Introduction - Hearth Science
At this point in history, it feels almost impossible to me to write honestly about the nervous system without writing about collapse. The project of modern civilization so-called, which is ultimately an imperial project birthed from alienation, has pushed the biosphere to the brink. All around us, in the multi-faceted infrastructures of modernity– how we have organized ourselves into nation-states, how we have organized political economy, how our lives are governed by inflationary pressures in the context of needing to make a living in systems designed to extract labor in service to capital– our nervous systems are sense-making in a context of increasing ambient threat.
The human nervous system mediates between interiors and exteriors. Autonomic physiology, which is the particular purview of my research and clinical work for nearly thirty years, is the neural scaffolding that governs the energy-processing templates through which we relate to our experience. Building on the foundation of Polyvagal Theory, developed by my primary mentor in neurophysiology, Dr. Stephen Porges, I have organized a model of Autonomics that regards this system through a tripartite intersection of three variables, which I sometimes call 3 x 3 x 3, because each of the lenses that comprise it has three possible states. These variables are neuroception, neurology, and neurochemistry. My purpose in this cartographic modeling is to show how intersectionalities of neuroception: our moment-to-moment assessment of safety, danger, and lifethreat, with specific autonomic neurological systems, in the presence of coordinating neuro-hormonal chemistry organizes autonomic states: energy-processing templates that govern how we process our experience of the world. An autonomic state is like a pair of neural glasses that you cannot take off. It shapes the depth, velocity, and quality of the river of experience flowing through you. It governs visceral state (how it feels inside your body), how you understand yourself existentially (we identify with the states we spend the most time in), what emotions are available to us, the nature of our thoughts, how we interpret the world around us, and how we behave.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Neurobiology of Connection to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.