Introducing Fluid Development by Cherionna Menzam-Sills, PhD, OTR, RCST

There is something in nature that forms patterns. We, as part of nature, also form patterns. The mind is like the wind and the body like the sand: if you want to know how the wind is blowing, you can look at the sand (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, 2008, p. 1) This article is intended as a brief introduction to my new Continuum Movement workshop series, Fluid Development. The workshop incorporates into Continuum Movement the awareness of motor development from conception through the first year of life, as well as potential psychological correlates and interruptions to that development. Continuum, developed over the last 45 years by Emilie Conrad, involves slowing down and deepening into fluidic states of being using specific breaths, sounds, movement and awareness. As our tissues soften, old patterning melts, and we tend to return to a state resembling the embryo. Here we can access the immense, mysterious potential of that early time of life. In the spontaneous movement emerging in Continuum, we often seem to be re-visiting earlier developmental and evolutionary stages. We may feel like a tiny embryo floating in a cosmic ocean, or like a fish or reptile moving in their characteristic ways. Each experience has its unique and valuable gifts to offer. Body-Mind Centering (BMC), developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, is a form of movement work that includes extensive experiential exploration of early developmental motor patterns. These involve the stages babies normally navigate in learning to lift the head, roll over, sit, crawl, creep, stand, walk, jump, hop and run. Each movement pattern rests upon the foundation of previous patterns. Underlying the amazing motor development after birth are the equally important movements occurring before and during birth. Motor development begins with life, at conception or even earlier. We start as highly fluid beings. Our primary movement is cellular. Like all cells, we vibrate and pulsate. We move in relation to our center point, like starfish in the ocean. As our midline develops, we move along it and in relation to it, and we push through it in birth. After birth, like early amphibians, reptiles and mammals evolving from oceanic origins, we learn to move our limbs and interact with gravity with increasing ease and grace. Our movement travels through the midline connecting upper and lower limbs and then right and left. Including awareness of specific developmental stages enriches our perception and unlocks less functional patterns and habits we may have developed in meeting life conditions. Intending to re-visit these early stages of development enables us to fill in and alter what we may have missed or glossed over. Continuum is a natural

medium for dissolving our patterning and returning to early, primordial states in which we can re-form and renew. Movement and Psyche My experience of BMC began with three years intensive study in the 90s with Susan Aposhyan, who has applied BMC to psychotherapy. My training in Susans work, Body-Mind Psychotherapy (BMP), has been one of the most important influences in my therapy practice. It also profoundly influences how I teach Continuum. BMP addresses psychological correlates of BMC, including developmental movement. Each movement pattern relates to developmental edges for the growing child. Where they have been missed, compensatory strategies emerge, affecting both psyche and soma. These may be less effective and more energetically consuming than the original developmental template. As we learn to physically interact with the world around us, we develop emotionally, learning about interpersonal trust, boundaries and differentiation, developing a sense of self, recognizing, reaching for and grasping what we desire. Where life conditions have interfered with any aspect of our motor development, we often experience corresponding psychological issues. Similarly, filling in areas of motor development we have missed facilitates associated psychological fulfillment For example, babies learn to push their upper bodies up with both arms to lift their heads (homologous push from the upper in BMC terms), and then learn to hold themselves up with one hand while reaching with the other. This leads to being able to crawl and creep. This homologous push which uses both hands to push is by nature unequivocal, whereas the push with one had that develops later has more room for modulation. Both pushes relate to being able to say no and set boundaries. The ability to set boundaries is foundational for being able to reach for what we want. BMC offers ways to explore these different patterns in our own bodies at any age. We can complete what we missed. For example, I never crawled (technically called creeping) as a child. I learned to crawl when studying BMC in my 30s. This affected my balance, and helped with healing from past trauma. I then experienced increased flexibility in my positioning in relation to things that were important to me. I developed more access to anger and its life force, and enhanced ability to set boundaries in relationships. Prenatal and Birth Patterning One of my favorite of the fundamental developmental actions is yielding, defined as a quality of resting in contact (Aposhyan, 1999, p. 64). This action underlies our later abilities to push, reach, grasp and pull. I see yielding as extremely undercultivated in our modern, western world. It is as if we push and reach our way through life without first meeting and receiving the support mother earth has to

