A defensive response is an automatic and powerful physiological response to a perceived survival threat meant to help bring us to safety - these fall broadly within three categories: fight, flight or freeze (various forms of ‘going away’ or shutting down/collapsing).

These defensive responses are meant to arise, get us to safety, and then to subside or complete. When these defensive responses don’t get to ‘complete’ in response to a perceived survival threat (for a variety of reasons), then their impulses and energy can remain stuck in the body/the physiology until they are digested. This is what we call ‘trauma’. 

Helping this charge move through is critical to reclaiming vitality, ease and wellbeing. Often, we need support to do this re-negotiation work. Sometimes we may be working on this on our own in between therapeutic sessions.

​A dear friend made this graphic and I hope it supports you! It’s specific to more active expressions of freeze (hide) and fight/flight:

As moderners (people heavily influenced by a cartesian rationalist worldview) we are likely to think of our minds as independent and objective observers of our experience, and therefore, to think of our experience of the world as objective. This misses a very important opportunity for self awareness (and for liberation from believing the content of our thoughts rather than seeing our thoughts as data) - our experience of the world is filtered through perception, and is therefore deeply subjective and affected by our various standpoints or locations. So what is this perceptual process? How we experience sense data through the sense doors and shape that sense data into a coherent reality is shaped in each moment by our minds- by memories, deeply held beliefs, and our physiological state. Though often different language is used to frame these explorations, in both the dharma and in psychotherapy we play with perception in ways that alleviate suffering. Making this play explicit can be a rich and valuable resource, and also provide clues about how to welcome and celebrate difference in ourselves and in our communities. 

Let's start with what perception is... Perception is the process by which we formulate an experience of the world in any given moment, and it's happening via all the sense doors (Eye, Ear, Nose, Tongue, Body, Mind). Think about the example of how different animals experience the world. Humans see a certain range of color/light, hear a certain range of frequencies, and have a certain capacity to process smell, and this leads to a particular experience of the world. Dogs, for example, have senses of smell that are 10,000 - 100,000 times better than ours, and thus the world they smell is quite different from the one we smell. In the realm of hearing, humans generally have a hearing range of between 20 and 20,000 hz. However, elephants can hear waves as low as 14 hz, while cats can hear up to 64,000 hz frequencies, and bats can sometimes pick up noises as high as 200,000 hz. Each of these beings has a profoundly different experience of the same world. Whose world is the 'right world'? Which one is the 'true' experience of the world? You can see how questions/views like these create delusion about the perceptual process, as well as leading to power dynamics in which certain ways of perceiving the world are suppressed/oppressed/dismissed.

In Buddhism and somatic therapy both, we're learning to cultivate ways of perceiving that lead to wellbeing/balance the heart, while also learning the art/language of listening to the information that comes from our perceptual process. This is truly its own mind AND body-based language, unique to each of us, and requires us to learn to recognize and digest our common patterns of reactivity/survival energy/fixation. Through this process we can start to read the cues underneath the reaction, beginning to deeply trust our perception (not that it is objectively true or true by some external standard, but that its providing reliable wisdom about what we need in any given moment - that it has an organic/organismic intelligence when it is balanced and our nervous systems are regulated)

When certain perceptions are valued above others or seen as more 'true' and other perceptions are seen as less than, then we can get into harmful situations in which people are gaslit, or taught not to trust their sources of knowledge and power. For example, perceiving a lack of safety is an incredibly important skill for mammals and there are times when that perception is very helpful and skillful.  Perhaps we go into a Buddhist space and we're encouraged to disregard fear and to cultivate perceptions of compassion - this preference for compassionate perception can be harmful when it causes the dismissal or suppression of important signals that something is not OK. These power dynamics are deeply interwoven with systems of oppression - more feminine ways of perceiving are diminished or suppressed in favor of more masculine ways of perceiving, or ways of perceiving that are common amongst white bodied folx are seen as 'true' and superior, while ways of perceiving that create safety and sanity for BIPOC beings are diminished or rejected. Some worlds are lifted up and others rejected or seen as less then. This is not a practice of liberation - in the practice of liberation we welcome all 'worlds' to the table - we welcome difference, knowing that for any given being a different perception may be skillful. This non-attachment is the same as what's needed in our internal process - what perception is skillful in this moment? and now this moment? We are asked not to cling to any fixed view. Maybe in one moment having a sense of a world in which there's a god is helpful, and in another that perception becomes harmful. Or perhaps in one moment we perceive our practice as for our own liberation, and in another its skillful to shift into perceiving it as being for the liberation of all beings. Neither one has to be right - by living between two worlds we find the middle path - we become free of/within the world itself.

