The Science of Compassion: Nature Vs. Nurture

Sarah Jamieson / Thoughts / Compassion / 0 Comment

What’s your most important goal/s?

What is the legacy you wish to leave behind?

Why does it matter so deeply?

Are you living your purpose?

How will you overcome the obstacles?

How can we answer these questions with sincerity, mindfulness and compassion and proceed with integrity?  While at the same time setting in motion the steps towards personal transformation?

It all starts with letting go of the fear and establishing a greater connection with ourselves, our values and our beliefs towards personal change.  In my own personal journey this is a two pronged path – one deeply rooted in the wisdom of ancient energy healing and meditation/movement practices and the one deeply engrained in the nature of the science and my obsession with Darwinian Theory. They both hold powerful portals to better understanding my own internal GPS, my position in the world, and my relationship to time and purpose. In my own process of what Brene Brown called “Gremlin, Ninja, Warrior Training” my personal resilience to suffering, (dis)ease, (heal)th, and stressful life challenges all stems from a greater understanding of my brain (even though pea like in mass), my relationship to time and my ability to always put compassion as the underlining foundation of my overall value system.

Train Your Brain:

Our understanding of the incredible power of the human brain and what it is capable is at an all-time high, in both the fields of science, as well as movement mechanics and energy healing. These new emerging fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and psychophysiology are opening new possibilities for greater health, happiness, and freedom from suffering, as well as a deeper understanding of our connection to the world, to technology and  the ever evolving fields of innovation.

This connection to the organ that is responsible for taking a third of our caloric daily intake; is even opening up connections to our brain’s biochemical and biological make-up with the current research in compassion and empathy.  A few months ago I wrote on the topic of “compassion” and how our brain is wired to be empathetic towards others – humans and the world around us. We see this not only in the homosapein sphere, but in our animals as well.

The Compassion Nerve:

The vagus nerve (or wandering nerve) is one of the most important nerves in our body. This nerve carries axons of type GVE, general visceral efferent, which provides parasympathetic innervation to glands of mucous membranes of the pharynx, larynx, organs in the neck, thorax, and abdomen, and all our skeletal muscle, as well as our aortic body and arch (known as our heart). The Vagus nerve is the biological building block of human compassion, because it’s connected to everything in our structure.

Since the dawn of time, we have been led to believe that humans are selfish, greed is good because it brings power and power rules the world. Altruism is an illusion and cannot be attained in our lifespan. Cooperation is for suckers and kumbaya singing hippies. Competition is natural, survival of the fittest.  War is inevitable. The bad in human nature is stronger than the good. And so on.

These kinds of claims have reflected age-old assumptions about emotion and who we are as a species. For over millennia, we have regarded emotions as the fount of irrationality, baseness, weakness and at times sin. Nothing good can come from being over emotional.  Hell, the idea of the seven deadly sins takes our destructive passions for granted and splays them out for all to witness.

Yet, biology tells us something different and it begs us to look at another age old question; which is are we a buy product o f“Nature or Nurture.” Usually it’s a little of both.

What if we have been looking through the wrong lens? What if perhaps, we have just led our brains down the wrong path, trained them wrong.

What if we chose to look at it this way: we were born into this world with pure love and joy and through the struggles of our ages, we “dis”evolved to believe that we are all alone, we have to fend for ourselves, etc. What if we accepted that this all crap propaganda and in fact –  This is “nurture” NOT “nature.”  These “beliefs” are learned skills, and thoughts, not our actual biological blueprint and thus – a new door opens.

FACT: The brain has neuro-plasticity and can be re wired to think and act in ways that benefit humanity and personal power. Ways that align with a more compassionate way of living. This is nature AND nurture.

The brain, as we know from research seems wired up to respond to others’ suffering—indeed, it makes us feel good when we can alleviate that suffering, dispelling the so called ideology that “all humans are selfish.”

At Princeton University a study was done on children and victims of violence – and what they found was astonishing. Take these two very different subject demographics and we find they are united by the similar neurological reactions they provoke when asked to contemplate harm to others. This consistency strongly suggests that compassion isn’t simply a fickle or irrational emotion, but rather an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains – this is “nature.”

Yet, feeling compassion is one thing; acting on it is another. We can see and now understand the human propensity for compassion and science has shown us the effects compassion can have on behavior and to the relationship to the world around us, but can we actually cultivate compassion, or is it all determined by our genes?

