Morfologia Occulta/en

Occult morphology (or symbolic morphology, or perceived morphology) is the traditional discipline that studies the forms of the human body and its systems not as objective anatomical data for study, but as visible expressions of subtle realities — states of consciousness, cosmic principles, formative forces — of which the tissues, organs, and systems of the body are corresponding material manifestations. For the hermetic tradition, every organic system is simultaneously a physiological phenomenon and an operative symbol: blood is not only the circulating fluid, but also the Cosmic Cross of the space-time intersection; the nervous system is not only a conductor of impulses, but also the seat of the «white rose» of the lunar body; the skeletal system is not only structure, but also the «body of flame» that conquers death.

The term «occult morphology» was introduced by the Gruppo di UR in the articles of KRUR published in year II (1928) and taken up again in year III (1929), under the collective signature «Krur» — corresponding to the joint work of Reghini-Quadrelli with contributions from Evola — and constitutes one of the most characteristic and original doctrinal nuclei of the twentieth-century Italian hermetic corpus. Its importance for the Paret-ISI-CNV School is twofold: theoretical (it offers the conceptual framework for reading the body as a microcosm structured like the macrocosm, according to the principle of the Tabula Smaragdina) and operative (it provides precise indications for the magnetic, alchemical, initiatic work of spiritualization of the body).

I. The problem: three bodily systems, three forms of consciousness, three colors

The article by KRUR in UR 1928 (pp. 339-346) starts from a traditional distinction that recurs with variations in many traditions — Egyptian, Vedic, Hermetic, Alchemical, Anthroposophical — and gives it a particularly clear formulation: the human being is structured in three bodily systems that correspond to three forms of consciousness and to three hermetic colors:

1. System of vegetative life (digestive apparatus, reproductive organs, glands) → lower seat of consciousness → hermetic green color
2. Nervous system (brain, spinal cord, nerves) → upper seat of consciousness → hermetic white color («white rose», «lunar body», «lamp of life»)
3. Blood system (blood, heart, circulation) → middle seat of consciousness → hermetic red color

The essential characteristic of occult morphology is that these correspondences are not metaphorical: the blood system is truly connected to the middle consciousness, and the red color is truly its chromatic manifestation. The principle of the page Alchimia e Magnetismo sec. IV applies here: traditional elements are simultaneously real and symbolic, and what is a symbol in the macrocosm is substance in the microcosm.

In the common man, writes KRUR, consciousness is limited to cerebral modifications — that is, it lives only in the «upper seat» and is not conscious of the other two. Spiritualizing the body means precisely «to succeed in making a state of consciousness correspond to each of the bodily systems», extending the conscious activity of the I beyond the brain, into the systems of blood and vegetative life. This is the central task of operative hermetic work.

II. Blood as the Cosmic Cross

The highest part of the article is dedicated to blood as mediator between the three planes. For KRUR, blood has a double cosmic function:

1. Spatial function: blood «is the function of blood with respect to space» — it carries in its globules and formative forces the present action of the whole body, connects it to its limits, is its unifying principle on the plane of extension
2. Temporal function: blood «also receives images and impulses that constitute what in the most general sense can be called «ancestral memory»». It is the present action of the past: in it live the collective forces of race, lineage, and other more original ones, which through blood gather and operate formatively even into the organs of the body

KRUR draws from this a formulation of great symbolic-operative power:

«In blood the two limit-lines of common individuality, that of space and that of time, converge. It is the Cosmic Cross, whose point of intersection falls in the heart of man; the heart, which watches, even when man sleeps.»

From this identity blood = Cosmic Cross derives the structure of the work:

• Heart = point of intersection of the Cross, center of being
• Horizontal and vertical expansion from the heart = red rose that blossoms in the center of the Cross
• Knowledge in the seat of the heart = anamnesis (remembering): «it is a re-calling — a going back to the memory that the blood-being carries, of the state of co-essentiality with great forces that still act as formative impulses in the various organs»
• Time-space = that which consciousness knows in the middle seat: «figures or «types» (space) interwoven with rhythm (time), or rhythms (time) that manifest themselves in figures, in «ideas» (space)»

This identification of blood with the Cosmic Cross has precise operative consequences: every authentic magnetic action passes through the blood (cfr. lodge magnetic chain as an invisible blood communion among participants); every deep memory (Platonic anamnesis, Indian smaraṇa, Sufi dhikr) works on the blood; every awakening of the Caduceus (cfr. Caduceo (Caduceus) — Risveglio Energetico) begins with a warming and intensification of the blood.

