Transcript

Brian
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Ani, how are you?

Ani
I’m good. How are you?

Brian
I’m doing well.

Ani
Great.

Brian
Ready to dig in today for our topic?

Ani
Let’s do it.

Brian
All right.

Ani
What are we talking about?

Brian
We— oh, so this is an interesting topic and it’s a little bit of a, uh, kind of a remembrance or a throwback a few episodes ago, maybe several episodes ago at this point in time, we did an episode on how the polyvagal theory was kind of being debunked or under attack or those sorts of things. Do you remember that episode?

Ani
Yes, because Steve had asked us to talk about it. Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Shout out.

Brian
We actually got a lot of great comments inside of our community on that podcast.

Ani
People love the polyvagal theory.

Brian
Which is really cool. Well, we’re kind of in the same ballpark because I had an article land in my inbox. I kind of do searches and get articles that come in. And it was, it was actually attacking The Body Keeps the Score.

Ani
I saw this on Instagram.

Brian
Did you see this one there too?

Ani
Yeah, I did. You know, it gets all kinds of press. So people like love those topics. So like, it’s good searchability for Body Keeps the Score and polyvagal theory. So a lot of people who are trying to capture folks’ attention. I didn’t look at it at all because it, to me, it just looked like people trying to like get people’s attention.

Brian
Well, I did.

Ani
I’m sure you did. I can’t wait. See, I don’t have to look into anything. I just have to, uh, wait and you will do it for me.

Brian
I will do it for you. I was like, what is going on here? I wanted to know what’s going on with The Body Keeps the Score. So there was an article that came into my inbox.

Ani
Like a real article. Was it a real article?

Brian
A real article.

Ani
Yeah. I’m saying that because my daughter pointed out to me recently that I say article and she’s like, did you see that on Instagram, mom? And I’m like, yeah. And she’s like, you just said article. Like it was a real article.

Brian
Yeah. So this was a, this is a published article. Okay. Published article. It was published in the Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.

Ani
Oh, wow.

Brian
And I just want to say it’s, it’s an opinion article.

Ani
Oh, okay.

Brian
It’s not a peer-reviewed study. It’s an opinion article, and the title of it is “The Body Does Not Keep the Score.” Okay. Okay. “Trauma, Predictive Coding, and the Restoration of Metastability.” Metastability?

Ani
What’s that?

Brian
Well, we’ll dig into that. We’ll dig into that. But so that’s the title. So what caught my eye is that the body does not keep the score. And so, you know, honestly, I’m an embodiment professional, somatic coach, those kinds of things. So I got my, my hackles up a little bit around it. I’m like, you get a little protective around things that you care about. At least I do.

Ani
I don’t know, this doesn’t bother me. No, no. I mean, especially because I don’t know, I mean, the— I might mess up your whole thing right now, so I’m just gonna let you keep going.

Brian
Okay, well, you can let me know if what you’re thinking actually gets fleshed out as the way we’re talking about it, okay?

Ani
Yeah, you’re welcome, by the way, because I have done that before.

Brian
Exactly. Yeah, you’ve thrown grenades into things before, so, so thanks for holding it sometimes, but you’re welcome. Yeah, so hold that one for a minute. Okay, so, um, here’s the thing. So, uh, this idea of metastability and predictive coding and trauma, um, it actually was a really good article. I do want to say that right off the bat. And anybody who is looking to learn something about, uh, predictive coding and trauma, like, definitely read the article.

Ani
Who wrote it, Brian?

Brian
Oh, it’s written by, uh, Kotler, Menino, Fox, and Friston. So they are neuroscience professionals. So they’re researchers and scientists that wrote the article. But again, it’s an opinion article. And the model that they’re proposing has not been tested either. So again, this is really a theoretical article, an opinion based on the work of Bessel van der Kolk and “The Body Keeps the Score.” So the idea of metastability, so this is what metastability is. Metastability is the brain’s ability to fluidly switch among semi-stable network states. Semi-stable network states. So it’s switching back and forth between neurological networks. Okay. And right, so when it’s metastability, in other words, there’s no— your brain is never like stable. Your brain is always flipping back and forth between activity in different networks.

Ani
Right.

Brian
So metastability is when all of that activity is stable.

Ani
Oh, that makes a lot of sense, actually.

Brian
Yeah, because the, the brain activity is never static, right? So, so balance in the nervous system is never— homeostasis is not static. Homeostasis is a dynamic representation of being in balance, but it’s because, like, things are out of balance enough that they’re balanced, kind of thing. Right. So metastability is that kind of idea. So the opinion paper lays out the case for brain function acting primarily as a predictive organ. And there’s actually research to support that for sure. We’ve talked about that a lot on the podcast, actually, how the brain primarily predicts what’s going to happen next based on earlier training and conditioning. Right. Because for the brain to be responding to everything all the time, that requires a lot of energy to do that. And the body is primarily an energy conservation um, uh, mechanism or ecosystem, let’s say. And so the best way to conserve energy is to decide what’s going to happen next before it happens and then just approach it that way. And whatever happens, it sorts it really quickly into those buckets. And unless something falls way outside of the prediction, the brain won’t, um, change the body’s operating systems to adapt to it.

