Your Body, Not Your Brain, Is Actually Running the Show
In just under 2 weeks, we’re embarking on our next live, communal online learning journey. We’ll wander in and through the terrain of Erotic Embodiment and the Triune Autonomic Nervous System (TANS) and we’ll study and experience the ways they are inextricably tied together, influencing our wellness and vibrancy.
The TANS is our primary internal navigation system, pulling the levers and influencing our behaviors at lightning speed, just beneath our conscious awareness. Although all human nervous systems are made of the same essential parts, our particular life experiences sculpt unique neural pathways that shape how we respond to situations and our environment. For example, about 15 years ago I got into a car accident about a mile from my house. To this day, every time I approach that intersection going the direction of the accident, my body braces with anticipation as if it’s happening right now.
It turns out that our bodies, not our brains, are actually running the show. Fight, flight, freeze are our nervous systems' brilliant survival mechanisms and in times of real danger, they can save our lives before our brain can even process the presence of a threat. But when our bodies carry unresolved trauma, we’re susceptible to being hijacked by sometimes-outdated and over-reactive warnings of danger ahead. If we don’t know our bodies’ tendencies and what we need to feel safe, curious, and flexible, our stress responses can become chronically out of proportion and our felt-sense of belonging is compromised.
The focus of this class is, in part, to help you build a framework for understanding yourself and others so that you can bring more awareness, compassion, and choice into your life. You’ll build a conscious relationship with your TANS through didactic and experiential learning in community and you’ll learn to befriend and trust your intimate internal experience while co-regulating with others. We hope you’ll leave better prepared to feel all your feelings, knowing when to slow down and when to speed up, and in more contact with your essential erotic nature.
Eros, as Alyssa defined it last week, is raw life force energy, pure potential driven to create more life. The erotic is the continued unfolding of life’s limitless creativity and our erotic embodiment is expressed in the innumerable ways Eros can move through us.
With this understanding, it’s easy to imagine how its raw, generative power can feel dangerous to a system that’s rigid, scared, and scanning for threat. If our goal is to heal and expand our deeply patterned and habitual erotic landscape, it’s important that we learn to tend to our erotic embodiment in our own way, with gentle attunement.
When we have a functional understanding of our neurobiology and the right tools in our pockets, we’re more capable of meeting ourselves right where we are, staying curious about what’s true, and what else might be true. Over time, we can safely replace outdated patterns and neural pathways with new ones that nourish our aliveness and vibrancy.