I stumbled upon an awakening experience almost accidentally. After years of meditating obsessively (and medicating as well), it descended upon me at the most inopportune moment. I was walking along a beach with my father, and a woman ran by. As a Pacific wave washed up, it swept the footprints away, and the sand was glass smooth. I saw her metaphorical legacy wiped out, and I was complete in the moment. I realized that there was nothing I had to do, and nothing I had to accomplish before I could fully be myself, and celebrate the moment. It was a joyous, bewildering experience.
Years later, I began performing Bloom Breakthrough sessions, somatic sessions designed to orchestrate radical transformations. As I approached these sessions, though the outcome was always something specific; to break out of a chronic love pattern, for instance, or to support the body in healing a disease, or to shatter a creative block, there was something else always at work. I carried that awakening experience with me, to every session.
The purpose of life is to gather experience. We do this most completely when we are an open channel. Then we become an instrument of the divine, of creativity, of good, of whatever we decide we are an instrument of. Incomplete life experiences contract the body; literally at the level of muscles and fascia. Even bones, which move and pulse with the cranial tide, can be restricted in their flow. This is the seed of disease.
A breakthrough is literally removing an obstruction and allowing the life force to break through the obstacle, the obstacle which is manifesting in life as something external. It's not, that's merely a symptom. This is why, after working on a woman's abdomen for an hour, she was free of a lifetime binging habit, or after rotating a woman's shoulder, she was free to finally fall in love.
I don't endeavor to change people, and neither should you, because it doesn't work, and it is perceived as a lack of love, or conditional love, with creates more tightening; more contracting, which further impedes the flow of the life force, and further manifests as whatever that pattern is that is a symptom of that impeded life force flow.
What I do is simply open people up to what they already are. This, for me, is the definition of enlightenment. The shadow lives in the restricted places... bringing light to those places is enlightening, enlightenment. Also, lightness and joy naturally flow in. I believe, personally, that joy is our natural state of being, and everything else is some sort of distortion. These distortions are nothing to push against, because they are valid, and they point is in the direction of wholeness.
The purpose of my work is not enlightenment, per se, but enlightened states of being are sometimes a side effect that does seem to arise.
And, of course, please know that I'm not speaking of enlightenment as some sort of permanent state, where sorrows cease, and issues vanish. It is a touchstone; a place from which to live; a compass that continually points to that which matters most... to the only thing that actually exists... being. Everything else is a fragment, an invention, a fiction.
For instance, recently a client, a successful retired entrepreneur, came to be because she felt like she'd been hiding much of her life, due to an abusive childhood. About fifteen hours into our working together, I was working around the viscera, explaining that when we are fully vulnerable, it is soft and fluid. My hand can reach in and touch the spine. You're hurting me; why are you doing this? Was the voice she noticed in the moment. The voice is always a valuable clue as to how we are perceiving the world. There is no me, and no you, in this moment, only the experience.
Note: this work can only be pursued with the utmost care of boundaries and trust, which can take some hours to build. If broken or violated, it represents a huge regression. So I am diligent about maintaining strict boundaries, because what is most important for me, is progress, and watching people sit up in new worlds, with eyes ablaze, and tears of joy on the lower lids.
Eventually, she got it. As I questioned her, I maintained the pressure on her abdomen, encouraging her to say how she loved herself, exactly as she was. I love you, exactly as you are. Often, I suggest a client touch their belly and say this to themselves, to their core. It seems to work better at that point, rather than, say the heart, because there is more flow in the joints... the elbows and shoulders. And for a woman, that is the womb area, the seat of potential new life, and sometimes we imagine speaking to the unborn child, or the child within.
She grimaced, gritted her teeth, and writhed, and we stayed in it, long beyond the point of discomfort, to a place long after every other practitioner in her life had already left at the surface level and given up. At a point, there is a welling up of energy, full body shudders (trembles are the way the body releases trauma, and in this journey, they often overflow into a specific or an unnamed emotion), and then laughter and sobs. I get it, she sobbed. I finally get it. I don't know why I was ever so hard on myself. I don't know why. And then she sobbed tears of sadness, for how long she'd mistreated herself, just as her parents had taught her. I simply held her feet, and encouraged her to cry with her whole body. To cry with the whole body is an art.
Remember, restrictions come from that which is incomplete, and we are looking to complete unclosed loops. A full body sob achieves this better than anything.
