Starting from this thread: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/226675-What-is-BODY-LOAD-and-what-causes-it
I would like to discuss body load and the most scientifically founded definition and description you care to offer. As part of a large bit of writing I am doing on exotic drugs (with focus on psychedelics) I was asked by an institute with potential interest (in publishing internally or cooperating otherwise) to explain body load. What seems self-evident between trippers who have experienced it appeared to be a lot harder to explain scientifically. It turned out that it would be hard for me not to get into scientifically vague territory, it seems necessary - well at least it would be necessary to connect the dots to more 'spiritual' or for example ancient oriental ways of understanding such matters.
Here are thoughts of my own:
To explain it, you might actually have to first explain the generation of body awareness when sober and one of the best things (which is not quite a lot) I can come up with is that it is the total sum of all kinds of tiny 'body states' that are represented in the brain and in somatic awareness. By tiny body states I mean for example the area that a single nerve ending can sense, of course there are various ways such as pressure, temperature, etc. All of this information is processed and integrated into a unity that corresponds to your body image and proprioception. I think that we normally only have limited attention for this, making this awareness condensed. This is helped by the fact that a lot of these neural circuits have shortcut feedback and operate on homeostatic principles. It is auto-regulated and a normal healthy state of affairs is not usually consciously felt because there is nothing signalling for your attention (such as a pain signal). With practices such as meditation (body scan meditation comes to mind!) and sports that require you to fine-tune body-mind coordination, you can intentionally increase your awareness of your body state even if all is normal and healthy.
On psychedelics I think the whole system I just described is basically amplified making you overly aware of your body and sometimes distorting your body image (by uneven amounts of amplification?). I think that sensation of parts of the body are partially compartmentalized, by that I mean that some areas may be felt as a sort of closed part of the circuit, but also still in contact with one another. Reasons for this I can think of are that peripheral nerves branch out of the spine in bundles from a number of places, not evenly and randomly. Also there might be endocrine systems that feed back on one another that also work closely together with the nervous system if one can even consider them separate...
Could this be more or less of a basis why the concept of chakra's are defined the way they are? The feeling of having energy flowing in all directions simultaneously but within a sort of construct, is this the result of deeply tuning into all the countless mini circuits and interactions such as endocrine...? Or is said energy a reflection of brain activity, is such a feeling an artifact from the processing that is done on somatic sensation signals? Does it stem from projection of some sort of branched structure or some other pattern that helps you with analyzing what is going on, and with determining what is what, that you're feeling?
When psychedelics and other drugs produce or influence body load, what part of it is caused by action of the drug in the brain, and what part can come from direct interactions of the drug in the body? Similar to serotonergic drugs acting on 5-HT3 receptors in the GI tract, can drugs act on other receptors that are involved with bodily sensations? I would imagine that if starting from a sober state countless receptors throughout the body are affected by a drug that is also centrally active... that that could produce quite a buzz, a buzz coming from summing up all those tiny body states that are signalling to have changed.
LSD is both potent and pharmacologically promiscuous, so a lack of body load is not due to it's selectivity - is the reason simply that the amounts in a dose are too small to have a whole lot of effect on the receptors throughout the body? Of course body hallucinations can be produced that are quite strong but that would be the action in the brain. My guess is that activity in the rest of the body is significant for a more or less stable and continuous 'body buzz' or load. Maybe something like 25C-NBOMe usually produces pleasurable tactile sensations because it affects serotonergic receptors the most that are associated with such feelings esp. when agonized instead of antagonized, or is this wrong and is this from action mainly in the brain?
What about 2C-N, I don't know about what is known of it's pharmacology but does it affect other receptors than serotonin? What could be an explanation for it's powerful body effects? Is it just mostly the fact that the doses are so high... and are the body loads of other 2C-X compounds similar if they were taken at such a level?
Please, your insight is very welcome! Perhaps at some point it would be interesting to pass this on to ADD - I would really appreciate it if things that are known about the way the nervous system and the body and mind in general work (together) could be combined with hypotheses to slowly but surely build a more elaborate theory on body load.
