Polyvagal Theory - what in the world is it and why should I care?

Season 4- Episode 45

So, what is Polyvagal Theory? This theory was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, and it helps us understand how our nervous system shapes the way we experience the world—especially in terms of safety, connection, and stress. 

Now do you see why you might care?

If you haven't already, check out Five Ives to see how strategies like this can be applied to adults, especially in the workplace. Five Ives works with staff in high burnout jobs to help them incorporate regulation strategies into their daily routines.

Try at Home Tip: Try one of the techniques from the episode!

Other related resources from The Behavior Hub: 

Blog Post: 

Podcast:

Our Online Courses: 

Do you have a question? I can answer it in a future episode!

Are you struggling with behaviors and not sure where to begin? Let me help!
Schedule a free discovery call and let me be your Guide.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. 

Transcript:

“We are back. The previous episode probably could have put these in a switched order. The last episode, if you, if you have been here with me. I am talking about the nervous system, and I love the nervous system. I think that nervous system dysregulation is like an epidemic in today's society, and I think that there are quite a few factors that influence that. But I think our lifestyles, especially here in the West and in the United States really negatively impact our nervous systems.

So I've been doing a couple episodes on this and the last episode I talked about this, the vagus nerve and I talked about how it's really it's a key to calm. It's the superhighway of calm. It's like understanding how that works and stimulating it or increasing your vagal tone is so powerful, and it can change your life and your health for the better, and help you have more energy, and not feel burnt out and feel more productive or feel happier. Just gosh! The nervous system I feel like has so many threads, for, like every part of our being but what I probably should have talked about before. I talked about the like vagal tone, and and maybe I talked about that 1st because it was easier to digest.

But I want to go into a little bit of something called the polyvagal theory. So the polyvagal theory was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, lovely human being. I had the pleasure of meeting him and talking about kind of connecting some of our work, and kind of continuing to teach his theory and kind of teach it through the work that we're doing at 5 Ives.

So in essence, what his theory does is, it kind of breaks down parts of the nervous system, and it helps us to understand our nervous system and the way that it shapes how we experience the world. So if you're dysregulated in this way or that way, or stuck here or stuck there. It really shapes how we show up in the world. Because think about if you're under a lot of pressure or stress, or trauma, or chronic stress, or whatever it is it it changes the way that you show up because you're tired or you're exhausted, or you're angry, or you're whatever it may be, insert many emotions. But specifically, it really kind of digs into safety both physical and psychological. Human connection and managing and mitigating your stress.

So feel like we should all care about nervous system regulation. But the polyvagal theory a little bit. So I know it's a little sciencey. I know it's a little heavy, but I'm gonna try and break it down. I'm gonna try and make it really short because I do these higher like sciencey episodes. I I try and keep them shorter, so that there's less to digest. I also get excited about stuff like the polyvagal theory. And some people are like this is so boring. I don't want to hear this, so let me try and make it fun, or as fun as I can make it. So we're gonna talk about what is the Polydal theory? Why does it matter and how it connects to you in terms of safety connection and healing?

Okay. So again, polyvagal theory developed by Dr. Stephen Porridges, and it helps us understand a nervous system so that we can change the way we show up in the world, essentially feeling safe, connected, and less stressed. All important things. All right. So your nervous system.like a security system.

It's constantly scanning for danger or for safety. I mean, it wants to find scanning for danger to keep you safe.

And I think about this. Some of these like fun factoids I always share when I'm teaching or speaking.

I think they come from Jim Quick's work. I've read so many books on the nervous system. I can't quite remember which text they come from anywho. Very likely, Jim quick.

The factoids are something like, and I'll probably get these a little bit wrong, but you'll get the point in hearing them is that in one day of life today.

We experience so much like data and input and sensory stimulation that it equates to the same amount of data someone experienced in their entire lifetime in the 15th century. I'm gonna say it again, because just in case you didn't like wrap your head around. What that meant, or how that came across, is this. In the 15th century, in someone's entire life.

The amount of like stimulation and data and input and sensory things that came into their brain and their body equates to the amount that we experience in 24 h today in the 21st century.

