5. Three Channels: Inner, Horizontal, Vertical

5. Three Channels: Inner, Horizontal, Vertical

The Metaphor of a Tree

Picture a tree. It has roots reaching down into the soil — through them it draws water and nutrients; this is its contact with itself, with its own foundation. It has branches that intertwine with the branches of neighboring trees — through them it exchanges with others, forms the shared canopy, and passes signals through the root network and the fungal web; these are its horizontal connections. And it has a trunk reaching upward, toward the light — its vertical axis, its connection to the source of energy and growth, to the meaning of its existence.

Functional Systems Facilitation is structured in much the same way. It has three channels of connection:

• The inner channel — contact with yourself: with bodily sensations, emotions, genuine needs;

• The horizontal channel — contact with the group, with other people, with the group’s shared space;

• The vertical channel — contact with the purpose, with meaning, with that for the sake of which all of this is happening.

The key point is that these three channels work simultaneously, not sequentially. They are not three stages to be passed through one after another. They are three dimensions of one and the same process, and they either reinforce one another or fade together.

The Biological Prototype

This architecture is not an invention. It has a precise biological prototype.

In his work on bioelectric networks, Michael Levin has shown that a tissue cell functions as a full-fledged living system precisely when three conditions are held at once³:

1. Internal coherence — the cell maintains its own homeostasis, its membrane potential, its metabolic unity;

2. Connection with neighbors through gap junctions — the cell exchanges ions, small molecules, and bioelectric signals with those around it;

3. Orientation toward a target morphology — the cell “knows” its role in a larger whole, in an organ being built or repaired.

When these three conditions are preserved, the tissue is capable of regeneration, adaptation, and healing. Loss of these conditions has been linked, in Levin’s framework, to disorganization (e.g., cancer), stagnation (aging), or breakdown (death).

In the paper The Multiscale Wisdom of the Body (BioEssays, 2025), Levin formulates this as a general principle: what holds of cells may scale to any level — from molecules to whole communities⁴. On this reading, a social group functions as a living system precisely when its members simultaneously have contact with themselves, contact with others, and contact with a shared purpose.

FSF is, in effect, a way of deliberately sustaining all three channels at once.

How the Channels Reinforce One Another

The most interesting question is how the channels reinforce one another. It does not happen symmetrically; there are directions in which the reinforcement is especially strong⁵.

Inner → horizontal. The more precise your contact with yourself — with your real sensations, your real feelings — the higher the quality of what you can share with the group. Without the inner channel, the horizontal channel runs “empty”: what flows through it is not real experience but a social mask, a rehearsed narrative. A group made of masks cannot reach collective intelligence.

Horizontal → inner. A signal from the group helps you discover in yourself what you cannot see on your own. When another person accurately voices their experience, your own similar experiences are activated — you begin to feel what had been “drowned out by noise.” The group works as a mirror that amplifies faint inner signals.

Inner + horizontal → vertical. When both channels are working, a genuine purpose is born. This is not a “purpose I came up with” but a “purpose I made out” — it emerges from contact with yourself and contact with the group. A purpose born this way differs in kind from a purpose formulated through analysis: behind it there is energy, clarity, direction.

Vertical → inner + horizontal. A clear purpose, in turn, organizes everything else. It directs attention, focuses energy, deepens the Practice of Silence, and makes group interaction more substantial. Without the vertical channel, the first two can “scatter” into fragmentary experiences.

What Happens When a Channel Is Closed

It is worth looking at what happens when one of the channels is closed. This helps make clearer why all three are needed.

If the inner channel is closed (a person does not feel themselves), they may look outwardly successful, yet carry a “blind spot” inside. Any goals they set will be alien — projections of what “ought” to be according to family, society, advertising. Any relationships will be superficial — they cannot give others what they cannot find within themselves.

If the horizontal channel is closed (a person is isolated), we return to what was discussed in Part I: rising cortisol, immune disruption, higher all-cause mortality. An isolated cell loses viability; prolonged isolation is strongly associated with worse health in people.

If the vertical channel is closed (no purpose, no meaning), the system loses its organizing principle. In a large American cohort study by Kim et al. (JAMA Network Open, 2022), a strong sense of purpose in life was associated with substantially lower mortality — about 46% in that cohort⁶. This is not “optimism” or “positive thinking”; the author reads it as a sign that goal-directedness may act as an organizing principle across levels of a living system.

And only when all three channels are working does the system truly live. It recovers, develops, adapts. It becomes capable of what Levin calls navigating arbitrary spaces — finding solutions in any space: morphological, physiological, cognitive, social, semantic.