As part of my continuing professional development, between March and July this year I participated in a fascinating and comprehensive course on the emerging field of the Science of Somatics. It was led by Tim Cacciatore and Sebastian Zahler, who are neuroscientists, as well as being somatic practitioners. The course explored the science that lies behind somatic practices such as the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais and Somatic Experiencing. Not only can neuroscience help explain some of the mechanisms and benefits observed with these disciplines, but it is also now clear that science may have a lot to learn from somatic practices.
It would take a whole book to try and summarise the course, so I’m just going to focus on one of the highlights for me, which is about how we experience (anything and everything). Whether it’s perceiving something such as an image or sound, or feeling an emotion or pain, the experience is always the outcome of a highly complex synthesis of present incoming sensations combined with predictions based on past experience and current context.
It might be a little surprising to realise that there is such a clear distinction between sensation (the information collected by our sense systems, such as eyes, ears, or skin) and perception, which is how we interpret this sensory information and give it meaning. The thing is that we never sense anything in isolation, instead we interpret the incoming sensory signals in the light of context and previous experience – taking all this information together, our brain ‘decides’ what is likely to be the best response in the current situation (e.g. this could be to have a certain feeling such as anger or thirst, or the experience of pain). Just to be clear, we are not talking about conscious decisions here – we aren’t aware of these processes as they are all entirely subconscious and are extremely fast. We can only be aware of the outcome, for example, a feeling. In making these decisions about what to experience, the brain is using internal models such as our body schema – this is our subconscious representation of ourselves, telling us where everything is in relation to everything else. Without it, an action as simple as scratching one’s nose would be very hit and miss.
To give a simple example, the act of seeing a flower is not objective, as it will be a different experience for everyone. Let’s say that I’m in the garden and start to look in the direction of the flower bed. The light travelling through my eyes triggers signals which my brain then interprets by taking into account the context – I know where I am and what season it is, so I’m already predicting seeing a flower. Putting together the sensory information and the prediction, the ‘output’ is my experience of ‘seeing a flower’ (perception). Different people can have very different perceptions of the same flower because we are all making our own individual interpretations. A clear example is that my perception is likely to be very different to that for someone who has never seen a flower before. Similarly, I might perceive the flower as bright red, while someone with colour blindness may perceive it as greenish in colour. On another note, optical illusions work because of a mismatch between what we are ‘seeing’ and what we are expecting (predicting).
Because the ‘output’, i.e. the experience, depends on weighing up several different factors together, the same sensory input will not always lead to the same perception. The sight of a dog walking towards me wagging its tail will produce sensations that I interpret as ‘seeing a friendly dog’. It’s also likely to make me feel happy and excited because of the way that I’ve put together the visual information with my past experience. Yet for another person, the exact same visual information may lead to a perception of a threatening dog and provoke fear – it’s the same dog but our different life experiences lead us to make very different interpretations as to what are the most appropriate feelings to experience.
Even within one individual, the same sensation can produce different outcomes. An example given on the course is that exactly the same sensation of an increased heart rate can result in two very different experiences, depending on the context. So, if a person goes out for a run and their heart rate increases, they may feel absolutely great because the current context and their prior experience lead them to subconsciously predict that this sensation is a sign of how healthy they are. If, however, they’re sitting watching a horror movie and their heart rate increases in exactly the same way, they are likely to feel fear rather than joy – it’s the same sensory input but they (subconsciously) make completely different decisions and therefore have two very different experiences.
Another example is feeling pain. As with any experience, pain is not an inevitable reaction; instead it is what we predict is likely to be the most helpful response at the time. You can think of pain as being an inbuilt alarm system that alerts us when we need to change our behaviour to protect ourselves. So, if I step off the kerb awkwardly and twist my ankle, the sensations that travel from my ankle to brain will be interpreted as a danger signal that is likely to produce an experience of pain – feeling pain, I’ll want to do something to protect my ankle. However, context is everything. So, if the same thing happens but I realise that I’m now in the path of an oncoming lorry, although the same signals will be sent from my ankle to my brain, I probably won’t feel any pain because that would be distracting and it’s more important that I just get out of danger as quickly as possible.
You might be wondering why any of this is relevant to the Alexander Technique? Let’s take a couple of examples which may help explain how learning the Alexander Technique can improve issues as diverse as posture and pain states:
A common reason for people beginning Alexander lessons is a wish to improve their posture. They may, for example, have a tendency to stand and sit with the upper back leaning backwards, or they may hold their head tilted to one side. One of the several reasons that it’s so hard to change these types of things on your own is that it will feel right as it is. Although our internal models such as our body schema are constantly being updated, if we continue to always do the same thing (habit), then our schema ‘gets a bit stuck’. This means that the individual will often be unaware that they are leaning back or holding their head to one side. What’s more, if they were to stand or sit with more alignment, it would feel that they were leaning forwards / holding their head to the other side (and, of course, in one sense they are right as they are noticing a relative difference to their usual). It’s thought that one way in which Alexander lessons can help improve posture is through the repeated (and pleasurable) experiences of standing, sitting, moving etc in ways that gently challenge the current body schema, such that the internal model gradually updates itself and becomes more reliable.
Another example can be found with the many people we work with who are living with persistent (chronic) pain. Earlier I described pain as a danger signal that is likely to make us change our behaviour in a way that is protective and helpful. However, when pain persists for an extended period of time, it does not necessarily remain a useful experience. As always, the brain is weighing up all the available information from current sensations and signals, together with context and previous experience, and then coming to a ‘decision’ whether to experience pain or not, and if yes, how much? We can think of this as our brain making its ‘best guess’ as to what response is likely to be the most helpful for us. The issue is that our brain’s best guess is not always reliable. It is well recognised now that sometimes the original tissue injury has completely healed but the person can continue to experience excruciating pain. In this situation, the many systems that are involved in pain (brain and nerve circuits, sense receptors, immune system etc) have adapted in ways that can produce a vicious circle of constant and often augmenting pain. In this scenario we need to embark on a journey of retraining the mind-body to make different decisions so that we can gradually unlearn the pain state. In an earlier post I describe the role that the Alexander Technique can play in recovery from chronic pain.
As a method for improving the reliability of our internal subconscious decisions on what and how to experience, I believe that the Alexander Technique is uniquely placed. This is because of its nature as being equally a ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach. ‘Top-down’ reflects how we learn to use our thinking – our intention, attention and awareness – to positively influence our responses, movements and general state of being. At the same time, we are learning and changing ‘bottom-up’ through experience guided by the gentle hands-on contact from the Alexander teacher. So, for example if I have an experience of movement or ‘posture’ in an Alexander lesson that is different to my habitual one, then my internal models (including body schema) are likely to be updated in a beneficial way and this will affect everything that I do and experience. Through subconsciously improving our internal models and consciously modifying our responses to life, we can gain stronger postural support, more fluid, easy movement and a calmer state of mind.