The Song Called "Life" in the Key of Polyvagal Theory

an introduction to the rest of your life...once you know, you can't unknow

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"Polyvagal theory is the science of feeling safe enough to fall in love with life and take the risks of living." ~ Deb Dana

I’m not sure about you, but the language of that text evokes many different energies and emotions for me: awe, relief, wonder, curiosity, peace, and perhaps a healthy bit of reverent fear.  The accompanying sensations in my body encompass relaxation, ease, flow, a sort of fluidity, and also some bits of resistant tension in my back neck area.

In her book, Anchored, Deb Dana goes on to write, “The role of the autonomic nervous system is to store, conserve, and release energy to help us safely move through our daily lives.”  This definition is maybe a little more clinically accurate and yet still accessible for the lay public.  Even so, I prefer the opening quote as it evokes something more, something deeper.  I’m a sucker for intensity and depth. It somehow calls out to me in another dimension.

For clarity’s sake, if you’re not familiar, “autonomic” means automatic when we’re talking about the nervous system.  I used to tell my pelvic physical therapy clients that the autonomic nervous system takes care of all the functions in your body that you’re not supposed to have to think about.  So if you’re thinking about it, you have dysregulation, which is a fancy word for imbalance, in the autonomic/ automatic part of the nervous system.

For me in this recent illness “perfect storm,” it meant (yes, I’m intentionally celebrating my use of past tense for the moment) that my muscles felt terribly tired, my sleep-wake cycles were off, meaning that I was taking 4 naps/ day, my blood pressure was quite low, my visual system was unable to stabilize gaze when I was in motion or watching TV, my heart was beating with funky rhythms, and my blood sugar was up and down and everywhere reflective of a diabetic pancreas (no longer, but it was crazy).  Generally, I don’t need to think about consciously stabilizing my blood sugar, my blood pressure, my visual gaze, or my sleep/wake rhythms when I am well.  This equaled MAJOR dysregulation for me.

Other folks, like those I saw when I practiced pelvic physical therapy, might have challenges with their gastrointestinal system/ digestion, constipation or diarrhea, migraines, menstrual cycle regularity and pain (yes, I know, this is almost everyone with a uterus, including me before this happened), or esophageal reflux or heartburn, for example. 

Again, systems doing things that we’re not supposed to have to consciously devote precious energy resources to control with effort = autonomic nervous system dysregulation.  When the automatic is no longer automatic, think nervous system issue, at least partially.   Sure, it could absolutely be other things too, but this is always and every time a piece what is happening.  I know that seems like a big statement to make.  I’m making it and sticking to it and willing to be proven wrong.  I have yet to see this happen though.

In my own case, still not having a diagnosis to point to the reason for all my issues (still currently), this truth about the nervous system always being a factor in the puzzle was some reassurance personally because I knew this clinically.  So, I started working with my own nervous system early on and still am.  First I did so with what I knew on my own, then with a program from nervous system expert Irene Lyon, then with the comprehensive program in which I’m currently participating.  I’m also working with a neuroplasticity coach one-on-one who knows the program that I’m working through. This process has been absolutely invaluable for me.  

You might wonder, when I already knew a fair amount about the nervous system prior to my personal experience, in addition to training in Somatic Experiencing, why did I need even more support?  Because I’m a human before I’m anything else, and I needed guidance.  I don’t know what I don’t know, which I’m finding out is a lot, and I needed someone or something to help me make sense of my experience, to not feel alone, and to stay on track (especially on the tough days) given my impaired state.

Common to the programs and what I already knew…enter the polyvagal theory.  It’s a great place to start in order to understand one’s nervous system.  Of course, I thought I knew mine pretty well, but it turns out, I didn’t.  These unconscious/ automatic to conscious/ deliberate expressions of the dysregulation in my nervous system were just the tip of the iceberg. 

Enter the experts: Polyvagal theory (PVT) is the work of Dr. Stephen Porges and “clinically translated,” as I like to say, by licensed clinical social worker and educator Deb Dana, whose book I mentioned earlier.   I drew a fair amount of inspiration for this and other forthcoming posts from her work in particular, although there are many wonderful folks educating about polyvagal theory these days.

Some of you might understand this polyvagal stuff already.  If you do, I applaud you.  Feel free to stop reading. For the rest of us, it’s life changing.  For the sake of completeness, I want to do a short review in this newsletter to set up the content for future posts, as I’m pretty certain, as a self-identified curious mind-body-soul, that I’m far from done digging around in this information.

Here’s the super-duper-abridged version, and again, I’m apologizing/ not apologizing for hugely over-simplifying concepts here (whole books and years of scientific research have been done on this, so I’m leaving a lot out, and I have a lot to learn still).  Here’s the super basics as I currently understand them:

• Our nervous system is the wiring that connects everything in the body to everything else

• One of these “wires” is called the vagus nerve.  It’s super long and does a ton of these automatic tasks that we’re not supposed to have to think about, being a part of the autonomic system that I mentioned earlier.

• The vagus nerve originates from the back lower brain and wanders down the body.  It has three parts:

  • One part goes out to the face (which I’ll call a “ventral” - meaning front side - vagal parasympathetic branch)

  • One part goes out to the chest where it supplies the wiring to the heart, lungs, and esophagus, to name a few. (another part of this ventral vagal parasympathetic branch)

  • One part goes down below the breathing muscle into the abdomen where it supplies the wiring for a bunch of organs such as liver, kidneys, intestines, pancreas, stomach, and maybe even the uterus and ovaries (which I’ll call the “dorsal” - meaning backside - vagal parasympathetic)

  • There’s another major part to the system that is supplied by a different set of nerves that help to drive the sympathetic - or what you might have heard called the “fight or flight “ - response.  They’re still a part of the “polyvagal” system, but they’re not actually a part of the vagal nerve.

