// UPDATE FROM SANTA CRUZ

Well, that was an exciting week...

The How to Unclench essay received over a million views on twitter/X, I find it somewhat re-assuring that people still have the attention span to read a 30 minute essay. Or as my friend Rob Hardy likes to say: "The people they yearn for depth."

I'm heading off-grid for a few days to recharge in nature, see you on the other side.

Stay Curious Out There,

Jonny

p.s. enrollment doors for Nervous System Mastery close this Friday, so if you've been on the fence, this would be a good time to decide.

// SPECULATION CORNER

How the Body Might Keep the Score

the "How to Unclench" essay contained a sub-essay in the library section which 95% of people didn't see, so I wanted to highlight it here.

~~

Neuroscientists have recently pushed back against the idea, popularized by Bessel van der Kolk, that the body keeps the score (one article was subtly titled: 'The Body Keeps the Score Is Bullshit').

Neuroscientists such as Lisa Feldman Barrett argue that everything, including trauma, is in our heads. Barrett argues that actually “the brain keeps the score”, essentially dismissing the idea that trauma somehow lives in the body.

Many of these critiques are valid: as of today, there is no established bodily mechanism for storing trauma.

Here's a quote from Andrew Huberman:

Note that he says somehow it gets embedded or activated in our nervous system. To see why this gap matters, go back to the early 1800s.

In that era, physicians knew that diseases spread, but they didn’t understand how or why. They saw fevers sweep through towns. They watched infections spread from patient to patient. But they couldn’t see what was causing them.

So their best theories were guesses: maybe it was bad air, moral weakness, or an imbalance in the body’s humors. Some observers, like the physician John Snow in the early 1850s, suspected invisible agents, but no one had actually seen them.

And crucially, microscopes and laboratory methods were not yet good enough to establish that specific bacteria caused particular diseases. Then, in the late nineteenth century, there was a shift that changed the course of humanity...

// REWIRE ANXIETY

Stateshift App Update: Grounded Games

We're wrapping up this month's Rewire Anxiety Challenge, the overall feedback was really good, and we have over 500 people now actively using the Stateshift app.

I had some leftover Fable tokens, and so I did what any self-respecting founder would do and built a game.

It's called "humming flight" – and the idea is that as you hum (a naturally relaxing practice), the phone's microphone picks it up and powers Barry the bird to fly and bring all his chicks home.

In the v1, there are 15 different beautifully rendered levels, with a neuro-acoustic soundscape (i.e. relaxing music). If you're a Stateshift user, try it out and let me know what you think (and if not, you can get a three-day free trial below)

// RUN THIS EXPERIMENT

Interrupting Reactivity (guided audio) A framework for catching and interrupting reactive patterns: Catch, Curious, Choose.

// ET CETERA

Explore: an incredible long-form piece exploring 'Nature General Intelligence': The case for a nature model grounded in the state and dynamics of the planet itself. Read.

Watch: One of the best (or at least hilarious) AI videos I've seen: we'd like to buy the world some more time, featuring all the usual suspects. Watch.

Read: Do you know your default shape? The prolific writing duo Cate & Sasha exploring the idea of 'How people respond to anything is how they respond to everything' Read.

// DIVE DEEPER

Free Nervous System Self-Assessment ​Get Your Score →​

Try Our Protocol Cards ​Downshift →​

Rewire Your Anxiety in 15 Days ​Try the iOS app →​