offer us. For babies, this support comes from mother, or other caregivers. Babies naturally rest into cradling arms, or, before birth, the womb. This yielding relates to a sense of safety and security. What happens, however, to a newborn laid upon a cold, hard metal table for examination by a masked stranger away from the familiar, supportive ground of mom? Babies contract against such painful, overwhelming and frightening sensory stimulation. When returned to mom, it may take some time to regain a sense of safety allowing rest into her support. How many of us in these modern times have started life this way? Such commonplace birth trauma can be even more influential if baby did not feel safe or welcomed before birth. If mother experienced ongoing stress, violence or lack of support while pregnant, her womb may have felt less than ideally safe and supportive for the little one within. Being separated from mom at birth is often just one more shock for the baby, reinforcing earlier prenatal experience. Yielding might take some extra practice for people born this way. They may always seem to hold themselves taut against some unseen force, guarding in ongoing hyper-vigilance against the unknown. Or they may move through their lives as if in a dream, disassociated from their bodies, not quite present or in contact. From a Continuum perspective, Conrad writes: if there was a problem in bonding or if it was impossible for baby to enter the family nexus perhaps because it did not feel safe or welcomed baby will not bond or anchor to the Earth plane. In this case the skin may be drawn away from the toes, curling them upward as if hesitant to touch the ground. The arch can be extensively pulled upward, with skin very taut in the foot; and all the energetic feel is sending the message that the skin does not want to land (p. 299). Developmental Patterns in Practice As therapist, I have found it immensely helpful to orient to these kinds of somatic patterns, even if my client and I are just talking. I have also learned that, even without specific reparative techniques, such as BMC offers, my awareness can be helpful for the client. I first had to learn about patterns like yielding within my own body. Once I could access this state, it could be communicated to the client by resonance, as well as by direct teaching and touch. If you are a practitioner of some kind, awareness of the developmental patterns in your own body can provide a template for supporting your clients. Linda Hartley, a BMC teacher, writes, The practitioner must have a clear vision of the pattern that is not being fully expressed and must be able to hold this as a context for what she doesAs long as the potential for a movement exists, it may be seen as a the unexpressed or shadow side of what is actually visible (p. 98). Meeting and perceptually holding the whole of a person then includes the potential not yet expressed.

Fluid Development: Continuum and Developmental Movement Patterns BMC includes ways to explore the developmental patterns from conception on. The Fluid Development workshop will introduce several important patterns along with relevant prenatal and birth psychology information. We will then engage the mindful practice of Continuum to gently explore further and allow what is missing to be filled in fluidly. The first seminar explores prenatal movement, our journey of embodiment, underlying all later development. The second addresses the time around birth, when we spiral through the birth canal, a major life transition affecting how we meet change throughout our lives. The third covers motor development in the first year after birth, as we learn to move in relation to gravity. This workshop is designed to support participants in discovering and resolving aspects of their own early history, while learning about developmental templates and potential interruptions to their expression. As with any Continuum workshop, we will practice refining our awareness, deepening our ability to be present in this moment. As Aposhyan (2004) writes, The awareness aspect of our selves generally seems to hover in the vicinity of our bodies. Embodiment involves the integration of our bodies and our fields of attention (p. 59). In both Continuum and BMC, we hone our somatic attention, enhancing our embodiment and, therefore, our potential for presence. I find the combination of knowing about specific movement patterns through BMC and being able to dissolve historical patterning through Continuum incredibly valuable in the healing process, both for myself and my clients. For example, my in-depth exploration of Continuum has helped me to find much deeper, fuller degrees of yield than I had ever known previously. Continuum explorations generally begin with what we call taking a baseline. This usually involves observing the extent to which our body is able to rest into the support of gravity as we lie on the floor. As we practice the various sounds, breaths and movements of Continuum, we return to this baseline to evaluate their effect. We are, in essence, observing our yielding. Inevitably, we find that, after a Continuum sequence, we rest much more fully into contact with gravity than we did before. One intention in Continuum is to provide a different, more supportive context than the one our issues formed in. Tissue structure cannot be separate from its environment. We cannot separate the body from the culture that it lives in (Conrad, p. 299). When we melt and then re-form with a field of safety, our bodyminds can align more easily with source, with our original template. This workshop series will include a chance to deepen into supportive, mindful community within a small, ongoing group. We can practice and observe within the field we create together how we develop within the safe, nurturing context we may have longed for all our lives.

References Susan Aposhyan (1999). Natural Intelligence: Body-mind Integration and Human Development, Lipincott, Williams & Wilkins. Susan Aposhyan (2004). Body-Mind Psychotherapy: Principles, Techniques and Practical Applications, W. W. Norton & Company. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (2008), Sensing, Feeling, Action, 2nd Ed., Contact Editions. Emilie Conrad, 2007, Life on Land: The Story of Continuum, Berkeley, North Atlantic Books. Linda Hartley (1995). The Wisdom of the Body Moving: An Introduction to BodyMind Centering, North Atlantic Books. Cherionna Menzam-Sills is an authorised Continuum teacher who has recently relocated to Devon, UK, where she has a private practise. Her work draws on 35 years experience teaching and practising various therapies and bodywork. She currently teaches Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and Continuum across North America and Europe, often with her husband, Franklyn Sills. More information on Cherionna is available at her website at: www.cherionna.com To learn more about Continuum and Emilie Conrad, please visit the Continuum website at: www.continuummovement.com Copyright Free. You may copy and freely distribute this article, as long as you acknowledge the author and give the website address. www.cherionna.com

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