That's why I get the people of the 15th century didn't live as long as we did. But the fact of the matter is that's a lot of stimulation. Here's the problem with it. Here's why everyone's nervous systems are so dysregulated is because our nervous systems are kind of always fried. I mean nervous system is not in a great space. It's hard to stay regulated, especially when your brain is young and not quite developed yet when I say young, not quite developed, I mean, like anything before 20 years old.

So oh, man, it's just.

It's such a big brown study. But we have all this stimulation that's coming at us, and stimulation is like anything like noise colors, moving pieces, parts, just anything that is any tiny little piece of data, a light, a color, a smell, a sound like if I look around the room that I'm in right now. I chose a poor room because I'm in my toddler's playroom, which is also happens to be my office. But it's a really happy, joyful place, so I like it being my office. But it…I'm just scanning the room. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, they're there, and I do a pretty good job of keeping toys to a minimum and colors, and we don't have like a lot of singing toys unless you're really calm singing toys. We don't have a lot of bright, flashy light up things. In fact, there's almost like none, and the colors I tend to choose are a little bit more muted and mild. But I even look around at what I do have here like, there's a lot of stimulation in here that at any one moment it's like all going into my brain. And it's like millions of bits of data going into your brain, and your nervous system is scanning these things subconsciously, and it can only take in about like 55 0 at a time. So imagine like it's trying to take in all these bits of data. It's too much data. It's feeling overwhelmed. It's constantly scanning. It's constantly taking in data. And it's constantly failing over burden because it's too much data to take in. Okay?

So naturally, then, yes, your nervous system becomes dysregulated because you got too much data coming in, it can't take it all in. It becomes overwhelmed, it becomes exhausted, and we become overwhelmed, and we become exhausted, and we land ourselves in a poor state of nervous system dysregulation. So Dr. Porges calls this process neuroception, which I think is a really cool word, sounds a lot more fun than what I just explained. But your bodies go through this automatic process without us even realizing it's totally the subconscious and depending on what this scanning system picks up our nervous system would land in one of these 3 states. Okay, so here's like the sciencey stuff that I'll break down the science stuff and make it a lot easier to understand, so it will either land in the ventral vagal state, in the sympathetic state or the dorsal vagal state.

Let me explain, like what this means in layman's terms. So either you'll land in a state which I teach a lot called the Window of Tolerance, and it's like this place where we are at, where it's how much we can tolerate. Where do you feel safe and social, and connected and happy and joyful and regulated? That's inside of your window of tolerance. So how much can you handle before you can't tolerate it anymore? And you leave your window of tolerance. That's the ventral vagal state.

Our body relaxes, our heart rate steadies. We feel connected to other people. We want to connect to other people. We don't feel like too exhausted to have a social life. This is where we thrive.

It's where we learn gatherers. We, our brains developed. We lived in communities, and our brains still desire that our brains deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply desire relationships, connection belonging a sense of not aloneness, and that exists today. And unfortunately, even though we have devices, and we think we're very connected, we are very disconnected as a society from each other, from people. So our social connections quite weak. So we're staying in our ventral vagal state less. And that's where we want to stay. That's where we want to be. Okay. So if you're scanning, scanning, scanning subconsciously, and you come across something, and your subconscious brain body parts are like whoops. Stop.

It won't even tell you to stop. Sometimes it just automatically responds. In fact, it is an automatic response. It might send you out of your window tolerance, out of your safe and social state into your fight or flight state, which is your sympathetic side of your nervous system for those of you that have been listening for a while. I talk about this state a lot. Mostly because I live in the state a lot, and I don't want to. I don't always choose to. Just sometimes I choose things that I'm not consciously aware of that. Keep me here. But it's a result of really tough childhood dealing with a lot of things that put me in this state I stayed in this state. The State got a lot of exercise. It was like a muscle, and it grew really strong, and it kind of took over some of my my window of tolerance, state my safe and social state. Basically that that state like shrunk down, meaning little things were setting me off, and then I it did, the more it got stronger and the more it grew, and the more it took up my safe social space. That's not a good thing, but it's also a good thing.

It's not a good thing to get stuck here. It's not a good thing to visit this this sympathetic side all the time.

It is good, is it? Helped us to survive? It's a biological response that we needed and still need. If you are, in fact, in danger. We want our body to scan it, see the danger and fight or flight.