At Berkeley, Dacher Keltner  wrote in his article called “the Compassion Instinct;” “Recent neuroscience studies suggest that positive emotions are less heritable—that is, less determined by our DNA—than the negative emotions. Other studies indicate that the brain structures involved in positive emotions like compassion are more “plastic”—subject to changes brought about by environmental input. So we might think about compassion as a biologically based skill or virtue, but not one that we either have or don’t have. Instead, it’s a trait that we can develop in an appropriate context. What might that context look like? It is based on our values, ethics, and belief systems.”

Recently, I met someone who has had a growing impact on my life and my ability to create greater resiliency to life’s challenges and he reminded of this amazing poem that in closing, I will share with you.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Sources:

• Dacher Keltner: The Compassion Instinct: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_compassionate_instinct
• The Invitation: http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/
• Inspiration for this article came from James Boileau at James The Coach: http://www.jamesthecoach.com/

The Compassion Nerve, The Wandering Nerve, The Vagus Nerve: It’s in our Physiology to Be Good

Sarah Jamieson / Thoughts / Compassion / 0 Comment

Why do people do good things? Is kindness hardwired into the brain, or does this tendency arise via experience or perhaps through understanding great adversity? Is it inherited, or genetically encoded in our DNA? How do we, as humans, tap into our greatest compassionate selves?

 

Compassion research is at a tipping point: Overwhelming evidence suggests compassion is good for our health and good for the world!  Last week I came across an article that showcased one of the leading authors behind the neuroscience of compassion, Dacher Keltner a director of the Social Interaction Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and it got me thinking about the brain’s connection, the neuroscience of what it means to be and do good in the world. The article was called “New Earth Physiology – Activating the Vagus Nerve” by Angela Savitri Petersen.

Keltner investigates these questions from multiple angles and often generates results that are both surprising and challenging. In his recent book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (W. W. Norton, 2009), and he weaves together scientific findings to uncover the neurological knowhow of human emotion’s innate power to connect people with one another. It is his believe that this lays the foundation towards leading a good life. Our research and that of other scientists suggest that activation of the vagus nerve is associated with feelings of caretaking and the ethical intuition that humans from different social groups (even adversarial ones) share a common humanity. People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism – compassion, gratitude, love and happiness.”

You can see our natural connectivity and compassionate instincts in how our brains react to pain. Nerves connect all parts of the body to and from brain in order to improve immunological, physiological and hormonal functions of the body. Our nervous system is highly intricate and each and every nerve supply important sensory and motor information to the relay stations in the brain (neurons) to perform critical activities. The Vagus nerve is one of the most important nerves in the body with a number of functions and as it would seem when activated create results that are all encompassing – better for the world, and our humanity. People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism—compassion, gratitude, love and happiness.

It’s in the DNA of the Brain

When we feel pain, or even see someone else in pain – we immediately empathize. This is the vagus nerve kicking in. We are hard wired to connect with others, even if in today’s world it might not seem so – we are.

And that’s not the only part of the brain that lights up when we see images of pain or suffering and distress. The amygdala—the brain’s threat detector—activates. This is the internal alarm system of the brain that turns on “fight” or “flight,” which is no surprise because we are also hardwired for survival.

When these two area’s are activated, and in highly compassionate people, there’s another area of the brain that Keltner has found lights up, a very old part of the mammalian nervous system called the periaqueductal gray; which is located way down in the center of the brain. This region is associated with nurturing behavior in mammals. We don’t just see pain or distress or suffering as a threat. We also instinctively want to alleviate that suffering through nurturance; whether that be our own or nurturing of someone else.

What exactly is the Vagus Nerve?

The vagus nerve is a bundle of nerves that originates in the top of the spinal cord, near the cranium and it is better known in Latin as the “wandering” nerve, because it wanders from the cranium, all the way down the spinal cord, to your lungs to help you breath and control heart rate, and into your spleen and digestive system.  It activates different organs throughout the body. When active, it is likely to produce that feeling of warm expansion in the chest—for example, when we are moved by someone’s act of kindness or when we appreciate a beautiful piece of music or visual landscape. This makes the vagus nerve one of the great mind-body links in the human nervous system. Every time you take a deep breath, your heart rate slows down, you can control your body’s function by connecting the mind-to body… via activating your vagus nerve.

In an article dated a couple years back by Scientific America “Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts” David DiSalvo (the journalist) had a close encounter with Dacher Keltner, on an interview DiSalvo asked; “One of the structures in our body that seems especially adapted to promote altruism, is the vagus nerve, as your team at U.C. Berkeley has found. Tell us a bit about this research and its implications?

