The Evolution of Self-Regulation & Becoming Human

Somatic Science® is a neurobiologically grounded, nondual wisdom approach. It supports our nervous system to become regulated, relaxed and harmonized with itself & the external environment. This helps us to develop a basic capacity for self-attunement and self-regulation, which are essential for satisfying relationships with our self and others. This approach can result in a great depth and breadth of self-discovery, presence, joy and peace- the aim of all genuine Wisdom traditions.

The aim of our approach is to enjoy life with happiness; no more and no less. It is not to focus on diagnoses, understanding our problems or spending many years analyzing them. When we are happy, we are simply BEING the present moment, where psychological problems do not exist. There might be challenges, and in being presence, we can resolve them with responsibility and care. Happiness is simply the absence of suffering, and for our nervous system, suffering means that a threat response cycle (TRC) is active regardless of present-moment safety. This has fundamental repercussions on our capacity for feeling alive, safe and open to novelty in our world.

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The endeavor here is to manifest the possibility for directly experiencing what is written. It is not to analyze or offer second-hand knowledge or scholarly references. We have the innate capacity to access exteroception (outside the body), interoception (inside the body) and cognition or metacognition (the experience of sensing or knowing that we are sensing) the space of consciousness where these perceptions are assembled.

Human emotional life is richly subjective, yet it remains grounded in the biological architecture of the nervous system. When we examine the act of emotional expression—not as sentiment but as behavior—it reveals an evolved mechanism embedded within our neurobiology: a self-updating capacity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), shifting from threat to safety through engagement, expression, and ultimately, restoration.

Our ANS is ordinarily caricatured as a binary switch between sympathetic (fight/flight) and parasympathetic (rest/digest) states. This over-simplification veils the complex interplay of our neural capacity as introduced by Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory. Most crucially, the theory distinguishes the ventral vagal complex (VVC), a uniquely mammalian, myelinated pathway that supports social engagement, vocalization, and prosocial behavior.

The dorsal vagal complex is akin to an antiquated dial-up connection—slow, primitive, and designed for survival, often triggering shutdown in moments of overwhelm. In contrast, the ventral vagal complex functions like a swift and sophisticated fiber-optic network—efficient, finely tuned, and essential for fostering connection, engagement, and emotional presence.

From a perspective where systems are understood by the structures and constraints that produce observable phenomena—we might consider emotional expressions such as crying as a structured output derived from internal computations resulting in safety. Our organism, confronted with a stimulus that initially registered as threatening, detects—through afferent signaling and cortical appraisal—that the environment is in fact non-dangerous. What emerges is not fight, fight or immobility, but a socially communicative motor expression: sobbing, moaning, or crying.

These behaviors are the foundation of our sense of self. When they are limited or suppressed (as in most humans) our capacity for coming up to the present moment is severely restricted or even unavailable.

"Coming up to the present moment" is an expression that can be simply described in a graph:

The process of assessing safety is crucial for us as relational beings to feel a minimum degree of containment and wellness. Only than are we truly primed to fully receive the experience of openness to self or others and allow our face and heart to re-connect. Then, it could be said that we are open to the experience of life as it happens to be at any given moment.

Then we are fully updated to these basic facts:

1. I am alive

2. I am safe

3. I am open to life

Then and only then have I been updated or "brought up to" the current manifestations and conditions of the present moment. The process of updating to here-and-now is distinctly managed by the VVC, the most recent neural circuit that evolution has given us. It is a circuit of relational dynamics with our-selves and parts of ourselves or with others.

This is a continuously reoccurring process where our ANS re-purposes metabolic energy previously mobilized through the DVC for defense and expresses it through ventral vagal structures—those responsible for regulating facial expression, voice modulation and breath. What might appear as a breakdown is rather a reorganization: a self-emerging return to homeostasis via prosocial channels. In evolutionary terms, this has clear adaptive value. Rather than retreat, aggression or a lapse into apathy, the individual engages others, signaling distress in a manner likely to register in others as a safe sign for care and co-regulation.

This behavior contrasts sharply with other autonomic updating expressions. Laughter, for instance, while social, tends to evoke a sharp spike in sympathetic arousal with a rapid parasympathetic rebound. It is a brief recalibration. Immobility or apathy, by contrast, engages the dorsal vagal complex (DVC), an older unmyelinated pathway that constrains metabolic activity, producing dissociation under threat. Crying resides in a more integrated space—it holds sympathetic arousal and parasympathetic tone in a dynamic oscillation, an interplay that gradually settles into calm.

Crying, often miscast as purely emotional or even weak, is more accurately understood as a bidirectional regulatory loop. The autonomic nervous system, having mobilized energy to confront or flee from threat, instead finds—through sensory feedback and relational cues—that the context is safe.

For those engaged in clinical practice or in learning to regulate their own nervous systems, the implications are immediate. Safety is not a rational declaration; it is a state registered by the nervous system through signals such as voice tone, breath rhythm, facial warmth and affect, and embodied presence (relaxation of core, limbs and head). That allows for the neural connections between the heart, pericardium and face to be present and then strengthened. This is the underlying requisite to communicate in the language of the VVC. Accordingly, expression that emphasizes vocalization, slow exhalation, or relational presence function not as symbolic reassurances but as literal neural instructions to downregulate defense and invite connection.

In therapeutic settings, this understanding clarifies why certain interventions work. Why talking without safety fails. Why silence with warmth succeeds. Why crying, when permitted, becomes an act of physiological reorganization. Autonomic updating is not a metaphor; it is a literal restructuring of input–output mappings in the neural circuits that govern our embodied cognition. The nervous system learns that what once threatened now nourishes. The body responds accordingly.

If at this very moment we are experiencing unease that can be located as a sensation of tightness or intensity anywhere in the body, it means that our ANS is attempting to update itself to the current conditions.

If we allow ourselves to experience aliveness, safety and curiosity it is more likely that this will occur. Yet we spend entire lifetimes resisting this gift given to us by evolution (life). We unwittingly become trapped by a part that was meant to protect us, and we become its slave.

Then we are subject to 3 different levels of suppression:

1. Muscular fixations

2. Behavioral fixations

3. Cognitive fixations

These fixations are managed by the DVC in an attempt to short-circuit or paralyze the natural process of autonomic updating. It is not fully safe yet to exist and be known to exist.

Evolutionarily, this system allows the redirection of energy that would otherwise support defensive states—such as fight, flight, or freeze—into prosocial motor behaviors like crying or even moaning. These behaviors are, in effect, a way of metabolizing arousal into connection.

Here, again, is a lesson in human capacity. That we do not merely react but adapt. That we hold in our physiology an architecture not only for survival, but for restoration. And that the simple act of crying—dismissed in many cultural narratives as weakness—may in fact be one of our most refined expressions of safety, complexity, and evolved intelligence.

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References

* Porges, S. (2009). *The Polyvagal Theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system.*

* Panksepp, J. (1998). *Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions.*

* Vingerhoets, A. (2013). *Why Only Humans Weep: Unravelling the Mysteries of Tears.*

* Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1997). *Emotional regulation: The autonomic consequences of sadness and anger.*

* Feldman, R. (2017). *The neurobiology of human attachments.*

* Keltner, D., & Bonanno, G. A. (1997). A study of laughter and crying in response to emotion-inducing films.