A Reptile Awakening
The reptilian brain is the deepest and most primitive part of the human brain, and still, the most instinctual part which dominates our nonverbal actions. Our reptilian brain reacts and responds at the moment and you are generally not consciously aware when this takes place.
The Reptile Brain is so old that it is located in the back of our head, close to our neck, from the times that we didn’t even walk on 2 feet, it controls the body’s vital purpose; heart rate, breathing, balance, and temperature equilibrium.
It (the reptilian brain does not deduce or reason it merely responds to the dominating reaction of an adrenaline-induced high caused by an internal or external emergency to protect or sustain life. This safety mechanism varies from person to person and is very subjective to the individual’s experience based on his/her outer (Parental) influences as a baby) (is not based on thoughts and reason, the Reptile brain is dominating our reactions to whatever is related to the Adrenaline rush or need to protect our body such as emergency, hunger, etc.) The Reptile Brain can’t go to a lecture or read an article, it is based on facts ( primordial instincts ) and it acts without consulting the rest of the parts.
It is also in charge of the sensations of safety, which is a much more elaborated, subjective perception of reality based on every individual’s experience.
We are exposing the intimate parts of our body that could easily awake the Reptile Brain for the same subjective perception reason. (In turn, this may cause many involuntary responses but let’s face the truth, they literally don’t exist, and perception makes it so, yet the perception is ever-changing with the integration of new impressions you are living through personal subjective experiences every day. All primal behaviors can be placed in 2 categories; The feelings of “GOOD” and “BAD”.
These feelings can cause many immediate impacts, of nonvoluntary responses to the human body such as;
an intensified or withheld breath, deep relaxation or anxiety, increased or decreased heartbeat, freezing shock, hardening of the main muscles.
This can trigger a response in you just by seeing a person that we don’t like, a cast of people that we don’t approve of, a smell, or sound that is related to an early childhood memory provoking a full reaction in our body even when it passes in our private living room without any other related symbols to that specific bad experience.
Let’s face it, we are that primitive, and this primal syndrome helps us live a safe life usually, unfortunately, this help doesn’t come with an expiration date on it, and our ability to “update the program” is still not as upgraded as we wish that it will be. Imagine that every good experience, your old bad one will be upgraded.
From the first few years of a baby’s development, it is born with an innate ability to trust, and what’s fascinating is our capacity to trust is very limited as we age. It can take one bad experience as a child which can imprint on our being for a lifetime. while we receive a water session (floating over the water, from any given technique),
there are Objective and Subjective reasons for the Reptile to wake up:
the water (flows closely sometimes on the edges of the mouth and nose, our two air resources that we have in our bodies.
This is a great reason to awake the Animal that is carefully protecting the precious breath, that is keeping us alive, the most precious thing that we exist by.
This experience could be based on past experience for all of those that had an emergency with water in the past, personally, as the protagonists, as witnesses while seeing another person that they care for or that they don’t even know, while it might affect them deeply, or in a vivid film that stroke them like for example “jaws” that made so many people fear sharks without seeing them in life.
Our need to keep on breathing is so primordial that it places any other event secondary to it.
Impressive amounts of people have had some kind of history, some of that they could remember with their conscious memory and some of it had been repressed, subdued in the subconscious mind) and can’t be brought to our memory directly, yet it is ingrained in our storehouse of total memories and can potentially activate stored in the memory cells and might activate the reptile brain when we are in a similar situation that invokes a protective mechanism in the body.
any of these intensive nonvoluntary reactions can be understood and unwinded normally only after few long moments in which intensified new memory might be formed from those special intimate moments of care.
Now the outstanding effect happens – also with the givers of the water sessions, especially when it comes to underwater sequence or even just by floating simply over the water; seeing a facial expression of helplessness or emergency in the body of the receiver might trigger a well-stored memory within the giver from the time that they experienced a vivid drowning or even worst when they experienced it while being the responsible person in the situation.
This can be A major influencer for an individual to begin practicing the arts of aquatic healing therapy one of the main reasons for people to learn and practice aquatic therapy/healing.
Another common and major phenomenon is the reaction of not having the feet planted on the ground; not touching the ground might provoke a subjective perception of “losing control”, this concept might be fiction yet “Being in Control” is socially rewarding, its downside is that as bigger our belief in our ability to control reality, our ability to navigate in the ever-changing nature of reality fades away.
Steadiness and navigation don’t symbolically co-exist unless practiced. Together with the misconception of vulnerability, that is considered to be by many, a symbol of weakness might wake up the Animal as she is alert of not being safe enough. (deeper observation of the concept of vulnerability as a gateway to empowerment can be met in the specified article- @Exile of Protection
Water therapy offers healing potential for all of those receivers that wish to navigate better with the sense of being in control and giving it away temporarily to other trustworthy beings.
People have been exposed either to: drowning or witnessing drowning situations, as the protagonists or even as a witness,
How many people had been in Car accidents or any kind of whiplash accident?
and if we will sum it together with people that had subjective issues with losing control of being exposed… it will be very rare to find people that are out of these statistics. If we will look at the statistics on many of those issues mentioned all are related to the “receiver” the side that is floating over the water, each one is arriving to the water to fulfill their missing experience, each one with their personal specific need or missing experience.
designated article about why do we offer healing Click Here
“givers” are living the same life and they could naturally fit into the same statistics, they two will also need to overcome a fear generated from some tangible or intangible memory, it might be their issue with being in control. For the giver that has issues with water being able to see another person underwater, or even just flowing with the water too close to their breathing area might make them act in a nonvoluntary way.
For any “giver” that had past experiences that connected the sense of responsibility with the association of stress that cause physiological stress-related syndromes, the water therapy offers an opportunity for those that had issues with being overtaken by the sense of being responsible and in control over situations that wish to keep on being their ability to respond without having the responsibility defuse the sense of Fun and pleasure in it.
by that, the practice of being responsible for other people’s breath, body, emotions transforms itself from being such an intensive daily practice, especially for any of those teachers, parents, managers, officers to offer an alternative that allows you to keep calm and be able to respond with appreciation.