After the tears passed, there was the familiar peace. I feel strange, she said. Welcome to the new world, I replied. To your new life.
When she sat up, her eyes were bright, and she looked 10 years younger. Her hair appeared softer, and there was an unmistakeable radiance.
It takes courage to sidle up to the brink of someone's intolerable pain points, and remain there, while reminding them of the purpose of the work. We need companions in difficult moments like these, to have our hands, and to walk with us into the fire, if needed.
She stood on wobbly legs, and cried. These weren't tears of joy, but tears of love. Love was pouring off of her.
How I Orchestrate Awakenings Somatically
First, we achieve (at least in part) the underlying objectives, which often include: balance masculine and feminine energies, heal residual trauma, heal parental wounds (one or the other or both), finish the process of grieving, clear somatic armoring, complete and heal a broken heart, etc.
Then, we gingerly proceed to Bloom phase 2: Layers of Awakening™. Though every epiphany that arises during sessions constitutes a layer of awakening, eventually we begin working toward those more definitely and directly. Accepting the self in the moment, the beauty of what you truly are, without any excuses or projections into the past or future. We do this by watching where the posture is when the 'but' comes in. I love you 'but', and then the solar plexus or the arches of the feet will collapse. Sometimes the collapse will be a little more idiosyncratic, like the spleen (guilt / shame) or the liver (anger). Then we adjust the posture and say it again.
What we are doing is aligning the physiology. An aligned physiology allows the life force to flow. Blockages create stagnant energy. If even the ankles are locked, this locks the knees, which locks the hips, and before you know it, half the body is virtually shut down, while the other half is going haywire to compensate. Heart conditions or thyroid issues, headaches, vision problems, indigestion, etc.
It's a matter of bringing attention to the physiology where the blockage is, and I do this through touch and alignment. Alignment as a metaphor is important too. If we feel 'twisted' in our mind, this will manifest in our body, in our spine or our posture, 100% of the time. Untwist in both places.
Of course, the body is tangible. It is easier to lay hands on it, and to turn that twist, than it is to get one to see the twisted thoughts, and to turn those manually, though either solution can work.
The body framework, in this model, creates staggering progress in just hours of time together. I used to think of that as happening rarely, and now it happens nearly in every case, so I must accept that it is simply a part of the work; par for the course.
So, for instance, I may work at a thigh, at the congestion, and the body tenses up, and then I align the body, coach around releasing the tension, and the energy is free to flow out. I align the feet and the hips, and the neck if the head has broken its connection with the body. As this energy is broken free and moves, life changes in waves. It jostles loose emotions. If there is no emotion, the energy has not moved, and we remain with it. There need not be emotion at every breakthrough moment, though it does need to accompany at least some of them.
Living or Dying (where are you?)
In this moment, how much of you is scattered in the past? The body tells no lies. If you lived with one foot out the door, that leg may still be missing. You'd feel incomplete, because consciousness cannot conceive of pieces of itself missing. It simply registers as 'something not right.' A client broke his leg, and that was the same idea. No matter who he was with, he was not fully with her, because he was legless. The trauma was still bound up in the leg, and the life force could not flow through and down, to connect him to the earth. He was like a tree with a fragile trunk and without roots.
Every cell trills with the life force; every organ is a full flow of light. This is the state we are working toward in phase 2. You can close your eyes, and feel exactly where the energy is bound up, and exactly where the flow is, similarly to the training done in Vipassana meditation retreats.
With this level of awareness, triggers are rare, because you can distinguish your boundaries. If you're barely aware of your boundaries, physically, they will be nebulous emotionally, and that will create all kinds of complications. You'll melt into someone else, become entangled, and lose yourself. Everything will be triggering, because you can't tell you from them. Once you are intimately aware with what is yours, what can trigger you? Someone launches an insult, and it is so clear that it is them, not you. If there is validity in it, you are able to say... ah, interesting, I do do that, thank you for pointing that out, and not in a sarcastic or a barbed way. Many pseudo-enlightened minds know what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to react, and attempt that, however, the real spirit of the words comes through regardless.
Don't get swept away by the promise of technology, or the notion that possessions will enliven you somehow. Instead, turn back to the root, and enhance your aliveness from within; remind yourself fall in love, laugh, weep with your whole body, your whole being. Tumble out of medications and addictions. In all honesty, it's the only way.
In Truth,
Steven Budden
Budden Enterprises - Dramatic Growth - Impossible Timeframe