Healing Neglect

Healing Neglect

There are two primary clusters of Adverse Childhood Experiences. If we think about this in relation to the Evolved Nest, Dr. Darcia Narvaez’s conceptualization of the ideal environment to encourage the thriving of offspring, one cluster of adverse experiences occurs because something that wasn’t supposed to happen did (abuse) and the other set occurs because something that was supposed to happen didn’t (neglect). The first category generates a cascade of responses in the Autonomic Nervous System: fear, anger, fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown that occur as a response to overwhelming experiences. These defensive neural platforms originate with lack of safety (neuroception of threat), and are evoked by physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; by exposure to a parent who is mentally ill; by witnessing violence (domestic or otherwise); or by, experiencing racism or misogyny or oppression where you are targeted, made to feel unsafe, or otherwise harmed. In these experiences, generally, you can imagine that your heart might race, you might fear for your physical safety, etc. If we use the analogy of electricity this cluster of experiences can be likened to overloading an electrical circuit with current until it is highly charged (fight/flight response) or until the circuit breaker trips (shutdown). On the other hand, experiences clustered around neglect are often characterized by a very different set of physiological processes. While neglect may lead to lack of safety (e.g., no one is watching you), and evoke the neuroception of threat, often it is experienced as a lack of reciprocal connection, a lack of resonance, nurturance, attunement, warmth, and being seen. In a way, while abuse is akin to over-stimulation, neglect is the lack of appropriate stimulation. Because reciprocal connection is required to instantiate (etch in your neurobiology) a sense of self-regulation– we learn to regulate ourselves because someone else has helped us regulate– neglect can be as damaging to our ability to attune to ourselves and our needs, to deeply feel and know ourselves, as abuse. Yet the mechanisms are different.

In indigenous childrearing practices, there is a great deal of attention paid to touch. Touch compression, from an early age, is part of what gives a baby a clear sense of boundaries: clarity about where she ends and the world begins. In utero, particularly during the last trimester, the developing fetus is under constant compression, growing against the taut belly of the mother, as it stretches. After being born, in most indigenous and ancestral cultures, babies are swaddled regularly for the first 9-18 months. Regular swaddling, particularly being carried on the back of the parent, where the child can viscerally experience their heartbeat, is a foundational practice to develop visceral regulation in the child. When a baby is held like this, as well as when it is cradled in the arms of a caregiver, when it is nursing, when it is being rocked, there is rhythmic and vibrational information being transmitted from the caregiver to the infant viscerally. Through touch, rhythm, song, and grooming, etc., the baby is viscerally held, and every cell in the baby’s body is vibrated.

You may be interested to learn that the heartbeats of attuned individuals synchronize. This phenomenon is called entrainment. Just as two metronomes left in the same room will fall into rhythm, a baby’s heartbeat entrains on its mother in utero, and after its birth. When a mother is gazing at her baby, holding her, there is an electro-magnetic field created between them, a neuro-cardiological harmonic, which most people simply call love. Dr. David Mars called this the 'verb of love.' It is a felt experience. This creates an informational vibrational field that aligns cellular structure. Children who are neglected, are, by definition, undernourished in this vibrational support, which leaves many of us / them with deficits in the ability to be fully in touch with ourselves/ themselves, not feeling seen or heard, and not feeling connected to a tribe or something larger than ourselves/ themselves.

When we think about restorative practices to address this, there are several relevant and related dimensions. At the level of touch and compression, one of the most simple and elegant restorative practices is a rede. Rede is the Brasilian Portuguese word for net, which simply means a hammock. Unlike the hammocks typically sold in the United States, a rede does not have a cross-bar, so it wraps around you, giving you touch compression. To rock, you simply push off. For people who have experienced neglect, the simplest core restorative practice is to buy a rede. Get into it, wrap yourself up, and rock. As you do this, make it into an experiential mindfulness practice and neural exercise by bringing your attention to the sensations of touch compression, warmth, and the sensation of being rocked. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to exert effort to hold the experience in focal attention. You can fall asleep. If you are able to do this, hang one of these in your house. Were it up to us, every therapy room in the world would have a rede hanging there, and people would have the option to do their sessions in the hammock. Every classroom in the world would have a rede.

As we continue to think about what nourishment wasn’t provided at a cellular level, we must reflect on the vibrational. Attuned relationship and reciprocal touch with a safe caregiver provide vibrational resources. For many of us who are adults, and didn’t receive this, touch can be a tricky thing. So finding ways to evoke or stimulate this that are within our control, and feel safe is very important. One of the most interesting ways that you can learn to do this is by learning to play the cello. Yes, the cello. Why the cello, you ask?

It has been noted by many that the violin is the instrument most closely attuned to the human voice. From the standpoint of pure physics— the frequency domain of the music itself— the cello is the instrument most closely attuned to the human body. An article in the Journal of the International Society of Life Information Science in Japan, titled The Effects of Sonic Vibration for Sound Healing on the Body, by Kita, Nakamura, Saitou, and Sakamoto (2010), explains that sound waves travel at a speed of 340m per second in air, but at 1500m per second within water (of which the human body is 70%). Within solids, such as bone, they travel at more than 5000m per second. Sounds that enter into the body ripple through body cells, one by one, in the form of waves, and travel through bones and body fluids.

When someone is playing the cello, not only are they bathed aurally in the sounds (listening with their ears), but the size and placement of the instrument, the way it is held by the body, and the placement of the hands on the neck and bow of the instrument, conduct vibration through the hands and the body.

In other words, the sounds massage the body at the cellular level with high quality sonic vibrations of 20 to 2000 times per second. Sounds of low frequencies at about 27.5Hz to 220Hz resonate better in the chest, abdomen, and lower limbs, as compared to the head. In fact, sounds of the cello that move listeners’ hearts are resonating at this low frequency range. This frequency is neuro-cardiological nourishment: food for the heart. Among other places, vibrational therapy using the cello has been offered at Beth Israel Medical Center and the New York Physical Therapy Institute (information courtesy of Elizabeth Byrd).

If you are looking for a restorative practice, have experienced neglect, and are at all interested in music, consider learning to play the cello. If you don’t want to learn to play it, consider listening to cello music, ideally with a speaker that vibrates your body. You might start with the Prelude from Bach Cello Suite No.1