I appreciated that the safety / danger / life-threat triad of neural systems was widened to include the role of the latter neural systems in non-threatening circumstances, which are likely their more normal mode of working when not dealing with chronic stress.
I appreciated when participants shared real-life experience to explore where things fit or not quite or not fully.
As others have stated, I have a better understanding of the color-coding of triangle wedges and their surrounds (circles) used in your newer charts.
The conversation began to touch on hormones' roles in various scenarios. I'd like to hear more about this, and if possible shifting language from technical (oxytocin, cortisol , ...) to language that speaks more to the activity they elicit or what elicits them?
Brainstem and spine act as a whole for complex patterned movement
Would like to better understand how various parts of the brain interact with the three ANS channels
Overall really clear and respectful of past exploration while being clear where "conventional wisdom" doesn't get it right. By "being clear" - specific observations that are counter to orthodoxy
I don’t think we’ve broken anything - you added body.
Heart centered, brain centered, blood centered concepts are insufficient. Even traditional Chinese medicine needs to revised, as there are multiple defects of translation.
So, whole body including all layers and structures plus energy level (aura etc etc) should be considered as a whole working together system - nothing should be abandoned and underrated.
And it’s very wise you add not exclude, that what I noticed on Friday’s meeting.
I would like to dive more into phenomenological approach, I see that it makes knowledge re ANS more accessible
Thanks Kirill. Appreciate your comments, particularly about the additive nature of this, and aspects of phenomenology. Looking forward to connecting more about this. I think my assistant emailed you about scheduling a further conversation.
The session was amazing. Overall I found the materials to be intense and challenging, as I am still in the process of delving as deeply as would be required to fully appreciate and comprehend the details of what was discussed.
The opening framework, including bringing in Thomas Kuhn work on scientific revolution, was extremely useful in putting the overall work in its proper context.
I particularly appreciated the notion that 'structural problems' require 'structural solutions.'
The significance/impact of measuring breadth versus heart rate was a 'wow' moment which led me to query whether others might now feel motivated to try to replicate using breadth as a measure, and if so, their results serving to further validate Gabriel's work, and maybe make a useful contribution/extension.
I found the discussion regarding the links to the online portal extremely important to assist me and others as another way in to comprehend 'what to do!'
'Human flourishing' as an end state is an excellent/positive/energizing way to frame our journey and desired end state. I am keenly interested in diving into achieving same via understanding indigenous cultures/linages.
Thanks for organizing the session. I look forward to further opportunities to continue this journey.
Great to see you Friday, and thanks for your thoughtful questions/ comments during the presentation.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. The contextualizing framework of Kuhn feels important, partly because it helps us walk a fine line with Polyvagal Theory, which is both a foundation of our work, and something we are moving beyond. Understanding the structure of scientific paradigms, and the drive to increase their explanatory power, sort of takes this out of the personal realm and puts into into the context of something larger, which feels important. Steven Porges is also a lovely person, so when people here me criticizing the theory, it makes them upset, as though I am somehow criticizing him, which I'm not. I'm seeking to align a theoretical scaffold with 15,000 data points from our work over the past decade.
There is a researcher in India who has developed a tool for quantifying autonomics through the breath, and with whom we almost created a diagnostics company. I am very interested in his work, and in breath as a portal to the Autonomic Nervous System.
And agreed, it feels important to frame this in terms of flourishing, particularly because what we focus on gets bigger, and much of the world of trauma healing, while doing necessary work, is missing this larger ancestral / indigenous context of connection. Trauma is what happens when we are deprived of the neural inputs of this ancestral baseline, since those are required for thriving.
