Somatic Tao

Somatic Tao Simple, effective relief for stress and trauma SOMATIC TAO is the home of BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect and how to heal the fall out of BEN.
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SOMATIC TAO is an integrated neuro-somatic emotionally aware therapeutic approach that helps treat mental and physical symptoms of stress, trauma and early life neglect.
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SOMATIC TAO understands that most modern day mental and physical "ills" are due to a lack of ability to tolerate and process emotional energies:

• rage and protest energy mobilised in answer to unmet needs;
• toxi

c shame created by unmet very early developmental needs;
• grief due to loss, rejection and abandonment;
• fear and terror due to unmet need for safety and security.
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Working with:

• Dr Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing (SE) to track felt sense of the body;
• Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory to identify the active part of the nervous system;
• knowledge of Traumatology;
• Parts of Self Theory; and
• the Taoist Philosophy understanding of how emotions affect health

SOMATIC TAO encourages suppressed emotions and trauma energy locked in your body to process, thereby increasing your mental and physical wellness.
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Combining the above with knowledge of Bowlby's Attachment Theory, SOMATIC TAO works with adults suffering the impact of:

• Babyhood Emotional Neglect, (BEN);
• Adverse Babyhood Experiences, (ABEs); and
• Adverse Childhood Experiences, (ACEs)

to recover emotional resilience and capacity to live an empowered and meaningful life for yourself and in relationship with others.
____________

With over 19 years experience of working with stress, emotional distress and trauma, plus familiarity of medical terms and drug mechanisms gained from previous careers in neuroscience and the pharmaceutical industry, I am able to share a unique and comprehensive approach to health to both clients and supervisees working in the mental health field. PLEASE NOTE: Somatic Tao does NOT use Messenger. Please contact using email at [email protected]
Many thanks.

BEN’s CAPACITY FOR ALIVENESSRecovery from BEN is not simply the absence of symptoms. Nor is it measured by how little yo...
12/06/2026

BEN’s CAPACITY FOR ALIVENESS

Recovery from BEN is not simply the absence of symptoms. Nor is it measured by how little you feel. It is the gradual development of the capacity to remain embodied with increasing amounts of emotion energy while maintaining coherence, regulation and choice. A greater capacity to remain present with vitality, emotion and relationship without needing defensive adaptation. Somatic Tao refers to this capacity as emoturity – emotional maturity of the noncognitive brain and body.

Prior to recognising BEN and its effects, a BEN survivor will likely live an existence of yo-yoing between OK’ish health and periods of:

• physical symptoms
• shutdown
• dissociation
• appeasement
• emotional flooding
• compulsive self-defence
• collapse or fatigue

They likely feel confused as to why they seem to “relapse” or suffer a symptom flare. Being knowledgeable, even vigilant, about potential “allergic” reactions, or physical or mental exertion, they successfully discount activities of the current day; perhaps also the day before. Unable to find obvious causes, they remain baffled as to why they feel like they “crashed.” The key aspect of life they are often not evaluating is their emotional life and the mobilisation of emotion energy occurring beneath conscious awareness.

Because BEN wires the nervous system with reduced emoturity, internal mobilisation of emotion energy is predicted as dangerous. Often this chain reaction is so deep and unconscious that the only sign available is the “relapse” or the symptom “flare”. But even then, the sequence of cause and effect can still be difficult to spot due to delays in the reaction surfacing into conscious somatic experience. Yet with committed diary tracking, not only can the patterns become obvious, but so too can the identity of the emotion involved. It then becomes possible to undertake specific emoto-somatic work to develop the nervous system’s emoturity for the emotion involved.