III. The two paths of the blood system: light and heat

KRUR describes a very subtle operative distinction of technical importance: the blood system, as mediator, polarizes into two paths depending on which of the two poles (upper or lower) attracts the energy:

• LIGHT aspect (with respect to the upper-cerebral seat, alchemical mercury) — the white rose, the lunar body, the lamp of life. It is the path that from blood leads to clear, illuminated, contemplative consciousness. It is the path of vision
• HEAT aspect (with respect to the lower seat, alchemical sulfur) — a deeper, more ancient, more radical aspect, which relates to «the Man of Saturn or mineral man, present in the forces of calcium contained in the body (skeletal system)». It is the path that from blood descends into the depths of the body and extracts its most ancient forces. It is the path of power

The experienced operator knows which of the two poles to activate depending on what one wishes to realize. The distinction is also important diagnostically: states of visual hypertension, luminous hallucinations, experiences of light indicate imbalance on the light pole; states of physical ardor, sexual intensity, nervous shock phenomena, sweats indicate imbalance on the heat pole. Mastery consists in being able to activate each pole separately, and then to compose them into the unity that produces the body of flame.

IV. The body of flame and victory over death

The concluding part of the article describes the goal of the work of occult morphology — the realization of what tradition calls the «body of flame» or «victory over death»:

«Blood is thus the medium, through which the I can extend itself to the complete conquest of the spiritual body. Reduced, or rectified, the element of emotion into «rhythm-life», as burning blood it leads inwardly to the saturnine element, extracting from the bones the consciousness of the bones, which is called «body of flame», «victory-over-death».»

KRUR cites two traditional testimonies in support:

• Buddhist tradition: «It is said in Buddhism that the body of the bodhisattva, when he seizes bodhi, becomes without bones» — a symbolic expression of the transformation of the bone structure into pure self-consciousness
• Christian tradition: «In the Gospels it is equally read that to the crucified Christ, his bones were not broken» — a sign of the same achieved spiritual corporeality

These are symbolic expressions — in the precise sense of occult morphology, in which the symbol is reality on another plane — of one same state of realized spiritual corporeality: the body of the perfect initiate, in which the bones themselves have become transparent to consciousness, and where there is no longer separation between material structure and the light of the I.

Cfr. La Doctrine du Corps Immortel by Giudicelli (1988) for the twentieth-century formulation of the same goal, and Boyer on the Four Bodies for the doctrinal framework of the lunar body in the French magnetic schools.

IV-bis. The Spirituslehre: the three spirits in Renaissance and early modern physiology

The doctrine of the three bodily systems expounded by the Gruppo di UR-KRUR does not arise in a vacuum. It takes up — making it operative in the twentieth-century Italian language — a very ancient doctrine that had a classic formulation in European medical physiology from the 4th century BC to the 17th century, and which the most recent works on the history of medicine have reconstructed with great philological precision. The main study reference for those who wish to delve deeper is Gerhard Klier, Die drei Geister des Menschen. Die sogenannte Spirituslehre in der Physiologie der Frühen Neuzeit (Sudhoffs Archiv Beiheft 50, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2002), which documents the transmission of the doctrine of the three spiritus (Latin) or pneumata (Greek) from Plato and Aristotle through Galen, Paracelsus, Servetus, Fludd, Fernel, Sennert, Van Helmont up to Descartes and Harvey — the historical window within which the doctrine passes, in parallel, from the integral form (spirit = living mediator between soul-body) to the reduced form (spirit = mechanized nervous fluid, direct antecedent of the bio-electric current of modern neurology).

The three spirits of the classical doctrine correspond system for system to the bodily tripartition of the occult morphology of the Gruppo di UR:

1. Spiritus naturalis — nutritive-vegetative. It is born in the liver as a product of the transformation of nourishment (chymus) into venous blood. Galen associates it with the dynamis physikē (δύναμις φυσική) — the nutritive power, also pneumatic, that spreads via the veins from the liver to the whole body. It is the bodily plane of substance, of generation, of regeneration — corresponds to the system of vegetative life of KRUR (UR 1928, pp. 339-346) and to the hermetic green color
2. Spiritus vitalis — vital-affective. It is born in the left ventricle of the heart from the cooking of venous blood with air brought by the lungs (Galen) and takes shape as Calor Innatus (καλόρ ἔμφυτος), the «innate fire» or «natural heat» which is simultaneously biological heat, affect, life-impulse. It spreads via the arteries. Paracelsus explicitly identifies it with the Vitalseele or «vital vapor in the blood» (Lebensdampf im Blut), and Servetus, Fludd, Paracelsus, Fernel place it in direct correspondence with the macrocosm (in particular with the Sun as the corresponding celestial body). It corresponds to the blood system of KRUR — blood as the Cosmic Cross of space and time — and to the hermetic red color
3. Spiritus animalis — sensory-perceptive. It is formed in the rete mirabile at the base of the brain through a further refinement of the spiritus vitalis in the cerebral ventricles. It is distributed through the spinal cord and nerves to the whole body, and is the vector of sensation (αἴσθησις) and voluntary movement. It corresponds to the dynamis psychikē (δύναμις ψυχική) of Galen and to the «nervous system» of KRUR — the «white rose», the «lunar body», the «lamp of life». Hermetic white color

To these three powers correspond — in all the philosophical tradition from Aristotle onwards — the three souls (anima vegetativa, anima sensitiva, anima intellectiva) of the human being. Klier reports with great precision the geometric comparison of Fernel and Pomponazzi: «the vegetative soul is like the triangle, the sensitive like the square, the intellective like the pentagon — but every more complex polygon contains all the previous ones in itself». The intellective soul contains the sensitive, the sensitive contains the vegetative: the tripartition is therefore not separation but integrated hierarchy.

What the Gruppo di UR-KRUR does in 1928 — taking up the ancient doctrine in its Notes on Occult Morphology — is to bring to light this traditional science after Cartesian rationalism of the 17th century (cfr. Klier, pp. 320-350: «the break with Descartes»), while preserving its terminological apparatus (spiritus animalis in the Passions de l'âme, 1649), had emptied the three spirits of their status as living macrocosm-microcosm mediators, reducing them to mechanical material particles. From Descartes onwards, physiology progressively loses the operative-initiatic meaning of the Spirituslehre. UR-KRUR — and after him the Paret-ISI-CNV School — rediscovers it, specifies it, makes it practicable.

IV-ter. The alchemical path: nigredo → albedo → rubedo as fluidic transit

Read sub specie alchimiae, the doctrine of the Spirituslehre reveals a precise structure that corresponds exactly to the classic path of European alchemical work. Klier provides — almost unintentionally, through the pure historical reconstruction of doctrines — the physiological map of the transit:

• Nigredo (black) — descent into the liver. Nourishment (food, external matter) enters from the world, descends through the stomach, reaches the liver. The liver — according to Galenic-Paracelsian doctrine — performs the cooking (concoctio prima) of the chymus, separating its coarse components (excrements, black bile) and extracting venous blood: it is the first alchemical solutio, the dissolution of the external form of food. It is the moment when substance dies to its external form to be born as internal matter. The black bile (melaina cholē, μέλαινα χολή) — one of the four humors — is the Saturnine mark of this phase. Nigredo
• Albedo (white) — ascent from the liver to the heart to the brain. The venous blood produced in the liver rises via the vena cava to the right ventricle of the heart, passes through the cardiac pores into the left ventricle where, by cooking (aufkochung) with pulmonary air, it becomes Calor Innatus = spiritus vitalis. The arterial blood, now rectified and ignified (it is the «fire» of the heart), proceeds along the arteries upwards to the rete mirabile at the base of the brain, where the final distillation takes place: it becomes spiritus animalis in the brain. The luminous white of the spiritus animalis is the «mercury of the philosophers» of the alchemical tradition, the «white rose», the «lamp of life». Albedo
• Rubedo (red) — diffusion of the purified fire through the nerves into the archea. The spiritus animalis — now purified and ennobled — distributes itself from the brain through the spinal cord and nerves to the whole body and — according to Paracelsian doctrine — animates the archea (singular archeus, a term introduced by Paracelsus and later by Van Helmont) — the local demiurges that govern each internal organ (archeus stomachi, archeus hepatis, archeus splenis, etc.). The archeus is the specific formative principle of each organ that directs vital processes at the local level. When the rectified spiritus animalis reaches the archea and informs them, the work is complete — every organ of the body is now vivified by the solar fire of the heart filtered by the lunar light of the brain. The body of flame has been realized, the «body of Victory» of tradition (cfr. section IV above). Rubedo

In this reading, the cycle digestion → circulation → innervation of traditional physiology is the alchemical cycle nigredo → albedo → rubedo. The external alchemical work (on metals) and the internal alchemical work (on the body) are the same work grasped on two planes — exactly as the Tabula Smaragdina states. The three phases are both really physiological and really symbolic-operative (cfr. Alchimia e Magnetismo sec. IV on principles and sec. XVI on epistemic status).