I loved the session. Porges work has been like time travel to me; it is also like space travel. The mammals internal environment is an incorporation of the outside environment, he explained for me in a very compelling way. Eggs rely on the mammal mother's internal source of nourishment as well temperature control, rather than a congenial outside environment. And on, in the journey of evolution. HRV is a rhythm dimension. Breath is a space and rhythm dimension. The internal pressures in the system are intertwined with the rhythms and they control how much of the outside (say oxygen) gets to the cell and further life processes (say how actin and myosin fibrils get together with the financing of ATP). All this to say how the baroreceptors are involved with autonomics. And how having the breath and recognition of its influence be a marker of autonomic health makes sense. From my vantage point as a former healthcare worker, the system pressure (blood, head, A-a ratio etc) is very much used to measure "health" in critical situations. Phenomenologically can we use that dimension ( my heart swelled with love, I felt deflated, I felt pulled in etc) to tell the story of healthy being.
Thanks for running that session - very much appreciated!
It's really great to see a model based on health rather than pathology, and accounting for a lot of healthy variations in normal (non-traumatic) ranges of ANS activity. Your explanation made a lot more sense of the chart, and I'm looking forward to going back to look at where it's hanging on the wall in my treatment room.
Appreciated Andrew, and great to have you with us. I think this focus on a salugenic, e.g., a health creation paradigm is really important. Perhaps ironically, the reason that the publisher who commissioned The Neurobiology of Connection dropped it is because they told me they didn't know how to sell or market a book about health creation. And that tells you a lot about the world we are living in.
The lowest center as the first to evolve has shutdown as a possible response to threat, but is also the basis for various capacities. The middle center is related to movement and adds more nuanced threat responses, fight or flight. The third center has the capacity, under threat, and if not overwhelmed by the lower centers, to see possibilities beyond patterned behavior.
I appreciated that the safety / danger / life-threat triad of neural systems was widened to include the role of the latter neural systems in non-threatening circumstances, which are likely their more normal mode of working when not dealing with chronic stress.
I appreciated when participants shared real-life experience to explore where things fit or not quite or not fully.
As others have stated, I have a better understanding of the color-coding of triangle wedges and their surrounds (circles) used in your newer charts.
The conversation began to touch on hormones' roles in various scenarios. I'd like to hear more about this, and if possible shifting language from technical (oxytocin, cortisol , ...) to language that speaks more to the activity they elicit or what elicits them?
Brainstem and spine act as a whole for complex patterned movement
Would like to better understand how various parts of the brain interact with the three ANS channels
Overall really clear and respectful of past exploration while being clear where "conventional wisdom" doesn't get it right. By "being clear" - specific observations that are counter to orthodoxy
I don’t think we’ve broken anything - you added body.
Heart centered, brain centered, blood centered concepts are insufficient. Even traditional Chinese medicine needs to revised, as there are multiple defects of translation.
So, whole body including all layers and structures plus energy level (aura etc etc) should be considered as a whole working together system - nothing should be abandoned and underrated.
And it’s very wise you add not exclude, that what I noticed on Friday’s meeting.
I would like to dive more into phenomenological approach, I see that it makes knowledge re ANS more accessible
Thanks Kirill. Appreciate your comments, particularly about the additive nature of this, and aspects of phenomenology. Looking forward to connecting more about this. I think my assistant emailed you about scheduling a further conversation.
Thanks Gabriel! Yes, hope to talk to you soon, end of the week most probably!
The session was amazing. Overall I found the materials to be intense and challenging, as I am still in the process of delving as deeply as would be required to fully appreciate and comprehend the details of what was discussed.
The opening framework, including bringing in Thomas Kuhn work on scientific revolution, was extremely useful in putting the overall work in its proper context.
I particularly appreciated the notion that 'structural problems' require 'structural solutions.'
The significance/impact of measuring breadth versus heart rate was a 'wow' moment which led me to query whether others might now feel motivated to try to replicate using breadth as a measure, and if so, their results serving to further validate Gabriel's work, and maybe make a useful contribution/extension.
I found the discussion regarding the links to the online portal extremely important to assist me and others as another way in to comprehend 'what to do!'
'Human flourishing' as an end state is an excellent/positive/energizing way to frame our journey and desired end state. I am keenly interested in diving into achieving same via understanding indigenous cultures/linages.