That's healthy, that's normal. We need it. We would have survived without it. So the system is not a bad system. It just becomes a little faulty when we're constantly feeling like we're in danger, and we're not actually in danger.

So when you're in your sympathetic side of your nervous system or your fight or flight side, this is when your body, whether consciously or subconsciously it senses. There's some type of danger, physical or psychological.

Even if we're not physically doing those acts. It's it's like turning on all the systems. Your heart starts to race, your muscles start to tense up. You feel restless. You feel anxious in this state who's living with a lot of anxiety. You're living in your synthetic state. I feel you not alone that said we might hear this and be like, Wow, I'm like failing. I'm failing with nervous system failing with life. It all makes sense. Now, yeah, that's that's not the point of the episode. The point of the episode is to bring you into a state of awareness. You can change it because the beauty of your nervous system is, you can change. It is that it adapts, and it's like a muscular system. Not is, but is like a muscular system in that. If you grow the other parts, for example, if you grow the safe and social part. If you grow the window of tolerance by doing things to get you to stay in the window of tolerance longer. Aka, our last episode. This is the polyvagal theory, the increasing your vagal tone. All the things I listed in that last episode are going to send you back into that safe and social zone. That's where you want to be. So you've got to do things both reactively when you don't feel safe or socially disconnected. How do you get to that? That neutral zone? Do some of those things. It'll get you back there. So you're kind of reacting to not feeling good. So you get yourself back to a neutral place simultaneously. You can do a lot of these things preventatively to keep yourself. Remember even leaving the window tolerance from ever even getting into the sympathetic state. So you kind of want to do both. You want to work preventatively and reactively.

But we're not always consciously aware, like, if your muscles are tensing and your heart is racing, you might not, really. You might be so used to being in a sympathetic state that you don't even feel it. You don't even know it.

You might feel the anxiety, or you might be so used to being anxious that you don't even feel that. So we have to bring ourselves into a state of awareness. What are the signs that tell us we are in this fight or flight state and not overlook them. Bring them into conscious awareness. Then we can change it. Okay.

I promised. It wasn't gonna be that sciencey. It's a little sciency, but it's good.

We've got ventral, vagal state. That's your window tolerance. That's the place where you feel safe and social and happy, and you're thriving.

If something knocks you off balance, you might go into your fight or flight state. That's your sympathetic side of your nervous system.

Definitely more prone to anxiety in this state.

The other state is what we call the shutdown state. This is the dorsal vagal state, shutdown state, dorsal, vagal state, and this is what for those of you that have been listening like your parasympathetic side of your nervous system, where the parasympathetic is a good thing. It can like reset us and balance us. It's called the rest and digest side. But the problem is, if your body becomes too overwhelmed by the scanned danger, it perceives, real or not real.

It becomes too overwhelming to your body, and your system says, shut down to protect what we have left. Go into a state of disconnection and frozen and numb.

And that's your dorsal vagal state. That's your shutdown state. That's your being lodged in the parasympathetic state. So again, all these things designed biologically to keep us safe or to keep us alive. Really.

So we're not bad things. We just have to know when we enter into the sympathetic state when we become so overwhelmed that we get lodged in the parasympathetic state and shut down. Because that's when we start to do the work reactively and preventatively to reset your nervous system. Okay? Done with the sciency part. That's the hardest part. You got that great. Hopefully, I broke that down for you in a way that you can understand it.

3 States.

Social and safe state, which is your window of tolerance. It's called the ventral vagal State. Your fight or flight State, which is your sympathetic side of your nervous system. That's like more anxiety based responses, heart racing, tense muscles. Your last state is your shutdown state. That's the dorsal vagal state, also parasympathetic state. And that's when you're feeling numb, disconnected, frozen.

Okay. Deep breath. Let that all sink into your brain, maybe even like get up and jump around and spin around.

How can these impact our everyday life? Especially like when you are at work, when you are parenting, when you are teaching? If you are a teacher. If you are a medical provider when you're in the front line, if you're police when you're in the front line, if you're doing community work. If you're nonprofit work, any serving based anything, whether you're serving your own family system or you're serving others.

This comes into play hugely. So when people seem anxious or withdrawn. It's often because their nervous system is responding to real or perceived stress. The good news is that we can help ourselves move back into the safe and social window of tolerance. State that ventral vagal state. How do we do it? In the previous episode I went through some things to do to increase your vagal tone. A lot of them might be more like preventative things that you could do to keep yourself from ever even leaving this state. But here are some ways that you can get back into it.

