A structural framework

EbAM is a structural framework for understanding how human experience is organized, develops, and becomes integrated. The model consists of three axes, each representing a distinct dimension of experience. These are not variations of the same phenomenon, but intersecting axes that together form a process-oriented and directionally guiding matrix.

The process axis

The process axis (x-axis) describes the development of adaptive capacity over time. It moves from basic safety and embodied grounding, through resource building, orientation, tracking, titration, and pendulation,and further toward discharge, completion, and integration. This is a process-based axis. It shows how movement flexibility can gradually be restored, and how freedom may eventually emerge as an integrated possibility. This forms the temporal dimension of the model.

The grounding axis

The anchoring axis (z-axis) represents how experience organizes itself as described in the SIBAM model. Experience appears through sensation, imagery, behavior, affect, and meaning. This axis reveals where activation or blockage is expressed within the system. It does not interpret experience, but shows how it is distributed across body and nervous system. Together with the process axis, it forms an evolutionarily grounded perspective. Here lie the biological conditions for contact, mobility, and orientation.

The alignment axis

The alignment axis (y-axis) represents the functional integration of body, emotion, thought, and action. At this level, experience is consciously organized and translated into choice. Coherence or fragmentation emerges here. Rigidity may be experienced as tension and inner division. Flexibility may be experienced as grounded wholeness. This axis reflects an acceptance-based perspective. It concerns how experience is met, held, and allowed to inform action in the present moment.

Interplay between axes

The three axes depend on one another. Adaptive capacity is shaped by how experience is distributed within the SIBAM system. The breadth of experience reflects the degree of integration and the ability to remain in contact with what arises. Integration and contact, in turn, influence the potential for further development along the process axis. The model shows how development unfolds through an interplay of time, sub-processes, distribution of experience, and the capacity to remain in open contact with lived experience.

Two complementary paradigms

EbAM also clarifies the relationship between two complementary paradigms. The process axis (x) and the anchoring axis (z) form an evolution-based plane, where capacity develops through embodied grounding and inner mobility, as described in the North Star. The alignment axis (y) shows how this capacity comes into expression through conscious organization and choice, as described in the Present Moment.

Mutual dependancy

Integration and contact depend on movement flexibility. This, in turn, depends on tolerance within the nervous system. Value-oriented action depends on embodied grounding. The x–z plane thus supports the y-axis.

Direction for practice

The acceptance-based paradigm primarily engages the alignment axis. It strengthens conscious organization, value orientation, and functional choices within available capacity. The evolutionary paradigm primarily engages the x–z plane. Here, flexibility develops through embodied grounding and inner movement, and experience becomes integrated across the SIBAM channels. As capacity expands within this plane, the range of possible action along the alignment axis also expands.

An integrated framework

EbAM thus forms the structural foundation of Arctic Soulcraft. The model shows how the evolutionary and acceptance-based paradigms operate within a unified structure, where embodied grounding and conscious action are mutually dependent.