Embodiment, Consciousness, and the Prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) sits at the front most part of the frontal lobe, that’s just behind your forehead. This part of the brain is what we use to think and make decisions, to self reflect on thoughts and feelings, and planning ahead regulate our actions and emotions.

I am a somatic intelligence coach which means I work with the entire perceiving person. I help my clients, or pupils, to use their prefrontal cortex to notice and inhibit harmful somatic habits. This stopping and noticing enables an individual to encourage and direct a more natural and beneficial coordination in activity. If the soma is working easily, as it should, the stresses and troubles in life can be dealt with more efficiently. I am trained to notice constraining patterns in other people’s bodies by having developed a capacity to notice them in myself.

To the degree that we pay genuine attention to ourselves and our somatic habits, we are able to pay genuine attention to others.

What do I mean by genuine attention? I mean conscious attention, not habitual attention, which is essentially not really attention at all, just habit. Habits are useful in many ways—driving cars, morning routines, important checklists and date nights. But true genuine attention is magical. It is where Life happens. Being more finely attuned and conscious regarding our somatic, body, habits, enables us to be more conscious overall. It is after all through the body that we can be conscious of anything. It is important to note that the brain itself is an organ of the body, and the contents of the brain inextricably interconnected with the body.

If the body is the storehouse of our subconscious lives, two thing untangle when we consciously restore and sustain the body’s natural integration—our traumas and our talents. As the embodied experience of trauma eases, we begin again to experience nature’s pleasurable vitality, and similarly the talents that lie latent inside of us begin to express themselves.

Human functionality is a marvel—to be searched out and unravelled.

The crucial key necessary to open what can be physically experienced as a ‘locked-door’ to our full-potential is the conscious employment of our prefrontal cortex in relation to our bodies.

The natural tendencies and direction of the body exposes itself in many westerns and eastern practices. Biokineticists, yoga practitioners, physiotherapists, tai chi masters, opera singers, all have knowledge of a more natural and powerful organisation of the body. The breath must not be constrained, the joints must be free, the head mustn’t push back and down onto the spine. This is great knowledge. Yet, how can this abstract knowledge make its way into our bodily habits?

We need to consciously and intentionally direct our use pattern.

A ‘use pattern’ is the way that you use yourself. I will not elaborate on this here, it suffices to say that this pattern is constructed by many things; inheritance, subconscious imitation, repetitive sport and activity, environment etc. It is this pattern that we must intercept using our volitional brain, our higher-evolved pre frontal cortex, to restore a more fluid and strong coordination, a sharper consciousness.

Lions and apes are conscious too, but they are not reflective to the extent that humans are. The lion’s somatic organisation is subconsciously attuned to nature’s patterning (apart from the lion in the zoo and circus). But the human, due to the ‘unnatural’ activities of civilisation, like sitting at desks and working a production line have separated us from nature. This may have been great for ‘progress’, for science, but not so much for our physical functionality.

It may be no demise that we keep our sexual interactions private, or that we are able to control our hunger for late lunch, or that we have created cars for transport and partake in sedentary higher education. These are all okay. Alas, it is what they have done to our bodies that is the demise.

We are at the precipice (have been for quite some time and will continue to be), where we can lose our footing and body-less-ly plummet into the increasing experience of despair and degradation that accompanies a disembodied existence. Alternatively, and preferably, in my opinion, we have the possibility of restoring our footing and enjoying both pleasures—natural, vital embodiment AND our adventures of modernity, tech, and science.

The prefrontal cortex has gotten us so far and it must get us further still!

We must, again, employ it in the very necessary cause of restoring the body back to the living human being.

My education on the body is thanks to FM Alexander and the Alexander Technique. FM found that the path to restoring the organisation of the body is a narrow road, that stopping and noticing body habits is essential for any change to take place. Concomitantly, inhibiting these habits is essential.

Inhibiting the pulling back and down of the head onto the spine is now our task, consciously employing the prefrontal cortex is imperative. We need to intentionally, by using our brains, inhibit the collapse of the spine, the holding of the breath, the fixing of the eyes, the raising of the shoulders, the fixing of the hip joints, drawing our knees inwards, or dropping them outwards. This new responsibility will indicate in a conscious thinking person.

If we can come to a pause and notice AND inhibit our somatic habits using our PFC, we can begin to direct the head forward and up off the spine.

Embodiment is the wonderful sensation that animals experience unconditionally. I believe human consciousness and its servant, the prefrontal cortex, can restore and retain what has been lost. Looking at the youth and their physical cowering over devises highlights the urgency of this new education. The natural and vital experience of ease and comfort—pleasure—was once ours for free. Now we must intentionally steward it.

I believe, there is no need to sacrifice nature for progress, nor progress for nature, we can have both pleasure and modernity!

I say, in all endeavour, sustain a free neck! And an embodied head and brain on top of your spine, a full stature, free hips and a lengthening and widening back, and agile, embodied limbs. Direct the knees forward and away from the hips. Allow your shoulders to release and embody your arms all the way to your finger tips.

It is in this intelligent state and continuum that we will make sound decisions, unprovoked, humble and alive.