Natural mental health (part three)

The Group Experience

We are a social species, our bodies only move relative to others, every thought and feeling has a social cue in the present moment. Emotions act like a tag, as a start and a stop to every thought, at the connection to every other thought. It happens because all sense data passes through the remaining reptilian, then mammalian structures of our ever evolving social brain before reaching the uniquely large human part, the neocortex. Our extra-large cognitive processing capacity grew as a response to the increasing size of human groups.

Natural human groups have a maximum size of around one hundred and fifty, made up of our closest genetic relatives, but with an increasing tendency to break into two from about one hundred. The size of all primate groups is directly related to brain capacity. Whilst the human brain may be capable of recognising thousands of faces, we are limited in the number of people we can feel an emotionally attachment for. We must fear strangers, for our lives depend on the group. In the past our human herd was our only social network and the group dynamics within it our principle concern, and over the better part of two hundred thousand years a collective brain evolved. Grooming - touch - forms the bonds in childhood and maturity. Leadership goes to whoever is the strongest in a particular space at a particular time, the best able automatically volunteer. With such a legacy, who's on your team? You have, in the modern world of constant strangers, perhaps three seconds to decide or feel - we need our instincts. Would you, ‘take point’ for him? Would you want him taking point for you? When you lock-on to the strongest person in a particular environment or situation you know your degree of freedom.

2016 (photo by Nick Hewling)

One should never empathise with the unhealthy. In the context of mental health that often means refusing the anxiety and fear of others. Disgust is the natural emotional response to any danger to health, we might ‘catch’ something physically (infection, disease) or mentally we may learn (copy, imitate) something disabling (fear). The instinctive emotional response of disgust causes us to turn away. Exclusion from our group has a purpose. Ultimately, we leave death behind by walking away, the natural human group moving constantly through a landscape allows nature to reclaim the fallen almost immediately, they do not cross the river - we do.

With the success of the large human group came greater longevity, the need for monogamy and the family unit. Penetrative sex became marriage, non-penetrative sexual activity the search for high compatibility, nature’s fertility test. Extreme genetic closeness repulsed, whilst towards the edge of the natural human group were the individuals with whom one had the greatest possible compatibility. In the modern world we are staggeringly incompetent in mate selection. In mate selection it is points of similarity which attract, it is the person of the opposite sex who appears to you to be the strongest in your group who wins. Our health, living healthily, depends on us recognising and learning from what is healthy in others; the shape of the body seen from behind in movement. Natural groups inherited the instincts of their ancestors to mate in positions where the male is behind the female. Prolonged eye contact is oppositional! The strongest social bonds follow when individuals look out upon the world from the same perspective. So men follow women and women following men. Yet, in natural behaviour it is men who display, whilst women choose. 

The essential pre-condition of all social contact, of all relationships is that those present, feel safe. What we look for in others is the combination of competence and warmth, only then for achievement or the ambition to achieve. Originally all knowledge was shared because everyone learnt the multiple skill sets required for survival. At some point a division of labour began to emerge, possibly building upon different amounts of time committed to child rearing by men and women. Equally, specialisation in tasks may have been driven by technological innovation based on different levels of aptitude or a conscious decision not to share expertise. In time a collective or social consciousness gave way to an emerging ‘self’, a perception of individuals. If orientated to nature, then what others provide will be what you need; therefore it is always your degree of comfort or discomfort with the social activity of food, shelter, rest, warmth, storytelling, dance, song, sex and healing that counts. Modern society, from agriculture onward, has become characterised by de-socialisation and dislocation, an increasing inability for natural group formation.

Healing is a group process too. The roots of shamanic practice have been traced back about forty thousand years so far. It is both the oldest spiritual, and the oldest medical practice known in human cultural evolution. In our migration out of Africa the remains of the trail appear first in central Asia, whether shamanism came out of Africa much earlier, or simply spread back there, is unknown. At heart the focus of practice is not the immediate distress of an individual but that of the community as a whole, its harmony and healing. The fundamental assumption is that everything in the known (visible) universe is alive with a soul or spirit and therefore capable of transformation, whether we feel we understand it or not. Our responsibility is therefore to remember (knowledge) and respect our connection to all the people and things we know.

