A systems view of biological health

Section 4: Application and Practical exercises

Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 : also see my full Copyright statement.

There is a communication loop that applies to all interactions between living entities and parts of living entities:

[;  Awareness   →; ]   Gesture   →   Response   [; →    Acknowledgement ; ]

This pattern will be repeated time and time again...

• Aware – we become aware of the general state of the body-mind, not taking much time – it's just "this is how I feel at the moment in a very general way" - with some emphasis on healthy sensations [1]. A one-or-two-second check-in to the mental and emotional and physical status-quo. This is described elsewhere as a good general habit - the background awareness of a somatic-mental-emotional-sensory here-I-am / familiar ground state.
• Gesture – we send a message to the body : there are many ways to do this – through interest (curiosity) in specific sensory information, through movement, or adopting a particular body or limb position, through accessing a memory or thinking about some particular topic, etc., etc. Some Gestures have a higher priority and are more useful (in accessing resourced adaptive states) than others. If ther eis more than one Gesture at a time, then the response can be complex, so we (i) aim for simplicity and (ii) stack gestures together than tend to have similar useful effects.
• Response (effect) – we become aware of how the body responds, if at all, to those Gestures. It might not respond – that's OK. It is important to be honest (so that you do not make things up) and at the same time open minded (so you do not doubt your impressions). Over a relatively short period of time, if there is genuine curiosity as to the effect/response the body will begin to respond - by sensations changing when you give it some information. If you feel no response, this is also a very good reason to persist.
• Acknowledgment – If there is any kind of response to the gesture we have just made, we acknowledge the body’s response. The acknowledgement may simply be by being more aware of its detail (your body is aware that you are aware of it!), or by literally saying something like “Yes - I can feel that”. This deepens the quality and depth of communication (between your mind and the body's physiology) that has just occurred and helps tp consolidate any changes.

The whole point of all of this is to communicate that you are safe - as deeply as possible into the physiology and cells of the body, in a way that the body understands, so that the nervous system has a "reality check", and then recalibrates itself to the safety of your real world.

It is not possible to just say “"" ” or “everything is OK”. This might satisfy your copgnitive mind, but the body will not usually be satisfied by these bland arm-waving statements. The message of safety is conveyed by real (congruent) emotions that confirm this, plus real (congruent) use of sensory attention that also confirm it. And further reinforced by entering a feedback loop - by paying discriminatory attention to the somatic response (interoception focussing on comfortably alive sensations). This cannot be done initially in a disturbed, over-busy or open public space, because so far as the primitive alarms of your brain are concerned, these are not particularly safe places. If you practice in simple well-contained situations, eventually there may be enough skill to apply this in more busy and complex environments.

Notes on what a healthy and alive body feels like

Physical "health" is a physical experience. It is NOT a "comfortably numb" feeling – and neither is it a feeling of something not being quite right. In between these two extremes of "absence" (dissociation/numbness) and ?"loud somatic noise?" (pain, big emotions), there is a middle ground - of multidimensional possibility, of sensations of health in the body that say "here I am and I'm alive, and everything is OK-enough". When making a deliberate conscious choice to discriminate sensory experiences, the most useful choice you can make is to focus on health:

If you find a part of your body that is numb, blank, absent, void-like, dizzy, leadenly heavy, exhausted, disinterested, overwhelmed, , dull or disconnected, then

Similarly, if you find a "loud noise" – pain, stiffness, rigidity, tension, anxiety, breathlessness, panic, agitation – then:

Once you filter out these two extremes of interoceptive experience, you are left with all the sensations that say "I am here now, I’m alive, I’m healthy and the world is OK-enough". These might just be contact sensations (pressure, warmth, texture of surfaces, space and air round your face, solidity and texture of whatever is supporting you, sensations of clothing, etc). Or they might be very physical sensations – muscle texture, or blood, or pulsing, or the shape and position of bony joints, or the various sensations of teeth and softness inside your mouth (etc). Or they might be more subtle sensations – tingly, fizzy, electric, buzzy, airy, cottonwooly presences (etc). Or maybe just a sense of being energised, and having the capacity to move. There are many, many possibilities. Health also tends to feel light more than heavy, and move-able rather than excessively dense and rigid.

Now explore this Health as a 3-Dimensional presence - a bubble of sensation - being curious how far it extends in any direction, does it have a specific texture or shape or seem to be made of any particular material, or remind you of anything. Is its shape anatimical in some way (such as a specific muscle or limb) or is its shape “something else?”. Does it have clear easily identifiable boundaries/edges or is it fuzzy?.

This schema and map of interoceptive experience is based on the Window of Normal Adaptation - see videos and description at Normal adaptation: Plan A Plan B and Surviving extremes.