to actually be there. So that when particulars arise, whether they’re particular structures or places of inertia, or functions, that particular can be seen by the practitioner in the context of the whole. Indeed, the system can see itself in that context.
So we kind of work with a split attention in many ways. Our attention is on the whole and yet we can also be aware of the particular. But if you lose the whole, and you narrow down to just the particular, you lose the potential of allowing that Health to start to show itself because you have narrowed down just to the particular condition in that system. So holding the whole allows us to hold more than just that particular condition and allows the Health to start to express itself through that condition, that strain, that compression, that pathology, it doesn’t matter. So what I’d like to do - I can talk about this for hours, let’s be careful. I want to focus this a bit in terms of what happens in the early embryo and how the midline is established around which the vertebra condense. This is our seminar for this time.
The vertebrae, which is a particular, and the centreline of our body, which becomes the vertebral axis, coalesces around the initial midline laid down by the Breath of Life within the embryo, and we’re continually coalescing, if you like, in relationship to that midline throughout our lives. So I’d like to talk about that. Remember that the cellular and tissue world is organised by potency and the natural world is organised by the great Breath of Life. A tree is part of the whole just as we are part of the whole. The mouse that escaped my cat’s clutches last night and is now inhabiting my house is part of the whole. I have to respect that. I may have lots of feelings about that mouse at the moment. No it’s the cat, that’s the one who I have feelings about actually. (laughter) But we’re all part of the whole and it’s a great cosmic universal play unfolding, of all sorts of things… let’s take a break now and after the break, let’s look at some embryology together.
From these, we will introduce some clinical work in relationship to vertebral dynamics.
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