In somatic therapy we understand that a system in survival mode will be perceiving an unsafe world. We use the attention/perception to shift toward and take in OKness, Coherence, to modulate exposure and balance. In this way we can start to give cues to the physiology that its OK to relax. As this process deepens the perceptions themselves will start to shift because of the underlying physiological shift. 

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Mindfulness refers to a collected presence of mind that allows (non-resistance, non-judgment) and receives (feels) our sense experience (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and cognition/thoughts) and includes an element of recognition of the experience/orientation. For example, maybe we are being mindful of a feeling of sadness in the body - Mindfulness accepts and allows the feeling, feels the heaviness, achiness, upwelling of tears, and is able to recognize/orient toward that sensory experience as ‘sadness’. Alternately, we might be being mindful of doing the dishes - here we connect and receive the feeling of the warm soapy water while gently noting ‘washing’ (noting is meant to support recognition/orientation and collectedness of mind, which are connected qualities).
 
This combination of allowing, feeling and recognition/labeling requires balance. If you find yourself overwhelmed by a sense experience then executive function (the ability of the mind to orient, or to recognize and understand experience) goes offline. On the other end of the spectrum, we can remain fairly disconnected from the body and focus on intellectual recognition alone/mental orientation, but this is not sufficient for mindfulness to deepen. The unique combination of being connected and clear can allow us to be responsive to the inner or outer situation (or both!) and cultivate ease and freedom in the midst of a range of experiences. 
 
This awareness/presence of mind can then be turned to various particular experiences/phenomena for various purposes/intentions. For example, secular mindfulness in the west was drawn from ancient Buddhist meditation practices in which mindfulness was turned toward the process of experience changing/arising and passing away. This was intended to support us feeling more free and flexible because it allowed people to practice seeing that difficult moments would pass and that fixating on good moments also wasn’t beneficial. 
 
We can use mindfulness to focus on a variety of experiences with a variety of intentions and our intention is always critical to what benefit we find from practice. For example, if we use mindful attention to try and control our experience, we will often start to feel frustrated or to suffer. However, if we use mindful attention with curiosity and kindness we will often find benefit. The practice of honing beneficial intention is a whole practice in and of itself and is something we can bring mindfulness to as well!
 
There are times when we might find ourselves trying to practice mindfulness but feeling more and more stuck - sometimes when we are overwhelmed/having trouble finding balance then other tools are needed before we return to mindfulness practice. For example, if we have a strong emotion or difficult memory coming up, we might try mindfulness but find that we are very lost or feeling emotionally overwhelmed. At that time we might need other coping strategies, distress tolerance skills, or support for trauma responses, and you should feel free to shift over to that content and return to mindfulness content when you’re feeling more resourced.

For moderner’s and westerner’s there can be an addiction to intensity that is fed and fostered by a dominant culture of interwoven disconnection, over-stimulation, and dysregulation. Seeking intensity can be a way to access feeling when we feel numb or disconnected, and it can also be a distortion of our natural and healthy attempts to down-regulate.

The nervous system’s healthy cycles follow the shape of a bell curve - beginning slow and building toward more intensity/a brief more chaotic phase at the top of the curve followed by trending back down toward rest and digest. Once energy is building, much like a single nerve cell that needs to reach a certain threshold to ‘fire’, the energy needs to reach a certain threshold for the system to complete the arousal cycle and naturally begin to down-regulate. When we have been living well outside our thresholds (many of us live this way!) there can be overwhelm all the time, and an inability to ‘meet threshold’ in order to down regulate. Similarly, when we avoid activation consciously and unconsciously, sometimes we never reach the threshold needed for the system to integrate activation and settle in a natural way. 

The result is that, at times, there may be a need for intensity in order to find our way to relaxing. Maybe you’re in a relaxing place but you can’t quite relax and instead feel restless. In these moments, it could be helpful to play with finding beneficial forms of intensity. 

