ABSTRACT
At a neurological level, Humpty’s ‘bottom up’ automatic unconscious senses switch into action, and, in life-threat freeze, his conscious ‘top down’ sense-making may go offline. If the ‘snake’ on the path ended up just being a stick, the senses would all come back online, a sense of coherence would be restored and Humpty, on his bushwalk, could begin looking forward to the view again. Sensing connection includes words and meanings, values and approaches to power and moral roles. Sensation helps Humpty to attend to his need for integrity, connection to others and coherent understanding of his world. Sensation of pain is also an attuned process linked to detecting threat – using nociceptive receptors linked to the rest of the organism in order to activate self-protective systems and behaviours. The capacity to sense social belonging and comfort is a key element of sense of safety.
