Chasing Consciousness Freddy Drabble

How are traumatic memories stored in the body? How has Somatic Experiencing helped thousands of people release the symptoms of trauma through bodily practices rather than talky therapy? How did Peter resolve his own devastating childhood trauma? What will a trauma aware society be like?



In this episode we have the fascinating question of the different ways traumatic memories are stored to think about, and how the body itself and not only the brain is instrumental in the way the memory’s are made and processed, and so in how we might ease the symptoms of the trauma later on. We’re going to delve into the brain-body connection in traumatic memory, looking at the way trauma can influence our bodily states and so in turn the way we can use bodily methods in a bottom-up approach, to re-train the brain to feel safe and integrate traumatic memories. 



For this there can be no better person than the psychotherapist, Dr. Peter Levine, the creator of the Somatic Experiencing therapy method, founder of the Institute of Somatic Education and author of many books on trauma and therapy, including “Waking the Tiger”, “Healing Trauma”, “Trauma Through a Childs Eyes”, “Trauma and Memory” which we’ll be discussing today, and his brand new book, which this episode is happy to celebrate the release of “An autobiography of Trauma: A healing Journey”.



Minus 1 minute

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro.

06:00 Conscious memories start earlier than we might imagine.

07:00 Descartes was wrong, better “I move, I sense, I feel, I have images, I have thoughts: therefore I am.”

07:30 The mid-1960’s session with Nancy that started it all for Peter.

14:20 The 3 different nervous system bodily states: fight or flight, freeze and social engagement.

20:00 Body/Nervous system bi-directionality: Influences between Polyvagal theory and Somatic Experiencing.

26:00 Exercises to switch the hyper-aroused message coming from the body.

29:00 Animal kingdom research into ‘shaking off’ daily life threatening experiences.

31:00 The very sensations that help animals release, are scary to us so we block them.

31:40 Vitality, movement and exuberance VS a disembodied society.

33:20 As children we learn to limit our exuberance, so as not to disturb adults.

35:30 Different types of memory and the role of the body in recording them.

36:00 Declarative conscious memory.

36:45 Autobiographical conscious memory.

38:30 Emotional unconscious memory (associative).

39:00 Procedural/body unconscious memories (to protect oneself).

39:45 Peter as Chiron “The Woundd Healer” archetype.

45.10 Being heard, witnessed and listened to: why reflection and mirroring are important.

47:00 “I don’t think there is consciousness without being mirrored”.

47:40 A trauma aware society.

51:00 Being heard and mirrored leads to resilience.

54:00 Peter’s devastating childhood trauma and shame: “An Autobiography of Trauma”

57:00 Confronting shame tends to intensify it.

59:30 Why share such a personal vulnerable story with the world?

01:01:00 The dream that helped him choose whether or not to publish this deeply personal story.

01:02:20 Encouraging others to tell their stories: cathartic sharing.

01:04:45 Sharing vulnerability with the compassionate other.

01:05:30 Is trauma required to transform or is it just an inevitability of life?

01:07:00 Trauma is a rite of passage towards being truly compassionate.

01:07:40 Gabor Mate, “Compassionate Enquiry”.

01:08:00 Curiosity can’t co-exist with fear, use it to shift the process.



References:

Peter Levine, “An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey” 2024

(Available at Ergos Institute, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Amazon UK, Inner Traditions, Books A Million, and Bookshop.org)

Somatic Experiencing

https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/home

Peter Levine, “Trauma and Memory” 2015

https://g.co/kgs/vAzjvB2

“Hand in Hand: Parenting by connection” episode, Listeni

In what way is beef in UFOs religious-like? Is there evidence for collective visions of these objects and entities, or rather for their objective reality? In what way could the experience have elements of both?

In this episode we have the ever more mainstream story of UFO experiences to assess; Not necessarily the important questions around the existence of the phenomenon, which the office of the US director of National Intelligence confirmed in an official 2021 report that they were, in fact, a ‘population of objects’ (see show notes below)- but rather the belief in the phenomenon, in 2008 polled at around %37 of Americans, but by no means confined to the US. This widespread belief, along with less ridiculed beliefs bolstered by the high probability of extraterrestrial civilisations more advanced than our own existing out there in the cosmos, has had a huge sociological and cultural influence on western society.