As capacity develops, even if the situation or relational dynamic remains unpleasant, the nervous system becomes less reliant on abandoning itself in response. Instead, it steadily becomes more possible to;

• feel anger without becoming consumed or exhausted
• feel fear without freeze immobilisation
• experience pleasure and excitement without anxiety or nausea
• sustain agency and stamina without burnout
• tolerate conflict or challenge without procrastination or panic
• tolerate manipulation without dissociation
• maintain boundaries without overwhelming guilt or self-shaming
• process regret associated with loss

The goal is not to eliminate emotion. The goal is to develop sufficient emoturity to remain embodied with it. This is the return to aliveness.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14de7ptomD3/

📌 BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BSt6kBwp8/

📌 RESTORING BEN’s SENSE OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CL38fta88/

📌 BEN's SEARCH FOR ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1D6jCk23Xc/

📌 BEN's ROAD TO RECOVERY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GkpiT3MUZ/

📌 TRANSFORMING INTERNALISED EMOTION
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E76pRnS1Y/

📌 THE EMERGENCE OF EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EXA9WHfDU/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 TRAUMA IS A STATE OF CONTAINMENT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnSCkV9YW/

📌 TRAUMA – EMOTION PREDICTED AS THREAT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FjLMQv1Nw/











BEN's ROAD TO RECOVERYBEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, occurs when an infant‘s emotions receive insufficient identificat...
10/06/2026

BEN's ROAD TO RECOVERY

BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, occurs when an infant‘s emotions receive insufficient identification, acknowledgement and co-regulation during the first 3 years of life. Without adequate co-regulation, the nervous system can become organised around the prediction that internally mobilising emotion energy is dangerous. The nervous system adapts by reducing metastability and flow. Life becomes restricted by the neurophysiological container of functional freeze – what Somatic Tao refers to as Yang Phobia.

Healing from BEN is totally possible… if the work is done in a titrated way. But what does that actually mean practically? First, let’s look at the word “titration”.

“Titration is a term from chemistry. It means:

a method or activity of finding exactly how much of something there is in a system by gradually adding measured amounts of another substance that reacts to it and produces a measurable response.

So, applying the above to working with BEN we get the following:

• The METHOD or ACTIVITY is tracking of the felt sense; tracking the nervous system speaking in the body.
• The SOMETHING is the threatening yang inside; the mobilising early life emotion energy.
• The OTHER SUBSTANCE is a small amount of gentle yang explored in the present moment, such as looking at a plant in the room, noticing sunlight through a window, thinking about a favourite person or pet; gently changing body posture to connect with a sense of agency.
• The REACTION is the nervous system’s response to connection with gentle yang.

The first response to gentle yang can include:

• a tiny bit of relaxation somewhere within; or
• a little less tension in some muscles; or
• breathing feeling a little more spacious or deeper.

None of the above are necessarily the ultimate responses of the threatening yang to the gentle yang. Rather, they are the nervous system's initial responses to the exploration. They tell us that something is changing, but not yet what the full effect has been. If we mistake these initial responses for the final outcome, we may return to more gentle yang before understanding the complete response to the first exploration. Titration is then lost.

Instead, we need to keep tracking. How does the nervous system respond once containment begins to soften? Does more emotion emerge? Does constriction increase? Does attention shift away from the body and into thinking? These later responses provide important information about how much mobilisation the system can embody without defensive adaptation - the Window of Tolerance of the system. Too much mobilisation too soon may reinforce the nervous system's prediction that emotion is dangerous. Rather than increasing emoturity and flexibility, the system can become further organised around protection, containment and withdrawal.

With the information provided by these ultimate responses, trauma therapy can be finely attuned to BEN’s nervous system as it is in that moment, on that day, as influenced by current life situations in relationship to trauma history. This is the way that titration expertly guides the work.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14de7ptomD3/

📌 BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BSt6kBwp8/

📌 BEN's SEARCH FOR ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1D6jCk23Xc/

📌 TRANSFORMING INTERNALISED EMOTION
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E76pRnS1Y/

📌 THE EMERGENCE OF EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EXA9WHfDU/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 EMOTION & THUS BEN DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19UGvs5vNM/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 TRAUMA IS A STATE OF CONTAINMENT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnSCkV9YW/

📌 TRAUMA – EMOTION PREDICTED AS THREAT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FjLMQv1Nw/

