Posted on

The Embodiment of Freedom, Part Two

From the traditional scientific viewpoint, people are observable, manipulable objects. Traditional doctors study people’s bodies; traditional psychologists study people’s minds. From the somatic viewpoint, people are more than just bodies understandable and approachable on a bio-physical level, and minds understandable and approachable on a psycho-social level. We are equally self-sensing, self-moving, self-aware, self-expressing, self-responsible subjects–we are somas. Somas who not only are shaped by their relations with the environment and other people in observable ways, but who also profoundly affect their own state of functioning through subjective beliefs, expectations, and through the power of their own self-awareness. Hanna and Wilber would agree that the first-person perspective discloses unique data, complimenting the third-person view of the human being, making it possible to move toward an integral understanding that recognizes the whole human.

Experientially-oriented therapy and somatic education are two distinct approaches with a common goal: to help people to move from an inefficient, unfulfilling, unhealthy mode of functioning to one of increased efficiency, fulfillment and health. That is to say, both approaches aim for transformation of the whole-person. On the surface, it appears each addresses separate levels of human experience, somatics being about improving people’s bodily functioning while therapy works to better psychological functioning. While the terms bodily and psychological do indeed refer to qualitatively distinct modes of experience, they are quite inseparable at both the structural and functional levels. As Hanna noted, all human experience–whether perceived as thinking, feeling, tasting, seeing or jumping–is a reflection of the functioning of the entire human soma, which is coordinated by the processes of the central nervous system.

As we discussed, from an objective vantage point, all our perceptions of self and world are routed through our brains via sensory nerves, while all our movements in the world and inside ourselves flow out from our brain down the spine via motor nerves. We saw how, through intelligent use one’s self-sensing abilities, a state of sensory-motor amnesia in a given area could be reversed by somatic learning. The implications that this understanding has for the field of psychology become evident when we consider the various qualities of psychological experience in their rootedness to this very same sensorimotor system. In fact, psychological modes of expression, such as thinking, verbalizing, and imagining, can all be understood in terms of the somatic process of movement, while the psychological constructs of self-consciousness and self-awareness can be understood in terms of the somatic process of self-sensing.

At first blush, such an understanding might appear reductionistic, but as we consider this perspective in light of both scientific (third-person) and somatic (first-person) data, we’ll see how such an understanding can only add to the psychological view and vice versa. If one understands that all self-expression manifests as the autonomous movement of living bodies (somas), then many of the characteristic problems plaguing contemporary society–typical forms of stress, fatigue, back pain, depression, anxiety—can be seen as the result of individuals’ diminished capacity for movement. This is easy to see when we’re looking at so-called physical problems, like back pain, but things get a little slippery when we consider mental processes, like thinking.

Integrating first and third person perspectives, Hanna [in his groundbreaking book Somatics] noted several studies investigating the relationship between thinking and motor activity. Edmund Jacobson, who developed the clinical procedure called progressive relaxation, conducted research that showed: 1) when subjects engaged in abstract thinking, speech muscles were predominantly activated, and 2) all mental activity decreased to the degree that muscle tension decreased. In another study, researchers found that subjects were ineffective in mentally focusing on anything while all their muscles were paralyzed (by a curare-type drug that did not cause any lapse of consciousness).

Roland Davis found that when subjects worked out multiplication problems “in their head,” the muscles of the subject’s dominant hand moved as if he or she were writing. Working with a subject who reported auditory hallucinations, F.J. McGuigan found that, using electrodes placed about the subject’s speech muscles, there was a subtle, ongoing movement in these muscles beginning precisely when the subject reported hearing the voices (as if the subject were actually speaking to himself!). These and many other scientific studies suggest an undeniable connection between mental activity that is perceived as being “in our minds,” and motor activity going on “in our bodies.” Neurophysiologist Roger W. Sperry has gone as far as to conclude that the entire output of the human thinking mechanism goes into the motor system, so that when people think, they are activating motor neurons [Hanna, Somatics].

Hanna put it this way: “thinking is movement–actual movement of the living body.” He further noted that whenever we sense anything, what we are sensing is movement of some form. We often speak of being emotionally moved by an experience to communicate that we’re feeling or sensing some emotion. However, when one makes themselves as hard as stone through intense contractedness, one becomes to that degree immovable in terms of emotional experience. Since emotions are a variety of psychological experience with such clear ties to bodily-felt sensations, it is relatively easy to understand how one’s psychological awareness of an emotion is really not other than one’s bodily sense of that emotion. In other words, the knowledge or awareness that “I am angry” is possible only to the extent that I feel or sense certain changes in my bodily experience–perhaps an increase in heartbeat, the hairs of my neck standing on end, muscle areas clenching. Likewise, the bodily movements associated with that sense can be understood as an expression of that sense/awareness. Pissed off, I might express myself with a frown and clenched fists; or I might be moved to scream or pound my fists on something (hopefully not someone). And as we have seen, to suppress emotional expression is to dull our capacity to sense or to be aware of our feelings. So, in terms of emotionality, we can see how sensori-motor association is essentially the same thing as awareness-expression association.