  • There’s more to it, but I’m going to leave it at that for now

• The vagus nerve flows information like a circuit in two directions - between the brain and the body, but one way is like a 5-lane expressway and the other way is like a two-lane, one-way country road.  By this I mean that the vagus nerve takes about 20% of its information from the brain down to the body, and about 80% of its information flows from the body up to the brain.  Wow.  That makes me super curious…

• The basic function of the vagus nerve is to support the brain in helping us to survive - our most basic animal-human function.  Given that 80% of the information is traveling from the body to the brain, we might conclude that the vagus nerve helps the brain to know what’s happening “below the neck.”

• So, big picture view, the nerve takes information up and down the circuits to help us know if we are in safety and connection or threat and protection.

I’ll get into one other concept here before we pause for this week.  This is super key: There’s a sequence that this brain-nerve pathway takes to help us to know which “state” is best suited for our survival in a given situational moment.  If our brain-body perceives threat, we will try to escape that threat in different ways, but always in this sequence of sort-of reflexive (not entirely conscious) choices:

1. Move towards/ befriend (ventral vagal)

2. Fight (sympathetic)

3. Flight/ Flee (sympathetic)

4. Collapse/ Play dead (dorsal vagal)

There’s also “fawning” as a response and a few others nuances to dorsal vagal activity that brilliant folks who understand the intricacies add, but I’m going to stick with the basics for now…Fawning deserves its own post…stay tuned…

So how do we know which place we’re in?  Start to notice, attaching description as you go - Are you:

• Feeling connected?  Peaceful? Sturdy inside?  (Sturdy is one of my new favorite words to embody within myself…)  Resilient?  Things happening that would normally irritate you but aren’t so much?  Then you’re probably in some version of a ventral vagal state.

• Feeling amped up?  Irritated? Frustrated?  Ready to react or flee?  Likely you’re in sympathetic mode.

• Feeling overwhelmed to the point of shutting down?  In collapse, maybe even noticing a slouched posture (you may find that you embody certain postures with these states - try noticing sometime - it’s fascinating!)?  Disconnected from yourself and others?  Enter dorsal vagal mode.

We’ll get into this more in a different post (I know I’ve said that a lot today).  None of these states are bad or wrong.  They’re all normal strategies that we are brilliantly equipped with to meet the survival needs of the moment.  We experience different flavors of them all day every day.  The practice is to learn how for the ventral vagal state to be your default, meaning being able to return to it throughout the day.  Getting stuck in sympathetic or dorsal vagal states is when chronic stress cycles create disease over time.  

I love how Deb Dana describes it here in her book: 

“We naturally travel between states, routinely moving out of ventral regulation into sympathetic or dorsal dysregulation and back again. Leaving regulation isn't the problem. In fact, the goal is not to stay in a state of regulation but rather to know where we are, recognize when we're moving out of regulation and being pulled into a survival response, and be able to return to regulation. The ability to flexibly move between states is a sign of well being and resilience. It is when we are caught in dysregulation, unable to find our way back to regulation, that we feel distress (emphasis mine). When we get pulled out of ventral safety and connection and get lost in a place of dysregulation, we move from flexibility to rigidity and feel the effects of a nervous system that is stuck in the intensity of sympathetic mobilization or dorsal shut down.”

Just to throw one more wrench in the works, our nervous systems can default to states that worked best for us to get our needs met as infants and young children, which often were not rooted in a ventral vagal approach.  Before you feel doomed by this knowledge, let me introduce one other concept to you: Neuroplasticity.  This means that we can change our brain-body.  Whatever you learned to do to survive in the past may not serve you well to thrive in the present and it is changeable.  This is good news and why I’m choosing to work with it so intensively in my recovery.  We can change how we respond - sometimes with help - but we can do it.

Being able to create space and pause to notice which state you’re in is definitely a learned skill. It’s not cut and dry, but more like a manual transmission car - clutch, gas, and brake being used to varying degrees at the same time - well, sort of, so I’m told.  I tried to learn and failed after about 11 attempts.  So this metaphor may be hearsay, but I wouldn’t know.

And you can’t just make it happen to “be” in a ventral vagal state.  You can’t judge yourself for the state you’re in - again, because none are bad or wrong.  We need them all. But we have the most access to our true self and connection with others in the ventral vagal state, so it seems like a better place to live from - and it is!

How do we nurture this then if we can’t “will” it to happen?  Future post.

I love this handy little starter practice from Deb Dana’s book though as a place to begin: 

“A good way to get the flavor of each of the three building blocks (polyvagal states) is by exploring two statements: ‘The world is…’ and ‘I am…’ Finding the words that describe how you view the world and your place in it brings awareness to the beliefs that are stored in each state.”

Safety and connection.  Threat (or perceived threat) and protection.  That’s the basic, basic, oh so basic gist.  And, as I’m writing this, I’m feeling like it’s actually a good point to pause at for this week as I’d like to break it down more as we go. It’s that important, so we’ll squeeze this orange for all it’s worth!

I truly want to know if and how this landed for you and any questions that you have.  You are welcome to interact here in the comments to get the conversation going ~