Over the past day or so there has been an energy arising that seems to be inviting me towards something that might be called courage. I've been acutely aware of how we're treating each other lately, and shocked at the lack of dignity and basic respect in certain interactions.

This is all emerging in the midst of a deep transition in my life; Having received my residency in New Zealand a little over a month ago, I'm now open to where and who I might be and what I might do to best be of service to life in the time and place that I live. There's been a certain tension in this:

On one hand, I feel a deep call to integrity and to living the fullest expression of the things that feel important to me. On the others hand, swimming within the waters of de-humanising and violent interactions can (if I'm not careful) predispose me to a kind of despair that makes it difficult to say "enough", and stand up fiercely for what is important.

Fortunately, time and patience have revealed exactly what I needed.

The White Rose

When I was 20, I spent a few months backpacking around Europe. I had an inter-rail ticket that allowed me to hop on any train in Europe, and I had zero plans. I slept on the streets of Milan, on a bench in Venice, at a hostel (and then on a bridge) in Munich. I shared a cigarette with a homeless man with whom I did not share a language. But perhaps the most important thing that I experienced on this trip was my visit to Dachau concentration camp, and my exposure to The White Rose.

The White Rose was a civil resistance movement that emerged in Nazi Germany during World War 2. I stumbled across their story at a University of Munich campus, where visitors will encounter replicas of the leaflets produced by The White Rose embedded in the pavement outside the campus. Walking beyond the pamphlets and into the campus itself, I was greeted by an open, airy lobby with a wrap-around mezzanine.

In the early hours of a February morning in 1943, in this lobby, Hans and Sophie Scholl distributed their latest pamphlet encouraging the German public to resist the Nazi regime, in the hopes that students arriving that morning would re-distribute them and thus avoid the authorities controlling the spread of their message. They were witnessed by a janitor, who quickly went to the Gestapo. On February 22 1943, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine. Sophie Scholl was 21 years old.

Sophie Scholl's Legacy

The quote above was written by Sophie Scholl, no more than 20 at the time. When I was 20, learning about her story changed my perspective on what it meant to live a courageous life. Rediscovering this perspective feels more necessary than ever.

I've noticed tendencies within myself of wanting "to be left in peace". Not quite of "no sides and no causes", but certainly of hesitating to speak up and act with the fierceness with which my integrity, values and the very source of my existence demands. Life is not a passive adventure, but a living dance continually inviting our participation. The de-humanisation of us through mechanical institutions will never change that.

And so the story of Sophie and The White Rose revisited me recently, a rallying cry to choose my own way to burn.

As I embark on a new journey, it is an invitation I sorely needed.

Somatic Regeneration: What's the point?

The next phase of my life appears to be inviting me into a synthesis of much of my experience to date, weaving living systems theory and practice with embodiment and somatic practice - that is, practices that work with the body and our physiological processes in addition to processes of the mind, spirit and psyche - to find ways to let vitality flow through us into the world.

I feel deeply inspired by what's emerging, the collaboration spaces I’m being invited into, and the body of practice I'm developing. I’ve also noticed a kind of lethargy in my engagement with what's emerging. That’s been partly because this is a growth-edge for me, and there’s ways in which I need to grow and develop to be able to deliver this work, partly because I’m suffering from a heavy dose of low self-esteem and imposter syndrome and partly because I’ve been disconnected from my own deeper wisdom for why this is important.

In October, I'll be running a 4-part series exploring vitality as an embodied phenomenon. The inspiration for this has partly been my recent study in Embodied Flow and writing my PhD proposal, yet the personal reasons for engaging in this struggled to really spark the kind of inspired action that brings me alive. Reconnecting with Sophie's story instantly brought me back to a deeper sense of meaning for why this work is important, and the ways it is of service to those participating.

While we're not living in the Third Reich, I am acutely aware of a kind of lethargy and apathy that seems to be descending on many of the workplaces and social systems around me. It feels as though there's a subtle kind of laziness seeping into our behavior that predisposes us to be less considerate of the ways our actions and being affects those around us, and to protecting our own patch with less consideration for the health of the whole. At times I've noticed in myself that tendency, and a desire to stay small and quiet in the corner rather than stating when my body and system tell me that the actions around me are not acceptable to me.

