[user deactivated]

The physical world whether it is living or not generates a kind of ‘emotional resonance’ in our perception. Information arrives at our limbic (emotional) system through our senses and we interpret it on cognitive and emotional levels. A good example might be the sight and smell of decaying bracken under Stanage edge. Sometimes for many people this normal process is interrupted. The information from the senses arrives in the brain but fails to make its way to the limbic system, creating an emotional disconnect. The world and ones self can be experienced as unreal, two dimensional, and far away. A persons sense of self maybe disturbed as they are unable to emotionally connect with their own identity and this whole experience may generate an inner world full of anxiety and existential fear. Acute experiences like this are thought to be a normal mechanism in the brain particularly at times of intense stress and danger, where it’s advantageous to survival to temporarily lose the emotional connection. Although for some people it can become a chronic disturbing state, often unnoticeable to others. Interestingly while I think climbing and particularly when it creates extreme sustained stress (like when mountaineering or in a dangerous position on a trad route) can lead directly to this mind state, I also think climbing and the it’s ability to offer strong connection to the physical world can ‘ground’ a person and re establish a sense of connection to oneself and others. I wonder how this links to the phenomenon of sensation chasing in climbing and other extreme sports where these kind of difficulties lead to momentarily ‘feeling normal’ for the person experiencing chronic unreality? I’d be interested to hear peoples opinion on this and how it fits in with climbing experiences. This kind of thing often goes under the radar due to the level of ‘weird and wonderful’ stigma it can generate.

[mrjonathanr]

Could you link to sonething which details the process you refer to there Dan? ie sensory input not leading to activation of limbic system? Cheers!

[Falling Down]

Dan - I think you’d enjoy “The Spell of the Sensuous” by David Abrams.  It’s a wonderful book about the mind/body organism and the intertwined relationship with nature.

He draws heavily upon the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and his own experience as an ecologist and philosopher.  Lots of insights into that grounding you refer to in your post.

[andy popp]

I have experienced those feelings of connection very strongly but I don't think I've ever experienced that sense of disconnect (or if I have, only very mildly).

Its worth understanding that emotional states and experiences are not produced only by apprehension of the physical world acting on physiology etc. but are also socially constructed and have histories.

[user deactivated]

Could you link to sonething which details the process you refer to there Dan? ie sensory input not leading to activation of limbic system? Cheers!

Hi there, the original article abstract is here I think. But has been built on since then.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9807645/

Thanks for the other replies, lots to say but gotta get back to work 🙄

[DAVETHOMAS90]

"often unnoticeable to others"

As I've come to realise.

Very good topic, and something I experience/have experienced a great deal.

There was something about the no hiding place of soloing, that made it the grounding experience you mention. Thankfully not literally.

My last climbing trip to France was in 1991, with plenty of soloing exploits at Buoux and in the Verdon. Since then hardly anything really. Just trying to emphasise how much it was my default option.

I know something of why it was ultimately so important, but it was Danny Brooks who asked me to consider where it might lead - he'd lost a friend, Pete Hughes, to soloing in the Avon Gorge.

I hate talking about/suggesting the influence of words like that.

However, now, when I go to the crag, it's as though I'm tied down - or grounded, in the other sense of the word.

In that sense, I haven't climbed for many years.

When I was soloing, it brought with  it the sense of an interconnection of everything - including an awareness of all possibilities.

I struggle with not being in that situation - not living.

Bachar's words resonated with me so much.

My own thoughts about his death are whether he'd reached the point where he was "going through the motions" and also struggling with the tension between knowing the wire he had to walk in order to feel alive, but had also become more cognisant of the potential finality.

There is something about soloing - on harder things perhaps? - that requires full openness and awareness, a sort of surrender to the situation, which means complete connection - there are no folds in the fabric for things to hide in - but also complete vulnerability.

Hope that makes sense - re how I'd look for a resolution of the two states you describe, in climbing.

[andy popp]

Its a small but important detail: Pete Hughes was terribly injured in but survived an abseiling accident in the Avon Gorge. Very sadly he subsequently died when he was hit by car as he tried to cross a road at night.

[andy popp]

I actually thought his second accident - that killed him - was while climbing also, but I would have learned that second- or third-hand so no doubt unreliable. Very sad.

