Content uploaded by James Hopper
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by James Hopper on Feb 20, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
Harnessing the seeking, satisfaction and embodiment circuitries in contemplative approaches to healing trauma
Abstract
This chapter offers an understanding of some key brain and psychological processes involved in trauma, in suffering and healing, and in potentially transformative contemplative practices – especially those for cultivating mindfulness, love, kindness and compassion. This understanding is structured by a framework that draws on knowledge from many scientific, clinical and contemplative traditions, and necessarily goes beyond scientific data to provide an integrative vision. The framework highlights and clarifies how the brain circuitries of seeking, satisfaction and embodiment can be harnessed to cultivate healing, freedom and happiness. (A “circuitry” is a collection of brain areas that work together to perform certain tasks.) As explained below with references to neuroscience research, like the brain circuitry of fear, the circuitries of seeking, satisfaction and embodiment are among the best established brain circuitries in neuroscience. In addition, the framework presented here is consistent with well-established ways of understanding and treating trauma, as well as with the emerging contemplative approaches featured in this book.
... Many trauma therapists use a form of mindfulness-somatic micro-trackingto help patients attend to minute shifts in somatic state and to allow themselves to experience defensive action patterns, or to finish enacting them, in an accepting and nonjudgmental way. 136,138,143,168,169 Various other techniques-for example, "open focus," a form of EEG biofeedback-use shifts in attention to induce high-amplitude alpha waves in the EEG, which are associated with reduced brain-body arousal. 170 Whereas the beta range (13-50 Hz) is associated with narrow attention and is the zone in which we carry out task-focused activities, the alpha range (8)(9)(10)(11)(12) is produced during alert relaxed states, including states of mindfulness and other states characterized by open-focus attention, and the theta range (4-8 Hz) is produced when deeply relaxed, day dreaming, or falling asleep. ...
... Sensations-the subjective representations of specific patterns of autonomic and sensory activation-need to be mindfully tracked until they dissipate and are replaced by new sensations. [135][136][137][138]169,203 The fixed action pattern needs to be mindfully and slowly brought to completion, thereby disrupting its "stuck" quality and allowing it to be replaced by new action patterns (see Vignette 17). [135][136][137][138]203 From a clinical perspective, the defense cascade can be understood as a hierarchical behavioral framework in which patients typically shift from one action pattern to another § § § § § Damasio 20 uses the term dispositional representations to describe patterns of neurological activity that dispose the individual to behave in particular ways. ...
... The practice of fostering a state of engaged, but nonreactive, curiosity (mindfulness) helps the individual decouple the physical sensations from the associated feelings of fear. 136,138,169 Importantly, as was suggested earlier, breaking the state of tonic immobility may sometimes plunge the individual into flight or fight 136 or, alternatively, into a state of very high arousal (see Vignette 18). Also as suggested earlier, the therapist and patient may need to prepare for that possibility. ...
Evolution has endowed all humans with a continuum of innate, hard-wired, automatically activated defense behaviors, termed the defense cascade. Arousal is the first step in activating the defense cascade; flight or fight is an active defense response for dealing with threat; freezing is a flight-or-fight response put on hold; tonic immobility and collapsed immobility are responses of last resort to inescapable threat, when active defense responses have failed; and quiescent immobility is a state of quiescence that promotes rest and healing. Each of these defense reactions has a distinctive neural pattern mediated by a common neural pathway: activation and inhibition of particular functional components in the amygdala, hypothalamus, periaqueductal gray, and sympathetic and vagal nuclei. Unlike animals, which generally are able to restore their standard mode of functioning once the danger is past, humans often are not, and they may find themselves locked into the same, recurring pattern of response tied in with the original danger or trauma. Understanding the signature patterns of these innate responses-the particular components that combine to yield the given pattern of defense-is important for developing treatment interventions. Effective interventions aim to activate or deactivate one or more components of the signature neural pattern, thereby producing a shift in the neural pattern and, with it, in mind-body state. The process of shifting the neural pattern is the necessary first step in unlocking the patient's trauma response, in breaking the cycle of suffering, and in helping the patient to adapt to, and overcome, past trauma.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.
... The framework for understanding traumatized brains and healing that I'm offering here, as in prior writings (Hopper, 2014(Hopper, , 2017, 2 is largely compatible with and complementary to conventional ones. However, it has different intellectual and empirical roots and, more importantly, a different moral CONTACT James W. Hopper jim@jimhopper.com and their brainsand their loved ones, and the institutions, communities, and cultures in which they livegenuine healing, satisfaction, and well-being? ...
... When one has learned that other people cannot be trusted for love and support, one will value and seek "support" and escape from addictive substances, behaviors, and experiences. When one's daily life is largely focused on survival and coping with overwhelming negative emotions, disconnection from one's own body, emotions, and other people, and/or fragmentation into extreme and polarized subpersonalities or "parts" (e.g., Schwartz & Sweezy, 2019), then what is valued, sought, and chosen is often unhealthy and unsatisfying (Hopper, 2014). The same is true when socialization and enculturation processes, including those associated with gender, have conditioned one to value ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that limit and harm oneself and others (e.g., Gilmore, 1990;Hopper, 2017;Lisak, 1995). ...
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.