The Gruppo di UR-KRUR, in its Notes on Occult Morphology (UR 1928 pp. 339-346) and in the follow-ups of KRUR 1929, does not explicitly thematize the alchemical phases with the vocabulary nigredo-albedo-rubedo applied to physiology — but its formulations (blood as «mediator», the «double path» light/heat of the blood system, the extraction of the «consciousness of the bones» as «body of flame», the «victory over death») contain all the elements of the alchemical reading. It is up to the modern reader of the tradition — guided by high-quality studies in the history of medicine like that of Klier — to put the pieces back together into a coherent synthesis.

IV-quater. Magnetism as the historical continuation of the Spirituslehre

Klier documents — in the introductory sections of his work — that the transition from the traditional Spirituslehre to modern neurology passes through a historical hinge-point: the recognition, starting from the 18th century, that the spiritus animalis flowing in the nerves is an electrical current — the «Aktionsstrom» (nerve action current) of the electrophysiology of Galvani (1791), Volta, Du Bois-Reymond (1840). The classic work by W.F. Bynum, Spiritus animalis bis Nervenaktionsstrom («From spiritus animalis to nerve action current», 1980, cited by Klier), reconstructs this metamorphosis in detail.

But in parallel to this physicalist translation of the nervous fluid, a second tradition — that of animal magnetism by Mesmer (1779) — maintains the integral reading of the fluid as a living macrocosm-microcosm mediator, preserving its operative-initiatic qualities that official physiology was losing. The «magnetic fluid» of Mesmer is — literally — the operative continuation of the traditional Spirituslehre in the post-Cartesian framework, maintained as a living science in the French Sociétés de l'Harmonie, in the magnetic chains of Puységur, in the works of Du Potet, Donato, Regazzoni.

The Gruppo di UR-KRUR — taking up the Notes on Occult Morphology in 1928 — places itself explicitly in continuity with this second tradition. Evola in particular recognizes in UR and in La Tradizione Ermetica (1931) that the «vital fluid» of the European magnetists is the spiritus vitalis = Calor Innatus = Mercury of the alchemists (cfr. Alchimia e Magnetismo sec. XII.2 and XV.7). Thus, in the thought of the Group, the broken historical unity of the traditional Spirituslehre is recomposed: modern nerve current (Du Bois-Reymond) and magnetic fluid (Mesmer-Du Potet) are the two diversified branches of a single original system that occult morphology integrates anew into its unitary vision of the body as a field of three coordinated spirits.

This is — in the map of the wiki cluster — the conceptual hinge page between the hermetic-alchemical tradition documented in Alchimia e Magnetismo and the European magnetic tradition documented in La Tradizione Europea dell'Ipnosi — da Mesmer a Paret. Whoever studies Klier's Die drei Geister des Menschen holds in their hands the historical key to see how these two traditions — apparently distant — are in reality the same doctrinal thread seen at different historical stages.

V. Continuation in KRUR 1929: further correspondences

In the third year of the journal, KRUR takes up and extends the discourse of occult morphology in subsequent articles. The main extensions:

• Correspondence with the planets: the seven traditional planets are fixed in the seven chakras or centers in the Indian tradition, and in the seven levels of the initiate's body — Saturn in the bones (calcium), Jupiter in the liver, Mars in the muscles and arterial blood, Sun in the heart, Venus in the kidneys, Mercury in the nervous system (caduceus), Moon in the lymph and bodily fluids. It is the same correspondence that recurs in the European alchemical tradition (cfr. Alchimia e Magnetismo sec. IV) and in Ayurveda
• Correspondence with the Three Worlds: the lower man corresponds to the world of generation and corruption (Earth); the middle man to the world of rhythm, of «spiritual sound», of the sambhogakāya (Atmosphere, World of Forms); the higher man to the world of illumination and Emptiness, dharmakāya (Heaven, Formless World). The Buddhist structure of the three bodies of the Buddha (trikāya) is recognized as the same as the bodily tripartition of man
• Correspondence with temperamental constitutions: the Hippocratic temperaments (sanguine, bilious, melancholic, phlegmatic) are re-read in an alchemical key as different proportions of the three principles (Mercury nervous, Sulfur sanguine-vegetative, Salt osseous-saturnine) in the individual

