Spinal Column

The spinal column appears in the depth-psychology corpus along two largely distinct axes of meaning. In the neurobiological literature — represented most comprehensively by Craig, Damasio, and Kandel — the spinal column is treated as the foundational conduit of the central nervous system: the anatomical structure through which ascending interoceptive and nociceptive pathways (notably the lamina I spinothalamocortical system) relay homeostatic, thermal, and pain signals to brainstem and cortical regions, and through which descending autonomic control signals modulate sympathetic and parasympathetic preganglionic cells. Craig’s work is especially consequential here, mapping the lamina I projection system and arguing that the spinal cord organizes the very substrate from which bodily feelings and ultimately consciousness arise. Damasio complements this by identifying the dorsal root ganglia arrayed along the spinal column as a critical interface between peripheral visceral signaling and the central nervous system. In the esoteric and somatic-psychological literature — Govinda, Evans-Wentz, Ogden, Jodorowsky, and Aurobindo — the spinal column figures as the axial channel through which subtle or psychic energies ascend, corresponding to Kundalini’s median nerve, the chakra column, and the postural core whose curvature encodes developmental and traumatic history. The tension between these registers — the column as neuroanatomical relay versus the column as sacred axis — gives this term its peculiar richness within a comparative depth-psychology concordance.

In the library 15 passages

The dorsal root ganglia are located all along the spinal column, at the level of each vertebra, one on each side of the spine, linking the body’s periphery with the spinal cord, that is, connecting peripheral nerve fibers to the central nervous system.

Damasio identifies the dorsal root ganglia distributed along the spinal column as the key anatomical interface through which peripheral visceral signals enter the central nervous system, and notes they uniquely lack a blood-brain barrier.

Damasio, Antonio R., The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018thesis

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These curves act like a spring to absorb shock, maintain balance, support the movement of the spinal column, and hold the body upright. If the curves become either too straight or too curved, added physical stress is placed on the body, and the adaptive functioning of the spine is compromised.

Ogden argues that the developmental curvature of the spinal column encodes postural integrity and that traumatic experience systematically compromises this adaptive structure.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis

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These are, according to Kuṇḍalinī Yoga, the median-nerve, in the hollow of the spinal column, and the right and left psychic nerves coiled around the spinal column.

Evans-Wentz identifies the spinal column as the anatomical locus of the Kundalini system’s central and lateral psychic channels, mapping Tantric subtle-body physiology onto the vertebral axis.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954thesis

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a knife cut that severed the spinal cord on one side produced a loss of pain and temperature sensations only on the opposite (contralateral) side of the body… combined with the loss of discriminative touch sensation and skeletal motor function on the same (ipsilateral) side as the injury to the spinal cord.

Craig uses clinical evidence of hemisection of the spinal cord to establish the anatomical distinctness of the spinothalamic and dorsal column pathways, foundational to his interoceptive theory.

Craig, A.D. Bud, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014thesis

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the axons from all three groups cross to the contralateral side of the spinal cord at the same spinal level as the cell bodies (the ‘segment of origin’). The lateral spinothalamic pathway ascends in the middle of the white matter on the side of the spinal cord.

Craig details the organization of ascending spinothalamic axons within the spinal cord’s white matter, tracing the precise anatomical routes through which homeostatic sensory information travels toward the brain.

Craig, A.D. (Bud), How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2015thesis

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The development of the spinal cord begins with the closure of the neural tube and the emergence of the alar and basal plates, which extend longitudinally through all of the spinal segments.

Craig traces the embryological origin of the spinal cord’s functional compartments, distinguishing interoceptive from exteroceptive neuronal lineages as developmentally distinct populations.

Craig, A.D. Bud, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014supporting

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This system is a homeostatic afferent pathway that conveys signals from small-diameter primary afferents that represent the physiological status of all tissues of the body. It projects first to autonomic and homeostatic centres in the spinal cord and brainstem.

Craig defines the lamina I spinothalamocortical system as a homeostatic afferent pathway whose first relay is in the spinal cord, reconceptualizing interoception as rooted in spinal-level processing.

Craig, A. D., How Do You Feel? Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body, 2002supporting

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The hypothalamus sends descending control signals to all of the homeostatic regions in the brainstem, as well as to the spinal cord, where hypothalamic terminations are found exclusively in the autonomic cell columns (IML) and in lamina I.

Craig shows that the spinal cord is not merely a passive relay but a targeted site of descending hypothalamic modulation, specifically at autonomic and interoceptive laminar zones.

Craig, A.D. Bud, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014supporting

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The pelvis of the skeleton and its spinal column borrow the colors of its scythe: azure and red, as if these two colors (vital action and spiritual receptivity) formed the base of the growth along the column, like a blade of wheat.

Jodorowsky reads the Tarot skeleton’s spinal column as a symbolic axis of spiritual ascent, encoding dual polarities of vital force and receptive consciousness rising from the pelvis upward.

Jodorowsky, Alejandro, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting

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The spinal cord contains the machinery needed for simple reflex behaviors… by examining the spinal cord, one can understand in microcosm the overall purpose of the central nervous system.

Kandel positions the spinal cord as a microcosmic model of the entire central nervous system’s function — receiving sensory input and generating coordinated motor output.

Kandel, Eric R., In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting

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The activity of the motor output neurons of both divisions of the ANS is controlled by oscillations and reflexes that are organized first at the level of the peripheral ganglia and next at the level of the preganglionic sympathetic and parasympathetic cell groups in the spinal cord and brainstem.

Craig situates the spinal cord as a primary organizational level for autonomic nervous system motor output, mediating reflex arcs that underlie both homeostatic regulation and emotional response.

Craig, A.D. (Bud), How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2015supporting

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Small-diameter afferent fibres that report the physiological condition of all tissues of the body terminate in lamina I of the spinal and trigeminal dorsal horns. The ascending projections of lamina I neurons provide the bases for somato-autonomic reflex arcs at the spinal, medullary and mesencephalic levels.

Craig’s schematic of hierarchical homeostatic neural organization begins at spinal lamina I, establishing the cord as the first integrative tier for interoceptive afference and autonomic reflex generation.

Craig, A. D., How Do You Feel? Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body, 2002supporting

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Spiller WG, Martin E (1912) The treatment of persistent pain of organic origin in the lower part of the body by division of the anterolateral column of the spinal cord.

This bibliographic citation documents the historical surgical intervention of cordotomy — severing the anterolateral column of the spinal cord — as a foundational clinical reference point for Craig’s interoceptive pathway research.

Craig, A.D. Bud, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014aside

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the energy of this centre is depicted as the dormant force of the goddess Kundalini — who as the Sakti of Brahma embodies the potentiality of nature, whose effects may be either divine or demoniacal.

Govinda frames the energy ascending through the spinal column’s central channel as Kundalini, a primordial psychic force that requires initiatory control lest it become destructive rather than liberating.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting

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To sit in meditation with the back, neck, and head in a straight line is not as easy as it sounds.

Easwaran’s commentary on the Gita treats alignment of the spinal column as a practical meditative requirement whose difficulty points to the deeper discipline of sustained one-pointed attention.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside

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