Most people live and die entirely by their assumptions, without ever really questioning their origins. You are a fluid constellation of stories. Refine the stories so that you are the hero rather than the victim. From this space, healing happens, love deepens creativity blossoms. It can't be otherwise. This is why incremental changes are sometimes harder to make than massive ones.
Navigating Volatile Times
The constant permutations of reality can get uncomfortable, to say the least, in proportion to how adamantly we cling to the familiar. What we cling to is completely arbitrary, by the way. The more you think about the more you'll realize that every tradition is the product of its times, just as our times are birthing other traditions. Think of a father or a grandfather wearing the same style of shoes or dress for their entire lives. There's nothing inherently wrong with groping for certainly, unless it limits your life experience.
We're indoctrinated into rhythms that repeat, the same yet different. Sea waves, seasons, moons, classes, etc. And through those experiences, we eventually learn that “The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change ", as Heraclitus put it. Most people don't fathom it as a visceral reality. They sort of intellectually waft around it, still blindly clinging to the things they refuse to change.
It is liberating to know that countless cells are dying and being reborn every second; that we are literally showing up to a new moment, and certainly a new year, with a body that is mostly new. And yet we think we are one way because we showed up that way in the past. Or maybe someone told us we were one way, though we've never set foot in that way of being, and we take it on as part of our identity.
Free yourself.
Bloom Foundational Principles
You are a constellation of stories, nothing more or less. What you believe is what you see. On some level, we've all experienced this. We manifest our reality. What we believe about our physiology, or organs, our cells, our blood, can dramatically impact our world. A belief that is erroneous, as in the case of accepting a diagnosis of diseases, can be fatal.
I wanted to give a little overview of some of the considerations that I feel are pertinent, so you can test them out in their own lives. It's imperative to test every concept against life experience, so that you don't wind up lead astray by blindly following leaders.
We are Stories (a meditation on transcending the stories that keep us stuck)
We are walking constellations of stories. Most of these stories are inaccurate, misunderstood, or the opposite of what is real. They are woven into our cells, our tissues, our organs. They reflect in our voice, our words, our actions, our posture. Our entire life becomes the 'singing of a familiar song.' We sing it in various keys, and in various styles, however it is the same song.
Over the years, I've learned to see the stories that people carry in their bodies. This is not esoteric knowledge. It just requires tuning into another layer of reality. The collapse that is indicative of the early childhood trauma, the anger toward the father, the sexual betrayal, the broken heart. At a glance these things can be seen.
Some Reflections on Healing old Wounds Somatically
During this somatic work, you'll feel pieces of yourself for the first time.
Who touches the inside crest of the pelvis, or the ribs alongside the torso, or the point just under the collar bone? To feel a physical place for the first time, is to feel a place in the psyche that had been in shadow. To feel fully it is to reconnect to it, and to complete a loop, freeing the body and mind from whatever pattern has been arrested there.
Physical Trauma as Emotional Healing. Case study of a 'broken heart' manifesting as a bruised sternum.
Seeing the World Through New Eyes
After I witnessed her whole body clench and vibrate (the signs of trauma releasing from the tissues), her face went through every season. It darkened, it clenched, it lightened, there were tears, gasps, a smirk. In the aftermath, the familiar peace descended. The loop had been resolved.
As she opened her eyes, they were shades lighter. She was gazing out into the backyard, blinking and rubbing her eyes.
What is it, I asked? What do you notice?
The leaves on that maple are extraordinarily red, she whispered. I thought I was hallucinating. They almost seem too red. I think I just wasn’t seeing them before.
Most people don't actually want to heal.
You know, most people don’t actually want to heal. They are enamored of their wounds, hold them tenderly and gaze down at them lovingly.
It can be a startling but liberating realization. Because allowing someone to cradle their wounds, for as long as they choose to, is loving unconditionally. It doesn’t mean you have to associate with them, necessarily, when they launch into a familiar song. It just means, we can now look at them knowing that their wound has become like their child. We can’t separate them from a bond that strong until the time is right. As of now, they wouldn’t even know how to conceive of life without it. It’s like a magical totem. It offers protection from falling in love, and all of the perils that might accompany that, or it offers a reason to stay in a relationship, without needing to brave the unknown. It becomes evidence that supports a fear based worldview. It’s a shapeshifter, this wound… it becomes anything it needs to be.
The Spine and The Inevitability of Healing
Like the entire body intelligence, the spine is brilliantly engineered. The perfect balance between mobility and protection; flexibility and durability. With the elegance of form that rivals anything we've seen.
The spine is modeled in a graceful natural curve. No one vertebrae touches another. They are buffered by fluid mediums. We float and are fluid in our bodies, and our bones float with us. Even the bones are said to be 31% water (though I don’t trust those sorts of numbers, generally).
Sometimes, an unnatural twist occurs in the spine. A minor twist, or one so extreme that a diagnosis is required. Scoliosis, for instance. This twist can occur as organs and viscera tighten due to congestion and/or deterioration from a corrosive diet, acidic thought patterns, or it can occur in reaction to a mental pattern. I worked with a client once who viewed her sexual fantasies as ‘twisted’, and this manifested as a physical twist. The body is, after all, an embodiment of our beliefs. As I straightened her torso physically, tears flowed. She just couldn't believe that the way I had positioned her was straight. She'd felt 'twisted. I showed her the mirror, and more tears flowed, wetting her cheeks and shoulders.