A shaman is the person chosen by the group (band or village) to act as messenger between the visible, known or understood world, and the invisible, unknown, or as yet unknown - or possibly unknowable, world of the spirit! Therefore in any one moment the shaman may be acting as healer or doctor; using the most fully understood medicinal remedies at the same time as presenting him or herself, verbally and nonverbally through ritual, in such a way as to have the greatest positive psychological effect on all those present. Equally, insofar as he or she is dealing with the unknown or untouchable they may act as priests. It is at this point that the way a community traditionally chooses their shaman is of paramount importance. When a shaman is seeking an apprentice the one fundamental qualification is someone who can access knowledge which is beyond the normal reach of the group. For this reason the person chosen is someone who has survived an experience which would have been expected to kill, physically or mentally, any ‘ordinary’ member community.

When discussing shamanism the convention has evolved to use the languages of central Asia, reflecting the dominance of Russian anthropology in the early 20^th century. ‘Shaman’, comes from the Tungus tribe of Siberia, translating into English as; ‘one who sees in the dark’ or ‘into the darkness’. The shaman looks at the spiritual, the emotional and the physical aspects of what we have come to call an individual’s ‘illness’, yet their explanations and treatments give primacy to the social and environmental dimension. They seek to unblock as well as remove, to retrieve the lost or wounded part following a physical or mental trauma – so that the group may (literally in the case of hunter-gatherer or pastoral nomadic bands) find their balance again and move on together to some other place.

Modern accounts of shamanism still suffer from the assumption that ‘we’ must be practicing healing more effectively than our ancestors did. This is to misunderstand evolution by natural selection, biological or cultural - there is nothing necessarily ‘progressive’ about it. As a consequence the practical medicinal resources and knowledge available to our ancient ancestors tends to get down played, with many taking it for granted that the psychological and spiritual components were all they had. Unfortunately the bias of modern medicine has often been uncritically accepted by many alternative therapists – they too assume that it is only their ability at spiritual connectedness which counts, or needs to count, in any healing process. Archaeologists continue to be surprised by the discovery of bones which healed many years before death; psychiatrists remain blind to the changes in mood, emotion and pain brought about by the rapid nonverbal direct touch interventions of hypnotists.

The shaman is seeking to heal the soul, the source of the energy or power which is lost with illness or distress. They journey to the realms of the spirit in order to be guided by ancestral expertise. It is the human spirit which suffers from fear, loss, grief, abuse or trauma; it takes flight to somewhere else to survive, but at the cost of isolation from others. To bring someone back into the community of others the shaman performs soul retrieval rituals, often localised to specific areas of the body to extract the harmful energy or force. Naturally enough there are also ancestral wounds living on through successive generations, again the shaman’s practice is holistic and doesn’t try to separate mind and body, or the cultural inheritance from the biological (the epigenetic perhaps?) The only question is; what works from the past and what should be let go? When death occurs, they seek to aid the living to accept the transition of the departed to the spirit realm. Beyond the community of ancestors in the spirit world there are also powerful animal allies with whom maintaining a strong connection is also a path to health - the wolves and predatory birds which once patrolled the constantly moving boundaries of our earthly territories.

The shaman creates the scared space for healing and transformation in the face of change by calling on the knowledge of the spirit world, where all possible future outcomes are known because all possible outcomes have occurred to our ancestors in the past. To connect to the spirit world the shaman purposefully alters their state of consciousness whilst creating enough trust and relaxation in the sufferer for them in turn to let go and move to an altered state. The most ancient techniques use focusing on the breath, leading to an awareness of the changing rhythm of the heart, over which is layer the simplest of drumming. The rituals undertaken by shaman from across the world have been found to include the fundamental aspects of meditation, of massage and of yoga. When the recipient emerges from one altered state to another, what change has occurred is visible to all in their behaviour and body language.

But the shaman is only a facilitator; much restorative practice may be built into the daily activities of the group. Focused and systematic massage increases awareness of the body, its organs, muscles, systems and structures for everyone. Remote stimulation (by someone other) helps in the identification of physical and emotional pain. It feels like a natural equilibrium is being restored. Sensitive and sensitizing, good massage treatment makes you feel safe. It mimics the lost, embodied skills of social grooming. Many of our routine physical movements are unconsciously directed, but have clearly been learnt; therapeutic touch is the fast way to break old patterns and start installing new ones.

