The Brain and Trauma - A Top Down VS. Bottom Up Approach
Understanding and applying brain training in movement & Pilates - by Ash Berry
Having spent the last 2 years completing my Somatic Movement Therapy training, I have had the opportunity to work with some incredible clients as they bravely unpack the chronic pain or dysfunction they experience. Not all, but many of these journeys have ultimately boiled down to unresolved trauma held within their bodies. Being able to observe and hear real time feedback from these clients about what they feel, sense, imagine and kinesthetically experience, has fueled a passion in me to try and better understand what constitutes trauma. I am especially interested in how it manifests in the body and how to best guide someone through that experience so they can regain their power and confidence.
Movementality has always been a safe space for working with pain and bringing out the best in people’s movement. We are proud of our track record with the many fantastic outcomes we’ve seen over the years. However the Somatic Movement Therapy elevates Movementality into a new level, somewhere movement on its own is not always able to go. It asks people to become witnesses, analysts and eventually masters of their own experiences. This takes an awful amount of bravery, of self inquiry, of honesty and of trust. It also involves rewiring the brain and recalibrating the nervous system to ultimately regulate the emotions. Below I talk a little bit about the brain’s different functions in relation to trauma and how we can use different strategies to regulate our emotions and help us to overcome traumatic experiences.
The most recent research related to the brain and trauma offers us two ways of regulating our emotions to reach a place of homeostasis. These are commonly referred to as a top down and a bottom up approach.
The Triune Brain MODEL
To understand this, first it is useful to consider Paul MacLean's "Triune Brain." This is a framework to explain the brain's different functions. The brain is built from the bottom up, both evolutionarily speaking and in the way it develops in each individual. The oldest part of our brain is the primitive, animal brain (or reptilian brain) located in the brain stem. It is fully ‘online’ at birth and is in charge of our physiological needs eg: breathing, eating, sleeping, heartbeat, excreting. The limbic aspect (mammamillian brain) is in the midbrain, which develops in the first few years of life. It is the seed of emotions, the judge of safety versus danger, pleasure versus pain. This part of the brain is moulded in response to it’s experiences and social interactions. Finally, at the top of the brain is our neo- cortex or human brain. It is responsible for language, imagination and rational or higher order thinking. It is the youngest part of our brain, becoming vital by the time we enter our first year of school. It’s here that we make conscious decisions and are able to sculpt voluntary behaviours.
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The brainstem and the limbic system can be grouped together under the term ‘emotional brain’. The emotional brain most regularly functions in a subconscious, reflexive capacity to maintain our ideal health. In Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps The Score, he describes the amygdala, located in the limbic system, as the smoke detector. If it senses danger, it will fire off signals to engage the sympathetic nervous system more commonly known as “fight or flight” and mobilise the body for action. The amygdala can not determine what kind of danger or how serious the threat is (that is a later job of the neo cortex), it can only signal that there is a threat. More so, if the brain is constantly being triggered by supposed threats, it becomes heightened to believe that there is always a threat. The result is that in cases of prolonged stress or trauma, the brain might constantly and quickly jump into “fight or flight” over little things that aren’t really that dangerous.
Have you ever felt highly reactive or emotional in a moment of stress, only to look back later and think “that wasn’t as bad as it felt at the time”? This is a completely natural physiological reaction - to move between the different brains, using our instinct or feeling or thinking our way through life. However someone with prolonged trauma is more likely to remain in a heightened emotional state (operating in a constant state of fight or flight) long after the stress has passed.
This kind of “overreaction” is not conscious, which can make it hard to acknowledge, let alone control. On top of this, remaining in this state can be detrimental for the individual’s relationships, interactions and own body’s general health.
So what strategies can support a person with trauma to return to homeostasis?
The first step to changing these subconscious behaviours is to become aware of them, which is where mindfulness and reflection are key, also known as “a top down” therapeutic approach.
“Top Down” refers to using the neo-cortex to soothe, understand and rationalise the emotional brain’s response. Van Der Kolk refers to it as “strengthening the watchtower to monitor the body’s senses.” It can involve talk therapy, analysing to better understand the experience and process it as well as being mindful of the bodily sensations that are arising. This can be useful as long as the person recalling the experience doesn’t continue to return to it and relive the trauma each time. The top down approach is often referred to as ‘mindfulness,’ where you consciously focus your mind on a meditation or another task at hand.
A bottom up approach works in the opposite direction. The goal here is to recalibrate the autonomic nervous system to bring about a change physiologically, eg: a slowed heart beat, or a change in hormone and enzyme production, which goes on to have a flow on effect to our emotions. It might include drawing out sensational experiences that might be frozen or stuck in the body, using breathing techniques to soothe discomfort or pain, hands on support, self touch and of course movement. A current but unusual example of a bottom up approach is the Wim Hof method, which has gained international popularity. Wim Hof was living with terrible depression. One day it got so unbearable that he jumped into a canal in Amsterdam. It was so freezing, that it shocked his body back into a new rhythm. He’s now a prolific public speaker and fanatic for all things freezing, utilising the brain’s control over the body.
But what about Pilates?
Pilates, Somatic Movement Therapy and Functional Neurology all utilise a blend of both ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approach. ‘Bottom up’ often occurs initially by engaging in movement, touch or trying to reset the nervous system with functional neurology screens. This is then followed up by encouraging mindfulness and awareness of the ‘felt’ changes. This is to help ensure the changes are sustainable and replicable.
To learn more about this, we highly recommend Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps The Score.