Fascia, Biodynamics & Listening to the Body
There is a knowing in the body—a deep intelligence that predates speech, systems, or scientific certainties. It whispers through every tissue, every subtle shiver, every curled posture of a baby. And if we become still enough, if we let go of our need to fix and begin instead to listen, the story unfolds—not in fragments, but as an exquisite whole.
Fascia is one of its most profound storytellers.
Fascia: The Tapestry of Interbeing
In my work as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist and integrative lactation professional, I do not look at the body as a set of mechanical parts, but as a field of being—pulsing, breathing, sensing, remembering. Fascia—this living web of connective tissue—does not merely bind the body together. It expresses the body’s history, its traumas, and its longings. It is the subconscious memory of the body.
What Tom Myers illuminates through Anatomy Trains aligns beautifully with what we feel palpably in biodynamic work: that nothing is isolated, and no symptom is random. The flexion in a newborn’s foot, the cranial rotation, the slight tightness around the mouth—all are ripples in a unified field of movement and stillness.
Fascia, in this view, is not just connective—it is communicative
Tensegrity and the Breath of Life
The concept of tensegrity—where bones gently push outward and fascia counters with a pull inward, feels profoundly resonant with the biodynamic model of health. The biodynamic model of health finds a deep resonance with the concept of tensegrity, where a gentle outward push of the bones is countered by an inward pull of the fascia. It mirrors what we experience in the therapeutic field: a delicate balance between forces of expansion and containment, between the fluid potency of life and the form it inhabits.
In biodynamics, we recognize the Breath of Life as an ordering force that moves through the tides, rhythms, and tissues of the body. Fascia is exquisitely responsive to these forces. It adapts, remembers, releases. It orients to health when given the respectful space to do so.
So when a baby comes to my clinic perhaps stiff, clenched, “defensive” in posture – baby needs us to just “Conscious Witnessing” rather than pathologize. This supports the return of the fluid movement. The body has been created with a sequencing of healing.
Infant & Pediatric Care is Not Adjustment—It is Acknowledgement
Fascia asks us to widen our vision. What if the tight jaw in an infant has roots in their prenatal positioning? What if the tilt in a baby’s pelvis is a holding pattern from a challenging birth?
In biodynamic craniosacral therapy, we do not impose. We attune to what is. We listen with our whole being, allowing the baby’s system to reveal its priorities for healing. Fascia speaks through subtle motility. It shows us where the system is stuck—and where it longs to move again.
Adjustment in this context is not something we do. It is something that happens, when the right conditions of safety, stillness, and presence are created.
Fascia and the Autonomic Nervous System
The growing research linking fascia to the autonomic nervous system beautifully echoes what we witness in integrative practice. The polyvagal theory speaks of the nervous system’s need for safety, connection, and co-regulation. Fascia, richly innervated and intertwined with the vagus nerve, holds the embodied imprint of threat and safety.
Thus, when we work with the fascia — when we truly listen biodynamically — we are in dialogue not just with tissue, but with the baby’s felt sense of the world. We are unwinding fear, restoring trust, and making space for secure relational attachment.
Movement Literacy is a Birthright
One of the most tragic modern delusions is that movement is optional. The baby’s body is not a container for compliance — it is an organ of perception and expression. When fascia is fluid, the baby body is feels free to explore, move & learn. When it’s stuck, the baby’s behavior becomes tight, repetitive, and guarded.
Functional movement in the body is the gateway to healing, presence, and relational wholeness. Fascia is the living bridge that connects form to function, past to present, and emotion to expression.
Our role is to be of Connection not Correction. The fascia carries the footsteps of its story and can be gently retracedu towards wholeness and vitality.