In this light, occult morphology is not an obsolete pseudoscience but a living diagnostic grid that allows the master to read the disciple — to see their dominant temperament, imbalances, tendencies, obstructions — and to prescribe the work most suited to their type. It is in this sense an essential pre-magnetic discipline: the magnetist who cannot read the occult morphology of the subject risks applying a magnetic action inappropriate to the type.

VI. Towards a symbolic or perceived morphology

The occult morphology of the Gruppo di UR is the starting point for what the Paret-ISI-CNV School today calls symbolic morphology or perceived morphology — a discipline of the immediate recognition of subtle realities through careful observation of the body and its way of being in the world. It is the same science, taken up with renewed tools and languages:

• From observing a person's respiratory rhythm one reads the state of their middle seat (heart-blood-emotions)
• From observing the osseous bearing (shoulders, spine, pelvis) one reads the state of their «Man of Saturn» — their internal discipline, clarity of will, rootedness
• From observing the face (expression, color, luminosity, mobility) one reads the quality of the upper seat — clarity of thought, mastery over imagination, presence
• From observing the tone of the blood (warmth of the skin, liveliness of the pulse, quality of the gaze) one reads their active middle seat
• From observing the eye (fixed or wandering gaze, luminous or opaque, deep or superficial) one reads the degree of integration of the three seats

This approach constitutes the necessary prerequisite for every authentic magnetic work, and is one of the competencies that the master transmits to the disciple. It is also, in forms that have lost awareness of their hermetic origin, what every experienced clinician, every intuitive healer, every traditional medium, every great director or portraitist knows how to do instinctively — to read in the body the invisible realities it expresses.

This page remains open to subsequent extensions as the School's work on symbolic/perceived morphology produces further formulations and materials.

VI-bis. The three planes: physical, vital, psychic of the Paret School

The Paret-ISI-CNV School, in its doctrinal lessons (courses Mesmerismus Level 1, Mesmerismus 2, Ultimate, Advanced), operationally distinguishes three planes of work on the subject and on oneself: the physical plane, the vital plane (or emotional-energetic), the psychic plane (or mental). This tripartition — of daily use in the School's didactics, particularly when teaching techniques of magnetism, fluidification, fascination, work on dependencies — is not a modern invention but is the operative re-proposal, in contemporary Italian language accessible to the student, of the same doctrine of the three spirits that the Renaissance Spirituslehre had handed down and that KRUR takes up in its Notes on Occult Morphology of 1928.

The correspondences are system for system:

• Physical plane of the Paret School = spiritus naturalis of the Galenic-Paracelsian tradition = system of vegetative life of KRUR = vegetative soul of Aristotle = physical body in twentieth-century Theosophical terminology = hermetic green color. It is the plane of the body as felt matter, of breath as basal rhythm, of the weight of the body in the chair, of the kinesthetic (defined by Paret as «the most primitive sense of all»). In the Mesmerismus lessons, Marco insists repeatedly: «this matter can only be learned from the physical point of view, it cannot be learned intellectually, you must feel with your body». Work on the physical always starts from the Charges of the breath, from feeling your feet on the floor, from perceiving the vertical (Hara)
• Vital plane of the Paret School = spiritus vitalis / Calor Innatus of tradition = blood system of KRUR (the «Cosmic Cross» of blood) = sensitive soul of Aristotle = etheric-astral body of Theosophy (in part) = hermetic red color. It is the plane of magnetic fluid, of heat, of emotion in the technical sense (not as disordered passion, but as energetic charge that traverses the body). It is the plane on which the magnetist operates when «giving energy while avoiding giving the part of Italy» (cfr. transcript Mesmerismus 1, 2022): the passage of magnetic fluid is done on the vital plane, not on the physical or mental. It is the plane of Mesmer's «warm fluid», of Du Potet's «Magnetisation Universelle», of Szápáry's Neuf Passes, of all European initiatic magnetism. When Paret in the Advanced courses teaches the technique of Magnetism and Fluidification (cfr. transcript Advanced Lesson 2024), the work is exactly on the activation of the subject's vital plane through the magnetist's fluid
• Psychic plane of the Paret School = spiritus animalis of tradition = nervous system of KRUR (the «white rose», the «lamp of life», the «lunar body») = intellective soul of Aristotle = mental body of Theosophy = hermetic white color. It is the plane of thought, of representation, of the magical image (cfr. Magia dellImmagine by Abraxa, UR 1927). It is the plane on which Fascination operates when working on the idea, on conviction, on the cognitive structure of the subject. Paret in the Ultimate courses explicitly speaks of the «three levels of change» (cfr. transcript Ultimate Lesson 1) — the first level «what we say to the other», the second level «mental processes you instill in them», the third level «when you help them to become present» (and this third level, which traverses the three planes, is precisely the presence that is beyond the three)