There was a terrible ground fall while leading at Trevallen, then the abseiling accident at Avon, and finally the RTA. As you say, very very sad. And yes, Pete was forever changed by the first accident, something only compounded by the second one.

[user deactivated]

Hi guys, I know what you mean Andy. That emotion develops is moulded  along with our sense of self and others particularly during early years where are internal working model is being layed down. This of course has a social - cultural context as well as being directly reflective of the nurture received  from care givers. This is why Cbt often fails to address very ‘felt’ beliefs because they are not rationalise-able.

The problem or mind state I’m referring is when a person through various experiences can become disconnected from this deeper emotional resonance with the world and people in it. For example a friend or relative may look like that person and talk like that person but does not ‘feel’ like that person. In this way a person experiencing this may seek to re-connect through sensation seeking.

Habrich - I took a look at that book. Very interesting stuff. Will give it a read. Are you training in psychology or something similar? I’m sure I read that on here 🙃

[DAVETHOMAS90]

Thank you for giving the correct information about Pete Hughes.

I'm sure I would have been given more accurate details at the time, but it was the concern felt for a long time - and his soloing exploits - that was relayed to me at some distance.

[andy popp]

I wasn't a criticism Dave at all, I just wanted to state things correctly.

[Falling Down]

Habrich - I took a look at that book. Very interesting stuff. Will give it a read. Are you training in psychology or something similar? I’m sure I read that on here 🙃

That’s me.  I’m midway through a training in Integrative Transpersonal Psychotherapy.  I’d offer more up to your threads if I could as you pose some great questions, but between a full-time job, the training hours and placement work I don’t have much time and headspace I’m afraid.

Keep at it Dan - I do enjoy reading your threads and all the thoughtful replies.

 

[user deactivated]

Wow that is a commitment. I hope the training is going well. A very challenging but rewarding course I’d imagine. I’ll do a bit of reading about it. Cheers

[Fiend]

The world and ones self can be experienced as unreal, two dimensional, and far away. A persons sense of self maybe disturbed as they are unable to emotionally connect with their own identity and this whole experience may generate an inner world full of anxiety and existential fear.

Dunno if it helps but this is exactly how I felt last summer during an IBS/depression meltdown. A hollow shell that looked and walked and talked like Fiend but had no soul inside.

I also think climbing and the it’s ability to offer strong connection to the physical world can ‘ground’ a person and re establish a sense of connection to oneself and others.

And this is exactly how I felt in autumn when I'd mostly got over the acute depression. A sense of realness, of ME-ness, of being true to myself and being in the world. And it wasn't about chasing the most extreme sensations - the time it really struck me was on Sidewinder at Glen Lednock - a good challenge for me, but I felt good and it felt fun - I had to fight a bit, there was some stress, but it was also within my comfort zone of.....not of "ease", but of the familiarity of the challenge and the situation.

This is why Cbt often fails to address very ‘felt’ beliefs because they are not rationalise-able.

I agree. I was doing CBT at the time and in part it was helpful, but in part the whole CBT mantra "behind everything feeling is a thought" is simply wrong for me. Sometimes the feelings are thought-derived, but sometimes associated thoughts are subsequent retrospective explanation / analysis.

Sorry I don't have anything more objective other than those experiences!

[DAVETHOMAS90]

I wasn't a criticism Dave at all, I just wanted to state things correctly.

Hi Andy.

And not taken as one at all! Thank you for giving the correct information - especially about something as important, and sensitive for everyone affected at the time.

[Johnny Brown]

Dan, I've got the Abrams book Ben recommended if you'd like to borrow it. I enjoyed it, but I suspect some of it might be a bit vague new-agey for you (based on recent posts). The bit on language certainly resonated with me though, and informed my own thinking on this area. Basically, I see a strong emotional connection to landscape and place as a key part of the human psyche that got us through a couple of million years of hunter gathering, and I suspect it goes back way further than that to a place far before language. Bruce Chatwin's Songlines also gives some insights into this, with the aboriginal pathways seen as both creation myth and map as well as an inheritable (and tradeable) meme. Given that memory tricks in 2019 still mostly revolve around mapping to mental journeys suggests that to me Chatwin's broader application of the theme was correct. The parallels with climbing culture - reenacting challenging linear journeys made by legendary predecessors - seem pretty obvious. So I'd suggest the vast majority of us in the modern world are damaged from the get go by the lack of any meaningful relationship with the fabric of the planet; a relationship that until very recently was central to our success as a species. Climbing is a very effective way of reconnecting because it is slow, intensely local and forces a significant level of concentration. And I'd agree with Dave that the deeper you go so the rewards are potentially deeper to. It'd be interesting to chat with a shaman about their understanding of the terms happiness or depression, but I suspect connection and disconnection might figure strongly.

