The spectrum of stillness

Since "trauma" has become a buzz word, pretty well every normal human experience has been pathologised one way or another. One specific instance of this is the startle-freeze spectrum of responses. It's surprisingly difficult to find positive examples of startle - as opposed to ones in which the person is confronted by a bunch of terrorists, or a deer is about to be turned into road kill by a large truck. I'd like to point out that the stillnesses of (so-called) startle are common, everyday experiences that have great importance - and that they (along with pretty well every other "trauma" response) have an important part to play in everyday life.

So if you walk down the street and think you recognise a friend you haven't seen for a couple of years, the first thing you will do - automatically, unthinkingly - is to go into a "startle" response. This involves the external senses "switching on", into a more actively alert state to gather more information. The neck (and whole body) lengthen as if looking over tall grass. The mind/interest/curiosity switches on but the mind also can be quite (apparently) empty of thoughts. The jaw slackens, freeing off pressure in the middle ear so as to better detect sounds and their direction. The same startle/pause happens when on a hot summers day you pass a shop, see a sign, and stop dead in your tracks "Hey! I didn't know they sold ice-cream here!" These reorienting pauses usually only occupy a fraction of a second, and they happen many times throughout a typical day.

So what is happening?

Every living organism one way or another is constantly attempting to use present and past experience to predict the future. The better we can predict the future, the less surprised we will be, and the better we will be able to survive in a dangerous environment. This function of trying to not be surprised by an ever-changing world that is inherently full of surprises - is such an important and central part of our whole organic makeup that if we are presented with a totally predictable world it starts to become boring and oppressive. It's not that we can never be surprised. It's more that our brain (and also whatever constitutes a meaning-interpretative mechanism in an amoeba floating in a pond or a plant root pushing its way through the ground) wishes to minimise these moments of surprise. But it also wishes to find them - because surprises can offer new positive survival opportunities. Surprise therefore places us in an ambivalence that can only resolve given its inherent context. If we expect danger and are processing mainly through our left cortex, then every surprise is a potential threat. So somebody already nervous will jump at the slightest unexpected noise. However, if we are feeling safe-enough, then surprise can be an almost ecstatic and exciting experience of a birthday present falling out of its wrapping paper - as we process it through the right hemisphere of the brain.

Whichever is the case - pre-expectation of something potentially good or pre-expectation of danger - something new and surprising has to be given meaning; and the interpretation of meaning is a very complex and time and energy-consuming activity. To grok the meaning of a surprise we take in as much information as possible (hence the various physical shifts described above), and then our whole organism (not just the brain) has to ingest and interpret that and come up with a suitable movement-response. Putting that into a very linear one-dimensional sequence, the whole process goes ... (1) surprise! (2) stillness (3) take in more information (4) movement-response. Where the movement-response in the case of danger may also be more stillness - so we are not seen. Or on a walk you see an unusual flower, and just pause - long enough to identify it or to decide to continue walking or to go closer to the flower to get a better look.

Of course these pauses are usually quite small because the meanings they identify are relatively small - in that they do not demand too much internal reorganisation. So bigger meanings requiring more internal reorganisation inevitably require an inherently longer pause. Everyone is familiar with that "double-take". And pauses can be longer still. Once the reorganisational pause lasts more than a second or two it can start to feel very uncomfortable, because an awareness that we do not know can start to filter through into consciousness. Unknowing is an absolutely critical phase of reorganisation, and is a vital part of play, in which children come across new situations and new experiences. Unknowing in play feels exciting, whereas unknowing in danger feels - dangerous. In a general sense, the degree of discomfort with unknowing is also one measure of how much our body mind is calibrated to the world being dangerous rather than safe-enough.

Life-changing internal reorganisations can create vast and seemingly infinite stillnesses, suffused with unknowing, and these can only be withstood if there is sufficient curiosity and sufficient sense of safety - both of which require the right brain to be more dominant than the left. In Craniosacral and other kinds of therapy these unknowings are common experiences for both the patient and practitioner, as the whole organic body-mind discovers a new possibility for its internal organisation, and then works out how to achieve that. Interestingly unknowings are also well documented experiences in many kinds of spiritual practice - such as the cloud of unknowing described by Teresa of Avila. The fact is that - if something enters our awareness that we do not have the faculty to conceive of, or vocabulary to describe, or experience with which to compare it to, or imagination to comprehend it - the only thing that can be left is an unknowing, which lasts until our whole being reorganises itself around this new phenomenon and works out a suitable response. Truly new discoveries in science are necessarily preceded by a state of unknowing - because otherwise they would not be knew/new - they would be already known.

So when you next find yourself pausing, maybe you could have a little interest in what this small unknowing feels like...? This exploration of the still, "startled" state of a small unknowing will make it far easier to navigate the far more important and profoundly large unknowings that can bring unimaginable gifts. Unimaginable - because we do not yet know them.