The point of all this is to support the following notion: many of the physical as well as psychological problems characteristic of contemporary society will continue to be poorly understood and ineffectively approached until the somatic foundations of human experience are taken more fully into account. This somatic/experiential perspective, which has been outlined above, is a point of view which takes into account both third-person and first-person data, and thus has much to offer the traditional paradigm of human health, which relies rather exclusively on a third-person perspective.

At the core of this somatic/experiential understanding are the somatic processes of self-movement and self-sensing. The idea here is that many of the diseases plaguing modern people are best understood not as psychological disorders where our minds are out of whack, nor as physical problems of bodies falling apart; rather, we are faced with functional disorders that are the result of people’s diminished capacity to sense the state of their own somatic functioning and subsequent inability/unwillingness to move from that embodied awareness. Hanna sums it up nicely:

In functional disorders, what is required is not the exchange of words with the “mind,” nor is it the exchange of chemicals and substances with the “body.” The requirement is a change in the living system’s awareness of its own functioning. The somatic system needs more information of itself and more efficient control. In sum, the distorted human soma needs new sensory information and new motor control. [Somatics]

Posted on

The Embodiment of Freedom

At some point it occurred to me that my whole point of view, my basic mode of experiencing life, would shift during certain moments from a dissociated, half-alive, going through the motions type thing, to a wakeful, clear-minded, energized state of pure awesomeness. Basically, I became fascinated by my peak experiences. There seemed to be a quality about them that was not dependent on content or context. In other words I felt like the same process was happening regardless of what I was doing. I got the funny feeling that I was peaking or “peeking” into the same place, or entering the same state of consciousness, whether I was hitting a groove on the guitar, entering “the zone” on the athletic field, writing a poem or a song, having great sex, communing with nature on a hike, or getting showered with insight during meditation.

My master’s thesis was really nothing more than a sustained inquiry into this process of personal transformation, which I defined as a shift in one’s basic mode of experiencing toward greater vitality, awareness and expressiveness. I found that various theorists and practitioners understood transformation in different ways, but I also noticed a common thread between the approaches that moved me the most. Psychologists interested in transformation talked about the movement from unconsciousness to consciousness; the spiritual folks spoke of the journey from ignorance to awareness or enlightenment; creative thinkers were interested in moving from inside to outside “the box”; somatic practitioners worked toward refinement of sensitivity and an expanded range of movement.

It was the somatic perspective, I thought, that could ground an integral, multilevel understanding of the transformative process. I was searching for some basic principles of transformation with which I could generate a unique set of practices, in a sense building an Integral Health regimen from the ground up. I appreciated the maps of others, but I yearned to wander from the well-worn paths, to know the joy of making my own way through the wilderness. I also felt that the somatic perspective, especially as understood by Thomas Hanna, had the potential to radically transform our understanding of both psychological health and spiritual growth. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if these loftier endeavors were plugged into an understanding of somatic education, they would become far more efficacious paths, less prone to pitfalls.

Hanna rejected the distinction between psychological and physical problems, instead using the term “functional problem” to describe limitations of the unified organism in its capacity for both self-sensing and self-expression. Central nervous system functioning is fundamental to all behavior and experience, according to Hanna. Ken Wilber would agree with this, although he would point out that psychological and spiritual levels of being are more “significant.” In any event, from a somatic viewpoint, there’s no separation of psychological from physical health, and the majority of the typical “mental” and “physical” diseases of our society are learned as people adapt to a culture that supports dissociation and alienation.

So, if we want to ground our understanding of transformation in the living body, we can start with the most fundamental aspect of the central nervous system–the division between sensory and motor processes. Our perceptions of the world outside our bodies, as well as our perceptions of our internal bodily states, come into the brain via sensory nerves. And every action we express, every movement we make in the world and inside our selves flows out from our brain and down through the spine by way of motor nerves. This structural division is functionally integrated within a single neural system, the brain integrating the incoming sensory information with outgoing commands to the motor system.