This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier Somatic Tao post originally posted on 24th April 2025:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bj2FK1WNK/












08/06/2026

BEN's SEARCH FOR ALIVENESS

BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, can organise the nervous system around the prediction that internally mobilising emotion energy is dangerous. From a Somatic Tao perspective, this creates Yang Phobia – an acquired intolerance of the body’s own activating energies. Over time this may reduce emoturity and metastability, leaving the individual less able to remain embodied with sympathetic activation – emotion, pleasure, excitement, agency and vitality. Life can begin to feel emotionally flat, disconnected or lacking in aliveness – an existence of functional freeze. (For more information check the links posted below).

Inability to feel and experience the body’s energies leads to a lack of feedback from both interoception, (the internal felt sense of the body) and exteroception, (felt sense of interaction with the external world). Relationship with oneself and others lacks a sense of exchange and fulfilment. Confirmation of existence can be difficult, even absent. Life can feel disconnected… alone… too still. Too yin. All can be deeply dissatisfying. And, therein lies Mother Nature’s answer. Therein lies the way out. According to the Tao and the interplay between yin and yang, (as shown in the Tai Ji symbol): what becomes too yin must naturally return to yang – the sense of dissatisfaction is itself the yang attempting to initiate movement once again. But this can bring a new set of problems…

Firstly, the drive for connection, engagement and aliveness can mean the person unconsciously turns to yang generating, mobilising, stimulating behaviours. Behaviours such as:

• Repeatedly revisiting threat-based experiences, conflicts or grievances;
• constantly creating drama or conflict, e.g., interacting with the wrong people; over-booking one’s diary; setting and trying to achieve impossible deadlines; creating difficult challenges to justify sense of frustration or anger;
• engaging in risk taking and harmful activities, e.g., shop lifting; drug taking; driving at speed; extreme sports; self-harm…

The unconscious intention of all the above is to drive sympathetic activation and temporarily restore a sense of engagement, flow and agency. Neurochemically, it increases the level of adrenaline in the system. Because adrenaline is a powerful organiser within the nervous system:

• it focuses the body’s senses and movement;
• it gives a sense of drive, purpose and agency; and
• it can also lead to increased engagement with other things and people.

Finally, there is confirmation of existence. Finally, there is connection and exchange. Finally, a sense of feeling alive. Feeling relevant. But aliveness from nervous system hyperarousal doesn’t really provide sense of engagement or vitality in life. Plus, it is biologically costly and potentially dangerous.

Secondly, the neurophysiology of someone wired with Yang Phobia lacks experience working with mobilisation itself. Because the dorsal vagal freeze that is Yang Phobia acts to massively reduce the availability of yang to learn with. This impedes the nervous system’s capacity to develop emoturity, metastability and flow. When this reduced capacity for mobilisation is combined with an adrenalised need for vigour and vitality, life can end up a yo-yo of booming yang busting back to yin – think of the person who is very up and down in their life with chronic fatigue.

Recovery requires experiencing the safe reintroduction of aliveness to a nervous system organised around Yang Phobia.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14de7ptomD3/

📌 BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BSt6kBwp8/

📌 THE EMERGENCE OF EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EXA9WHfDU/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 EMOTION & THUS BEN DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19UGvs5vNM/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 WHEN EMOTION HAS NOWHERE TO GO
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18U1YAKnTM/

📌 TRAUMA IS A STATE OF CONTAINMENT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnSCkV9YW/

📌 TRAUMA – EMOTION PREDICTED AS THREAT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FjLMQv1Nw/

This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier Somatic Tao post originally posted on 18th April 2025:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Ac7W1wbcd/












Music to video: Storm Chaser by Paul Fowler

07/06/2026

SOOTHING SUNDAY – Cleanse & Revive...

Let the sea
Cleanse and revive you.












