Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a new client — someone warm, thoughtful, and brilliant in his own field. He comes from the world of systems theory and design. A field of work that revolves around logic, structure, and clarity. Of course, he’s more than that — but from what I heard and sensed, that seemed to be a significant part of how he has learned to navigate the world.
At one point in our session, I shared some reflections on the limitations inherent in all practices — not just one model or system, but the reality that every framework, no matter how refined, eventually bumps up against its own edges.
I was also speaking to something subtler: how the way we understand or interpret a system isn’t always aligned with what that system was actually designed to do. We bring our own cognitive maps, beliefs, and ways of making meaning, and we shape the system into something that fits our worldview. But in doing so, we might distort its essence — or miss it entirely.
It’s entirely possible to be practicing what we believe is a particular model, but to not actually be in contact with the model itself. For example, I can be doing what I believe is Rolfing — but really, it may just be my interpretation of Rolfing, filtered through my experience, conditioning, and assumptions. In that way, it both is and isn’t Rolfing. It carries the name, but may not carry the essence.
And that’s part of the fragility of systems. We can be certain we’re following them — and still be entirely off track. Not out of bad intent, but because of how perception quietly bends things toward what feels familiar or explainable.
He paused, thoughtful, and then asked me a simple, honest question:
“How come your system isn’t flawed?”
And in that moment, I didn’t know what to say.
It was a great question. One that landed in my gut and stayed there long after he left.
I’ve been sitting with it since.
And as I often remind clients in this work — many of the deepest, truest answers don’t come when we look directly for them. They tend to emerge when we soften our grip, when we stop reaching, when we turn our attention elsewhere.
That’s exactly what happened. I put the question down. And later, when I wasn’t thinking about it at all, the beginning of an answer found its way to me.
Because on the surface, yes — what I offer might look like a system. There are patterns. Orientations. Frameworks. Language. We work with the nervous system, with cortical and subcortical processes, with dilation and relational fields. And we work with the body itself — which is, of course, a system composed of many intricate and interrelated systems. Muscles, fascia, breath, tissue tone, structural integrity, and organ motility — all of it matters. We also work with the more elusive terrain of mind-body systems: how thought, perception, emotion, and memory shape the physiology of our lived experience.
We touch structure.
We meet form.
We listen for what’s underneath.
And any time something takes shape, there is the possibility of limitation. That’s the nature of form.
So in one sense, of course my system is flawed.
But in another sense… the truth is, I don’t see what I do as a system at all. At least, not in the way systems are typically understood. What I offer, what I practice, what I hope to embody — isn’t a fixed methodology. It’s not something to be mastered or overlaid onto another person. It’s not a model to impose. It’s a way of relating. A way of listening. A way of being with what’s alive, in real time, without needing to define or fix it.
It’s rooted in presence.
In relationship.
In being.
And that makes it different.
This is the part so often missed by practitioners in every modality. We get caught in technique. In frameworks. In maps. We miss the forest for the trees. We trade direct experience for the comfort of conceptual understanding.
And yet — healing, growth, and transformation are not conceptual acts. They can’t be diagrammed. They live in the spaces between. They arise in the nervous system and the body when they feel safe enough, known enough, witnessed enough to reorganize — not through willpower or clever interventions, but through trust and presence.
So no, I don’t believe this work is “flawless.”
In fact, one of its main flaws… is me.
I’m a part of it. And I’m a human being with my own blind spots and limits. I’m constantly working to refine my own awareness, to clear out what clutters my capacity to be present, spacious, and grounded. But I still miss things. I still get in the way.
And that’s part of this work, too.
If there’s anything I trust in this “system,” it’s that it doesn’t rely on certainty. It’s based in relationship — not rules. That, to me, is what makes it so potent. And also so hard to grasp.
Because you can’t conquer this kind of work.
You can’t master it or finish it.
You can only enter it.
And let it reveal itself to you, over time.
That’s what I’ve come to.
That’s what I continue to come back to.
And that’s why I call it freedom in the foundation.
A foundationless foundation.
Not built on structure, but on the capacity to meet what is —
(as much as we are currently able to).