So tired…..

I’ve been sick this winter, actually, officially sick with a diagnosis and antibiotics and all of that.   While I am healing well, I am left with lower-than-usual energy and a sense that fatigue overtakes me quickly.

One of the mindfulness practices I learned while taking Dr. Bill Cook’s Body-Mind Awareness program back in 2009 was about attending to where in the body intention arises.   That sounded terribly foreign to me at first;  if I intend to get up from my chair, it seems to me that the intention arises in my thoughts.  But no, if I am careful, take time, and bring attention to my body with the question, I can actually sense into my body where and how that intention arises.

So with this fatigue, I have been using this practice to locate “tired” in my body.  This is probably easier than the intention to change position.  What I notice is this:   my mind will say something like, Oh, I feel tired….then I turn my attention to my body.  Where in my body do I sense this “tired?”  What is it like?   When have I felt something like this before?   What does it remind me of…and what else might be there, along with “tired?”

That last question is a good one.  What else is in there, in this felt sense that I have labelled, perhaps too quickly, as “tired?”  On Saturday, I took to the dog for his weekend walk along the river.  We plowed through shin-deep snow, watching the sun come up through snow clouds, and feeling the barely freezing temperature rise a bit and fall a bit, shifting the nature of the precipitation.  When I turned to walk back to the car, calling for the dog, I was suddenly aware of sensation in my calves, like melting butter, achingly draining to my heels….there it was!  That was my fatigue.   Internally, I named it and asked, what else is there?  As I breathed into my belly and let my attention rise from my legs to my abdomen and diaphragm and chest, I realized that there was more there.   I felt a sensation that I labelled tears;  tension that I wanted to discharge in my core, tension in my pelvis that hard sobbing would release.  So there was more than tired;  there was a deep tension of holding back sadness, right there.

Tired happens when you have been sick.  Tired also happens when things feel like just too much, and when you need to cry and you don’t give yourself the space to really experience those feelings.  Having to “hold in” and “hold on” to yourself to keep those tears in check is a really exhausting way to live.

When you feel tired, where in your body do you notice it?  What else is in there?

It doesn’t take much for me to feel wiped out these days.  But how do I know that I am tired?

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Fight, flight, freeze….or interact!

Nexus, Colorado’s Holistic Health and Spirituality Journal.

This link goes to an interview with Dr. Stephen Porges about his polyvagal theory.  This is a way of looking at the parasympathetic nervous system that helps to explain a lot about how people respond to traumatizing events or situations.

The old story was that we have two pathways in our involuntary nervous sytem, the sympathetic, or the arousing system, and the parasympathetic, or the calming system.  The sympathetic was activated by a sabre-toothed tiger leaping at us (or someone stomping on the brakes ahead of us on the bridge) and we were inspired to fight or run away.   The parasympathetic went into action in opposition, calming our bodies down when the tiger was gone or we had outrun him.   Turns out that this “either-or” model probably doesn’t really describe how things actually happen in the nervous system.  The model worked pretty well clinically;  people who were stressed had over-active sympathetic systems and needed to do relaxation exercises to activate their calming system.  When Herbert Benson labeled this the Relaxation Response in the 1960’s, it was a breakthrough and it still works pretty well when we are simply talking about external overstress and calming the body.

However, the realities of life in a body that has PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) were not really accounted for by this model.  For example, people who have been traumatized will often experience hyper arousal and hyper-vigilance.  That’s consistent with the opposition model.  But on the other hand, PTSD victims will also often be numbed, hypo-aroused, emotionally empty or frozen.  This can happen with or without being dissociated or depersonalized.  The old model just cannot account for how a person could have TOO MUCH activity in the parasympathetic system.

So Porges’ polyvagal theory is hierarchical rather than simply oppositional.  He posits that there are three distinct aspects to the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve, and that these developed in the mammalian nervous system concurrently with our social and emotional behaviour.  That is, the physiology of the nervous system develops as a cause and an effect of behaviour.  The three parts are responsible for different aspects of functioning;  communication, mobilization, and immobilization.  Social connection requires visual and auditory attention and expression;  this part of the system ennervates the face, mobilizing the mouth and eyes, making it possible to listen and to speak, and to make eye contact.  The mobilization system makes fight or flight possible, while the immobilization system enables the organism to “play dead’ or to feign death or syncope to the degree that a potential aggressor will lose interest.