Adults are more ‘tense’ than children and have a diminished sense of fun. Just as our eyes are dependent on our hands to confirm reality, they too can be relied upon therapeutically. But massage is not immediately acceptable to everyone in the modern world, if you were not handled agreeably as a child you are unlikely to trust being handled as an adult. But, the body can often massage itself; core muscles compress and release the digestive organs with each deep breath, the slightest movement of limb muscles relieves pressure on nearby veins which maintain circulation, the arms when free to swing, relax back muscles. When tired or unwell, natural body movement becomes depressed, but then the natural massaging of the legs is inhibited by sitting too. Gravity slows circulation at the extremities. There are benefits in both the giving and receiving of massage, and always an immediate emotional pay-off in the rediscovery of the connection between touch and movement. The spinal column is the pivotal structure of all movement, yet we have come to think of the buttocks as a seat rather than the reason we can stand upright for prolonged periods. Crossing the legs undermines the spine and is often accompanied by the forward projection of the head. Muscles are a record of our feelings, yet their tension and release ought to ease stressful situations.

Much of this essay might be described as ‘naturopathy' a harmonious philosophy of life which does not separate mind and body or the individual from their social and physical environment, placing wellbeing within a universal order. A view that nature cannot be 'bettered' and that wisdom which has survived the longest is the most reliable. It invites us to discover how nature finds equilibrium (or homeostasis) in the body; producing vitality, creativity, regeneration and spiritual awareness. If massage can be said to have a practical objective it might be stated as achieving a confident composure without fearfulness. With that, wider ambitions are possible such as the 'rewilding' of an over-civilised society lacking in natural stimulation and strong connections with others. The parts of the body with the greatest numbers of nerve endings are the hands, feet, face and genitals. The more comprehensively these areas are massaged the more connected the recipient feels towards the giver of the massage and the world around them. Grooming is belonging. An Indian head massage; running fingers through the hair and massaging the scalp to relax the mind, boosts the awareness of all the senses. When done well it includes many ‘pressure’ or ‘acupuncture’ points - argument over what connects to what, matters little if all possibilities are covered! Similarly, to judge reflexology on whether a particular area of the foot, the hands, or ears connects directly to particular organs is a distraction, thoroughness is all.

The philosophy known as Tantra emerged as a counter to the asceticism found in traditional Hinduism, it sees sexuality as one route to enlightenment, along with other everyday earthly tasks such as eating, dancing and creative expression. Each commonplace activity is seen as a sacred act in and of itself. Tantra (meaning to manifest, expand, show, weave), maintains that sexual behaviour can expand consciousness; weaving together the male (embodiment of Shiva) and the female (embodiment of Shakti) into a harmonious whole. With the right partner, you revere them as the embodiment of either side of the deity. Sexual energy can create health and be a means to transformation. Sexual experience is a dance, but with no beginning or end, and no goal beyond the present moment; a union between a couple which is meditative, expressive and intimate. Extending arousal with many peaks of ecstasy (which may or may not include orgasm) within a single encounter is the focus, rather than sexual intercourse. Giving pleasure takes precedent. In the first instant it requires making time for each other, creating sacred spaces with an inviting atmosphere. You create ritual to develop intimacy around bathing, massaging, and feeding the other person. You pay attention to the breath of the other; pacing them, maintaining eye contact. Tantra seeks not to judge, but by maximising the simple pleasures of the day-to-day it achieves, counterintuitively, an unstructured and timeless experience. The Tantra approach may well focus on the most mundane but that includes the most fundamental. Of course the most basic of energy must emanate from the base of the spine – the most crucial functions of ‘pissing, shitting and fucking’ should, along with all else, be regulated and awakened by the breath and our core muscles through yoga, meditation and massage.

Such processes are both active and passive because they are social. They are active in the sense of being a systematic exercise of the techniques of meditation with the guidance of someone who has already had the experience; passive because ultimately it is a path that allows an individual to surrender to nature, to let go of impediments to awakening. A pathway which gives greater access to the unconscious by setting aside the ‘self’, and so allowing for selfless service within the family, the group and hence a true belonging. There is something we can call a natural mind, but it is part of a collective of brains in natural human groups.