So in this episode I want to put into a sociological context all of this quasi-religious belief; understand the role of our perception of technology; get our heads around a rare example of a modern myth forming in real time; look at the ways a phenomenon can be both physical and psychological at the same time; and examine various scientific, academic and even philosophical doors into this confounding phenomena that no matter how much the sceptics deny, just won’t go away.

So when we study belief we have to turn to a religious studies specialist, and who better to call on than Professor of Religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Diana Pasulka. She’s also the author of 3 books, “Heaven Can Wait”, a book about purgatory, “American Cosmic” on scientists who believe in UFO’s, and her new 2023 book “Encounters” on multi-disciplinary academic approaches to the UFO phenomenon and experiences with non-human intelligence.

Don’t forget listeners, that we talk about all the science in more detail with Stanford medical School’s immunologist, pathologist and inventor Garry Nolan in this series so check that out too.

What we discuss:00:00 Intro.13:08 Meaningful events propel people towards religious belief.21:30 Heidegger’s warning about underestimating the influence of technology on our culture.27:00 Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” - A just government and the control of information.34:40 Nietzsche, the risk of assigning causal power for synchronicities to higher powers.44:00 Perspective change: The creation of a modern myth, to a real physical phenomenon.45:50 Looking for UFO crash parts in the desert with Garry Nolan, taken blindfolded by a Space Force scientist.49:00 The ‘Antenna’ hypothesis: the brain as a receiver and transmitter.56:00 Physical data analysed by top scientists, and government “management” of information.01:01:00 Where the physical and non-physical meet: idealism or VR hypotheses.01:05:00 Humans may be a sophisticated type of biotechnology.01:06:00 The use of intuition protocols to find technological solutions: intention and visualisation.01:11:30 New Encounters book: a “reorientation”.01:14:00 Iya Whitely: validating pilots experiences.

Diana Pasulka, “Encounters”.

https://g.co/kgs/tFfG3Mx

Diana Pasulka, “American Cosmic”.

https://g.co/kgs/MbQ1tXQ

Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assessment on UAP, June 2021, John L. Ratcliffe

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf

Martin Heidegger essay, “The Question Concerning Technology”

https://g.co/kgs/ed5JVEW

Iya Whitely “Trusting and Learning from Pilots”, Lecture at the SOL Foundation symposium at the Nolan Lab at Stanford Medical School

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR09GHQ5AwA

Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence - Rey hernandez et al.

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-UFOs-Science-Consciousness-Intelligence/dp/1721088652

Does the use of computer models in physics change the way we see the universe? How far reaching are the implications of computation irreducibility? Are observer limitations key to the way we conceive the laws of physics?
In this episode we have the difficult yet beautiful topic of trying to model complex systems like nature and the universe computationally to get into; and how beyond a low level of complexity all systems, seem to become equally unpredictable. We have a whole episode in this series on Complexity Theory in biology and nature, but today we’re going to be taking a more physics and computational slant.
Another key element to this episode is Observer Theory, because we have to take into account the perceptual limitations of our species’ context and perspective, if we want to understand how the laws of physics that we’ve worked out from our environment, are not and cannot be fixed and universal but rather will always be perspective bound, within a multitude of alternative branches of possible reality with alternative possible computational rules. We’ll then connect this multi-computational approach to a reinterpretation of Entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
The fact that my guest has been building on these ideas for over 40 years, creating computer language and Ai solutions, to map his deep theories of computational physics, makes him the ideal guest to help us unpack this topic. He is physicist, computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram. In 1987 he left academia at Caltech and Princeton behind and devoted himself to his computer science intuitions at his company Wolfram Research. He’s published many blog articles about his ideas, and written many influential books including “A New kind of Science”, and more recently “A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics”, and “Computer Modelling and Simulation of Dynamic Systems”, and just out in 2023 “The Second Law” about the mystery of Entropy.
One of the most wonderful things about Stephen Wolfram is that, despite his visionary insight into reality, he really loves to be ‘in the moment’ with his thinking, engaging in socratic dialogue, staying open to perspectives other than his own and allowing his old ideas to be updated if something comes up that contradicts them; and given how quickly the fields of physics and computer science are evolving I think his humility and conceptual flexibility gives us a fine example of how we should update how we do science as we go.