The most interesting (to me) part of this model is that the social interaction system is connected to our sympathetic nervous system.   Look here at what Stephen Porges said in the interview when asked about how this works:

I’ve heard the human mind described as a paranoid instrument. The premise is that when we are living in our senses, in the here and now, we usually feel safe, but our thinking mind often throws scary impressions in front of us, as if it’s anticipating some threat.
SP: I’ll address that by describing to you a part of our nervous system that is entirely focused on responding to other people, even other mammals like dogs and cats. This is not the same part of the nervous system that can put us into states of enlightenment or ecstasy. In a sense, this is a very grounded component of our nervous system. It engages contact with certain levels of senses that are not the ones that you’re describing. It’s where we are feeling our bodily information from inside our organs. This information from the body actually travels through nerves up through the brain stem and radiates upward to our cortex. This part of the nervous system provides a contact with reality; it regulates our bodily state, so we become alert and engaged. That does not include all of human experience, but it does include most of what we call social interactions. We can say that the social interactions are a very important component of our psychological experience as human beings. And this system, the social engagement system, is what determines the quality of those interactions—the features that we show other people, the facial expression, the intonation of our voice, the head nods, even the hand movements, are part of this. And if I turn my head away while I’m talking to you, if I talk in a monotone without any intonation, or if I drop my eyes, will you have a visceral response? How do you feel when I do that?
RD: It feels like you’re not very present, like you’re withdrawing or you’re disconnected.
SP: Disconnected, which may be interpreted by the other person as evaluative, not liking, not being motivated to engage, condescending or suspicious. So these facial gestures, which for some people are purely physiological responses, are now interpreted with a moral or, at least, a motivational overlay. This may or may not be true. Social engagement is a unique and very powerful component of our interactions.

As a therapist, I am very interested in how to make “safety” for my clients.  As a person, I am interested in how to help myself feel connected and comfortable in my world.  When I can see a person looking away, unable or unwilling to connect socially, I can now think of this as a function of the autonomic nervous system, not just voluntary behaviour.  If a person has a trauma history, then these elements of their social interaction may be a manifestation of their struggle….and imagine how it can keep on influencing relationships!   Plus this model has a lot to tell us about how our awareness of our bodies influences our sense of safety and the ability to soften into our lives and connect with others.

Hmm, lots to ponder…..if you want more, I suggest http://www.wisebrain.org/Polyvagal_Theory.pdf

Bioenergetics and Mindfulness

Bioenergetics and mindfulness

You have probably heard of mindfulness in many contexts. It is a popular term for a very old concept. This old concept refers to something that people do spontaneously; we become aware of the present moment, with all the subtleties of that moment. This happens many times each day. However, we also may spend a lot of time in unawareness, or mindlessness. This can happen when we are “lost in our thoughts,” caught up in some internal story or conversation, struggling with memories or worries, or otherwise on auto-pilot and out of touch with what is happening right now.

Bioenergetic bodywork helps us to focus on the present moment by focusing on body sensation, movement, patterns of tension and relaxation, and even emotion. These experiences of the body are sometimes ignored or even pushed out of awareness. Bioenergetics allows us to locate ourselves in our bodies and, perhaps for the first time, really experience who we are, right here, right now.

A mindful state can be attained by simply paying attention.  Right here and now, stop reading and pay attention to your body sensations.  Feel your feet on the floor, your seat in the chair, your hands in your lap.  Notice how much of your weight you can let down into the chair.   Notice the breath as it enters your body.  Notice where it goes, and how it leaves your body.  Notice how much of your body moves with the breath.  Now just let that breathing happen, giving it about 25 percent of your attention, letting the rest of your attention just float.  Notice what it is like to let your attention rest lightly on your breath.  Notice what it is like to allow your attention to float.   Notice what it is like to be fully attentive to whatever is happening with your breath, with your body, in this moment…this moment…this moment.  This is mindfulness.  This is being with what is, right here and now.

Top-down, bottom-up?

How do you learn new information? We usually think of learning as the process we tried to engage in school. Someone told us something, and we “learned” it, meaning that we could, perhaps, parrot it back, or maybe even state the concept in other words (“in your own words…”). However, learning happens in lots of ways. I have learned more through my cooking experiments than from any cookbook or cooking class. When I notice that my cake is flat, or that my smoke detector is going off, or that this soup is just not, ummm, right….then I have an opportunity to learn something from my body’s response. This is more bottom-up than top down.

When we feel a “gut reaction” or some kind of unaccountability in our bodies, and we acknowledge and use that information, we are using bottom-up processing to help us manage top-down information. We’ve spent years and years refining our top-down methods, and really ignoring the messages that have been available through less verbal channels. It makes sense, though, for us to use, actively and with awareness, all of the information we have to make decisions, to problem solve, and to just check in with ourselves.

Try this: take a moment to just sit and notice your breathing. You might find yourself paying attention to how your body sits in the chair, or how your feet feel on the floor, but try to attend to the ways that air moves into and out of your body. Then open up a little space to see what else is in there? What else do you notice besides the fact that you are breathing? What other sensations are available to you? Just check it out and see if there is anything happening inside you that you might not have been aware of before you took time to check in on your bottom-up processes.