Mindfulness, Weeks 3-4 of Your 8-Week Program by Michael Chaskalson

Author:Michael Chaskalson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Box 6: Empathy and Body Awareness

When you’re better able to read what is happening in your own body, you’ll also be better at reading what is going on with others. Heightened awareness of your own body and its states can increase your own levels of empathy.

For almost all of the 2.6 million years of human history up until the beginning of settled agriculture about 10,000 years ago, our forebears lived in tribal bands – usually no bigger than 150 members. They had to compete with others for scarce resources, avoid predators and spend almost all their waking hours searching for food. In that kind of harsh environment, those who were better able to cooperate generally lived longer and left more offspring. Bands that were better at teamwork generally beat those whose teamwork was weaker. Since they were more likely to survive, it is their genes we have mainly inherited, and that gives us an in-built capacity to read what is happening – ‘read’ one another, as we must do if we are to work skilfully together.

Humans have the capacity to read the inner states of other humans to an extraordinary extent. These capabilities are driven by three different neural systems: we have the capacity to sense – and to simulate within our own experience – other people’s actions, their emotions and their thoughts.

The networks in your brain that are activated when you perform an action are also activated when you see someone else perform it. That gives you, in your own body, a felt sense of what others experience in their bodies. The way these networks ‘mirror’ the behaviour of others gives them their name: mirror neurons. Think about what happens when you see someone choking up in distress, for example. Most likely you will notice in your own body some reflection of what they are actually feeling in theirs – although usually to a lesser extent. Or think about what happens when you see a friend or family member bursting with happiness. Most likely you’ll experience some of the physical components of elation for yourself.

There are emotion-related circuits forming our experience. The neural circuits that are usually active when you experience strong emotions, such as fear or anger, are sympathetically activated in you when you see others having the same feelings. That allows you to make sense of the feelings of others, so the more aware you are of your own feelings and body sensations, the better you will be at reading these in others.

Yet another set of circuits comes into play when you come to ‘read’ the thoughts and beliefs of other people. The prefrontal circuits involved in helping us to guess the thoughts of others work in conjunction with the circuits involved in sensing the feelings and actions of others. Together, these produce your overall perception of their inner experience.

The capacity for two people to ‘feel felt’ by each other is a key factor in allowing those in relationship to one another to feel vibrant, alive, understood and at peace.

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