Metastability and the Metacrisis: An Interoceptive Path To Consilient Awareness
The Deep Core Body Map
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We will be using the deep core body map, just a handful of bones, as a simple, natural and intuitive guide to accessing the bodywide myofascial synergy that constitutes our axial line and postural core.
This is our deep inner interoceptive sensory motor system and because it emerges to the surface at either end of the spine and in the feet we can access it directly and intuitively there. These are the sensory stations of the deep core and at the center of each one is a prominent bony servomechanism that functions as a coordinative center for our awareness: a handful of bones.
The deep core myofascial synergy is our interoceptive sensory motor system. It is a great source of somatic self-awareness. There are only a handful of bones, prominent bony servomechanisms, that we need to pay attention to in order to build conscious awareness of this self directing, self balancing and self-aware part of our body.
The bones we will focus in the workshop are the center of the major junctures of the body. By simply bringing awareness to them we will build presence, help to balance our structure, and reverse the patterns of the most common forms of chronic joint pain.
We will unpack a very simple body-map experientially through gentle movement and touch. You will learn simple activities you can do easily anytime. These major junctures on the axial line are parts of you that you can relate to at any time and in any place. Awareness of them will help you to remain grounded, centered, balanced, and present in your body on the earth. Because this is our postural core and interoceptive sensory motor system, activation of this structure helps us to adapt both somatically and mechanically to the stresses of modern life. You will experience a profound sense of power-with rather than power-over your own body.
This is a very practical workshop and you will learn simple strategies to repair and heal or to preserve and strengthen your postural balance.
But this is also the muscle synergy that forms the basis of a higher order of bodywide metastability and this is reflected in a cognitive shift in the brain. Metastability is both structural stability and a perceptual or cognitive phase shift.
“Metastability has been hailed as a new principle of organization in complex living systems, including the brain, reconciling apparent contraries such as individual and collective, part and whole, competition and cooperation, integration and segregation, and so forth” (Kelso 2009).
Research has shown that metastability in the myofascial synergies of the body affects the patterns of oscillations in the brain (Aguilera et al 2013, Tognoli and Kelso 2014). We hypothesize with good reason this kind of deep, bodily, pre-verbal and whole-system awareness will generate or gradually induce a Consilient perceptual faculty in the right hemisphere of the brain: In other words as we become aware of the whole-body system of systems that is our highly sensitive and profoundly innervated deep core, a sort of pattern recognition engine for awareness of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts emerges in the right hemisphere of the brain.
It is this perceptual shift that we need in order to deal with the metacrisis.
Please join us for a friendly and healing exploration of our own selves at our next Prosocial Embodiment Circle.
Wear loose clothing and be prepared for gentle movement both standing and on the floor or similar open surface.
Monday September 30 3-4:30pm PDT (GMT-8)
https://calendar.app.google/wmoNAj7bDx2wqFbU9
Comments to: jimfreda@gmail.com
References:
Aguilera M, Bedia MG, Santos BA, Barandiaran XE. The situated HKB model: how sensorimotor spatial coupling can alter oscillatory brain dynamics. Front Comput Neurosci. 2013 Aug 23;7:117. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2013.00117. PMID: 23986692; PMCID: PMC3750630.
Kelso, J.A.S. (2009). Coordination Dynamics. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_101
Tognoli E, Kelso JA. The metastable brain. Neuron. 2014 Jan 8;81(1):35-48. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.12.022. PMID: 24411730; PMCID: PMC3997258.
Three Bones Theory 
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