ABSTRACT
In India, the Hindu Yoga and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions co-evolved systems of embodied practice using related forms of archetypal imagery, mantra recitation, advanced breath control, and core body yoga. The smart vagus co-evolved with the trigeminal, facial, auditory, and glossopharygeal nerves, and the mammalian neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin, to support enlarged capacities for social-emotional communication, sustained social engagement, and prosocial autonomic mind/body regulation. Both modern depth psychology and ancient Tantric science agree that the deepest, subtlest layers of the mind–brain–body drive processing at higher, coarser levels, and hold the imprints of reactive stress and trauma that condition mental suffering. Taken together, the breakthroughs of embodied cognition, cerebellar integration, and vagal social engagement provide basic science that can help us study and understand the previously obscure workings of embodied contemplative practice, and embodied psychotherapy. In the neurobiology, embodied practice internalizes the holding environment of psychotherapy, replicating the sociobiology of kin-recognition; secure attachment, limbic resonance, mammalian caregiving, and early development.