I would like to discuss body load and the most scientifically founded definition and description you care to offer. As part of a large bit of writing I am doing on exotic drugs (with focus on psychedelics) I was asked by an institute with potential interest (in publishing internally or cooperating otherwise) to explain body load. What seems self-evident between trippers who have experienced it appeared to be a lot harder to explain scientifically. It turned out that it would be hard for me not to get into scientifically vague territory, it seems necessary - well at least it would be necessary to connect the dots to more 'spiritual' or for example ancient oriental ways of understanding such matters.
Here are thoughts of my own:
To explain it, you might actually have to first explain the generation of body awareness when sober and one of the best things (which is not quite a lot) I can come up with is that it is the total sum of all kinds of tiny 'body states' that are represented in the brain and in somatic awareness. By tiny body states I mean for example the area that a single nerve ending can sense, of course there are various ways such as pressure, temperature, etc. All of this information is processed and integrated into a unity that corresponds to your body image and proprioception. I think that we normally only have limited attention for this, making this awareness condensed. This is helped by the fact that a lot of these neural circuits have shortcut feedback and operate on homeostatic principles. It is auto-regulated and a normal healthy state of affairs is not usually consciously felt because there is nothing signalling for your attention (such as a pain signal). With practices such as meditation (body scan meditation comes to mind!) and sports that require you to fine-tune body-mind coordination, you can intentionally increase your awareness of your body state even if all is normal and healthy.
On psychedelics I think the whole system I just described is basically amplified making you overly aware of your body and sometimes distorting your body image (by uneven amounts of amplification?). I think that sensation of parts of the body are partially compartmentalized, by that I mean that some areas may be felt as a sort of closed part of the circuit, but also still in contact with one another. Reasons for this I can think of are that peripheral nerves branch out of the spine in bundles from a number of places, not evenly and randomly. Also there might be endocrine systems that feed back on one another that also work closely together with the nervous system if one can even consider them separate...
Could this be more or less of a basis why the concept of chakra's are defined the way they are? The feeling of having energy flowing in all directions simultaneously but within a sort of construct, is this the result of deeply tuning into all the countless mini circuits and interactions such as endocrine...? Or is said energy a reflection of brain activity, is such a feeling an artifact from the processing that is done on somatic sensation signals? Does it stem from projection of some sort of branched structure or some other pattern that helps you with analyzing what is going on, and with determining what is what, that you're feeling?
When psychedelics and other drugs produce or influence body load, what part of it is caused by action of the drug in the brain, and what part can come from direct interactions of the drug in the body? Similar to serotonergic drugs acting on 5-HT3 receptors in the GI tract, can drugs act on other receptors that are involved with bodily sensations? I would imagine that if starting from a sober state countless receptors throughout the body are affected by a drug that is also centrally active... that that could produce quite a buzz, a buzz coming from summing up all those tiny body states that are signalling to have changed.
LSD is both potent and pharmacologically promiscuous, so a lack of body load is not due to it's selectivity - is the reason simply that the amounts in a dose are too small to have a whole lot of effect on the receptors throughout the body? Of course body hallucinations can be produced that are quite strong but that would be the action in the brain. My guess is that activity in the rest of the body is significant for a more or less stable and continuous 'body buzz' or load. Maybe something like 25C-NBOMe usually produces pleasurable tactile sensations because it affects serotonergic receptors the most that are associated with such feelings esp. when agonized instead of antagonized, or is this wrong and is this from action mainly in the brain?
What about 2C-N, I don't know about what is known of it's pharmacology but does it affect other receptors than serotonin? What could be an explanation for it's powerful body effects? Is it just mostly the fact that the doses are so high... and are the body loads of other 2C-X compounds similar if they were taken at such a level?
Please, your insight is very welcome! Perhaps at some point it would be interesting to pass this on to ADD - I would really appreciate it if things that are known about the way the nervous system and the body and mind in general work (together) could be combined with hypotheses to slowly but surely build a more elaborate theory on body load.