Keltner replies offering kudos to another top rated scientist;  “Neuroscientist Stephen W. Porges of the University of Illinois at Chicago long ago argued that the vagus nerve is [the nerve of compassion] (of course, it serves many other functions as well). Several reasons justify this claim. The vagus nerve is thought to stimulate certain muscles in the vocal chamber, enabling communication. It reduces heart rate. Very new science suggests that it may be closely connected to receptor networks for oxytocin, a neurotransmitter involved in trust and maternal bonding.”

Arizona State University psychologist Nancy Eisenberg has found that children with high-baseline vagus nerve activity are more cooperative and likely to give. This area of study is the beginning of a fascinating new argument about altruism: that a branch of our nervous system evolved to support such behavior.

Stress and the Vagus Nerve:

Your nervous system cannot differentiate between mental or physical stress – it just feels stress. The body’s levels of stress hormones are regulated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS).  The ANS has two components that work to balance each other; which are the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).

The SNS activates or turns on your nervous system. It helps us handle what we perceive to be emergencies, when there is a threat, and is in charge of the flight-or-fight response.

The PNS aims to turn off the nervous system and helps us to keep the systems relaxed and calm. It promotes relaxation, rest, sleep, and drowsiness by slowing our heart rate, slowing our breathing, constricts the pupils of our eyes, decreases muscular contraction and relaxes tissue. Acetylcholine; which the nervous system uses as a neurotransmitter is responsible for learning and memory. It is also calming and relaxing, which is used by vagus nerve to send messages of peace and relaxation throughout your body. As we get older, our connective tissue starts to become more stiff and our bones more brittle, we stiffen up and your immune system produces more inflammatory molecules, thus our nervous system turns on the stress response, promoting system breakdown and aging.

Vagus and Inflammation

New research has found that acetylcholine is a major brake on inflammation in the body and understanding how to consciously refine the benefits found in meditation and therapeutic movement, like yoga and flow state energy work can help activate the vagus nerve – which leaves you not only relaxed, but more joyful and thus compassionate.

A ground breaking piece of research by Kevin Tracey, director of the Feinstein Institute and Professor and President of the Elmezzi graduate school of molecular medicine in Manhasset, New York, has been knee deep in research for, what seems like ions on how the nervous system (the vagus nerve) controls inflammation in the body, now known as ‘The Inflammatory Reflex’. Inflammation is one of the major contributors to aging of the body and plays a key role in illness and disease. Tracey’s studies on inflammation, and the physiological and immunological response to infection and injury has been instrumental and he has worked on the mechanism by which neurons control the immune system; which he relates much success and reverse engineering disease in the body by activating the vagus nerve!

Inflammation isn’t always bad either; the vagus nerve is the brake on inflammation throughout the body. Once the vagus nerve senses that there are enough inflammatory substances (the chemicals of inflammation) following an injury it sends a signal to the immune cells that make those chemicals and tells them to turn off production, without it – we might literally burst Much like applying a break to your car, so the car can stop at the red light.

Studies have shown that there is a great link between inflammation and pain AND compassion. Seems logical enough. Studies have shown that those who show high vagal tone, have less disease, rake high on the healthy scales, and are – you guessed it – compassionate and inflammation free.

Brain Wave Frequency and Clearing the Mind

Another benefit to activating the vagus nerve is the connection with brain wave frequency and brain entrainment. When we calm the mind, the brain can make the transition to delta, theta and even gamma waves; which can be extremely beneficial for those who have sleep deprivation, or sleep disorders, as well as those in high stress occupations. Research has found higher levels of gamma brain waves and thicker brain cortexes (the areas associated with higher brain function) in people who meditate or perform slow energy work.

It shouldn’t seem unnerving that tapping into our vagus nerve increases compassion; and with that being said increases the sustainable benefits towards positive change for our planet and our humanity overall – Ketlner thinks so, and I would agree.

Sources:

• Scientific America; “Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts” By David DiSalvo
• Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life(W. W. Norton, 2009), Keltner
• New Earth Physiology – Activating the Vagus Nerve: http://risinglifemedia.com/?p=1701
• The Compassionate Species By Dacher Keltner, July 31, 2012: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_compassionate_species
• Mind Body Green “What you need to know about the Vagus Nerve” http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4986/What-You-Need-to-Know-About-the-Vagus-Nerve.html