Brian
Again, unless it’s way outside of the predictive coding.

Ani
Right.

Brian
Right. So there is truth to that.

Ani
Oh yeah.

Brian
And here’s the point though. Van der Kolk talks about that in the book.

Ani
Sure.

Brian
He says that in the book. And if you read Body Keeps the Score, there are several chapters on the brain. So he’s not, um, he’s not avoiding the brain topic. He’s not saying the brain isn’t useful. He talks about the brain at length in the book. He talks about how trauma affects the brain. He talks about memory in the brain. He talks about, um, uh, actually talks about predictive kind of coding in the brain also. So he goes to great length to kind of talk about the book. So, um, the, the paper, the opinion paper, actually what I found was interesting, lays out basically the same processes that van der Kolk lays out in his book, okay, and how it relates to trauma and its effect to the brain. So they went through a lot of the paper actually validating—

Ani
yeah, what’s the point then? Well, so here’s the point.

Brian
This is what was it really interesting. The paper takes issue— it did this a couple of times— it takes specific issue with the term “keeps the score.” Oh. The body keeps the score. They’re like, that is not true. The body does not keep the score because they’re saying is that the trauma is not stored in the body. Right, but it’s predicted by the brain. Okay, now the paper also says this. The paper says this very clearly. It notes several times that trauma is not stored in quote-unquote non-innervated, non-innervated bodily tissue. Nowhere in the book does Bessel van der Kolk make that claim, that, that trauma is stored in non- innervated tissue. Because here are some examples of non-innervated tissue: cartilage, dental enamel, your cornea, your hair and your nails— epithelial tissue. So nowhere in the book does Bessel van der Kolk say, listen, trauma is stored in non-innervated body tissue.

Ani
Yeah, right. I, I just think this is hilarious in, in the fact that the folks who wrote this opinion article, which sounds like it was cool, um, probably have not written a best-selling book that is globally all over the place called The Body Does Not Keep the Score: Trauma Predictive Coding and Restorative Metastability. No one is buying that. People want to buy a book that’s called The Body Keeps the Score because it illustrates enough a concept that people can understand so that they will initiate a relationship with the material and, and do something with the material. But if it’s called something weird or unrelatable, then people won’t even like— so of course he’s got to call it something like that. And by the way, I would love to know, see if you can find this on Mr. Wizard, like, was that— did he come— did Bessel van der Kolk come up with that title, or the, the editors?

Brian
Oh, good point. I don’t know.

Ani
I would really like to know.

Brian
I don’t know.

Ani
That would be fascinating.

Brian
But what it reminds me of, like this bit of the paper, was the same thing that happened in the polyvagal theory paper, was that the, the rebuttal paper made assumptions about polyvagal theory that weren’t actually included in polyvagal theory, and then worked to disprove the theories that they were putting on polyvagal theory that weren’t actually a part of the theory. So in large part, what this paper is saying is when it says the body does not keep the score, it’s saying that trauma is not stored in non-innervated bodily tissue. Well, of course it’s not. Bessel van der Kolk never said it was. And so if they’re putting their paper on that, then they’re actually putting something into the book that’s actually not in the book. And so they’re disproving something that’s actually not even a part of the theory to begin with.

Ani
Right?

Brian
So when I read that, I was like, oh, okay. It makes sense. They’re kind of using that title in order to get attention to read their paper. Exactly. Which isn’t a bad paper.

Ani
Right.

Brian
But it’s also making ineffective or inaccurate assumptions about the work. Now, one of the things they did say in their paper, which I thought was really cool— I’m a big fan of Antonio Damasio, who wrote Descartes’ Error and several other books on interoceptive networks and those kinds of things. So I want to read a quote from the book that they actually— Wait, wait, wait. From the paper.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
From the paper, it says, “A more compelling thesis for how emotional maps are truly embodied comes from Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis. The central premise of somatic marker hypothesis is that while the body provides the territory for emotion, the maps,” example, “the storage and representation of emotional experience are constructed in the nervous system,” through distributed processing centers, including visceral, brainstem, and cortical networks. So I just thought it was interesting that they put this quote in the paper and it says including visceral. Isn’t visceral a part of the body?

Ani
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, all of— I mean, even the brain’s a part of the body, by the way, but yeah. Oh, that was, that was the grenade I was gonna throw.

Brian
That brain’s a part of the body.

Ani
I was right.

Brian
Yeah, of course it is. Yeah, brain’s a part of the body.

