Wounded Jiwasa: when the body cannot trust the collective

What if the core problem is not a lack of resources, but the body’s inability to trust “we”?

Jiwasa describes a living collective in which individuals participate without losing critical sense, and leadership emerges dynamically. But this capacity is not guaranteed. It can fail to form, be interrupted, or be injured. When that happens, we have Wounded Jiwasa.

Wounded Jiwasa is not an abstract idea. It is a bodily, neurobiological, and social state in which the collective is not experienced as shelter. “We” ceases to be safety and becomes risk. The other is no longer part of continuity but a potential threat.

This rupture often begins early in life.

When a child grows up amid:

• abandonment

• violence

• instability

• unpredictability

• incoherent or aggressive authority

the nervous system learns that the collective is not trustworthy. Interoception (internal sensing) becomes marked by tension; proprioception (orientation in space) shifts toward vigilance; attention organizes around threat detection. The body learns to survive.

    This learning is effective for survival.
    But it limits the capacity to belong.

Attachment research shows that insecure early bonds are associated with later difficulties in emotion regulation, trust, and social engagement. Contemporary social neuroscience indicates that such experiences are reflected in patterns of brain and physiological activity linked to threat processing and defensive states (Porges, 2022; De Felice et al., 2025).

In this context, the brain does not “choose” distrust.
It learns it.

And that learning shapes how the body enters relation with the world.

When Jiwasa is wounded, the body cannot relax in a group. It maintains micro-tensions, shallow breathing, narrowed attention, and continuous risk scanning. Small disagreements may be perceived as threats. Critique becomes attack. Silence becomes abandonment. Difference becomes danger.

    The collective ceases to be a field of intelligence.
    It becomes a field of defense.

This state corresponds to what we call Zone 3: a condition dominated by defensive activation, with reduced capacity for fruition, metacognition, and creative thought.

Zone 3 is not only individual—it can become collective.

When many individuals with Wounded Jiwasa organize together, predictable patterns emerge:

• preference for rigid leadership

• heightened need for control

• intolerance of difference

• polarization

• construction of enemies

• repetition of simplified narratives

In such cases, a “we” exists, but it is based on threat rather than belonging. It is a defensive mass, not Jiwasa.

These dynamics are intensified by social conditions.

Urban violence, extreme inequality, economic insecurity, structural racism, territorial dispossession, and lack of public care systems create environments where the body cannot stabilize. Territory fails to support the organism. APUS weakens. Jiwasa becomes difficult to emerge.

Latin American perspectives help clarify this. Rogério Haesbaert frames territory as lived and relational, essential for belonging. Arturo Escobar understands territory as ontology—a mode of existence. Ailton Krenak emphasizes that breaking from territory is also breaking from life’s continuity.

When territory is fragmented—when APUS is dismembered—the body loses external references of stability. This amplifies internal insecurity. The nervous system becomes more prone to defense.

Contemporary neuroscience provides tools to observe these states. Studies using EEG, fNIRS, and hyperscanning show that in contexts of low trust or threat there is reduced inter-brain synchrony and increased markers of vigilance and stress. In contrast, cooperative and safe contexts are associated with increased neural coupling and physiological regulation (Dumas et al., 2022; De Felice et al., 2025).

This suggests that Jiwasa is not merely cultural—it is physiological.

When the body cannot trust, it cannot synchronize.
When it cannot synchronize, cooperation degrades.
When cooperation degrades, collective intelligence does not emerge.

    Wounded Jiwasa disrupts the flow of collective life.

This also helps explain the appeal of simplified solutions.

A body in Zone 3 seeks predictability, order, quick answers, and protection. This can lead to adherence to rigid ideologies, polarized narratives, or authoritarian leadership—not necessarily from deep conviction, but from the need for regulation.

    Ideology becomes anesthesia.
    Authority becomes shelter.
    Simplicity becomes relief.

But this relief comes at a cost: reduced critical capacity and diminished ability to compose with others.

The challenge, therefore, is not only cognitive or political.
It is embodied.

Restoring Jiwasa requires restoring conditions under which the body can trust again. This includes:

• safe and predictable environments

• consistent, reliable relationships

• education grounded in bonding and co-regulation

• territories that sustain life

• public policies that reduce chronic insecurity

• real experiences of cooperation

Zone 2 is crucial in this transition. When the body exits defense, breathing deepens, attention broadens, nuance returns, and the other is no longer automatically perceived as threat. From there, the collective can re-emerge as a field of intelligence.

Multimodal approaches (EEG + fNIRS + HRV + respiration + GSR) are promising for studying this transition. They allow us to observe how bodies move from defensive to cooperative states, how trust modulates physiology, and how group contexts reshape individual regulation.

This reframes trust: not merely a moral value, but a measurable, trainable biological process.

Politically, this means belonging cannot be built by discourse alone. It depends on material and embodied conditions. It is insufficient to speak of “community” if territory does not sustain life, or to call for “unity” while bodies remain in chronic defense.

In this sense, proposals such as DREX Cidadão can be interpreted as attempts to restore a minimal social metabolism. By guaranteeing basic conditions of existence, they may reduce the chronic survival pressure that keeps bodies in Zone 3. This does not solve everything, but it opens space for Jiwasa to emerge.

In the end, Wounded Jiwasa reveals something essential:

the problem is not only the absence of the collective—
it is the body’s inability to trust it.

And as long as the body cannot trust,
“we” will be experienced not as belonging,
but as threat.

Restoring Jiwasa is not only a social task.
It is a neurobiological, territorial, and political task.

Because before it exists in discourse,
“we” must exist again in the body.

References

DAMASIO, Antonio. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. New York: Pantheon Books, 2021.
Foundational account of consciousness as embodied, integrating interoception, proprioception, and action.

PORGES, Stephen W. Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety. 2022.
Explains how the autonomic nervous system regulates states of safety, threat, and social engagement.

HAESBAERT, Rogério. “From Body-Territory to Territory-Body (of the Earth): Decolonial Contributions.” GEOgraphia, 2020.
Frames territory as lived, relational, and essential to belonging.

ESCOBAR, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press, 2021.
Develops territory as ontology and collective world-making.

KRENAK, Ailton. Futuro Ancestral. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2022.
Articulates belonging as continuity between body, land, and life.

DE FELICE, Silvia et al. “Relational Neuroscience: Insights from Hyperscanning Research.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2025.
Links social interaction, bonding, and inter-brain coupling.

DUMAS, Guillaume et al. “Inter-brain Synchrony in Social Interaction.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2022.
Examines neural synchrony as a basis for social coordination.

GRASSO-CLADERA, Aitana et al. “Embodied Hyperscanning for Studying Social Interaction.” Social Neuroscience, 2024.
Integrates brain and bodily measures in the study of social interaction.