|Frontal Lobe “Check Out"|
The frontal of lobes of the cerebral cortex (higher, or human portion) of your brain defines the sense of self, and enable you to assess the appropriateness of behaviors. It is that part of your brain that gives you a sense of the body-mind or emotion in your body. It helps you make long-term goals and ponder your life's purpose.
The higher brain (frontal cerebral cortex) is a region where more complex information is received and processed. It takes greater time to “upload” complex files to and within this most highly evolved portion of the brain. More simple messages about the limbs, trunk, organs, emotions, your body position and wounds are not as complicated of a “computer file” and can be handled easily and more quickly by the lower brain.
The body wisely and efficiently uses the lower brain areas to receive these less complex messages. This can save your life, when there is not enough time for you to process every detail of a threatening experience but you may need to act or react instantly too.
When the information received by your body and brain is perceived to be threatening, you'll need to either run away or fight for your life. The blood supply to the higher frontal cortex is diminished and signals are detoured to the more primitive and reactive (lower) brain. This part of your brain has already decided its action or behavior BEFORE the higher (more evolved) brain has had the chance to interpret the data, integrate the experience and choose the response most appropriate for your culture, your biology, and the expression of your uniqueness.
In such a stress scenario, there may not be enough time to place action "on hold" until you're higher brain carefully analyzes all of the details of the experience. Messages about our subtle internal cues, tension patterns, abstract concepts and emotions are low priority when your body perceived danger, or lack of safety.
When in stress physiology, a wider range or alternative adaptive strategies are not possible or desired. Tension in the body keeps awareness of these more subtle "files" walled off from your attention. This is a state of DEFENSE.
What places us in the sense of stress physiology?
This occurs when the number of messages per second received overwhelm the brain. It may be in response to a physical, emotional, or chemical stressor. For example, when you're in a car accident, the messages about the position of your head, neck, shoulders, muscles, spinal joints, spinal cord, and the connective tissue are massively, and instantly reorganized. The higher brain is protected from sorting through the data. The brain and body locked into DEFENSE mode as the spine moves into a defensive posture.
Another way this may happen is when the information received by the brain is in conflict with our cultural story of how things should be. We determine what our lives "should" be like, and expected roles of others in the culture. When someone or circumstance violates our story of what we are entitled to in this life experience, a similar process occurs with the same results. Stress /Defense physiology is promoted by our perceived lack of safety.
When you are in defense, the more primitive parts of your brain are predominantly in control of your experience, your body and your life.
Trauma is stored as vibration
When an event occurs that our brain perceives as not being safe for us to fully experience, the energy and information of the event is translated into vibration, which is then stored as tension in the body. It is not unlike the after-image of a flashbulb. Our body and then walls off the offending energy and tension overtime with muscular spasm, spinal distortion, reduce breathing into the area and we reduced motion.
Until it is safe to experience that energy again and our body developed the strategy to accomplish this, we cannot digest the information from the trauma nor can we feel whole or be truly well.
Healing is reduced in defense, as is your ability to "find" those parts of your body that are the physical anchors to the alienated, isolated, abused, or denied energy that was never fully dealt with was also compromise when your body perceived the barrage of stressful input. Your ability to connect with, or touch those areas of your body, or to direct your breath into those areas also becomes impaired. You are unable to receive the message and "medicine" from that region.
In defense, you tense more easily and your physiology also more easily returns to and sustain a state of stress. This becomes the body's new functional baseline. In this state we become more structurally rigid or armored. Our blood pressure tends to rise, our range of motion and emotion is decreased, and our reaction to the new stress is heightened. The brain continues to perceive life defensively, produces stress chemicals and inhibits the ability to pay attention to the incomplete "energy" or "unfinished business." We focus upon the external threat to our stability, structure, organization, and identity.
Posture, muscular tension patterns, connective tissue tension, choices in life, and even spinal alignment are your emotional reactions to a hostile and defensive perception of the world. Many of us remain in defense throughout our lives. The higher (more evolved brain) rarely has the opportunity to develop its unique properties and evolve new strategies for living in experiencing life.
With NSA/SRI, when you use your hands to touch your body, adding specific breath patterns, movement, and focus awareness, you can reconnect and safety to the body-mind and unlock its healing energy and wisdom. The body then moves away from defense and towards growth. It has an ability to reorganize at this point.
When feeling safe, the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex may be given access to the previously unavailable files, which were locked away with vibrational anchors to the structural system. When we feel safe, we can evaluate present and past reactions for appropriateness. We can find ways to release tension, trapped energy, information, and distorted structures.
We can feel more profoundly, we can use the subtle information within to make healthier choices. We can be more compassionate to others, and to ourselves. We can activate "internal software" for experiencing life, changing our course, and for healing. Our brain can pay attention to the body's tension patterns, its spinal alignment, its posture, in its current state. We have moved from defense and stress to safety, and from safety into GROWTH.
In order to "fix" something we must first find it. Our bodies can better take inventory, as our brains feel safe to experience. Somato Respiratory Integration seeks to activate the self- observational and self- correcting strategies along with liberating the energy within to act as fuel for the internal transformation. Our hands instructed us to connect with the subtle vibration carrying the story of our lives. Our breath ignites the emotional brain to give more meaning to the vibration, and our higher brain gets to learn from our vibrational medicine.
We do not have to re-experience an event in our lives, as that would be a restorative approach. Instead, we need to connect with the body part that was blocked at the instant we went into defense. This will enable us to use the energy once directed towards keeping parts of us separate from ourselves to facilitate the process we know as healing.