Acknowledgments

Armstrong, K (2000) The Buddha. Blackmore, S (1999) The Meme Machine. Blackmore, S (2011) Zen and the Art of Consciousness. Ekman, P (2007) Emotions Revealed. Fitzgerald, M & Fitzgerald, J (2006) Indian Spirit. Harrison (1994) Teach Yourself Meditation. Mitchell, S (1992) Massage. Navarro, J (2008) What Every Body Is Saying. Finally, I owe much to the support and motivation provided by Leah Bracknell in her occasional blog posts and two DVDs, Yoga and You (2003) and Yoga For Life (2011).

Natural mental health (part one)

Introduction

My preferred way to meditate is to walk, but then walking is the most common and natural activity of the human species, it is what we evolved to do.

The basic elements occur naturally too, one following from another. First by focusing on the breath, it dictates an open upright posture, and balance comes from knowing that the centre of the body resides in the diaphragm along with the breath. In motion the focus shifts when the eyes are allowed to rise naturally to an open horizon; not a point of constant attention, but the place they come back to again and again as you let-go of distracting emotions and thoughts - from a past which is gone (behind you), and a future that is unknowable (beyond the horizon). With the eyes to the horizon and with good posture, then the feet will start to follow the contours of the ground and as if by magic, a ‘bodyscan’ occurs all on its own, as the right muscles are stretched, and then relaxed, along with stressful feelings and thoughts. A ‘mantra’ can be found in the pace and rhythm of the stride, but it must be flexible enough to change in an instance, for walking consistently and repetitively will soon narrow the horizon and an open future.

A connectedness to the world around us, of others and things, should be our moment to moment pre-occupation. We cannot see others as they are, if we are preoccupied with ourselves. The origins of spirituality or religious experience may lie with making others, and or other things, rather than one’s ‘self’ the central focus of our lives, allowing for transcendent experiences – a going beyond our usually limited perception of others. Equally, in the past there must have been a time when we were all very effective meditators. In some sense it must be a natural state, for it is hard to imagine our hunter-gatherer ancestors being able to survive without such skills. Think of hunting; of long hours on one’s feet, of the constant gentle movements needed to pick up a trail, to track and stalk, feel movement in the air, the physical coordination, the ability to navigate, feel the sudden stress of real danger, but be able to let go when it passes, the need for so much stillness, and the quick flowing response. And afterwards, to squat for a while under a tree, within the only real temple there is - not enclosed by the buttressing of branches but open to the vaulted sky beyond. And later still, the making of fire, the focus of community and our collective narrative.

8,34  20.7.2016 (photo by Nick Hewling)

The brain and body are so intimately connected it makes little sense to separate them when conceptualising mental wellbeing. Indeed the process of mental mapping which creates enduring neural pathways in the brain, and imposes habits of behaviour, evolved from the sense data coming from all our five senses as we move and grow in a landscape. The appropriate ‘treatment’ for mental distress may well be a physical one. When in the presence of someone who is ‘psychotic’, how often do we understand the content of their words? Better to pay attention to the body; the tone of voice, facial expressions of emotion, gestures and body movement. What would a physiotherapist see observing a client in their own territory away from the clinic or hospital? Suppose on encountering someone for the first time you ignore their apparent mental problems, offer just physical relaxation techniques, enforce a regular but limited sleep pattern, strictly control their diet and everything else they put in their bodies, and wait. Introduce mindfulness techniques for better anxiety and stress management - for greater mental awareness. After a week or so you may well be left with someone with enduring communication problems, a blocked ability to empathise and a limited ‘theory of mind’, but visible, through their nonverbal behaviour. Reintroduce one of the most powerful communication tools of all, touch. Allow the mentally distressed to learn, or more often relearn to be intimate with others. And you teach them to play again, to gain ‘balance’ (physical coordination) and the ability to ‘navigate’ (in space and time) in that social landscape of others. But all this would of course require staff willing and able to model and demonstrate natural and desired forms of behaviour.