What we discuss: 
00:00 Intro
07:45 The history of scientific models of reality: structural, mathematical and computational.
20:20 The Principle of Computational Equivalence (PCE)
24:45 Computational Irreducibility - the process that means you can’t predict the outcome in advance.
27:50 The importance of the passage of time to Consciousness.
28:45 Irreducibility and the limits of science.
33:30 Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem
42:20 Observer Theory and the Wolfram Physics Project.
50:30 We ’make’ space.
51:30 Branchial Space - different quantum histories of the world, branching and merging
58:50 Rulial Space: All possible rules of all possible interconnected branches.
01:19:30 The Measurement problem of QM and Entanglement meets computational irreducibility and observer theory. 
01:32:40 Inviting Stephen back for a separate episode on AI safety, safety solutions and applications for science, as we did’t have time.
01:37:30 At the molecular level the laws of physics are reversible.
01:45:30 Entropy defined in computational terms.
01:50:30 If we ever overcame our finite minds, there would be no coherent concept of existence.
01:51:30 Parallels between modern physics and ancient eastern mysticism and cosmology.
01:55:30 Reductionism in an irreducible world: saying a lot from very little input.



References:

“The Second Law: Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics”, Stephen Wolfram

“A New Kind of Science”, Step

How has the evolution of cognition led to homo-sapiens being such effective collaborators and how is the collective knowledge and wisdom of the society distributed and passed on to later generations? How can we apply the amplified wisdom of distributed cognition to solve some of humanities biggest problems?



Today we have the important fields of Collective Intelligence and how we can use it to solve our problems as a society, to try and get our heads around. We’ll be discussing the relevance of difficulties arising from cognitive science and physics research that for some put into question the consensus story that embodied feelings were fundamental in the development of reasoning and consciousness; We also discuss the relevance of the work of Carl Jung on the Collective Unconscious; of Neuroscientist Anil Seth’s Controlled Hallucination and Don Hoffman’s User interface theory; of Iain McGilchrist’s split brain research and of Michael Levin’s take on cellular cognition. 



There is of course only one polymath who can hold that many topics in a single conversation and that’s the Cognitive scientist, and philosopher John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is the director of UToronto’s Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches an Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness. 



He has been a leading intellectual observer of the modern meaning crisis: the loss of a spiritual worldview in the West, and the decline of wisdom traditions that help individuals find meaning in their lives. His online lectures and practices integrate teachings from many different disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, religion, and cutting edge cognitive science. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and his brand new series, "After Socrates."



What we discuss:

00:00 Intro.

05:35 Losing faith without losing a taste for the transcendent.

15:30 The difference between intelligence and living cognition.

18:40 Relevance realisation: What to attend to in the sea of info available.

21:00 Cognition “cares” because its life is on the line: Salience landscapes.

24:15 Humans VS persons.

30:05 Distributed Cognition explained.

30:30 ‘Reason is monological’ framework.

33:15 The rise of individualism.

34:30 Distributed computation and problem solving via the internet.

36:30 ‘Reason is dialogical’ framework.

38:00 Your best self-correction ability is with other people.

42:30 Life builds collective intelligence without language.

45:50 Issues from neuroscience and quantum physics.

50:30 Predictive processing to identify salience.

52:30 The imaginary VS the imaginal.

53:40 Imaginally augmented perception.

58:00 Causality is not the same as causal relevance: Acausal phenomena.

01:00:30 Determinism VS fractal probability. 

01:03:50 A hierarchy of cognitive selves: Michael Levin.

