Anatomic structure is behavior. Formative philosophy states that there are two ways the body manages its behavioral process. One is inherited, the pulsatory, neural, and muscular patterns we are born with; the other is voluntary effort. Both arise from the cells and are a natural body process. Inherited behavioral patterns are autonomous and automatic. They require no voluntary effort. Voluntary behavior arises from the inherited, nonvolitional and is localized in the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex has the ability to voluntarily influence behavior, creating new connections and new patterns. These new behaviors becomes anatomic and supplement inherited behavior. Both of these behaviors, the inherited and the voluntary, are experiences of self-knowing.

The soma grows an adult by organizing a series of shapes over time. There is a sequence in this series of shapes. They begin as unformed, motile shapes; then they become diffuse and porous. Finally, they become more formed and stable, rigid or dense shapes.

This sequence of developmental shapes can be influenced by gradients of voluntary effort. With voluntary effort, the cortex can manage surges of motility, the osmotic diffusion of porosity, rigid firmness, and compacted shapes. The unformed, unstable and the stabilizing continuum of shapes takes place between the body and its cortex and the world.

Adults who learn to influence their behavioral process develop an ability to govern their lives and their transitions. Adults who grow their voluntary function are able to embody new experiences and actions. They develop a variety of ways to be present in the world. Discrete voluntary acts make complexity from simplicity and transform and deepen both our anatomic and our experiential reality. Voluntarily formed behavior organizes anatomic structure—-a living memory that is a center of acting and knowing.

The forming of a personal anatomic structure requires persistent voluntary effort. Voluntary effort extended over time grows anatomic connections that form relationships between the body and its cortex. It is a somatic function that can alter and create an anatomical structure.

Voluntary effort is the driving force in the development of a personal life. It has consequences for influencing emotions, satisfaction, relationships, and personal destiny and awareness.

Anatomic Memories

An anatomic structure is a remembered behavior. Remembered behavior is ready to be used, since it has already gone through the motile stage and the diffuse and porous stage. A remembered behavior may be recognized as anxiety, yielding, stiffening, or hunkering down.

There are four patterns of remembered behavior: Two are inherited, one is unprogrammed and the last is volitionally formed. The first inherited pattern of remembered behavior is the organization of an organism, its architecture and its movements of expansion and contraction. The second inherited pattern of remembered behavior is the patterns of electrical excitatory pulses, which resonate and form bonds with other cells, like birds chirping together. The next pattern is the experiences that accompany the developmental process. Then there are the anatomic behaviors formed by voluntary effort. Voluntary effort influences inherited and developmental behavior.

The Formative Method

The method of formative psychology regenerates our emotional and instinctual vitality. It suggests ways to inhabit our body and to resist shrinking from our excitement and emotional aliveness. Emphasis is on daily life as the practice of being present as an adult somatic self

Each conception represents a unique combination of tissue types with a particular organizational process. The endomorph, a pear-shaped soma with big lungs and intestines, gathers and incorporates. The square-shaped, muscular mesomorph likes to act and confront. The long-bodied ectomorph has a large sensory area for gathering information and is hyperactive and alert. These body types give an orientation to the organism’s experiences and toward others---to incorporate, to confront, to be alert and motile. How we do the exercises, and the responses we have to them, are related to the type we are. We can do them and respond in an endo or meso or ecto way. We can misjudge our responses or be critical of them.

There is a general organizing process that forms our somatic reality. This organizing process is essential in establishing a relationship to ourself. It has several phases and stages. Four stages, on a continuum, are tissue responses: swollen, porous, rigid, and dense. These stages affect how our soma also has a shape. We can be a mesomorph that is swollen or porous, rigid or dense. Our bodies can be inflated, with the membrane stretched, or the membrane can be porous, rigid, or compact. These states influence our organizing process. It is important to know that our inherited vitality and desires, our arousal and emotional and social response patterns, can be modified or exaggerated, individuated and personalized. We can do the exercises and respond in a swollen, porous, or rigid way. The brain is able to influence its somatic state and compensate.

Pulsation is an essential expression of our emotional life. The exercises influence and extend the motility and pulsation of our tissues which in turn organize cycles of arousal. When pulsation is inhibited or over stimulated, our shape also changes. The organizing pulse, when interrupted or over aroused, disturbs the bodying process. The methodology of formative psychology engages the volitional part of the brain to work with the nonvolitional tides of excitatory pulsation, desire, and feeling.

The exercise method is inaugurated when (1) we recognize the pattern of our present somatic-emotional stance, an ectomorphic, alert state.( 2) we intensify our pattern of somatic presence and give ourselves more definition, a mesomorphic function. We magnify the pattern of action, and the images, memories, and thoughts that accompany it. (3) we disorganize the muscular pattern that has been organized. This is also a mesomorphic function. These three steps bring into relief unknown somatic-emotional structures and their rings of response. Step two organizes rigidity and density, while step three organizes porosity and swollenness. (4) In this step, we contain the swelling of pulsation, excitement or image made available from step three. This is an endomorphic, porous shape. (5) This step is new form, new behavior. It is a reorganization for a new somatic adult reality.

Somatic work organizes a dialogue between body and brain which shifts the pattern of meaning and order. We begin to live our destiny, our somatic emotional-inheritance. We begin to empower ourselves in forming our adult and its relationships. In this way we recognize and experience the body we have, the body we live, and the possibility of the soma we can be.