Ani
Yeah, but also like, that’s how it all gets stored, you know. So anyway, I was right. You told me to tell you, I’m telling you.

Brian
So you’re right, that’s good. Um, but I thought it was interesting that they put this in the paper and then they say the body does not keep the score, but they actually then attribute Damasio’s— that says the viscera does— is a part of the storage process.

Ani
The viscera is the body, right?

Brian
The viscera is—

Ani
there’s no stretch of the imagination on that one, right?

Brian
Yeah, this is in the— in here, it’s, it’s here. So I thought that was kind of interesting too.

Ani
Okay, um, say what viscera is for people.

Brian
Oh, so this is the gut, right? So it’s your gut, it’s, it’s your gut. It’s the stuff in your gut, your bowels, your, um, organs, your— that kind of things. And there’s a lot of innervation in those areas, right? So there’s a whole other brain down there, um, uh, that operates through your gut. You know, if you talk to people like gut health and microbiome and those kinds of things, there’s a lot of research around depression and microbiome and, um, the gut-brain. So there’s a lot of connections in there that are worthy of consideration. Yeah. And it’s definitely a part of your body, no argument there.

Ani
No arguments on that one.

Brian
So here’s another thing that the paper then leans heavily into— flow research, the research of flow.

Ani
Oh yeah.

Brian
Um, as the theory for refuting the body’s role in a storage model of trauma. However, flow states in large part require body movement, right? Right. Flow doesn’t— like, when you look at flow research, it’s always including body movement of some way, right? So a lot of the very early flow research was done in things like surfing and movement practices and those sorts of things.

Ani
So that doesn’t make—

Brian
how can you discount the body. I mean, how can you say flow is only about the brain and not about the body when you’re including the body? Which, as soon as you’re moving the body, you’re giving the brain information to work with. Even if the brain’s predicting what that information might be, you’re still feeding it information. So, and, and a lot of information is, uh, interoceptive. It’s also proprioceptive and exteroceptive information. You got a lot of sensory flow comes up into the brain. When you’re moving the body. So I just think there’s all these little things about the paper that, again, I thought were compelling, but at the same time, they were really undercutting themselves, at least their— the title for their thing. Actually, for me, it made— actually, they’re telling me the body does keep the score.

Ani
Right, it actually confirmed it more.

Brian
Right? So my thoughts— here were my thoughts after reading the paper. And we’re going to include the link to the paper in the show notes, so definitely check it out for yourself. Again, it’s a really good read. I love reading papers like this because they’re very educational. They talk about different brain networks and systems. So I just kind of keep bumping up my learning around the connectivity and parts of the brain. And because of the way they’re written, they’re written a little more friendly than like in a textbook. So it’s really, really good for learning. So I’d highly recommend it just from a learning perspective. So I really enjoy the paper for that. This paper, kind of like that polyvagal theory paper, makes unclaimed assumptions about what’s going on, then it tries to disprove those assumptions. So I think so, I wasn’t really bought into the idea that the body does not keep score anymore after doing this based on how they were proposing it, but for a couple other reasons for this too. I do want to say too though, the authors were very, what do I want to say, supportive actually of van der Kolk’s work and the value it’s brought to the world and those kinds of things.

Brian
And so the claim that they’re making is that they’re not positioned in this paper as a rebuttal to Body Keeps the Score. They’re actually bringing it as a proposed update to it.

Ani
Oh, gotcha.

Brian
That the book needs more update on the predictive modeling aspects of the brain to integrate some of that work together. So I think that that’s true and real kind of thing. But what I think the paper is really missing, because it didn’t talk about it at all, is another informational somatic storage system, which is the connective tissue.

Ani
Oh yeah.

Brian
It didn’t talk about connective tissue at all.

Ani
Oh, that’s really interesting.

Brian
Because we know connective tissue is both innervated and energetic. Of course, non-innervated tissue is not gonna store information because it’s not innervated. It’s not gonna store information other than its DNA. Like your DNA stores information, Anyway, any cell that has DNA is storing information not only based on your historical information, but all the information of as any human has ever experienced at any time in the past. We know that that’s true. And also, in some of that gray matter, the DNA, we’re also storing potentially— what’s it called? The records. The Akashic records. Akashic records, right? There’s also Akashic record storage in the DNA. There’s been work around that information, which is kind of cool as well. But I do digress. I do digress.

Ani
I think you just got yourself another—

Brian
here’s the thing, it does not even address the information and innervation, energetic, uh, construct and innervation of connective tissue.

Ani
I think you should write an opinion article to the opinion article and talk about that, because that’s in my—

Brian
when we talk about the Body Keeps the Score and we’re talking about informational, um, archiving. I believe the connective tissue is the missing link to that. And I believe that when we embrace the holistic nature of our being, right, rather, rather than trying to understand the complexity of our human experience through a reductionist brain-dominant lens, then our connective tissue will actually emerge as the key player In understanding the body’s role in belief, perceptions, and our personas.