01:06:50 There isn’t just bottom up emergence but top down emanation.

01:07:20 Deep continuity - Evan Thompson.

01:09:30 Hierarchies of selves: Michael Levin.

01:15:30 Could we be part of single selves greater than our individual organisms?

01:17:30 Cognition is a continuum but differences of degree eventually make differences of kind.

01:19:30 Solving collective problems via distributed cognition and practices of connectedness.

01:25:20 Left/right hemisphere considerations for distributed cognition: Iain McGilchrist.

01:32:30 Adaptivity: Self-transcendence VS self-delusion.

01:35:15 Narrative bias and the Left Brain interpreter: Mike Gazzaniga.

01:37:00 Extended naturalism

01:40:24 The Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung.

01:46:25 A lot of the unconscious contents are not narrative like or persona like.



References: 

“After Socrates” You Tube series

“The meaning Crisis” You Tube series

Michael Levin - Cellular cognition episode

Evan Thompson - Deep continuity hypothesis

“Mind in Li

How does breathwork interact with our nervous system, access memories and help integrate traumatic memories? How has it got results treating auto-immune disease, addiction, agrophobia, PTSD and depression? How can it help sleep, detoxification, digestion, immunity, and taking control of negative thought patterns.





In this episode we have the hugely popular practice of Breathwork to look into. After millennia of it being used in bodily practices like martial arts and yoga, conscious breathing was launched into our modern scientific world view by the work of psychologist Stan Grof, who developed Holotropic Breathing in the 1960’s at Harvard, see our Transpersonal Psychology episode for more on that; Breathwork continued to gain in popularity following the focus on the lungs and breathing in near regulation proposed by Dr. Stephen Porges in his Polyvagal Theory, see our devoted episode with Dr. Porges for detail on that; And gained further in popularity with Dr. Pete Levine’s development of Somatic Experiencing, who I am delighted to announce will be coming on the show in the next series, so look out for that. 

So having been present for some time in the trauma community, in the last few years the practice has exploded onto the wellbeing scene as well because of all its benefits both physiologically and psychologically.



So who better to talk to about this than expert in a wide range of Breathwork and body-based therapies, Rebecca Dennis. She facilitates workshops, events and retreats alongside her public speaking and individual sessions. She is a gifted speaker and coach, specialising in breathwork, trauma release, somatic modalities, polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation. 

Part of her wide popularity is due to her having written three successful books on the topic, the latest being a new edition of Let it Go, “Let It Go and Breathe – A Practical Guide To Breathwork” which has been featured in Amazon and Sunday Times Best Sellers, and which we’ll be discussing today. And she has also collaborated with Google, BBC, Stylist magazine and Sweaty Betty.

What we discuss:

00:00 intro.

05:15 Breathwork explained

09:00 Repressing and controling emotions changes breathing.

12:00 Sympathetic vs parasympathetic nervous system.

20:50 Long deep breaths don’t necessarily calm you down.

23:50 It’s NOT hyperventilation or hyperoxygenation.

29:00 How traumatic memories can be brought up by the breath.

38:00 Rebecca’s crisis that brought her to breathwork.

43:30 Benefits: Depression relief, confidence, sleep, detox, digestion, immunity, taking control of thought patterns.

46:00 “Let it go” book: the foundations of the breath in daily life, tips and methods.

47:40 Breathe yourself calm - lower abdominal breathing.

49:00 Anxiety is higher now than ever.

52:40 What’s the right way to breathe?

59:00 Accessing altered states of consciousness without psychedelics.

59:45 Unlocking traumatic memories: Breath, psychedelics, EMDR.

01:01:00 Easing the symptoms without re-living the memories.

01:02:45 Some of her darkest memories have been her greatest teachers.

01:05:00 Increased resilience emotionally, physically and mentally.

01:07:20 Anti bacterial/anti viral Nitrous-oxide produced, improving immunity.

01:08:00 Gut-brain-cardio vascular system axis: anti-inflammatory effects.

