The Five Values of Becoming mBODYed: Safety (part 1)
Becoming mBODYed is a growing body of work rooted in the Alexander Technique and Body Mapping. Over the past 28 years, those who have come to work with me have brought a variety of experiences that have required additional knowledge and training on my part. This growth has become a pillar of my work – a continual evolution. Each training program I have done has had its ethics, professional standards, and means of doing the work, all of which have shaped and influenced Becoming mBODYed. As we were developing our new site, it was essential to stress the environment shaping the development of Becoming mBODYed. These values are the result of that influence.
Value I: Safety I began to fully understand the importance of safety in somatic work about five years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic. While in quarantine, I was working simultaneously on a certificate in DEI and a training program in Neuroscience. Then, I learned what the brain was up to, specifically from a mapping point of view. We think the brain is busy processing complex tasks like movement, emotions, and deep processing. While all of this is true, these are all secondary to its primary function – to ensure our safety.
The Brain and Safety: There are three levels to the brain from an evolutionary perspective, each developing over millions of years of life on this planet:
The reptilian brain – the brainstem. This is the oldest part of the brain and processes movement and essential bodily functions.
The midbrain or mammalian brain – the Limbic system is the center of emotional and memory processing.
The cortex is the youngest part of the brain and is the seat of consciousness and sensory-motor processing.
The midbrain and the cortex have the same primary function – to question and ensure our safety. Our midbrain takes sensory information through our exteroception, interoception, and proprioception and compares it to our memories and previously lived experiences. From there, it determines our situation and sends signals throughout the nervous system to modulate our level of arousal. These signals will move us into our sympathetic nervous system responses if needed. We will eventually notice changes in our heart rate, breathing, and sensory perception and begin interpreting our response to our surroundings.
The Nervous System: The nervous system is divided into four areas:
The central nervous system comprises the brain and spinal cord.
The peripheral nervous system is made of nerves that branch out from the spinal cord and innervate the arms and legs.
The enteric nervous system, the network of nerves through your abdomen, is sometimes called the “gut brain” or “second brain.”
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls your essential bodily functions and has two branches:
The sympathetic nervous system, simply stated, controls our panic responses of fight and flight.
The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) controls active systems when the body is in “rest and digest” mode. It also controls the freeze and dissociative responses of our panic survival system.
The brain has evolved over thousands of years to become increasingly complex. In evolutionary terms, the oldest part of the brain is the brain stem, also known as the reptilian brain. This area controls various autonomic functions, including breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, locomotion, balance, sleep, arousal, and temperature regulation. The second oldest part is the inner, mid-, or mammalian brain, which houses our limbic system. This includes structures such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and thalamus. This area regulates sensory and motor systems, our emotions, and the processing of those emotions into memories. It also manages reflexes and assesses our safety and survival responses. Above the middle brain is the cortex, the brain's outermost layer, where memory, thinking, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, emotions, consciousness, and sensory functioning occur.
The brain repeats one essential function above all other functions: ensuring our safety. When you place your hand down on a hot surface, you will (almost reflexively) remove your hand without consciously thinking to do so. Your nervous system is hard-wired to do this. The same functioning happens subtly when we walk into a room, such as a performance hall or our teacher’s private studio, and feel we are about to be evaluated. If we haven’t processed that private lessons and performances are safe spaces of growth for us, our nervous system will begin to modulate into our panic responses of fight/flight. Our heart and respiration rates are the first to change, with a whole system of bodily functions following. We may notice that our mouths goes dry, our hands and feet feel cold and clammy, we begin to sweat, and we may feel nauseous (butterflies in our stomach). These are all sensations of our body moving towards panic. Eventually, these sensations rise to the surface of our conscious awareness, and we report: “I am nervous.”
Our middle brain does this at light speed compared to the cortex, but they both work together to evaluate information continually coming in from our senses. Often, the middle brain makes decisions and delivers instructions to the brain stem to respond long before the cortex notices what is happening. In a literal sense, the middle brain functions bottom-up (sensing, responding, thinking), while the cortex functions top-down (thinking, responding, feeling).
How your nervous system does all of this is a complicated process that we will simplify. Your brain accepts information from three categories of sensory input: exteroception, interoception, and proprioception. Our exteroception tells us about what is happening outside of our bodies and includes the senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Our interoception informs us about what is happening internally and our thoughts and emotions. Our sense of belonging is also part of our interoception. Proprioception includes chemoreceptors (chemical), baroreceptors (pressure), thermoreceptors (temperature), mechanoreceptors (motor movement), and nociceptors (threat). Proprioception borrows information from our interoception and exteroception (sight, hearing) to also give us a sense of where we are in space and our environment and how we move throughout that space. The receptors interact intricately, creating complex sensory systems and understanding.
These sensory receptors are always on and always sending data to our awareness. These are our sensations. This raw data feeds our unconscious awareness. When we analyze and choose from this data, we compare it with our previous knowledge and experiences. This process is called perception. It is essential here to make a distinction between sensation and perception. If we are referring simply to the data from our senses, that information is raw but accurate. Perception is the interpretation and comparison of that data to our previous experiences.
Let’s return to our essential brain function—to ensure our survival. Our brain continuously asks, “Am I safe?” This is done in both the midbrain and the cortex of the brain. The current thought in neuroscience is that the midbrain does this at eleven million bits of perceivable data per second. Our cortex does this at around ten to sixty bits per second, considerably slower than the midbrain. To accomplish this process, our sensory appreciation system must be incredibly efficient.
The human body is hardwired for efficiency. Once we learn something, the brain takes steps to ensure the process can happen quickly and at the lowest possible caloric cost. The way that our sensory appreciation system serves to ensure our survival is no different. It is designed to adapt and normalize. This is called Sensory Adaption.
Our four external senses adapt to repeated exposure (our eyes have some inherent movement qualities to prevent this action in our vision). This is hard-wired in our nervous system and ensures we have the resources to attend to other stimuli in our environment. This process helps us “tune out” unnecessary information and distractions, thus preventing sensory overwhelm. It also ensures that the midbrain and cortex have the necessary information, moment by moment, to ensure our safety.
What we have described here is the bottom-up functioning of our nervous system. Our senses and feelings provide an experience; conscious thinking is the last step in this process. Our bodies have sensed, processed, and adapted long before we notice. Often, these adaptations cue us into how our body responds.
We also have top-down processing, where we use our thinking and reasoning to understand the world within and around us and thus change how we respond or react. The field of psychology is based on this ability. Neither of these (bottom-up vs. top-down) is better; we need both to function.
Continue on for part 2…