The value of the physical/vital/psychic tripartition in the School is operative, not speculative:

1. Diagnostic. Before the subject, the master recognizes on which plane the person is predominantly blocked: whoever does not feel their body is blocked on the physical plane; whoever does not let energy pass is blocked on the vital plane; whoever is caught up in thoughts-representations is blocked on the psychic plane. Each has their own path of unblocking
2. Sequential. The work proceeds nigredo → albedo → rubedo (cfr. section IV-ter above): start from the physical (grounding, breath, weight), pass to the vital (feeling energy, activating the fluid, working with magnetism), finally integrate into the psychic (representation, idea, mental presence). Skipping a plane produces unstable results
3. Synthetic. The goal of the School is not to specialize in one plane but to integrate the three into a unitary quality of presence — exactly as tradition describes the «one and triple body» of the immortal body (EA, UR 1927; Giudicelli, 1988). The School's Presenza Integrale™ is precisely the neurological-corporeal integration of the three planes under the presence of the I

Here one understands the historical depth of the terminology that the Paret School uses daily. When Marco says in a lesson «physical, vital, psychic», he is saying — without needing to make it explicit — something that has twenty-five centuries of science behind it: the Aristotelian tripartition of the souls, the Galenic doctrine of the three powers and principle-organs, the Renaissance Spirituslehre of Paracelsus and Servetus, the occult morphology of KRUR. The continuity is direct, and the operative efficacy of the terminology derives precisely from being anchored in this long doctrinal chain.

The reader who wishes to delve deeper can compare:

• the transcripts of the Mesmerismus and Ultimate lessons (daily use of the tripartition)
• the Notes on Occult Morphology by KRUR (UR 1928 pp. 339-346, sections I-IV above)
• Klier's book Die drei Geister des Menschen (Sudhoffs Archiv 50, 2002) — modern philological founder of the Spirituslehre
• the classic by Werner Wilhelm Jaeger Diokles von Karystos (Berlin 1938) — on the Greek origins
• Walther Pagel Paracelsus (Karger 1958) — on the Paracelsian Renaissance revival

VI-ter. The three spirits and the three branches of the autonomic nervous system: the constructive pyramid

An implicit correspondence of central operative importance links the traditional doctrine of the three spiritus of the Renaissance Spirituslehre (cfr. sec. IV-bis) and the three physical/vital/psychic planes of the Paret School (cfr. sec. VI-bis) with the three functional branches of the autonomic nervous system as described today by Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory (The Polyvagal Theory, Norton 2011). The three branches are not invented by Porges — they were already anatomically identified by neurophysiology from Cannon, Langley and Eccles between the late 19th and 20th centuries — but Porges provided the hierarchical functional map that frames them in an evolutionarily coherent way. And this map coincides with surprising precision with the traditional tripartition.

The three branches of the autonomic system in polyvagal theory

1. Ventral-vagal parasympathetic (myelinated ventral vagus) — innervates heart and lungs (above the diaphragm). It is the social branch of the autonomic system: it regulates heart rate in a modulated way, breathing, facial expression, voice, eye contact. It is the system of living communion between human beings. When active, it produces states of communicative warmth, relational presence, safety in the other. It develops in the higher mammal — it is the latest evolutionary conquest of the vertebrate nervous system
2. Dorsal-vagal parasympathetic (unmyelinated dorsal vagus) — innervates sub-diaphragmatic organs (digestive apparatus, reproductive organs). It is the branch of deep rest, digestion, reception, vegetative calm. When active it produces states of slow dissolution, rest