Neuroception at the Clay Field
All living beings have neuroceptors. We need them to coregulate our survival from conception onwards. They represent an autonomous nervous system response that precedes the evolution of the cortex; some call it our crocodile brain. Our neuroceptors are always at work in the background and they respond to situations much faster than our thinking brain. While we have intuitively worked with neuroception in therapy for ages, the shift towards body-focused approaches has heightened their importance.
In order to feel comfortable, we need at any time in life more cues about safety than danger. Stephen Porges describes safety as predictability in one of his lectures. What we know and what allows us to feel present, alert and relaxed, is deemed as safe by our nervous system. Porges example is the baby, who responds to coos of a familiar caregiver, but cries in stress when approached by a stranger. For clients’ implicit sense of safety, for instance, it might be important that the therapy setting is consistently the same. Cues of safety and danger are being processed every microsecond. Such signals will trigger either a parasympathetic (calming) or a sympathetic (arousing) response. Based on Stephan Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (Porges 2011), Deb Dana describes neuroception as the relationship between us and others, and us and the environment. In this context we continuously scan the environment for welcome or threat. (Dana 2018)
Externally: Looking at the relationship between us and others, including our environment is the most obvious to consider. Footsteps in a deserted alleyway at night might trigger sympathetic arousal, while having a cup of tea in front of an open fire will relax us and make us feel safe.
Internally: Physical illness, but also frightening events or memories of these can trigger our heart to race, hold our breath, blush in shame, have a knot in the stomach, or a lump in our throat. While pleasant memories and events can make us feel tingly, open hearted, and profoundly at ease with ourselves.
Interplay: Signals from others or our environment trigger responses in our nervous system, responses to which we react. This is an intricate, and widely unconscious information flow. Someone smiles at me, I smile back, both nervous systems have deemed the contact as probably safe, and proceed to test their contact with further cues. Or someone looks at me with an angry expression, and instantly alarm is triggered in my system.
Coregulation is based on mutually exchanged cues. When safe triggers have been exchanged, our faces may become more animated, and we may move closer together. Or, if the contact has been deemed as dangerous, we retreat from each other to a safe distance - or we accelerate the aggressive responses, potentially culminating in a physical fight.
We tend to interpret and potentially misread cues of safety and threat based on our biography, which over time, becomes our biology as Bruce Perry puts it. (Perry 2002) Children with insecure attachment issues grow into teens and adults, who feel fundamentally unsafe. However, because they have always felt this way, they will not question how easily they are activated, but consider high sympathetic arousal states as normal. Complex trauma and PTSD sufferers are known to have a short fuse, to view everything in black and white and to be easily triggered into fearful states. And then there are the lucky ones, who are described as chilled, relaxed, deeply resting within themselves, and it takes a fair bit to rock their boat. Which nervous system state is the dominant baseline of your being?
Of course, there are situations of threat everyone will respond to with alarm. But I also recall plenty of situations where I have misread someone’s cues, or asked myself afterwards: Why did I overreact? What just happened here? Deb Dana calls this neurobiological process mismatching neuroception.
When clients sit in front of the Clay Field, a box filled with around 10kg of smooth clay, their neuroceptors will project their lived experience into this symbolic environment. The hands connect with the material and usually instantly withdraw. We are talking about seconds here, right at the beginning of a session. Even though the setting is safe, many clients expect danger when they engage, especially when asked to touch an other-than-me they do not know. The clay in the box triggers their embodied memories: If they touch, they will get hurt. If they reach out, they will get shamed. If they destroy the smooth surface, they will get punished. These neuroceptive expectations are not conscious. If I asked these clients, they would not even be aware of a perceived threat, and certainly not of a biographical story, but their neuroceptors inevitably respond to past experiences of touch.
Deb Dana introduced the concept of increasing consciousness through three steps:
Neuroception – physiological responses as they happen
Perception – becoming aware of these physiological responses, being able to track them in the body
Discernment – being able to distinguish between past and present, what is a memory, and what is happening in the present
In Clay Field Therapy the focus is not on image-making, but on the hands connecting with the material in whichever way they want to. The pliable material feeds back whatever mark the hands make. As I touch the clay, inevitably, I am also touched by it. Interestingly traumatized clients become aware of their neuroceptive responses, when nothing happens! Because those wired to constant threat, expect something to be triggered when they touch the material. And they respond with surprise when this threat does not eventuate. The clay does not shout back; it does not shame or hurt. Clients encounter nothing but themselves through these touch experiences. This is when their responses begin to change. The setting allows them to coregulate their autonomic nervous system within this haptic clay-world. New, safe experiences begin to remould how these clients, and many are children, respond to stimuli when they connect with the touch experience at the Clay Field. Gradually perception begins to dawn, sensory insights are gained. This bottom-up approach allows old belief systems to be updated, based on safe neurological experiences. How does it feel in your body to be confident, capable and trusting? Just as our neuroception is always listening to our environment, our physiological states are able to teach us how to create a more enabling story.
Works Cited
Dana, Deb. 2018. The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the rhythm of regulation. New York: W.W.Norton & Co.
Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2013. Trauma Healing at the Clay Field, a sensorimotor art therapy approach. London/Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley.
Perry, Bruce. 2002. “Childhood Experience and the Expression of Genetic Potential: What Childhood Neglect Tells Us About Nature and Nurture.” Brain and Mind 3 79 - 100.
Porges, Stephen. 2011. The Polyvagal Theory. New York: W.W. Norton.
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