What makes intensity beneficial? The most important aspect here is that it is non-addictive. There are many forms of intensity that feed addiction cycles in which we never truly feel that our need is met but we repeat the same pattern over and over to try and get satisfaction. For example, we might experience this with binging television, social media scrolling, or love addiction, etc.

What are some forms of intensity that are wholesome and non-addictive? Here are some ideas I am playing with and I invite you to come up with some of your own:

Exercise

Dancing to fun/upbeat music

Romping/Wrestling/Play with friends or family members

Physical labor

More intense chanting and/or bowing practices

Visiting a waterfall, taking in a big storm, seeking out and connecting with intensity in nature

Kind, connected and grounded sexual connection (with oneself or another)

What are your ideas? What happens if you try regularly including some wholesome form of intensity in your life?

This is an offering on the importance of respecting life - of seeking permission/consent, which has been deeply alive in my own practice over several years. 

We live in a culture in which force is quite normative. If we don't like something or we want something, we are used to, and numb to, using force. We regularly force ourselves to do all manner of things we don't want to do. Overriding our systems, and life in general, is reliable, and we prize reliability (even when it hurts) above all else. 

Often, when we are not in force (or what I'd call toxic/unhealthy masculine) we are in permissiveness. We tighten down on a new exercise and diet routine for a a couple weeks only to quit at some point and binge Netflix on the couch for days. Permissiveness says that allowing is synonymous love, and its the polar opposite of the domination of force. We can see these polarities of unhealthy masculine play out internally and externally - in how we relate to ourselves and how we relate to children, among other places.

What would it be like to begin in relationship to our softer selves? To build trust? To ask permission? To invite the system to try something, rather than trying to push it into doing something? And after there's  connection/a sense of trust, how can we rebuild a healthy masculine that says - 'I love you and so we're going to do this because I know you'll feel better afterward' - that moves from love and connection rather than force and domination. Healthy masculine can only emerge in balanced relationship with feminine - when we are in touch with our tendernesses, our feels, our no's. 

I want to acknowledge some nuance here - When the body and feminine are chaotic/disorganized as they are for many of us, it often takes some healthy masculine/containment for the feminine to move into more coherence/into a state in which its signals can be read more clearly. In other words, until the feminine has more coherence/containment it's unlikely that we can glean the information we need in connection with it. Yin and Yang are deeply interwoven - each supporting and containing each other. That said, if you're moving between these poles -from fear/from force- in my experience this initial influx of order/coherence should likely come from outside of you - from a trusted therapist or guide.

Respect requires and is a practice of cultivating (bit of a paradox here) equanimity. It requires us to let go of the 'wanting' and 'not wanting' that flows from fear/from our ideas about how things should be. It requires us to accept what is. To be humbled and to be made both soft and strong. To listen to what's needed - to the deeper need under the 'wanting' of the moment. For example, often I find when I go to scroll social media that the need is actually for rest - for down time - but the 'want' is to check out by scrolling. When I can listen to the need and respond to it, rather than acting from the addiction, I build trust and connection with my system.

We cannot grow, we cannot truly change, we cannot find freedom from force. The vehicle and vector of liberation is our body, and so we must bring it along - we must find 'buy in' from the body/from the feminine, for anything to be truly integrated. Just as we cannot force an animal to relax, to come out from behind the bed or to receive our trust, we must bring deep respect, patience, and commitment to our relationship with our bodies and our hearts. 

This same lesson is true at gross as well as subtle levels, and is deeply interdependent/holographic. To respect the body is to respect the broader 'nature body' - the earth that is our bones and flesh, the rivers our blood, the trees our lungs. To respect others is to respect ourselves. These more gross trainings can begin to train us to respect each moment - the teaching of each moment. To respect the sorrow and the joy, the longing and the anger. To respect winter and spring, rain and sun. Healing comes only in this respect - in connection - there is no other way forward. 

"When I pushed forward I was whirled about, when I stayed in place I sank...And so I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place. "

​Perhaps we can shift out of this polarity of 'pushing forward' and 'staying in place' - of force and permissiveness - and into a healthy masculine rooted in respect for and connection to the deep wisdom of the feminine. Perhaps this is the middle path.