The continual interplay of sensory information and motor guidance is referred to in contemporary neuroscience as a feed back system which operates in loops. As Hanna describes it, “the sensory nerves ‘feedback’ information to the motor nerves, whose response ‘loops back’ with the movement commands along the motor nerves. As movement takes place, the motor nerves ‘feedback’ new information to the sensory nerves.” Acknowledging that there are indeed physical and psychological problems that are the result of structural deformity and/or physiological imbalance, Hanna argues that many of the health problems afflicting people today are not about bodies or minds breaking down, but about individuals who have lost conscious control of their somatic functions. These functional problems are ones in which the person suffers from a loss of memory: the memory of what it feels like to move in certain ways, and the memory of how to go about moving in certain ways. This type of memory loss is what Hanna calls sensory-motor amnesia, a state of diminished self-awareness that is quite reversible–that is to say, a state that can be transformed.

Sensory-motor amnesia involves a dual loss of both conscious control of a particular area of motor action and conscious sensing of that motor action. As the human organism adapts to repeated stressful conditions, whether resulting from cultural conditioning or from uncontrived environmental circumstances (like extreme ecological conditions or biophysical trauma), there is a loss of conscious voluntary control of specific somatic functions. For example, faced with the stress of ridicule and/or punishment for crying or screaming out in public, the sad or angry child will contract certain motor areas of the soma (i.e., muscles) in an effort to hold back their authentic response. Crying or yelling out simply cannot happen when the corresponding muscle systems are held motionless, because crying and yelling are the movements of those motor areas. As this stressful response of contraction is activated again and again in similar situations, the response eventually becomes habituated and the child loses awareness of it (i.e., the muscle contractions can no longer be consciously sensed) and control of it (i.e., the child cannot voluntarily relax the contractions). The child has been successfully conditioned not to emote in public.

This innate tendency of human beings to develop automatic, unconscious responses in the face of stressful stimuli (i.e. the process of conditioning) was well documented by researchers such as Pavlov and Skinner. Hanna describes the loss of conscious volitional control as sensori-motor amnesia so as to emphasize two essential facts: 1) habituated, involuntary responses, like all somatic processes, are a reflection of sensori-motor functioning, and 2) what becomes unconscious, forgotten, or unlearned, can become conscious again, remembered, and re-learned. Thus, sensori-motor amnesia can be reversed by somatic learning.

Somatic learning is a process that results in the expansion of an organism’s range of volitional consciousness. This process takes advantage of the feedback/loop nature of the sensori-motor system and is described by Hanna in the following way:

“If one focuses one’s awareness on an unconscious, forgotten area of the soma, one can begin to perceive a minimal sensation that is just sufficient to direct a minimal movement, and this, in turn, gives new sensory feedback of that area which, again, gives a new clarity of movement, etc. This sensory feedback associates with adjacent sensory neurons, further clarifying the synergy that is possible with the associated motor neurons. This makes the next motor effort inclusive of a wider range of associated voluntary neurons, thus broadening and enhancing the motor action and, thereby, further enhancing the sensory feedback. This back-and-forth motor procedure gradually ‘wedges’ the amnesic area back into the range of volitional control: the unknown becomes known and the forgotten becomes relearned.”

So it is that a diminished state of self-awareness and a diminished range of conscious responsiveness can expand and transform at the basic level of sensor-motor functioning. Our emotionally inhibited child, now an adult, can learn to pay focused and sustained attention to subtle sensations in the forgotten contracted muscle areas and thereby recover in awareness the sense of being perpetually held back and fatigued. With this awareness that “I’m contracting my muscles” and “I’m holding myself back,” comes the realization that one can now begin to relax those inhibitions.

Although I’ve chosen to illustrate this transformative process with what would normally be considered a “psychological” example–the emotionally inhibited person–, the practice of somatic education (as typified by Hanna’s work and Feldenkrais’s Functional Integration) is normally applied to what are thought of more as “physical” problems. Middle-aged to older adults with gross-level range of motion restrictions or distortions, often the result of trauma or injury, are more typically the clients of somatic therapies. Many people who seek out and engage in somatic practices are primarily looking to feel better and healthier on a physical level, not especially considering the implications the work has for whole-person growth and healing.

The psychological implications of “body work,” although increasing evident and acknowledged, seem to be less than adequately understood. The example of the emotionally inhibited person hints at how an understanding of sensori-motor function can contribute greatly to psychological perspectives of personal transformation and vice versa. An integral viewpoint promises a deeper understanding of how various transformative practices can be utilized in a complimentary fashion to most effectively support an individual’s capacities for self-regulation, health and growth. This integral understanding also allows for the articulation of basic principles that can be applied to any number of experiences and life situations, principles that anyone can use to create their own unique practices and approaches to personal transformation.