The
three reflexes of stress. discussed by Thomas Hanna in his definitive article on clinical somatic eduction, are emotional reactions. They involve the
limbic system -- mammalian brain -- however much they may also involve
the reptilian brain (brain stem).
Let's take this discussion of FM further and deeper.
In habituation, the neocortex disengages, leaving the limbic system and cerebellum in control. Reactions are automatic.
That's the state of the majority of humanity most of the time.
Exceptions: moments of deliberate action, creativity, learning
Habituation
forms with the onslaught of experience -- individual, cultural,
species, and planetary memory -- and "befouls" (as well as constitutes)
the memories and functional capacities of the individual. "Birth Trauma"
is better framed as "Life Trauma" -- meaning compounded forms of Trauma
Reflex. The onslaught of experience is like gravity -- an ongoing
influence that endlessly "tests" our balance and fluidity.
"The
Fair State" of which Thomas Hanna wrote is an ideal, asymptotically
approached (but never reached), in which responses are increasingly
free, creative, and finely tuned and in which attention is increasingly
discerning and accurate -- both toward "the world" (3d and 2nd person)
and toward ourselves (1st person) -- and leading to transpersonal
awakening ("0"th person).
Thus,
a life may be seen as a struggle to overcome the onslaught of
experience, which drives us, again and again, to lower levels of
function -- lower levels of brain function (below the neocortex). By
"rebound" (refusal of limitation), we may awaken at the neocortical
level and creatively develop means to exceed those limitations, leading
to new habit formation and subsidence of the higher cortical functions.
Thus,
humans alternately awaken to our higher potential and then sink to
lower levels and then, in conditions of crisis, rise again. Such
accounts for the rise and fall of civilizations (including our own).
(That's why people have trouble following instructions.)
"Sensory-motor amnesia" describes the most rudimentary form of this habituation -- gross movement and fine motor control.
"Attentional-intentional
amnesia" describes the more complex forms of habituation -- emotion,
conceptualization/cognition -- observable 3d-person as habits of action
and interiorly-feelable pattens of tension identified (mistakenly or
only provisionally) as, "self" -- sometimes clinically diagnosed as,
"fibromyalgia" and usually, as "ageing".
More primitive than habituation is incompetence -- or immaturity.
"Sensory-motor obliviousness" describes the most rudimentary form of incompetence or immaturity.
"Attentional-intentional
obliviousness" describes the more complex forms of incompetence or
immaturity identified (mistakenly or only provisionally) as, "self".
Clearing
up all of these forms of befoulment or incompetence is the proper scope
of somatic education -- escape from the sense of the gravity of life
and the accelerated awakening of and to our own unrealized potentials.
The Ultimate Structure of All Senses of Identity
http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/2015/01/somatology-ultimate-structure-of-all.html
http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/2015/02/on-fibromyalgia-and-full-spectrum.html
http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lawrencegold.wordpress.com/265/ Angels in Winter Lawrence Gold https://lawrencegold.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/angels-in-winter-lawrence-gold/