The preparatory set: a novel approach to understanding stress, trauma, and the bodymind therapies

Abstract

Basic to all motile life is a differential approach/avoid response to perceived features of environment. The stages of response are initial reflexive noticing and orienting to the stimulus, preparation, and execution of response. Preparation involves a coordination of many aspects of the organism: muscle tone, posture, breathing, autonomic functions, motivational/emotional state, attentional orientation, and expectations. The organism organizes itself in relation to the challenge. We propose to call this the “preparatory set” (PS). We suggest that the concept of the PS can offer a more nuanced and flexible perspective on the stress response than do current theories. We also hypothesize that the mechanisms of body-mind therapeutic and educational systems (BTES) can be understood through the PS framework. We suggest that the BTES, including meditative movement, meditation, somatic education, and the body-oriented psychotherapies, are approaches that use interventions on the PS to remedy stress and trauma. We discuss how the PS can be adaptive or maladaptive, how BTES interventions may restore adaptive PS, and how these concepts offer a broader and more flexible view of the phenomena of stress and trauma. We offer supportive evidence for our hypotheses, and suggest directions for future research. We believe that the PS framework will point to ways of improving the management of stress and trauma, and that it will suggest directions of research into the mechanisms of action of BTES.

Self-Active Relaxation Therapy (SART) and Self-Regulation: A Comprehensive Review and Comparison of the Japanese Body Movement Approach

“…Many of these approaches were promoted in the third wave boom of psychotherapies and have been recently advocated as alternatives to talk therapies and drugs in groundbreaking research on resilience and traumatic stress (Van der Kolk, 2014 ). Some researchers have integrated such methods into an overarching toolbox of meditative movement (Payne et al, 2017 ), but SART appears to be aligned with the reflexive rather than volitionally attending aspects of these techniques as it does not entail the explicit introspection or concentration found in meditation (Payne and Crane-Godreau, 2015 ). SART shares the body movement emphasis of yoga and the Alexander Technique, the guided process to relaxation and muscle contraction of PMR, the psychoeducation aims of the Feldenkrais Method, and the here-and-now aspect of focusing.…”

Addressing Anxiety, a Comorbidity of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Case Report Using Qigong Sensory Training Methods

“…The capacity to self-regulate requires a nervous system that is able to identify the source of a stimulus, interpret its meaning and to address it in a meaningful way [20]. In contrast to cognitive therapy, body-mind oriented (somatic) therapies and educational systems employ and address needs of the whole nervous system [20]. An integrated approach using qigong-based therapies, as a supplement to standard contemporary therapies may support a more even development of the nervous system including cognitive skills.…”

Touching the Lived Body in Patients with Medically Unexplained Symptoms. How an Integration of Hands-on Bodywork and Body Awareness in Psychotherapy may Help People with Alexithymia

“…Research also strongly stresses the bottom-up mortgage that trauma poses on normal processing of intense emotions and shows how dysfunctional bodily processes involving breathing, dystonia, immunology, and digestion are involved ( Guilbaud et al, 2003 ; Levine, 2005 ; Ogden et al, 2006 ; Siegel, 2009 ; Van der Kolk, 2014 ). In particular the role of the autonomic nervous system has led to several models of psychosomatic dysfunction or trauma related disorder such as the visceral brain-body transfer ( Cameron, 2009 ), the polyvagal theory ( Porges, 2009 ), the neurovisceral integration ( Thayer and Brosschot, 2005 ; Cameron, 2009 ), the window of tolerance ( Ogden et al, 2006 ) or more recently the preparatory set ( Payne and Crane-Godreau, 2015 ). In essence all these models point at the significant influence of a deeply disturbed autonomic nervous system with severe consequences for all afferent and efferent processing.…”

“…In line with Craig, Fogel sees the interoceptive-insular pathway as the backbone of BA but although equally stressing the exclusive interest of the insular capacity to re-representation, he links the lower and limbic brain structures to embodied self-awareness. A profound therapeutic consequence of this is the use of evocative language ( Fogel, 2009 ) or imagery playing-out ( Payne and Crane-Godreau, 2015 ; Payne et al, 2015 ) to enter, explore and express embodied self-awareness in patients. In contrast to regular language that is more under cognitive control and censorship, evocative language and imagery are resonating the felt experience ‘as it appears in the present moment’ ( Gendlin, 1969 ; Gendlin and Olsen, 1970 ; Bloom, 2006 ; Fogel, 2009 ).…”

“…The combination of light and tactile manual bodywork with non-directive verbal guidance is triggering the dyadic bodily resonance described by several authors as being deeply healing, restoring and resourcing ( Totton, 1998 , 2005 ; Levine, 2005 ; Bloom, 2006 ; Ogden et al, 2006 ; White, 2006 ; Heller, 2012 ; Cipolletta, 2013 ; Van der Kolk, 2014 ; Cornell, 2015 ; Payne et al, 2015 ). Trying to grasp the underlying mechanism of this beneficial process of EBW, research mostly points at optimizing and rebalancing of a secure attachment ( Ogden et al, 2006 ), at opening up the social engagement system ( Porges, 2009 ), at engaging and integrating preverbal memories ( Bloom, 2006 ), at befriending the body, which is a metaphor for allowing and naming the physical sensations beneath the emotions ( Van der Kolk, 2014 ) or at biological completion ( Payne and Crane-Godreau, 2015 ; Payne et al, 2015 ). The latter authors are putting forward a hypothesis for understanding body mind therapies as normalizing what they call a preparatory set, which is basically a unitary trauma response based on affect, posture and muscle tone, autonomic state, attention, and expectation and which they call the core response network.…”