The following article was written by Linda Graham, MFT, of San Francisco.  Linda is a wonderful teacher who works to integrate modern neuroscience, Western relational psychology and Eastern contemplative practice.

Presence is simply being—and being with.  We experience presence as connection, an embodied resonance, an openness to engagement, an open flow of energy back and forth between our being-ness and the being-ness of an other, or the being-ness intrinsic in the moment.

Presence creates a neural receptivity which opens up the fields of awareness and acceptance to whatever is happening in the moment, and allows the wisdom of “what to do” to emerge in the next moment.

This neural receptivity can be cultivated because our brains can process experience from two distinct (though integrated) neural networks.  According to the research of Norman Farb in Attending to the Present and Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain a medial (midline) network in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain allows focused processing, especially on future and past events, is evaluative, goal-directed and purposeful.  The medial network is what helps us constellate the narrative of the personal self (thank goodness!) and allows us to attend to all the necessary tasks of verbalizing and  “selfing.”  Lateral networks, especially in the right pre-frontal cortex, allow processing that is more now-focused, more sensory-based than thought-based, more experiential than narrative, more panoramic and impersonal, less verbal, less judgmental.  The lateral network is what brings us into a state of mindful presence. (Even deeper thank goodness!)

It’s the brain’s capacity to access the lateralized state of mindful presence, get the big picture, be comfortable with the unknown, the uncertain, and shift back and forth between lateral and medial processing, between presence and the drama of the story, that creates the healing moments in all trauma treatments, that creates the resilient dancing with all moments of life in general, with awareness, acceptance, and emergent wisdom.

In two articles published in the AEDP Transformance Journal, one last September and one two weeks ago, Kai Macdonald suggests that a “hidden island of cortex” called the insula may be the switching station for shifting from a more exterior [medial], goal-oriented, narrative oriented mode of processing to a more interior [lateral] “felt sense” of experience and self.  The insula is the brain’s structure of interoception–the felt sense of the physical and emotional state of the body.  And, as part of the medial network, a component of the re-representation of those states in conscious thoughts and words.

The insula is increasingly seen as the neural substrate for empathy and compassionate acceptance of the emotional states within ourselves and of others.  Since the nuances of modern neuroscience compellingly inform us that emotions profoundly impact our decision-making, Kai says, “the insula appears to be an important component in a dynamic coalition of brain regions that codes ‘how we feel in the present’ and uses these valenced, often unconscious feeling states to guide action.”

We know from research by Sara Lazar and others that mindfulness practice activates and strengthens the insula and the related anterior cingulate, allowing us to move more easily from “story” to being in the present moment and from there to re-wire our story.

We come into presence first by coming into awareness of simply being in our body, here, now, even for a breath or two.  Knowing where our feet are, knowing what tightness we are holding in our jaw or chest. (Lateral network sensory and present moment focus rather than medial network past-present, thought-story focus.)  Awareness of the body requires activation of the insula; activation of the insula brings the felt sense of what’s happening in the body (somatic markers of feelings) to consciousness (essential to later emergent decision-making).

Coming into presence in the body sometimes requires calming an agitated body or re-engaging a numbed-out body.  The engagement of the “noticing and naming” of mindfulness keeps the conscious cortex engaged and helps regulate the body back into equilibrium.

We then come into presence more deeply by intentionally focusing attention away from the story or whatever is troubling us in the moment and temporarily accessing a more spacious “open field” of awareness. Traditional mindfulness practices of focusing attention on the breath brings the mind to this more open field of awareness; we can let go of the story temporarily because we are tapping into the being-ness that underlies any moment of experience: we are alive, here, now, breathing in this moment, regardless of the drama/trauma we are also attending to.   We drop into a spacious receptivity, more space than agenda, more being than doing.  (Lateral network panoramic bird’s eye view rather than medial network of personal, tighter, self-referencing focus.)

Focusing awareness on simply being requires the activation of the anterior cingulate, the neural structure of focal attention that focuses our attention on anything.  By activating the anterior cingulate, we are able to maintain a dual awareness–awareness of the object we are attending to–body sensations, feeling tone, memory of a particular event, a thought or belief system–and awareness of the mindful presence itself that is “holding” the particular object of attention.  Successful trauma therapies such as the EMDR, Sensorimotor, and AEDP, entrain the client into the safety of presence  by the therapist being with the clients in that spacious dual awareness.  Client and therapist together are holding the awareness of the drama/trauma to be worked on in a mindful, empathic shared consciousness.

We then come into full presence by being with whatever our open field of attention has allowed to come to consciousness.  Being with requires acceptance based on empathy and compassion for the human experience.  (Seeing trauma as a normal response to abnormal circumstances, not as pathology or deficiency.)  [Lateral network of experiential, less verbal activity, being with rather than talking about, rather than medial network of narrative and abstract verbal talking about.)

Presence is healing in and of itself.  It is not exactly the same as empathy or intimacy, though certainly a pre-requisite for both.  It is not exactly the same as mindfulness or equanimity, though certainly a pre-requisite for the awareness–consciously registering life in the moment–and acceptance–compassionately allowing and embracing life in the moment.

Presence is a refuge of a steadied, embodied ease and inner peace. Over time, we notice our capacities for sustained presence allow us to be increasingly present with widening circles of life experience, even past experience.  With more and more of humanity, glorious or torturous.  We remain present in the face of the distinctly unpleasant, the truly worrisome, the downright disgusting, the previously unbearable.  Simply being and being with can become our primary way of being, how we automatically meet the slings and arrows of every moment, even of someone else’s moments.  Now our refuge of presence becomes the re-Source for the intuitive wisdom that knows “what to do next” to heal trauma, or any suffering, any confusion or distress.

Neuroscientists are just beginning to map how skillful and wise action emerges, often very quickly, seemingly out of the blue, from a steady, engaged presence as we  re-engage with the surges and flows of our dynamic lives (or moments of past turbo-charged and troubling surges). As we interact with other living-breathing-acting-reacting human beings (or memories of same).  As we re-engage with all beings, all processes, all forms, all of everything, actually.

I’m halfway through reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, a brilliant yet accessible exploration of the emerging neuroscience of decision-making, especially decision-making that has to happen so quickly there’s no time to think.  It’s increasingly evident to scientists, despite centuries of previous philosophies that assumed all decisions were made by the rational mind (or should be) and plagues of bodily impulses and “destructive” emotions were better  set aside or “conquered,”  that good decisions are really made by an uncanny millisecond-by-millisecond switching the networks and integrating the rational, the emotional, the visceral, the intuitive.

We do know, from 2,500 years of “presencing” in mindfulness practice, that our intuitive wise effort (letting go of the unwholesome and cultivated the wholesome) emerges spontaneously from the exquisite paying attention, the spacious receptivity, the ultimate awareness and acceptance of what is, that presence evokes.

Presence harnesses the brain’s innate neuroplasticity, moment by moment.  The safety and trust experienced through the lateral network of mindful presence allows a new relationship to the old story, a new emergent response to the old story.  Presence creates a new neural platform for what trauma therapies call the “self-righting” innate to all human beings. The integration of lateral-medial networks in the therapist is what re-wires the same lateral-medial integration in the client.  The client can now switch the story by switching the networks–and heal, change, and grow.

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