Releasing past 'trauma'; by accessing the layer of consciousness where it is stored
It’s common for people to underestimate their traumas. Some even shy away from using the word trauma. I simply use it to mean ‘something that the body is still holding on to.’ It could have come from something as extreme as years of ritual physical abuse, or something as seemingly innocuous a harsh word from a trusted parent. It doesn’t really matter how it compares to the lives of others. All that matters is that we discover and honor our own experience; acknowledge where we’re stuck so we can move forward as gracefully as possible.
This requires feeling the emotions fully. This sounds simple… it isn’t for most.
Deepening Intimacy by tuning into the Rhythms of Life
Our skulls literally expand and contract at the sutures. This opening and closing happens approximately 10 times per minute. The motion only covers fraction of a millimeter, but we can learn to hone in on it and use it for our own unfolding. It can be a powerful tool for cultivating presence, and its beauty lies in its simplicity.
Tuning into this rhythm on ourselves, the rhythm of life, is the most profound sorcery, however it’s easier at first to feel it on another. The cranial tide swims through the entire physiology, but it’s perhaps most accessible at the skull. If presence is the origin of wisdom, the cranial tide, along with the breath, is the pathway to presence.
Amplifying Effectiveness; Purifying your Creation Cycle
Most people are incapable of effective action, not because of a lack of talent, ability, or motivation. They are incapable of effective action because they live entirely in reaction to unresolved life events.
Improving the world and your quality of your life requires effective action, so I’m going to analyze and break down what effective action is, and how evolution occurs during the unraveling of personal patterns, and how my original approach supports this.
Before effective action can be taken, information must be gathered, so that a far-reaching strategy can be formulated. The most important information arises out of stillness, or ‘not doing.’ In this way, ‘not doing’ becomes an integral component of directed, effective action.
Examples of action in terms of re-action abound. One example is attempting to make money because you were poor in the past. This is not the purest state of wealth creation, because it is essentially a reaction to poverty (a state which has probably long sense passed). There are other components that may figure in, such as living differently from the father figure, or seeking redemption on his behalf.
Muscling through these types of patterns via non-effective action, against the gravity of the situation, I call ‘forced action’. It can ‘get things done’, however there are drawbacks. It is less efficient energetically, because there is a lot of friction, as the gears of unresolved events and unreconcilable unconscious beliefs grind against one another. Only a fraction of the energy you are investing actually makes its way into the project. The rest is lost. Spending energy in this way is not sustainable, and illness or failure inevitably follow. This is why building wealth at the expense of vitality is us not sustainable, and therefore cannot be considered success, regardless of qualitative measures.
Forced action is diluted action. The multiplicity of objectives are illogical, and often at odds with one another. As an example, I desire more money to compensate for childhood poverty patterns. I also want to deepen my relationship with my father, and abandoning his poverty mentality and anger at economic systems, which we’ve bonded over in the past, via conversations and rants, may distance us. So I try to keep a foot in both pools. A ‘cleaner’ motive (arising out of the core) increases the efficacy of action (sometimes by redirecting the energy entirely to something more aligned). In this case, making money to fulfill your personal vision for you self, to enhance your evolution, support your family, etc.
Another consideration, perhaps the most important, is the fulfillment (or lack of fulfillment) that follows action. Somewhere along the line of translating intention into reality, we need to discern exactly where the intention comes from, and whether it is from a clean source. Otherwise, we are not creating OUR reality: we are either pushing against a reality we don’t believe in (intuitively or programmed), or creating the reality that we think someone else may approve of (a parent or mentor, for instance).
Effective action in the direction of our vision is ultimately more fulfilling, as the vision manifests, because the intention was aligned, so the result is pleasing to witness. It is less fulfilling to look out on our creation and to realize it was not our intention at all, but the adopted intention of another individual or a even a culture. We come out weary, for having ‘pushed so hard’ against the thing we were against.
What is the solution?
Resolving the past, and completing the incomplete loops is foundational in powerful creative cycles. I have found that the most effective way to discover and complete these loops is through precise, physical touch, guided by intuition and powerful questions. A once skeptical client recently called my approach a ‘panacea’ that positively impacted every area of her life; creativity, career clarity, relation to husband and children, clarity of communication.
An example of an Effective Creation Cycle
- Phase 1. - Seed (Non-linear. May come in the form of inspiration, or intention to support oneself or another)
- Phase 2. - Information gathering from 2 sources. Unconscious and Conscious sources. The unconscious gathering comes from ‘not doing’.
- Phase 3. - Strategizing (including analysis if the seed and resources, to see if implementation aligns with core values).
- Phase 4. - Effective Action, energy efficient and focused, so that minimal effort is needed to impact the strategy. Dandelion spore metaphor comes in useful.
- Phase 5. Calibration to adjust tactics to Increase effectiveness. or adjust strategy.
- Loops back to prior phases, or a new seed.
Where does the Budden strategy fit in?
The Budden Strategy, this sweeping out of residual energy linked to unresolved past events, involves the foray into pure subjectivity, and the personal witnessing of the constellations of systems, sensations, and stories that are making up the current moment. What is incomplete is discovered, through touch, and completed, through verbal and emotional processing. This process clears the way for greater objectivity along the cycle of creation. Every phase along the cycle of creation is dramatically amplified, by the improved ability to direct and efficiently use energy.
In other words, when we touch on a point on the body, and process whatever memory or emotion arises, it clears the channel, brings what was unconscious to consciousness (enlightenment). In the wake of these clearings, life changes, because what is between you and your essence falls away. You are no longer living entirely in reaction to anger about a past slight; you are living for your true purpose.
In truth,
Steven Budden