This article describes brain body communication patterns and how what we feel alters what we see and hear. The three states of the “polyvagal ladder” that we discuss in sessions – top of the ladder (calm and connected), middle of the ladder (fight or flight), and bottom of the ladder (defeated, dissociated, or frozen) – dictate how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
“The vagus nerve is one of the pathways through which the body and brain talk to each other in an unconscious conversation. Much of this conversation is about how we are relating to others.”
“Maybe you walk into a social situation that feels welcoming. Green light. Your brain and body get prepared for a friendly conversation. But maybe the person in front of you feels threatening. Yellow light. You go into fight-or-flight mode. Your body instantly changes. Your ear, for example, adjusts to hear high and low frequencies — a scream or a growl — rather than midrange frequencies, human speech. Or maybe the threat feels like a matter of life and death. Red light. Your brain and body begin to shut down.“
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/opinion/brain-body-thinking.html
“According to Porges’s ‘Polyvagal Theory,’ the concept of safety is fundamental to our mental state. People who have experienced trauma have bodies that are highly reactive to perceived threat. They don’t like public places with loud noises. They live in fight-or-flight mode, stressed and anxious. Or, if they feel trapped and constrained, they go numb. Their voice and tone go flat. Physical reactions shape our way of seeing and being.”
“Lisa Feldman Barrett, of Northeastern University, also argues that a main purpose of the brain is to read the body, and to regulate what she calls the body budget. You may see a bully on the playground. Your brain then predicts your next action and speeds your heart rate and breathing to deal with it. You experience these changes as emotion — oh, this is fear or oh, this is anger — because your brain has created an emotion concept to make those physical changes meaningful.”
“If bodily reactions can drive people apart they can also heal. Martha G. Welch of Columbia University points to the importance of loving physical touch, especially in the first 1,000 minutes of life, to lay down markers of emotional stability.”
“Under the old brain-only paradigm, Welch argues, we told people to self-regulate their emotions through conscious self-talk. But real emotional help comes through co-regulation. When a mother and a child physically hold each other, their bodily autonomic states harmonize, connecting on a metabolic level. Together they move from separate distress to mutual calm.”
Brainspotting Therapy with Elaine Korngold
The motto of Brainspotting is “where you look affects how you feel”, referring to the connection between the eyes and the limbic or emotional part of our brain, which in turn connects to the body through the brain stem. When we remember a particular emotional event in our past, our gaze shifts to a certain direction, which is the brainspot that is connected to the emotions felt in the body.
I am a Certified Brainspotting Therapist and an Approved Consultant and would be happy to talk to you about Brainspotting. Brainspotting therapy accesses the genius of our deeper emotional brain. During the healing process I am fortunate to observe how intelligent, inventive, and intuitive all human beings are. Creativity is revealed through their resilience, survival, and recovery. The processing that occurs with clients focused on a Brainspot is deep, rapid, and unpredictable. During each session I wait for the surprise and I am rarely disappointed. Brain body communication is clear during our sessions.
With your focused vision and my attuned presence and verbal guidance, emotional Brainspots can be released in a gentle and non-invasive way. There is no need to be in chronic emotional pain. Please text or email me for a free consultation.