[user deactivated]

Hi JB I’ve been meaning to reply to your fascinating post. Thanks for the offer, it would be great to borrow the book. Some of what you’re saying reminds me of the ‘Jungian’ archetypes view of evolution which that Canadian psychologist theorises about. E.g. The Hero. I’m really interested in spirituality and a deeper connection to the landscape (not in a deepak Chopra sense, I hasten to add). And some of what you’re saying really resonates with me. With regards to Shaman and feeling more connected, I wonder if desire to transcend through spiritual experiences is about disconnection and then reconnection. Like taking ayahuasca or dmt or experiencing a ‘kundalini awakening’ (not sure I fully understand what that is tho). Anyway making ego based drives secondary to places, adventure and companionship away from the usual has certainly beeen essential to my reconnection. 

[northern yob]

I don’t really know what on earth you lot are on about, but for what it’s worth my experience with a shamen(which was as close to authentic as it could be) left me feeling absolutely connected to my environment and completely disconnected to me as a being within it. I have never been less connected with my ego than during the “ordeal”

[El Mocho]

And how did the other folk you went to the Shaman with find it? Say if one of them had a slightly bigger ego to begin with 

[northern yob]

I don’t think it’s my place to speak about other people’s experiences particularly something like that. Personally I think that one of the terrifying things about the experience was that to make it through, you had to give up on you! Ego is absolutely essential to our identity,we all have one, and until you are forced to give it up I don’t think you really understand how big, or how intrinsic it actually is!

[northern yob]

Also relating back to what JB was saying, a common theme of dmt derived experiences is a connection to the planet.

For me I didn’t just feel connected to it, I was it!

I think that the reason early humans grasped onto dmt, as a means to understand why we are here,and the deeper meanings of our existence was that you feel absolutely connected to your environment.And that was a crucial part of our survival as a species, it links back to a primeval part of our brains, which has become virtually redundant in today’s society.

[user deactivated]

It sounds like the torture device from hitchhikers guide:

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex

[northern yob]

It sounds like the torture device from hitchhikers guide:

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex

Worryingly that’s about as close an analogy as you could get!

[user deactivated]

Exactly, a brief cost - benefit analysis indicates I’m better of at home with a nice cup of tea and a bacon buttie

[Johnny Brown]

Ha, was hoping our resident shamanic voyager might pop up!

Ben, good shout on that book, just dug it out (must be ten years), and page 20 and he's right on the money:



You're still welcome to borrow it Dan but I'm going to reread it first. Or they're like 4 quid on amazon.

Bruce Parry's latest film Tawai is worth a look too, in which how tries to look a bit deeper at some of the tribes he's visited and what we might learn from them. The most instructive bit for me was where he goes out hunting with some guys in the amazon and discovers he simply hasn't developed the mental tools to be anything but a hindrance. That level of concentration would have been our daily experience and key to our survival, providing both the connection we're talking about and also the meditation/ mindfulness most of us find is lacking in modern life.

I've found some other activities (birdwatching, field recording, nature photography) that provide some of this but climbing remains the most powerful, as above, because of the physical grappling with the detail of the landscape, and genuine danger. This is one of my main motivations for doing BMC access work, and pushing for climbing access not to be subsumed by conservation concerns. I don't think conservationists appreciate the power of connection climbing provides, the lifelong effect it can have, or the way we've now got an incredible mentored pathway bringing people in to this connection all the way from inner-city casual fitness vibes.

Some of what you’re saying reminds me of the ‘Jungian’ archetypes view of evolution which that Canadian psychologist theorises about. E.g. The Hero.

Or Jung himself perhaps? Reminds me, been meaning to check him out. Guessing FD might have already?