Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

Attention to feelings as opposed to attention to thoughts leads to a decline in rumination and depressed moods

threatening events, especially if they are chronic, can fundamentally alter our embodied self-awareness.

The most highly creative form of normal absorption has been called flow. Flow occurs when one’s skills perfectly match the challenge of a task, when there is a sense of pleasure or “high,” when attention is totally focused on one’s activity, a loss of self-consciousness (but not necessarily self-awareness), and an expansion of the felt sense of tim

“The True Self comes from the aliveness of the body tissues and the working of body-functions, including the heart’s action and breathing” (1960, p. 148). The False Self is our conceptual self-awareness in the condition that it becomes divorced from the regulating reassurance of embodied self-awareness. It is the story we tell about ourselves that

Neural learning is reflected in physiological changes in the nerve cells and their connections. Practice leads to the growth of an increasing number of interconnecting fibers that can synapse between cells. The more synapses between adjoining cells, the more likely there will be a direct communication between them, and the stronger the neural netwo

is important in the short run because it helps us rise to challenges and mobilize our resources. If we can return to a more relaxed state soon after, allowing our parasympathetic nervous system to slow down our hearts and cool our bodies, normal recovery and restoration of our metabolic energetic resources will result in an ability to think clearly

Like somatization, which is a kind of ruminative focus on negative body feelings, rumination affects the immune, cardiovascular, and neuroendocrine systems in a way that maintains illness: depressed thoughts and negative self-evaluations lead to depressed moods and vice versa in a self-sustaining cycle

Suppression, in general, occurs when we feel the need to protect ourselves by not exposing our feelings and urges to others. Suppression, then is a response to some kind of perceived threat to our ability to be in the subjective emotional present.

The ability to recognize and respond to threats to our safety is a fundamental design feature of our physiology. Threat is the felt sense of fear that a person or her or his property or significant others are under attack and in danger of physical or psychological harm. The threat may originate from outside of ourselves or from inside our bodies.

Shock trauma is the effect of a relatively brief and sudden event like an assault or a drug overdose. Developmental trauma results when exposure occurs over a longer period of time. Eventually, the tissues around the interoceptive receptor sites may become physically threatened, at which point the person begins to feel pain.