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There’s something in vasocomputation I’ve been calling a “stance” or way of feeling — stances are essentially discrete patterns of muscle tension (primarily vascular tension) that we can jump into and which offer specific affordances. The girl in this video is a great example: she goes from her default stance, to professional-calm, back to default (with a big release of tension)

Vasocomputation’s basic thesis is “vascular clenches stabilize neural patterns” — patterns of muscle tension will set certain aspects of phenomenology as constants and others as variables. I.e. every stance has a certain internal feeling that defines the stance and as long as you hold this feeling, you “hold frame” — if you lose the feeling (i.e. if this core pattern of stabilizing tension shifts), you break frame.

This would predict method actors will exhibit distinct patterns of muscle tension (especially vascular tension) across different roles; to take on a role is to take on a specific pattern of tension. Jung’s work on archetypes involve enumerating particularly natural and functional stances for us to fall into; subtle checkerboard patterns of tension & absence of tension we can inhabit that have useful affordances

We’re sort of fish-in-water in that we all have a default stance, i.e. a pattern of tension we habitually hold to feel like ourselves. Some of this tension is likely latched, and some isn’t; unlatched tension can be relaxed on the order of seconds-to-minutes if we find the right prompt, whereas latched tension will be constant across all situations until it’s explicitly released. What Buddhism calls the “self” will be a combination of latched tension (vascular muscle that is physically glued into a contracted state) and tension that is merely habitually clenched (i.e. *not* physically latched)

Vasocomputation suggests that every pattern of muscle tension is also a prediction, often held until some specific perception becomes true. Everybody has muscle tension; it’s worth thinking about what your particular pattern of muscle tension is predicting. Often it’ll be that a hidden list of very specific bad things will not happen; to know someone is to know their list

I think a really important part of childhood is learning the feeling of being loved & being safe, and incorporating these feelings into our default stance, the way we habitually hold our smooth muscle

The girl in this video has a very pleasant default stance — it is a pleasant thing to be her. But her default stance doesn’t seem to offer a wide range of social affordances, so she’s learned how to jump into a more professional mode (defined by a specific pattern of tension). But stress builds up when she inhabits it and uses its affordances; perhaps it feels transgressive to ask for room service