01:11:45 Telomere length in meditators (caps on the end of chromosomes) Elizabeth Blackburn 2015 study.

01:13:30 Treating auto-immune disease, addiction, agrophobia, PTSD and depression using breathwork.

01:17:00 New book coming soon.

01:17:50 Her own new training school in Nov 2024.



References:

Rebecca Dennis, ‘Let it Go: Breathe yourself calm’

www.Breathingtree.co.uk

Polyvagal theory, Stephen Porges, CC Episode #5

Deborah Dana, ‘Anchored’: how to befriend your nervous system’

Elissa Epel, Elizabeth Blackburn 2015 ‘Can meditation slow rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and

What role does bioelectricity play in the formation of new organisms? How do cells connect to form a hierarchy of ever more advanced cognnition, preferences and goals? What are the implications for regenerative medicine, sense of self and consciousness?



In this episode we have the extraordinary role of bio-electricity in the orchestration and elaboration of organisms to look at. I became interested in this topic in the nineties when I read a book that was controversial at the time: ‘The Body Electric’, by Dr. Robert Becker who had been studying the bioelectric fields around salamanders as they regenerated limbs. I’ve been hoping to hear about it again ever since, but I thought the research had died out. That was until my guest Zhen Xu at the university of Michigan, spoke about the work of my guest today, in our episode #37 on her work “Histotripsy: Ultrasound for destroying cancer cells”.

He is the award winning Biology professor at TUFTS Michael Levin, in the department of regenerative and developmental Biology, although he started out as a computer engineer. His specialisations are in how cells form bioleletrical networks, used for storing and recalling the pattern memories that guide morphogenesis. He then applies that to next generation Ai to help understand a top down control of pattern regulation in the new field of the bioinformatics of shape. He is also a visionary in how all this can be applied to regenerative medicine and bioengineering and his work obliges us to re-examine our approach to morphogenesis.

I have been longing to find someone to talk to about the implications of this work for the biolelectric nature of collective intelligence, and how that builds up ever higher levels and layers of collective cellular agency, cognition and sense of self, culminating perhaps in collective intelligences greater than single organisms. For that answer you’ll have to listen to what Michael says in the episode.

What we discuss:
00:00 Intro.
06:10 Bioelectrical fields are responsible for which cells become which body parts.
07:30 The cognitive ‘glue’ that binds collectives of cells to goals, agency and preferences.
09:30 Morphogenesis explained.
11:00 Self-organising cellular adaptability.
12:30 Cells also communicate using electric signals, not only neurones.
16:00 How are cognitive memories encoded in the electrical field? We don’t know yet.
16:45 “Electric face” present in the field: copy it, apply it elsewhere and it grows there!
18:30 The bioelectrical pattern is instructive.
20:15 It’s a simple information encoding.
20:30 Competent active cellular material.
24:30 DNA vs Bioelectricty: Analogy of Hardware vs Software with reprogrammability
28:00 Where is the location of the forms stored, memorised and encoded in the bioelectric field?
30:30 “We really have to redefine what me mean by “Where”“
32:21 We don’t know where the truths of mathematics reside.
38:10 Bioengineering: Training competent materials VS building passive materials.
40:30 Agential’ material: Cells have agency and preferences.
44:30 Zenobots: cells re-program themselves in days, with no training only influenced by their environment.
50:40 Highly regenerative, cancer resistant, immortal: Plenaria asexual worms.
55:40 Gap Junctions: bioelectric gates for cells to network memories and agency
01:01:50 Cognitive hierarchy of selves within selves, with increasing levels of advanced complexity and agency, each with subjective experience.
01:08:00 Collaborative collective intelligence between organisms VS ever larger selves as one unified intelligence.
01:09:00 Testing agency at any level: Perturbative experiment over only observation.


References:
https://drmichaellevin.org/

https://thoughtforms.life/

Voltage movie of an embryo developing “Electric face” - Dany Adams, TUFTS
Agential material Nature paper
Zenobot researchWerner Lowenstein book - the discovery of Gap junctions