Come Together: 3 Brains, 1 Body

“If you can't understand what your intuition is conveying to you, the key is to pay attention and listen to your body. It tells you everything that you need to know.”

(Robin S. Baker) Respecting Emotional Data I frequently focus on self-regulation in my practice. Being in a centered body and out of reactive Sympathetic Nervous System dominance is literally what heals trauma, what stops panic attacks and anxiety, and what puts us in an optimal place of discernment.

“Getting off our last nerve” doesn’t make our feelings go away. Feelings result from our assessments of situations. Our first assessment is often a confusing mashup of the data from all three brains, undifferentiated. That first assessment is often not always the best informed, but challenging it can leave our more wounded parts feeling like we’re telling them their reactions and wounds aren’t important, or that we are trying to make the emotions stop.

That’s not it at all! If we put our bodies in neutral with one (or more) of the self-regulation techniques, we can better hear those emotions. We can also reconsider our assessments. If we end up with the same assessment and resulting feelings, we are now clear headed enough to be strategic with what we have discerned.

Our goal is not to “control” our emotions, but rather, to clearly hear and consider the information our emotions are bringing us.

Lost in Translation Our heart and gut brains are sharp, but they have their limits. They aren’t so good at:

• Discerning if a threat event is remembered past, present reality, or imagined future.
• Determining whether a threat is physical, emotional, psychological, or some combination of the three.

Biolocation is a helpful tool that I developed and use to better hear each brain in its own language. Using the brain in our heads to hear and make sense out of the information from the other two brains is a tremendous asset. These brains aren’t in some battle for supremacy: They are collaborators for our best interests.

Internal Intersectionality Each brain has its unique concern. The gut brain is fixated on assessing threat and safety. The heart brain is concerned with social connectivity, relationship risk and safety, and belonging. The neocortex is occupied with linear logic, or, how the things we are experiencing make any kind of sense with the knowledge we have accumulated so far in our lives.

Do you see how these concepts intersect? Each brain has helpful information for the other. When we use biolocation to bring them altogether we have access to the strengths of each, informing the whole.

How We Do Biolocation? To better understand the signals of the body, especially when it seems like they conflict with what we thought we wanted or needed, it helps to tune into the

physical

sensations we are experiencing, and to give a nod to body metaphors in the English language.

For example, have you ever come away from an exchange with someone and thought, “That person just makes me sick!”? We will very often feel genuine nausea in our stomachs. The gut brain and heart brain are speaking. What needs to be metaphorically vomited out of this situation?

Did you feel manipulated? Objectified? Belittled? What other responses are happening in your body that will help you figure it out? Did you find your shoulders crumpling, making you small? Did the exchange leave you feeling belittled? Did your heart get tight? Did you find you needed to “guard your heart” to keep from taking in someone emotionally dangerous? Was your throat tight? Was there something you wish you had said, or wished the other person could hear?

As another example, consider the phrase, “heavy hearted.” When we are grieving we often feel like our hearts are physically weighed down by our feelings of loss. Heartbroken? Doesn’t it feel sort of like something has physically cut through that organ when someone breaks our heart?

This is all biolocation. The gut and heart brains use a lightning-fast shorthand with our neocortex. At times those sensations are almost jumping up and down to get the conscious mind’s attention. In the long run, it’s easier and more effective to learn how to listen.

Podcast I was recently asked by an old friend to be interviewed for his podcast, Let's Make a Show With Brian and Angel. Brian has become fascinated with MBraining, which is the root of biolocation and wants to know more about it. Picking up where my latest reelsleave off, I’m planning

to explain how I use biolocation, which is a way of using (interoception,) to gather the rest of the data we need in order to make more fully informed decisions in our lives.

Stay tuned for the link to that podcast. I have no idea where the conversation is going to go, but, knowing Brian, it will likely at least be interesting!

................................................................................................ If you’d like more guided practice on using Biolocation to better understand what your body is telling you about your situations, choices and habits, contact Tiffany today. I’m looking forward to helping you sharpen this skill.