One you could potentially do some breath work. And there are hundreds of types of breath work hundreds. So what I tend to think about is, I like to think of this in opposites. So if you're stuck in that anxious, sympathetic side. Your body's already on like high alert, so I want to do some slow breathing, so I might like breathe in 4, 5.

Hold it for 5, and breathe out for 7, 8, 10, whatever. I'm having a longer breath out than I am in. But if I'm in the parasympathetic side of that shutdown state. My body's kind of like sleepy and like knocked out a little bit, maybe even depressive. I want to wake it up. I want to do the opposite.

I might do some faster moving breath. Work quick in and out to just get some blood pumping through my system, get some oxygen to the brain, and just wake myself up, and then and then I might follow a slow breathing, just to kind of reset myself. But breathwork is huge, and if you don't know what to do. Search, chat, gpt, use an app like there's so many breathwork apps. I like insight timer, which is more as a meditation app. But there's a lot of breathwork sessions on there.

Okay, you could also do things like stretching, rocking, swinging. Think of like slow, moving things that stretch your body out, or things that are rhythmic, like walking or rocking or swinging the body and the brain and the subconscious. The nervous system. It likes rhythm and routine. So can we add in any of that, both preventatively and reactively. Even so much as like being around a warm, cozy person.

Someone that's like a warm, facial expression and and makes good eye contact. I laugh at this one because I've had so many people tell me that my face is like a even my like energetic experience as a human being is very safe, like people look at me and they feel safe. And I don't really know it's a subconscious thing. But there's something about the gift I have been given, and it makes sense to me, because when I am traveling or I'm somewhere where I'm like by myself, and I don't know people. People will always come up to me, and it feels like they just unload their life stories and like, why do people feel so inclined to share with me? I don't even know who they are. It's because my presence is warm and inviting sometimes. That's I'm trying that most times it's 99% of time. It's just people that are warm and inviting and calm and present.

It helps them to co-regulate. They mirror, what they see and what they feel, and it helps them to calm down the same with a calm voice, like someone can have a really calm, steady voice. I've gotten that, too. I’ve been duly gifted with a physical presence and a calm voice

That said, It's not always common. I'm not always physically inviting, but more times than not I am. That's a gift. Some of us offer that as a gift. Some of us have to try a little bit harder, but either way, when you're around someone who is safe and inviting and warm, and their language is body language and their facial expression and their voices is peaceful, it will naturally start to send you back into your window. Tolerance.

Okay, listening to nature sounds listening to soothing or slow moving music.

Even something that I have been digging into a lot lately is binaural beats and isochronic tones. Okay, it sounds really sciencey again. But it's really cool binaural beats. You would need a set of headphones, for, because it plays different frequencies in in both of your ears, and your headphones can do this, and I just go to spotify. And I search binaural beats. And basically what's happening.

This is gonna sound woo. But it's a lot of science in it is the different beats that are playing in your your ears are are impacting the the brainwave frequencies, and it's sending you into a brave wave frequency that sends you into a state of rest and peace and calm. So if you're in the sympathetic side, and if you're really anxious pairing that with the opposite binaural beats or isochronic tones can help you get back into that peaceful state of mind.

Isochronic tones are similar, but different. You don't need headphones for those, though it would benefit to get out the other extraneous noise outside the headphones. But it's not 2 different frequencies. It's just a different type of beat that's playing. That's your body's basically like mimicking. Okay, very cool thing. Nature sounds are good, actually, getting out into nature is good, too. For the same reason nature vibrates. There's like an energetic, vibrational existence of the earth itself. So we have this grounding where you put your feet on the ground.

So. That's why going in. Nature is really grounding and really beneficial. So nature sounds kind of do the same thing, because it makes you feel like you're in nature. Kind of fools you to think you're in nature.

Also humor, laughter, laughing at something, watching, something funny being around funny people.

Anything associated with laughter and humor is going to put you right back into your thinking brain. It's going to get you out of that fight or flight, or maybe even that freeze state. But laughter is a good thing.