Thanks for organizing the session. I look forward to further opportunities to continue this journey.
Hi Joe-
Great to see you Friday, and thanks for your thoughtful questions/ comments during the presentation.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. The contextualizing framework of Kuhn feels important, partly because it helps us walk a fine line with Polyvagal Theory, which is both a foundation of our work, and something we are moving beyond. Understanding the structure of scientific paradigms, and the drive to increase their explanatory power, sort of takes this out of the personal realm and puts into into the context of something larger, which feels important. Steven Porges is also a lovely person, so when people here me criticizing the theory, it makes them upset, as though I am somehow criticizing him, which I'm not. I'm seeking to align a theoretical scaffold with 15,000 data points from our work over the past decade.
There is a researcher in India who has developed a tool for quantifying autonomics through the breath, and with whom we almost created a diagnostics company. I am very interested in his work, and in breath as a portal to the Autonomic Nervous System.
And agreed, it feels important to frame this in terms of flourishing, particularly because what we focus on gets bigger, and much of the world of trauma healing, while doing necessary work, is missing this larger ancestral / indigenous context of connection. Trauma is what happens when we are deprived of the neural inputs of this ancestral baseline, since those are required for thriving.
Hi Gabriel and Joe and all,
I loved the session. Porges work has been like time travel to me; it is also like space travel. The mammals internal environment is an incorporation of the outside environment, he explained for me in a very compelling way. Eggs rely on the mammal mother's internal source of nourishment as well temperature control, rather than a congenial outside environment. And on, in the journey of evolution. HRV is a rhythm dimension. Breath is a space and rhythm dimension. The internal pressures in the system are intertwined with the rhythms and they control how much of the outside (say oxygen) gets to the cell and further life processes (say how actin and myosin fibrils get together with the financing of ATP). All this to say how the baroreceptors are involved with autonomics. And how having the breath and recognition of its influence be a marker of autonomic health makes sense. From my vantage point as a former healthcare worker, the system pressure (blood, head, A-a ratio etc) is very much used to measure "health" in critical situations. Phenomenologically can we use that dimension ( my heart swelled with love, I felt deflated, I felt pulled in etc) to tell the story of healthy being.
Hi Gabriel
Thanks for running that session - very much appreciated!
It's really great to see a model based on health rather than pathology, and accounting for a lot of healthy variations in normal (non-traumatic) ranges of ANS activity. Your explanation made a lot more sense of the chart, and I'm looking forward to going back to look at where it's hanging on the wall in my treatment room.
Appreciated Andrew, and great to have you with us. I think this focus on a salugenic, e.g., a health creation paradigm is really important. Perhaps ironically, the reason that the publisher who commissioned The Neurobiology of Connection dropped it is because they told me they didn't know how to sell or market a book about health creation. And that tells you a lot about the world we are living in.
I would be interested in exploring relationships of your ANS model to
* the threefoldness in mammals described by Wolfgang Schad (current 2-vol edition: https://www.amazon.com/Threefoldness-Humans-Mammals-Toward-Biology/dp/0932776647 | sample, chapters 1-3: https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/wolfgang-schad/living-form-in-mammalian-biology ) and to
* Gurdjieff's three brains: https://www.gurdjieffsocietymass.org/post/our-three-centers-thinking-feeling-moving and to
* The three Dantian of Tai Chi : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dantian
The lowest center as the first to evolve has shutdown as a possible response to threat, but is also the basis for various capacities. The middle center is related to movement and adds more nuanced threat responses, fight or flight. The third center has the capacity, under threat, and if not overwhelmed by the lower centers, to see possibilities beyond patterned behavior.
Interesting to hear you have looked at Samar Singh's breath profiling work. In case it is helpful, I wrote an introductory article about it so we had something to cite/show when talking about it https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/respiratory-profiling-a-window-into
This was a duplication of the comment above, so I've taken it down.