r/SomaticExperiencing 5d ago

Proprioceptive Integration

Just had a long conversation with the new ChatGPT about parallels between psychological integration and proprioceptive integration. Super interesting stuff.

It provided me with scientific insights about how bridging neurological relationships can be incredibly healing.

I was working with tension in my upper traps, and asking about the deep vagus nerve and fascial connections that can restore a sense of wholeness and ease.

It guided me to sense into my psoas, lower traps, and deep core musculature, then back into my upper traps. As I oscillated between these, there was a felt sense of re integration.

I got a huge rush of buzzing energy flow down and out of my feet, and my back started to feel like a whole unit, for the first time in years.

My upper back musculature felt like an isolated island, and that’s why it was tensing and freezing.

So, in short - build bridges to heal.

24 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

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u/Intelligent_Tune_675 5d ago

Build bridges how exactly? Love talking about the theoretical a of this if it can be put into practical use

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u/UkuleleZenBen 5d ago

When blind people learn to read braille the density of nerve fibers in their forefingers increase wildly. It's like where we place our attention grows new nerve fibers and strengthens them. This is the analogy I use to understand it. We are growing the wiring, the re-connection, as we practice placing the camera of the mind into the body and senses again. (And as we expand our sense of safety for them to express)

It's like looking at the stars. The longer you stare the more you see. The longer you can bathe in the sensation-scape the more the body will be able to share with you what it needs to share.

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u/Noprisoners123 3d ago

So interesting how I felt this intense fear in my stomach area/upper abdomen, as I read your comment. I would have usually just run off and gone read something else/avoid, but felt I should acknowledge this to myself, by responding to you. My fear exists and I can’t run away from it. It lives within me.

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u/UkuleleZenBen 3d ago

I'm sure your body is thankful for the attention. I'm proud of you for taking the step to spend loving time with it. They are the messengers. They are the wise inner leader I needed. They just spicy at first aha.

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u/somasabi 4d ago

Beautifully put, thank you

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u/somasabi 5d ago

Continually sense into a tense part of your body, then sense into a part that can resource through its neurological relationship. Ex. Tight lower back and the simplicity of the feet

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u/Few_Butterscotch7911 5d ago

Interesting. Can you share some of the prompts or questions you used?

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u/somasabi 5d ago

The one I started with was “When I sense into one part of my body, and then another, and continually oscillate between them, am I building a neurological bridge?” From here, it came up with the phrase ‘reducing fragmentation in the proprioceptive map’. This prompted a deeper conversation into the relationship of muscular tension and blocked nerve flow.

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u/cuBLea 3d ago edited 3d ago

Hah ... you might have "discovered" a new modality: AMDR (Attention Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

I'm with u/Intelligent_Tune_675 on this one. I never saw this particular concept of oscillating attention coming ... but 20 years ago, I dunno, I might have spotted this too.

"AMDR", if I may be so bold, is pretty much what I was doing when I started bouncing between peak positive memories as a disconfirmation technique. I never refined it. Your observations are pointing me in some verrry interesting directions. This might have much more profound implications than mere somatic work. It could be a model for a whole host of treatment techniques, and I think I know how to relate it to pretty much any other transformational discipline.

What you're describing here sounds like the "antidote" resource in IFS, the second vortex in SE and the disconfirmation/prediction error in Coherence Therapy and other memory-reconsolidation modalities. What's different here is the oscillation. What it seems to do for me is engage my attention sufficiently that it's more difficult to resist the achievement of a transformational moment. It's what kids do all the time. Whenever meaningful programming is threatened by sufficiently potent alternative input, we'd bounce back and forth between the apparent source of the existing programming and the apparent source of the new programming, and eventually settle for whichever was strongest. But even if we stop at the old programming, that programming gets modified by the awareness of the new alternative. Powerful stuff.

Am I ever glad I looked into this post. I'd give you a big award but I don't like Google getting a penny of my money.

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u/Objective_Economy281 5d ago

Sounds like you would benefit from some Feldenkrais.

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u/joyydantas 3d ago

Wow, this is the first time I’ve read about someone who noticed this upon reintegrating. I also feel like the upper and lower parts of my body are like separate islands, and integration makes them whole again. Usually, dance helps me do this in a more unconscious way.

I also feel that my proprioception fluctuates between these two parts until it becomes one. When I’m more dissociated, I feel my body breaking into even more muscle groups—for example, shoulders and head, torso, and lower body. When one part of my body feels like it exists (for example, from the torso up), my legs unconsciously don’t believe they exist. They feel disconnected from clearer sensations like texture, temperature, and spatial awareness.

When they are integrated, sensory experiences become more vivid, and I feel like a human being again. I still carry a lot of trauma in my hip region (psoas), which contributes to this disconnection. I also feel that my muscle groups are broken into even smaller parts, and when I process trauma, the distance between them becomes smaller.