Sophy Banks on Bringing Systems Back to Health What is the change we want to see in the world, and how will that change happen?” These were the two rather intimidating questions we posed ourselves at the recent Transition Network Awaydays – our twice-yearly retreat for staff and board members. This post shares one piece of the our wide ranging exploration of theories of change, which looks at what it is about human beings that enables us to create healthy, sustainable, pleasurable ways of living – and why we often don’t. We started with a very big map of change – and the understanding that the change Transition seeks is towards more “health” in every part of our system. We used the word health not just for our physical state of wellness, but applied to all the different parts of the huge system of which we’re a part. So it includes our mental or emotional as well as physical health, but also applies to larger scales – community or societal health, ecological health, planetary health, and so on. We went on to look at a number of Theories of Change, including the one below - which looks at how we can get stuck in an emergency state, and continually recreate stressful, unequal systems at all levels of scale. Exploring Doing and Being What follows is a really simplified version of a model which focuses on two aspects of human existence, Doing and Being. The model has lots of layers and facets. My intention isn’t to present something definitive or watertight, but to give an overview of something which I – and many I’ve shared it with – have found helpful. (See here for a video of me explaining this and another model of health / un-health at the Change Day in 2013) Health = Balance and Flow The first proposition of this model is that health for humans is a flow between two contrasting (not opposite) qualities of life. Some might call them archetypal qualities. Here are some words that describe them: Outer, Doing, Active, Will, Yang, Task-oriented Inner, Being, Receptive, Love, Yin, Relationship-oriented So we might draw health as something like this: You can see this natural rhythm resulting from our evolution in a world which has similar cycles – night and day, winter and summer. In fact we have nervous systems which regulate our bodies for both parts of the cycle – parasympathetic for the relaxing, digesting, inward part; the sympathetic nervous system for the active outer phase. Resilience = Ability to bounce back to health When we are resilient we can be stressed in this system and bounce back to health. A lot of neuroscience research recently has shown that there are a number of ways we can respond to stress. The sympathetic nervous system often goes into fight or flight response – the most well known. Peter Levine’s work with trauma shows animals and also humans can freeze when threatened. Our evolved response is to take action, and then to release the tension from the body – either through the running away or fighting, or by shaking out after the freeze response. We can then come back to the healthy flow between relaxation and action. Out of balance = Unhealthy However there are circumstances where we don’t come back naturally to that flow. One is where our stress response is overwhelmed by a major event – such as a physical attack, or being shamed in front of others (we respond to emotional attack as if it were physical - we don’t have a distinction in these parts of the brain). The other is if we endure some kind of stress over long periods, where there isn’t time or space to recover and bounce back. It’s been shown that this kind of long term activation of the stress system can damage the immune system, leading to illness. One of the areas of research is into early development of the stress response, showing that the brain wires up differently depending on genes as well as our early holding and relational field. Some people have an overactive stress response, triggering easily into highly active attack or withdrawal; others handle stress by feeling numb, having a low emotional tone. When our capacity for coping with stress is overloaded over time we can get stuck in the physical, mental and emotional survival state. For some this is a driven need to keep going, for others this may be a place of collapse. It’s helpful to see that these two positions are the extremity or the distortion of the healthy qualities of activity and stillness, and the healthy emergency responses of fight / flight and freeze. Recognising an unhealthy system There are a number of features of a system – whether an individual or a group – that has reached this state of distorted polarity: Both polarised states become an identity, not just a response to circumstances. “We’re hard-working”, “I’m powerless”. The people in the active state will tend to run the system – because they have capacity to act and do things. The beliefs of this state become the cultural norm. The over... buff.ly/1kiTR…
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 10:05:13 +0000
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