You could do some mindfulness activities. I find mindfulness is a little bit hard to do when you're in more of like a survival state when you're in more of that overwhelmed state, or especially if you're in a disconnected state. It just feels like like the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 mindfulness that I kind of hate it because I'm like, Okay, I'm already overwhelmed. The last thing I want to think about is doing 5 things and 4 things and 3 things, and 2 things. And one thing I understand, some of the benefits to it. But is there something better? So one of the things that I really like to do? And and some of you that are watching via Video. See this, those of you that aren't that are just audio. You might hear it hopefully. I explain it well enough that you can kind of visualize it, but a deep background in nervous energy. And he talks about setting up this.

What do you? What would I call it? Like? A?

It's like it's pairing of like 3 of these things that would normally reset your nervous system. But if you pair them together and you do them when you're starting to feel like you're leaving your nervous system, it can kind of reset you. So, for example.

I've done this one by itself, but not in this trio. So now I started doing it in this trio.

It's creating a mind space. So when you're calm, you close your eyes and you visualize a space that feels really calm for you. It could be the mountains, it could be the ocean, but visualize it. What do you hear? What do you see? What do you feel. Is there anything that you taste?

Can you touch anything like what? What like, really get clear what that environment is and like, lock it in? That's like your calming brain space or calming mind. Space. Mine for me is a tree house. So I visualize trees and greenery, and being a high vantage point and a hammock, and like just peaceful colors and things and objects and decor inside this tree house that feels very safe to me.

So I've utilized that in the past, when I'm feeling dysregulated, I might like close my eyes and visualize the treehouse. It's worked pretty well.

His suggestion is to do that but also pair it with some type of like touch. So I have a friend that teaches regulation. She'll do one where it's like a self hug. So she recommends you take an arm and like cup it and an arm a hand and cup it, and wrap it around into like your armpit, and grab a hold, and then just wrap your hand around your other arm flat and just squeeze really tight. So she recommends that I prefer one where I kind of like make an X with my arms over my shoulders, and I just squeeze really tight with my fingers on the back of my shoulders. You could do just like hug yourself in any way that feels good. There are lots of ways to like self hold. So think about like, if someone were.

if you were to do a physical touch to your body that allowed you to feel safe and comforted. What would that look like? I mean? You can't give yourself a full blown like frontal hug, but you can give yourself like a self hug, or you can again, like under the armpit, or it could be you squeeze your legs like whatever it is. Just think of like a self.

Soothing physical touch that you can do to yourself, and the last one is having some type of like mantra or calming statement.

So what I found is, I actually really like this trio. I've used all these practices before, but not all together, and it's like stacking these practices where you can do it really, really quick, you can do it right in the spot right in the moment. So when I'm feeling dysregulated, or I'm feeling overwhelmed, or I feel myself leaving my window of tolerance and headed into that sympathetic state. Feeling anxious, I immediately close my eyes. I visualize that calming space, that mind Space Treehouse. I go ahead, and I give myself my little self hug, and when I tell myself my mantra. Which is, I am at peace and instantaneously. That brings my nervous system out of that state. So I'm using that reactively. I could use it preventatively as well. But it's really good for reactivity. So I'm a really big fan of this, like trio of stacking these things on top of each other to really get like a full effect, because if you are an extremely dysregulated state, you might need to stack some things all right. What else we got? We have weighted items like, if you have a weighted blanket, I sleep with a weighted blanket not all the time, but I do. Sometimes I like it. It feels like a heavy hug. The deep pressure on my skin is really calming. You might have for kids, especially like a stuffed animal. You might have something weighted. You could put like a bean bag like even a heated bean bag, because then you're stacking again because you've got heat and warmth. And then the heavy beans on in like a bag on your, on your neck, or on your stomach, where wherever you want to put it.

But something of weight. Double bonus was like something of weight and something of of temperature. I like a heated blanket every now and then.

Don't love wrapping myself in whatever's electrical in that blanket, but I like the way that the he feels, and I feel like it outweighs the negative. So do your own research there about. If that's really beneficial or not.

You could also just dance, sing, hum.

Dancing, and singing together. Is that stacking again? Because again the rhythm, the movement, the humming, the singing, the humming, and the singing I talked about in the last episode. It it stimulates your your vagus nerve, and it

Helps to increase your vagal tone, so any of those can be beneficial. We talked about rhythm and routine. Brain likes that. We talked about temperature changes so that could be hot cup of tea, hot cup of coffee, coffee. You get the extra stimulant with caffeine, but you could decaf.