OUR FEELINGS ARE INFORMATIONOne of the costs of Babyhood Emotional Neglect (BEN) can be learning to disconnect from emot...
06/06/2026

OUR FEELINGS ARE INFORMATION

One of the costs of Babyhood Emotional Neglect (BEN) can be learning to disconnect from emotion in order to cope.

Yet our feelings are not the problem. They are information.

They help us sense safety and danger, understand our needs, guide our choices and deepen our connection with ourselves and others.

The goal is not to feel less, but to develop the capacity to remain embodied with what we feel.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 THE EMERGENCE OF EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EXA9WHfDU/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 EMOTION & THUS BEN DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19UGvs5vNM/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14de7ptomD3/

📌 BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BSt6kBwp8/

📌 RESTORING BEN’s SENSE OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CL38fta88/








RESTORING BEN’s SENSE OF ALIVENESSRecently, we learnt how BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, can create an acquired intole...
05/06/2026

RESTORING BEN’s SENSE OF ALIVENESS

Recently, we learnt how BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, can create an acquired intolerance of internally mobilised emotion energy and a state of functional freeze – what Somatic Tao describes as “Yang Phobia”. Great for surviving internal movement of emotion energy perceived as threatening within the body. However, such self-protection comes at a cost:

• reduced interoceptive ability, (ability to be aware of internal sensations in our body);
• reduced exteroceptive ability, (perception of stimuli originating from outside the body via the five senses and proprioception);
• reduced sense of aliveness and vigour;
• reduced connection to one’s emotion energies;
• a tendency to adrenalise with drama and threat in order to feel vigour and vitality;
• a life that’s prone to yo-yoing between boom and bust because the nervous system has been precluded from developing its expertise to work with emotion mobilisation. Its window of resilience for yang is very small.

All causes a big intrapsychic conflict: how to begin to experience life when life is conserved by not feeling?

Well, for starters there are things we definitely don’t want to do, e.g.,

• connect to anything potentially traumatic, i.e., the trauma narrative is out of bounds;
• connect to anything dramatic or intense, as that only serves to reinforce intensity for sense of vitality; or even
• work directly with the felt sense of interoception, because remember: the threat, (yang or whatever moves and emotes inside), is perceived within the body.

So, that leaves us with one useful starting option: connecting to the felt sense of exteroception in the here and now. But even so, we need to respect the very small window of resilience of BEN’s Yang Phobic nervous system. So, we need to begin by exploring gentle forms of yang; somatically connecting to experiences such as:

• sense of gentle humour, e.g., amusing videos, conversations or other light-hearted experiences
• sense of pleasure, e.g., imagining walking in nature; or spending time with their pet; singing their favourite song
• empowering body movements, e.g., asking them to stand up rather than sit down and to track their felt sense
• sense of agency, e.g., moving closer to something or further away

Yet, all still needs to be done in a tracked and titrated manner. Too much yang too soon will act to reinforce the prediction within BEN’s nervous system that mobilisation is dangerous. Insufficient somatic attunement and titration will likely exacerbate boom and bust yo-yoing.

To conclude, BEN can organise the nervous system around the prediction that internally mobilised emotion energy is dangerous – a form of Yang Phobia. Over time this reduces emoturity and metastability, leaving the individual less able to remain embodied with activation, pleasure, excitement, agency and vitality. Life may feel flat, distant or lacking in aliveness, drawing some individuals toward threat, drama or crisis because intense activation temporarily restores a sense of vitality. However, recovery does not come through greater intensity. It comes through gradually expanding the nervous system's capacity to experience safe mobilisation. Humour, pleasure, curiosity, agency, movement, creativity and connection become opportunities to experience aliveness without overwhelming activation.