The thing is, that embodied sense of "this is not acceptable" is deeply wise. It is the product of millions of years of evolution that point us towards sources of vitality. Learning to tune into it and to feel the inherent "rightness" in trusting that in-built sense liberates us from oppressive social norms and cultural standards, and builds the capacity for us to respond fiercely to unacceptable behavior. In doing so, those same social and cultural systems become healthier over time as more behavior begins to orient towards vitality rather than convention, acceptability or risk-aversion.

The Source of My Commitment to Somatic Justice

On a personal level, this is so important to me because of my own up-bringing. My sister, Sara - who was effectively my twin for the first 5 years of my life - has an extremely rare neurological disorder called Pitt Hopkins Syndrome. I’ve witnessed and felt first hand what we all lose when feel - often on a deeply unconcious level - a need to respond out of social conditioning rather than a deeper sense of truth. Early in life, that looked like Sara being bullied by those around her. While that’s tragic on many levels, perhaps the greatest loss is the resulting failure of those blindly conditioned people experiencing the relentless joy of being in Sara’s presence. Much is now being learned about the way that autism and other neurological conditions impact a person’s experience of reality, and their resulting ability to change us and the world that other’s without that experience simply cannot.

On an even deeper personal level, this is tragic because I witnessed in myself the trend towards social safety as I grew older. For a variety of reasons, I no longer live in the same country as Sara. We see each other infrequently, we chat on video when we can, and we still love each other immensely. But in my quest to find safety and security in my body and my world - a necessary quest that I feel no shame for given the complexity and intensity of the trauma I have experienced and inherited - I noticed over time ways that I subtly adopted simplified notions that somebody like Sara is anything other than a miracle that can open our eyes and hearts to truths we can’t even dream of.

This whole aspect of my personal journey happened through and because of the body. I left Northern Ireland because I was unable to find a sense of nervous system safety there. I began to conform to culturally normative (and incorrect) views of who and what Sara is because my search for safety in my body and my nervous system asked me to put aside the deeper truths I felt so that I could find safety in social settings, ultimately as a pathway to safety in my own body. That was a necessary thing for me to do. Had I expressed in words and actions the deeper truths I felt in the world, those around me simply would not have been able to make sense of me. I would not have been able to find a basic level of acceptance in my environment that could allow me to find a pathway to homeostasis* for myself; a means to regulate my system in the changing circumstances of my environment. Gratefully, I now know a level of safety and anchoring in my nervous system and body such that I find myself needing to conform less and less to the expectations of the world around me. Today I can accept that allowing some aspects of myself to dwell in the shadows for a time allowed me to build a stable platform from which I can now begin to express those parts of me without fear of losing my identity within my environment.

*homestasis describes a self-regulating process by which biological systems maintain stability while adjusting to changing external conditions

Organismic Regulation

Finding this space of homeostasis - where as a living organism we can make sense of and regulate ourselves, our bodies and our identity within our changing context - is the platform on which vitality can coalesce, and through which greater health can emerge from which we can all benefit. All organisms do this. Even a simple single-celled organism has a membrane that differentiates it from it’s context.

If that membrane is too rigid, it exchanges information and energy with it’s context so slowly that it is unable to respond to changes in that environment quickly enough. Over time, it becomes inappropriately adapted to (and thus unsuitable for) it’s environment, and dies off over generations, replaced by more suitable organisms.

If that membrane is too porous, it is unable to maintain it’s internal coherence and self-identity independent from the environment it inhabits. It receives information and energy from it’s surroundings too willingly, and it’s internal structure quickly becomes a soup that is difficult to distinguish from it’s surroundings. It loses it’s essence, and hence it’s ability to contribute to it’s context from that place of essence. Without that, the environment has no need for it, and will ultimately reclaim the energy and nutrients that constitute it for more nourishing purposes.