Ani
Wow, that’s a tweetable, if tweetable Twitter even exists anymore. I don’t know. That’s my— that’s a good one. I think that’s a good one. I can’t believe they didn’t mention that. How do you not mention that? I mean, just for the fact that it’s literally wrapped around everything.

Brian
Yeah, it is.

Ani
It is everything about like— yeah, like, wow.

Brian
Yeah, that’s crazy. So that’s just another, another piece of that’s, that’s really important to consider. I, I just think it’s interesting how, um, we still are kind of caught up in this brain versus body dynamic. Exactly. You know, and it reminds me actually a little bit of a book that was called The Master and His Emissary. It was written several years ago. I don’t remember the author’s name, but it was— it talked about the hemilateralization of the brain, right brain versus left brain dominant, right? And it talks about how the right brain— and I’m going to simplify this way beyond what was talked about in the book— but how the right brain is kind of the, the creative spatial, high-level kind of organizational part of the brain, and the left part of the brain is the organizing, planning, executive, executing kind of part of the brain sort of thing. And the way he was talking about it is the Master and His Emissary was basically a symbolic story of how the brain operates, that the, the master would send the emissary out into the countryside to execute his plans for the countryside, right? To build this school, to do that, to do that.

Brian
And after a while, the emissary is like, I’m doing all the work, I don’t even need the master anymore. And basically then separates from the master. But the problem is, is that the, the left side of the brain, the emissary, had no really creative thinking potential. He would just keep— he would be doing things, but he just keep doing, doing, doing. And what they showed in that book is that the The right side of the brain recognizes that it’s the right side of the brain, but also recognizes that it needs the left side. I love that part where the left side of the brain does not believe it needs the right side of the brain.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And so that’s just actually how brain dominance kind of works.

Ani
Oh my God.

Brian
And I think when we are focused on, uh, this brain versus body symbol— we’re, uh, symbology— we’re doing the same thing.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
We’re like, the, the body recognizes it needs the brain, but brain is like, I don’t need the body. Like, I am all-powerful, I’m making all the decisions. And so I think in research, we can kind of set up this dynamic of brain dominance is, you know, doesn’t need the body. And we lose that aspect of our, of our holistic representation of ourselves. We’re still in this body-mind split.

Ani
I hear a thesis coming out of this for you. Thesis? Dr. Brian Trasko’s thesis on the The connective tissue. I’m tired.

Brian
You’re tired of listening to me?

Ani
No, I’m tired of listening to you. It’s been fascinating.

Brian
You wore me out.

Ani
I was thinking to myself about how glad I am that you’re my partner because I understand all of this, but I can’t regurgitate it. It’s just not how my brain works. I was like, wow, it’s so fascinating. I get it. I’ve read this stuff, but also So thank goodness you can regurgitate it. I know, I love it. Thesis, Dr. Brian Treskos. I love it. Yeah.

Brian
So, so good. So those are my takes on the paper.

Ani
I would read your article. I would, I would sit down with a cup of tea. I would take my time and I would read your article. Mm-hmm.

Brian
Well, I really appreciate that.

Ani
Yeah. That was really fascinating. I love it. Cool. Yeah. So I’m so glad you did that. I was very enthralled and interested. I was going to say entertained, but it was way more than entertaining. Okay. It was really interesting.

Brian
Anything else to add?

Ani
I think you did good.

Brian
Thank you. Really appreciate that. So I got a bit of a soapbox for me.

Ani
Good job.

Brian
Good job. Sorry if I monopolized the airspace with my soapbox.

Ani
I think, I mean, listeners, you tell me if I’m wrong, but I think listeners appreciate being able to come here and hear your hot takes about— well, they’re not really hot takes, they’re like educated dissertations, educated disentangling of complicated topics like this, because most of our listeners and students and clients and stuff, it’s not— they have not made their life’s work to understand all of this stuff, but you have, and you can take it and digest it and then tell us about it in interesting and practical ways without us having to go in there and like do all that ourselves. And, and also, by the way, so that we can see things on Instagram and be like, oh, you know, Brian explained that, or I’ll bet Brian could explain that, you know. So super helpful, awesome. And I hope it’s, uh, really valuable for our listeners to be able to have these kinds of conversations because I think it is.

Brian
So, well, thank you very much, Johnny. But, you know, a couple weeks ago we did, we did a podcast on the bell curve and not being attached to the positive comments. So people are never gonna I’m not going to attach the positive comments. I don’t want to get smacked down by the other side. But for you listeners, I do hope it was valuable to you. And let us know, drop a comment, share it with a friend, let us know what you think. What are your questions? We’ll take it from there.

Ani
Sounds good. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week. We’ll see you next one.

Brian
Bye-bye.