His fear was validated. I believe this is why he could quickly return to a balanced state of relaxation. Both he and the herd responded to something in the environment, physically and with a purpose. I think on this as an example of functional embodiment, even a sense of selfhood, within a healthy culture; I hold it up to the tragic picture of the individual struggling with PTSD and trauma in this culture, the one who endures isolation, with poor access to viscera, the body, or on-the-ground support. I think of my uncle, friends and neighbors coming home from Vietnam to shunning, abuse, accusations--no sense of home. Communal support wasn't there and is still not wholly there. Honestly, I think of the high social order of elephants and feel disappointment in our kind. I wonder why it's so difficult for research in this field to happen and then for solutions to become available to those who need them. We have too many obstacles.
On-the-ground support may be within the body itself. Why is it important to be present and to be embodied? In a any given person, or any given elephant, the brain is wired for one thing: mobility. The body is in service of a complex survival system engineered by the brain and limbic system to fight or flight and it can also quickly becalm. It’s difficult to relate embodiment to simple reactivity or response. Awareness, consciousness and presence seem important and defining to the essence of this state. Maybe the question is what is the self, as in what is consciousness? I could ask this question ad infinitum and only come up with question after question!
But if embodiment has a root, it may well be the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve that has the power to change unconscious body processes such as heart rate, blood pressure, the immune system, digestion and mood. Interestingly, it impacts voice and keeps the mouth open for breathing during distress. Also known as the “rest and digest nerve,” the vagus nerve wanders from brain then to ear, jaw, larynx, heart, lungs, belly, and pelvis. When stimulated, it improves the status of mood disorders like depression and has become a stabilizer for some kinds of seizures. Through deep, relaxed abdominal breathing, the vagus nerve can be activated to trigger the relaxation response in the body. That response can be consciously induced through yoga.
In trauma, that vagus nerve is signaling through the body to a hyperactive amygdala which continuously loops emotional memory, locking the suffering person in cycles of unbearable arousal states. “The vagus nerve instantly affects the state of viscera, the internal organs of the body, literally the guts,” Dr. Van Der Kolk says, "People take drugs to make it (pain) disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away. If these sensations last long enough, your whole brain starts fighting against emotions. And what happens in the long range is that traumatized people who continuously have a state of heartbreak and gut wrenching feelings learn to shut off the sensations in their bodies. And they go through life not feeling their physical presence.”
They disembody. “What should cause some fear, actually, is the idea of a selfless state," says Prof. Antonio Damasio, who suggests the self is a circuitous, speedy communication between amygdala, basal ganglia, somatic memory, and viscera--the lungs, gut and heart. He argues that to be embodied one must have a sense of self which is constantly influenced, changed, reinstated by the experiences of the organism but also has static properties in narrative memory, autobiography, past and future planning. ‘The self is not a homunculus or little man in a single point of the brain telling the body what to do but is a perceptually recreated neurobiological state.’ It’s a a continuous loop. ‘The (neurological self) is an endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (memory and planning) and constitutes a sizable part of the state of the self." Feeling as it relates to the neurological self is the experience of changes in the body state. For me, this is where yoga can have a pretty big impact. As feeling is noticed, then allowed, explored and transformed through movement, the sense of embodiment may return and, in theory, the sense of self. What yogis call the "I am" state. That "I am" state was affirmed in the young elephant whose call was answered through effective action by the adults.
In the moment of decision making and action, what the outer world sees, the self is revealed. The dynamics of a person arrive. Movement choices are made as expression of feeling or emotion or sometimes both. This is yoga as mirror. To know one’s self seems to mean, in its purest form, to know what is happening within in a given moment of time within the whole organism as it makes conscious choices for its well-being. Awareness may be embodiment within viscera, breath and vagus nerve, conscious recognition of sensory information, engagement with memory, disposition, executive abilities, preferences, the idea of self. When the body is moved by a decision made by the self, the body's call is answered, affirmed. If the family home of the person isn't answering the basic needs of love and validation, maybe we begin initiating home within--validating the self, noticing the call, answering the true, dear self as if its life depended on it.