It could be putting your hands under warm water. It could be bringing yourself out of a dysregulated state by kind of shocking yourself with cold water, cold bath shower, running your hands under cold water, sticking your hands on a little bit of ice, not for too long, but for a couple seconds. It'll like, pull yourself out of the dysregulated state into the present state, even scent based strategies. So I think again, a little woo people think of like Aromatherapy being a little bit woo woo.

But there is a lot of research behind certain scents will help us to feel more relaxed. For example, if you, I'm a big fan of woods based scents, sandalwood, cedar wood. So I tend to choose oils, or if it's candles, or whatever it is, it's something with a woodsy, based, nature-based smell.

And by exposing my nostrils to that, it's bringing me to the present, because I'm like

I smell that woodsiness, and on a subconscious level I kind of feel like I'm in the woods, and that maybe to me feels safe, maybe to some of you that doesn't feel safe. So it just depends what what works for you.

And then just any type of like bilateral stimulation. So can you tap. That's why there's a lot of this like, tap it in. So tap your arms, tap your thighs walking running like there's this bilateral movement of side to side or rhythmic pattern. Both of those things can be really, really regulating to you. So that's all I'm going to say. There are also hundreds of other things that you could do to get yourself back into a regulated nervous system state. This was just like, I don't know, probably one through 1012 here, but a bunch of different ones. I tried to give you a variety. These are all small actions that you can do pretty quickly without much of a cost that send signals to your brain and your nervous system.

I am safe. I am okay.

Help me restore connection and go back into a state of well-being. That's what we want, and the more you do that reactively and preventatively, the more you grow, your window tolerance, and the more your nervous system stays regulated, and the less the nasty things come into play from a dysregulated nervous system. So next time you feel like you're noticing some stress, some overwhelm, some anxiety, maybe some depression, some disconnection. Think about those states of your nervous system.

Utilize one of the practices, or stack some of the practices, to get yourself back into a regulated state, and then keep yourself in a regulated state by continuing to do those practices preventatively.

All right, wrap up our show. I'm gonna give you a try at home, Tip. No, I'm not because I just gave you like 20. Actually, I give you a lot. I give you many. So I'd say, pick one from above. That's your try it at home tip. And that is it. For today's episode of returning to us. Podcast don't forget all the tips. I gave you up above and before, and we'll list them for you in the show notes and the transcripts, so that you can remember to apply them yourself.

If you are looking for more support in the area of stress or trauma or behavior of the brain, or just

wanting to consider how does this go beyond just me? Because I'm talking right now about like individuals. More so. But Jessica, Dr. Jessica Doering and I created this organization called 5 Ives. It really takes it brings it into an organizational level meaning. We work with businesses. So it could be, we do a lot of nonprofits policing medical education where there are individuals that are serving other individuals, and typically and often the individuals they are serving carry a lot of stress and nervous system and dysregulation. So we teach those people how to teach those people how to stay more regulated. We teach those people how to keep themselves regulated. We teach the leadership that is, directing and guiding those people how to stay regulated, and how to guide the people that they are guiding and keep regulation through it all.

And then, if there's other levels or whatever it is, we kind of go through the entire organization. So it's the organizational whole and work them through. What does getting to a state of regulation and high functioning look like? Because that impacts how people show up at work? Do they come to work? Do they keep their jobs? Do they burn out? Do they quit. All these factors are impacted by this. So we teach it, and we teach people how to actively and easily implement it into their lives and into their work into the organizational whole 5 Ives. If you want to learn more, hop on to 5 Ives, FIVE, IVES. Website. And we'll tell you all about it. We're happy to hop on a call with you, to talk more about what this would look like and how we can support the work that you're doing.

Don't forget to lock in what you learned today by sharing it with someone else, by applying it, reflecting on it, by finding an accountability partner to help you or help you help them, or you help each other. Remember to do those things because this change is not easy. Your body has brain has been wired to work this way, and we're trying to rewire it until next episode. I am Lauren Spiegelmeyer, and thank you for joining me.”

All Episodes

Calming & Coping, Emotional RegulationLauren SpigelmyerComment