A cold but awake body is physically and mentally stressed, warmth is relaxation - too hot and you are anxious. The mind and body are always on a positive feedback loop! Health in body and mind are the same thing. The source of health lies in natural environments – where only the unhealthy or threatening is ugly. We evolved to be outside and on our feet all day, with our eyes coming to rest on the horizon, catching the sun. Depression is entombing oneself all day, with a slumped body posture and nothing but artificial light, consuming more calories than you use up. It is about having a fixed territory, being stuck in one place and one time, and defending it in both a mental and physical sense. Mental wellbeing is about being happy with movement, change and uncertainty. It is not a sign of progress that the modern world is able to offer mental healthcare, rather it has become necessary since we started transforming our natural habits and ways of living. Anxiety and the heightened awareness that goes with it, is the normal response to perceived danger - the natural reaction is to freeze (the predator notices first the moving object), take flight or in extreme situations, fight. In the absence of real danger, anxiety should rapidly fall away. It is normal to fear the unknown, ‘outsiders’ or ‘strangers’. Anxiety is part way on the continuum from happiness or joy (loss of self-consciousness) to intense fear. A misplaced fear of others in the modern world, or the inability to attribute fear to the right people (or human artefacts) is what makes others appear as permanent strangers, outsiders or simply mad.

Most communication is nonverbal and unconscious, but with training can be consciously observed and a conscious nonverbal response given. But the meaning of any communication is the message received. You can only be conscious of a tiny fraction of what your brain is doing in any one moment, including thoughts and emotions. There are severe limits to what any one individual can objectify. In a sense you can only ‘know’ your own character by what you put into your body, and by the kind of people you spend your time with! The best diet for physical and mental health is probably still a pre-agricultural one, certainly the absence of refined sugars, cultivated and grounded grains, dairy products and domesticated animal meat. An inability to navigate with sight, sound, touch, smell and taste, is a fundamental element of what some call psychosis. A lack of balance, from not being able to rest the eyes on the horizon and feel the natural contours below one’s feet due to the modern built environment, shows in the long term mental as well as physical ‘crippling’ of the body.

History Seen Through the Wrong End of the Telescope

We are a social species and everyone’s greatest natural urge is to belong.

The natural mind has a nonverbal purpose in life, it notices signals, may or may not accept them as cues to action or as indicators of how others intend to act - though not necessarily how they are thinking; it allows us to decide whether others are comfortable, being honest with themselves or us. Verbal pronouncements are often just an explanation that satisfies the speaker and not us - they occur after the fact, and are not a cue to action.

Happiness or joy, is our baseline or default emotional state, the point to which we return when experiencing comfort and any stressors have been dealt with. Not being focused on joy, not constantly letting go in order to returning to it, is the measure of how far we are from nature. It is the lack of self-consciousness first experienced in childhood play. Nonetheless, joy still has to be found or remade every day.

Once upon a time our biological ‘social brain’ had an equivalence in culture, a ‘collective mind’ of shared and sharable information, the distance between the two now is one measure of how far we are from nature. Much of what we call nurture in the modern world, is a partially successful attempt at learning to suppress natural instincts. The most successful in society (the most mentally and physically healthy) are those who manage to resist or let go of such learning.

If we could learn mentally healthy behaviour without ever understanding its meaning, or indeed being conscious of learning it – would it matter? For there really is only one mental health problem – chronic stress (physical as well as mental) caused by our learnt inability to behave naturally around others, leading to cognitive and emotional isolation. The entire spectrum of phenomena observed and listed by psychiatry under its numerous categories can be seen as an expression of this basic truth.

A social model of mental health however needs to be set within and be consistent with a broader model of socio-cultural evolution. The rules of Darwinian evolution by natural selection hold - individual behaviour (action) is the subject (not personal meanings or explanation) and we should always look first at adaptation in specific environments (social situations). Situations change rapidly, within them there is always individual variation and selection from minute to minute, where a ‘personality’ only persists in so far as an individual acts today to try and reproduce their world as it was yesterday - a collection of routines, habits and addictions (skills learnt through repeated practice) which will be daily frustrated to the extent that they fail to be flexible in the face of change. The winners (those who forever return to the human default emotion - happiness) are those who can learn new (better) habits and allow existing ones to whither through lack of use. Such learning is socially neuroscientific insofar as an individual’s mental maps (made up of established, reinforced and discrete neural pathways) can add new connections imitated from other brains, and let go of existing habits, slowly allowing them to become dormant. Change usually comes uninvited, but we are pattern making machines. However, the healthy (successful) are those who are most willing to observe and adopt new habits (of thinking and emotional response through action) in new situations. The level of an ‘outcome’ for anyone in mental distress is directly proportional to their ability to undertake new learning.