Applying these concepts and navigating them practically in our own body day-to-day is not easy. I've been working in an employed role in an environment in which it is all too easy to fall into the habits of conventional behavior, allowing my boundary to become so porous that I lose my sense of self-identity that guides me as an individual towards vitality, and us as a whole towards collectively healthier actions and behaviours. The reality is that there is often social risk to trusting this in-built sense that is our evolutionary inheritance (the risk of being punished, socially isolated, losing our job, etc). But having conversations about it is critical to socialise our embodied understanding of these notions and our own lived experience so that new pathways open up to us.

When Blue Isn't Blue

Research indicates that the color blue did not exist in our experience of reality until fairly recently. Analysis of countless ancient texts, artwork and more find no mention of blue in any form, and there are still cultures today that cannot differentiate between a color palette of mixed green and blue squares. This (and other research) implies that our process of perception significantly influences what we perceive. Without language to describe a phenomenon, we have no ability to perceive it.

This is why bringing the language of vitality and socialising the reality and genius of our evolutionary inheritance and in-built vitality-seeking tendencies within organisations and the mainstream is critical: If we can’t adequately describe vitality and vitality-giving processes in our communities, social structures and organisations, we can’t perceive the forces that might give rise to it. We become destined to stay trapped in a set of behaviors that see no other option than to devitalise and create pathology, despite our best efforts.

It’s why I’m coming to accept that my place to influence change is unlikely to ever be within an organisation long-term: The entrenched social norms make it really challenging to bring new language and practice that can open up new possibility. Being social creatures is a gift in many ways, but the demand to fit in also places certain pressures on us that make it easier for us to remain blind to new colours, horizons of perception that lie out of view from our current vantage point. These new possibilities are indescribable with the language we have at our disposal today, and thus invisible to our imagination. Perhaps one day I’ll get to a point of being so rooted in my sense of self that I can maintain my sense of cohesion and integrity while standing at that vantage point and operating within an organisation. For now, I’m realising that I can be of most value maintaining a certain distance from the social norms of organisations. From that place I can maintain my own connection to new imaginative possibility, and bring that as a creative offering to those I collaborate with.

Coalescing Towards Vitality

Many of us that have been kicking around systems theory for a while are very familiar with the problems of reductionist and mechanistic language and metaphor. They tend to reduce the indescribable complexity and emergence of the dynamic, living world in ways that guarantee unintended consequences in other parts of the whole. What is less regularly talked about is that - even in circles where systems theory is prevalent - the language of pathology, problem and disease is deeply entrenched, as it is in our whole culture.

Nora Bateson recently coined the term Aphanipoiesis to describe the ways that life coalesces towards vitality in unseen and often indescribable ways. Vitality is a real phenomena that we can experience in our lives. The results of it are visible, observable and describable, but the ways in which this vitality comes to fruition are complex; indescribable (in entirety) through language and the mind.

Developing and using this language to open up new avenues of possibility for us is key, as is tuning into our deep evolutionary intelligence that shows us where vitality is emerging in a way that doesn’t require us to oversimplify our surroundings. In oversimplifying our surroundings, we automatically limit the outcome of our actions by engaging the parts of the mind that perceptually filter based on what is already knows. By definition, that which we need next to solve the problems of today is not knowable from our current vantage point. We need to re-learn to trust the body, trust our inherent intelligence, in-spite of whether the systems around us tell us we have a right to do so. It might just be the most radical action we can take in today’s world, and is something I am deeply committed to fostering for my remaining days in this body.

In re-connecting to my truth that...

1) The emergence of life-affirming cultures is possible only through our active participation in it.

2) Our active participation is only possible when we are liberated to deeply trust our inherent, intuitive and evolutionary intelligence.

3) That this liberation is achieved partly through having new language that allows us to see new realities, and partly when we are empowered to cultivate and act on our embodied connection to that evolutionary intelligence.

... I feel an immense sense of purpose, drive and commitment to what comes next. I look forward to sharing the journey with you all.

Keep an eye on my Facebook and LinkedIn for information about the upcoming series on vitality (due to run 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th October, 6-8PM at Te Aro Astanga in Wellington CBD).

If you're interested in the research I'm exploring and the body of practice I'm building, feel free to check out my PhD proposal here.

Lastly, if you’re interested in exploring work together, reach out to ben@ben-preston.com.