An Expanded View of The Three Reflexes of Stress: Part 1

by Lawrence Gold

Part 1 of 2. Part 2 of An Expanded View of the Three Reflexes of Stress will be available on 11/11/09.

"We become how we live."

In his book, Somatics1 , Thomas Hanna described three neuromuscular reflexes of stress: the Landau Reaction2, the Startle Reflex3, and the Trauma Reflex4. He described his view of how, when repeatedly triggered, these reflexes lead to the formation of tension habits that create the pains and stiffness commonly attributed to aging.

This information might be of interest to you if you're wondering what's going on with you, particularly if you have chronic conditions that don't respond well to the usual therapeutic options -- or if you're a therapist or somatic educator and you're wondering what's holding up your client's progress. Thomas Hanna also described the role of expectation in the aging process ? how the expectation that aging leads to decrepitude leads to people limiting their lives so that they become unfit for life; their expectation becomes a reality. In popular parlance, "Use it or lose it."

My own practice has substantiated his views. I have also seen that there are various attitudes and ways of operating in life that lead to a poor life experience and to formation of tension habits that lead to poor aging. In general, these ways of operating have to do with how we handle beginnings, middles, and endings of the events in our lives.

The Enigma

Most people respond well and decisively to Hanna Somatic Education as a way of eliminating chronic muscular or musculo-skeletal pain resulting from aging, injury, or stress. But from time to time, I encounter people whose improvement is temporary, and for whom their initial complaint reappears ? or who just don't respond as expected to the work.

For some of these, the explanation is simple: they have returned to the same activities that provoked the problem to begin with, not adding to their lives the regimen of somatic exercises that dispels the effects of those activities.

There have been others, however, for whom the return of the initial complaint, or its failure to resolve, was enigmatic.

The Insight

Expanded insight into the psycho-physical workings of human somas (ourselves) seems to provide an explanation that intuitively resounds with an striking ring of truth. The ways we accept, reject, and participate in experience (or the ways in which we handle beginnings, middles, and endings in our lives) lead to the accumulation or release of tension. Let's begin with a premise and see if it is intuitively acceptable.

What this means is that paying attention and getting ready to act involve moving from a state of rest to a state of heightened muscular activity. Moving from a state of "not ready" (at rest) to a state of "readiness" (getting set) and into action all involve rising tension. ("Ready, get set, go!")

You might experience such a state of heightened tension as you work to understand what I'm getting at in this paper. The effort of understanding is both an act of attention (to these words) and an intention to make sense (of these words). Effort is tension. That's just an immediate example, perhaps the hardest one you will encounter in this paper.

For those who are unfamiliar with the reflexes of stress named above, I begin with a brief description. Then, I touch on attitudes and ways of operating so that you may consider them in your own case and, as a somatic explorer in your own right, determine for yourself whether those connections between behavior and tension hold good in your own case. I frame each of those ways of operating in terms of "beginnings, middles (or continuations), and endings (or interruptions)" to help you tap into the type of intention that can change them for the better.

The Neuromuscular Reflexes of Stress

THE LANDAU REACTION The Landau Reaction is the movement into beginnings and the mood of continuing or sustained action.

The posture of the Landau Reaction, though evident in people everywhere, goes largely unrecognized. It is the swayback and tight shoulders of people under stress. Its beginnings start in infancy.

At about three months of age, most infants start lifting their head to look around. They are developing a heightened state of alertness and awareness of their environment. This development is the key distinction of the Landau reaction, which involves both heightened alertness and activation of the erector muscles of the spine, the muscles that gather independent vertebrae into a functional unit that is recognizable as a spine ? and making lifting the head, sitting up, crawling, creeping, standing, walking, etc., possible.

When an infant turns upon their belly, they are preparing to crawl. The act of crawling, itself, activates the gluteal muscles of the buttocks and the hamstrings (for leg movements) and the muscles that surround the shoulder blades (for arm movements).

So we have two distinctions for the Landau Reaction:

• coming to a heightened state of alertness (sensory awareness)

• activation of certain nerve pathways that control certain muscle groups in the back side of the body

THE STARTLE REFLEX The Startle Reflex is the movement of withdrawal from total experience; it is the withdrawal of attention from experiencing via the cringing response.

The movements of the cringing response are familiar to all of us. We see it when we hear a sudden noise (e.g., a door slams or someone yells, "Duck!") and we pull into a ducking position, or when something moves quickly toward our face and we shut our eyes and contract our face. We may possibly have read about people curling into fetal position when under emotional stress. The Startle Reflex is the reflex of fear.

The reflex involves a cascade of responses in which the individual closes themselves off from the environment, starting with the face, then the neck and chest, then the arms and shoulders, abdomen, and at last, the legs, as the knees are brought together and pulled toward the chest in a movement into collapse.

Where the Landau Reaction is the impulse to explore and participate in our environment, the Startle Reflex is a drawing away and withdrawal from our environment.

Where the Landau Reaction involves activation of the muscles of the back of the body, the Startle Reflex involves activation of the muscles of the front of the body.

So we have two distinctions for the Startle Reflex:

• withdrawal from sensory awareness of the environment

• activation of certain nerve pathways that control certain muscle groups in the frontal aspect of the body

THE TRAUMA REFLEX The Trauma Reflex is the limiting of movement (or participation in experience) in order to maintain safety while participating in experience.

There is a universal response to pain or injury: we contract away from the perceived source of the sensation.

The trauma reflex is another kind of "movement-away". Unlike the Startle Reflex, which is wholesale withdrawal from contact with the individual's environment, the trauma reflex is a selective withdrawal from an external event or stimulus. It is an act of self-preservation, while still staying in participatory contact with our environment.

Unlike the Startle Reflex, which has a consistent movement pattern, the trauma reflex involves patterns of movement unique to the situation. In general, injuries come from a single direction, usually from one side of the individual or the other; rarely do they come from a straight-forward direction. So the effects of trauma reflex show up as asymmetrical postural distortions.

So we have two distinctions for the Trauma Reflex:

• withdrawal of sensory awareness from a painful or shocking sensation

• activation of certain nerve pathways that control muscle groups involved in physical withdrawal from the direction from which pain or shock seems to come

SUMMARY OF THE NEUROMUSCULAR REFLEXES OF STRESS

These descriptions show that there is a correlation of the emotional, cognitive, and sensory-motor realms. They all involve a simultaneous involvement of the senses and of movement.

Each has its proper moment. Problems occur when they persist beyond the moment as chronic, fixated, or habituated responses.

Somatic education, in general, and Hanna Somatic Education, in specific, is a way to get free of these responses when they have become habituated and chronic, to return to a free state of functioning appropriately responsive to the moment.

1 Hanna, Thomas, Ph.D. Somatics. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1988
2 ibid, page 61
3 ibid, page 49
4 ibid, page 79
5 ibid, page 74

For more information visit www.somatics.com

This material © 2009 Lawrence Gold. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.