Recovery requires emoto-somatic experiences that allow mobilisation to no longer feel inherently dangerous. With careful titration the nervous system begins to learn how vitality can emerge from life itself rather than through threat.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14de7ptomD3/

📌 BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BSt6kBwp8/

📌 THE EMERGENCE OF EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EXA9WHfDU/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 EMOTION & THUS BEN DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19UGvs5vNM/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 WHEN EMOTION HAS NOWHERE TO GO
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18U1YAKnTM/

📌 TRAUMA IS A STATE OF CONTAINMENT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnSCkV9YW/

📌 TRAUMA – EMOTION PREDICTED AS THREAT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FjLMQv1Nw/

This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier Somatic Tao post originally posted on 21st April 2025:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16T8UphwJX/











BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESSIn a previous post we learnt how BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, can lead to our body’s emotions...
03/06/2026

BEN’s FEAR OF ALIVENESS

In a previous post we learnt how BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, can lead to our body’s emotions and yang energies becoming threatening inside, leading further to a lack of sense of aliveness, (link below in MORE INFORMATION).

Let’s take a more in depth look at exactly how BEN affects sense of aliveness.

Aliveness is yang. It is the upward and outward movement of energy within the body. It’s about being able to pursue pleasure. It’s that feeling of being lit up inside; that desire to move towards the things that enrich and nurture life.

Like aliveness, trauma also involves mobilisation of energy within the body. When emotion energy exceeds the nervous system’s available capacity for integration and regulation, experience shifts from empowering to overwhelming. This allows:

• fear,
• grief,
• anger,
• shame,
• excitement,
• joy,
• attachment longing

to all have the potential for becoming overwhelming under the wrong conditions. The issue is not merely quantity of yang or a specific type of emotion. The issue is insufficient nervous system emoturity to support embodiment in the presence of mobilising emotion energy. Internally mobilised emotion increasingly becomes predicted as a threat to biological and psychological integrity.

When this happens, the nervous system responds by increasing activity in the dorsal vagus to contain or even immobilize the emotion energy in freeze. From a Somatic Tao perspective, this can be understood as a form of “Yang Phobia”. Either way this containment strategy comes with a trade-off – access to other forms of life-enhancing energies such as a sense of aliveness, pleasure, joy and even hope may also become reduced.

Sometimes such containment and immobilisation can be so strong that a person can feel numb, disconnected from their emotions and detached from life; even presenting with de-realization or de-personalisation. The body just becomes too unsafe to live in.

Many people can still achieve a lot in their life despite struggling to have sense of aliveness. E.g., they can be high performing and successful at work, or they can have a stable family life. On the outside they can appear to be functioning and living “normally”. But, inside they are likely experiencing life as mundane and unrewarding, struggling to find sense of meaning or purpose. Because the Yang Phobia of their nervous system impedes availability of yang for emoto-somatic feedback. Without it life is experienced in the absence of sufficient aliveness, otherwise known as living in functional freeze.

Signs of functional freeze are as follows:

• PHYSICAL, e.g., slowed or held breathing; cold extremities; body heaviness and stillness; sense of paralysis, fainting; chronic fatigue; trouble taking care of oneself.

• COGNITIVE, e.g., foggy thinking; procrastination and difficulty making decisions; lack of memory.

• EMOTIONAL, e.g., numbness and alexithymia, (difficulty feeling, identifying, understanding and expressing emotions), or a background sense of anxiety that just won’t shift; tired but wired; sense of detachment; social withdrawal or difficulty forming meaningful relationships; sense of dread or doom; sense of loneliness.

Living a life of functional freeze points to previous need to survive unresolvable sense of danger. It indicates successful endurance of repetitive, unavoidable and chronic threat. Functional freeze is the language of a nervous system that has learnt to protect life when flight and fight were rendered impotent. It is an effective way to live in a body organised around the prediction that internally mobilised emotion is dangerous.

From a Somatic Tao perspective, functional freeze can be understood as an expression of Yang Phobia.

Functional freeze is commonly observed in individuals who have a history of BEN.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14de7ptomD3/

📌 THE EMERGENCE OF EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EXA9WHfDU/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 EMOTION & THUS BEN DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19UGvs5vNM/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 WHEN EMOTION HAS NOWHERE TO GO
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18U1YAKnTM/

📌 TRAUMA IS A STATE OF CONTAINMENT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnSCkV9YW/

📌 TRAUMA – EMOTION PREDICTED AS THREAT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FjLMQv1Nw/

This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier Somatic Tao post originally posted on 17th April 2025:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1K8weujWGp/












BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESSResearch is beginning to indicate BEN – Babyhood Emotional Neglect – organises the nervous system...
02/06/2026

BEN's LACK OF ALIVENESS

Research is beginning to indicate BEN – Babyhood Emotional Neglect – organises the nervous system around the prediction that internally mobilised emotion energy is dangerous [1]. From a Somatic Tao perspective, this can be understood as a form of “Yang Phobia": an acquired intolerance of the body's own mobilising energies.

Threats on the inside are problematic and challenging for the nervous system's usual defence responses:

• from a Taoist perspective, fighting the internal threat can become a form of fighting the self – a dynamic reflected in conditions where the body appears to turn on itself, e.g., autoimmune conditions; and

• the impossibility of physical escape necessitates an energetic form of flight through dissociation, withdrawal or immobilisation.

Whilst energetic flight from the internal threat of the yang of emotions can be super successful for self-protection, it is truly detrimental to a sense of thriving. Once mobilisation itself becomes associated with danger, the survival system tends to generalise that danger prediction across many forms of mobilisation – even the yang of vitality and sense of life.

The very energies needed to feel alive become energies the nervous system has become wired to fear.

Hence, a person with a history of BEN can feel lifeless, numb, or even dead inside.
A nervous system organised around containing perceived internal threat often has reduced access to many other life-supporting forms of yang, including:

• hope;
• curiosity;
• joy;
• pleasure and enjoyment;
• sense of purpose or ambition.

Inability to feel and experience such energies leads to a sense of emptiness inside. And, because BEN happened before conscious awareness, there is little ability to understand why life feels the way it does. Or, why anyone else might be able to relate to the emptiness and deadness. After all, everyone else seems to be gaily enjoying life. So, life not only feels empty but also lonely. This can feel intolerable and may lead a person towards behaviours such as:

• retelling dramatic events and stories;
• constantly creating drama or conflict;
• engaging in risk taking and harmful activities;
• self-harming and cutting

These behaviours may function, in part, to increase physiological activation to temporarily challenge the containment patterns of a nervous system organised around threat. A way to temporarily increase adrenaline to counter feelings of numbness, emptiness or disconnection. Because adrenaline is a fantastic organiser within: it focuses the body’s senses and movement; it gives a sense of drive, purpose and agency; and it can also lead to increased engagement with other things and people. Finally, there is confirmation of existence. Finally, there is experience of feeling alive! But aliveness from nervous system hyperarousal doesn’t really provide sense of engagement or vitality in life. Plus, it is biologically costly and potentially dangerous.

So, how to recover a sense of vitality without the sense of trauma? How to unpick the nervous system conflict of preserving life by not feeling, yet needing to feel to feel alive?

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 EMOTION & THUS BEN DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19UGvs5vNM/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 WHEN EMOTION HAS NOWHERE TO GO
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18U1YAKnTM/

📌 TRAUMA IS A STATE OF CONTAINMENT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnSCkV9YW/

📌 TRAUMA – EMOTION PREDICTED AS THREAT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FjLMQv1Nw/

📌 ADRENALINE SEEKING AND THE SEARCH FOR FLOW
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18qyt4jMZ4/

RESEARCH:

[1] Lyons-Ruth, K. (2025). Is neglect the first form of threat? Attachment & Human Development, 27(4), 511–538. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2025.2518687

This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier Somatic Tao post originally published on 15th April 2025:
https://www.facebook.com/somatictao/videos/654877444101288












31/05/2026

SOOTHING SUNDAY – Nestling in sunny spots...

A moment to settle the nervous system, and return to yourself.

Nestling in sunny spots
On the woodland floor
Little blue jewels
Of Speedwell
Proudly broadcast
Their dainty beauty.











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