Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 424: Become an Active Operator of Your Nervous System | Deb Dana

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

We don’t think about it this way, but as we move through the day, the various moods we inhabit — excitement, engagement, aggression, fear, dejection — they’re all dictated by, or correlated with, our nervous system, or to be specific, our autonomic nervous system. The guest for this episode explains how you can become an active operator of your own nervous system.Deb Dana is a licensed clinical social worker, clinician, and consultant who specializes in working with complex trauma — although the advice in this episode can apply to everyone. She is also the author of Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.This episode explores:What polyvagal theory is.The case for understanding our nervous system.The practical tools and exercises for changing our nervous system and learning to become more regulated.The fact that our nervous systems aren’t simply isolated, self-contained phenomena – they are social structures.Our responsibilities for our own nervous system and the nervous systems of others.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/deb-dana-424See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Greetings, salutations, my fellow suffering beings. We don't often think about it this way, but as we move through the day, the various moods we inhabit, excitement, engagement, aggression, fear, dejection, depression, they are all dictated by or correlated with our nervous system, or to be specific our autonomic nervous system. And the cool thing is, as you're about to hear,

you can become an active operator of your nervous system. My guest today is Deb Dana. She's a clinician and consultant who specializes in working with complex trauma, although to be clear, the advice you're going to hear her give today is not specific to people dealing with trauma. Deb is the author of a book called Anchored, How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory. In this conversation, we talk about what polyvagal theory actually is, the case for understanding your nervous system, practical tools and exercises for changing

your nervous system and learning to become more regulated. Generally, the fact that your nervous system isn't simply isolated and self-contained that your nervous system, all of our nervous systems, are actually which he calls social structures. And she's going to talk about how you can take responsibility for your own nervous system and the nervous systems of everybody in your orbit. This is a really great interview. I actually looked back at my notes afterwards and I saw that at the top of the page, I wrote love her.

And I suspect you may feel similarly. So we'll get started with Deb Dana right after this. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do?

What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos. To access the course, just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm all One word spelled out Okay on with the show Hey y'all it's your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my new podcast

Baby this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends family and experts the questions that are in my head Like it's only fans only bad where the memes memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. nice to have you here. I'm going to open with a big question. What is polyvagal theory? Oh boy, that is the most common opening question. So in the simplest terms, polyvagal theory is a theory that my colleague and dear friend Stephen Porges developed about how the nervous system works. And in its simplest form, which is the way that I use it, is it has three organizing principles that govern how we navigate our daily life, hierarchy, neuroception, and

co-regulation. And if we understand those three principles, then we understand what's happening in our biology that then gets translated into our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors, the stories that we enter into as we move through the world. Okay, so we'll go in depth, I hope, into these three layers or levels you described. But let's just stay on the level of, so what? Why should we care about polyvagal theory? So we should care about polyvagal theory because it helps us understand our biology. And even though we think our brains are running the show, truly our brains are getting the communication from our body.

And so if we understand this embodied system, if we understand how the nervous system works, we can begin to shape it differently. I like to say we can become active operators of our own nervous system. And that gives us a level of management over our responses and a way to engage with the world with more awareness and more intention. So, we think we've got like an inner executive that we're running the show, we're controlling it all, all of our actions with our thoughts. But actually, there's this, I'm gonna use a metaphor that's often used in a slightly different context from Jonathan Height.

Jonathan, I do hope you come on the show eventually, but he often talks about the elephant and the rider that there is a person on top of an elephant, and the person thinks he's controlling everything, but it's the elephant who's in control. Often, when he uses that analogy, the elephant is our subconscious, but you're referring to our body, our nervous system that is really running the show most of the time. Yes, and through the vagal pathways, and what we know is that 80% of the information

is traveling the pathways from your body to your brain. 80% and 20% is coming back from the brain to the body. So, you know, in my work with people who have experienced lots of trauma, it became clear that understanding this body to brain pathway was important. And then, you know, as we began to discover more about the everyday role of the nervous system, you know, I sort of thought, so everyone needs to understand how this system works. It's like, this is the vehicle we're the nervous system, I sort of thought, so everyone needs to understand how this system works. It's like this is the vehicle we're driving through life and we need to know how it works so we can manage it in a new way. We can regulate so that we can be in connection

with others. We can create healthy relationships. We can practice self-care, all of the things that depend on a regulated nervous system, because if we are dysregulated, if we move into one of the two adaptive survival responses, it's not that we don't want to be in relationship or practicing self-care or any of these things. It's that our biology won't allow it any longer. We've moved out of a place of being able to into a survival response. So, it's like polyvagal theory. It's my words, not yours. It's kind of like an operator's

manual and owner's manual for this mind-body system that is our life. Yes, beautiful. It's a lovely way to put it. You know, one of the things you wrote about the nervous system that I found so interesting is that I don't know if this is the exact term you I found so interesting is that it, I don't know if this is the exact term you use, but it is a social structure. It's not self-contained. Yes, our nervous system, although it's embodied, is always connecting both with our own brains, our own minds, but it's also connecting with the environment around us, with other people's

nervous systems. The nervous system has three parts to it. We are a system that then is in relationship with other systems, and you can keep expanding out and out. One of the things I say is that we are inextricably linked nervous system to nervous system around the globe. Every nervous system is communicating. Our nervous systems are in communication right now.

And so what I like to do is help people be able to speak that language, understand that language. How are our nervous systems communicating right now, Mime and yours? So that would take us to neuroception, one of those organizing principles. And neuroception is the nervous systems way of listening and it's listening inside our own bodies it's listening inside to what's going on in our visceral lungs our hearts it's listening in the environment around us and it's listening in the space between so my nervous system is looking for cues of welcome from your nervous system. I mean the words you speak are lovely as well, but the look on your face, your movements, your eye gaze, the tone of your voice. These are the below the level of conscious awareness ways the nervous system feels welcomed or warned. And that's happening microman to microman

every time we're around another nervous system. And so if we can bring that to the level of explicit awareness, we then get much more information. We often think, I don't know why, but I just don't like being around that person. That's your nervous system sending you those cues. And when we can bring awareness to what we can think, oh, now I know why, because there is this thing that person does that reminds me of somebody in my life has nothing to do with that person. It's a reminder and nervous system, autonomic reminder of somebody else. So it's interesting. We sometimes find that, Oh, I really do like that person. It's just when they do that thing that I feel unsafe.

So you said there are three parts of the nervous system. One is neuroseption. What are the other two? Hierarchy. And hierarchy are the three basic states that the nervous system has access to, that it takes us through. There's a state called Ventral, which is the state of regulation, safety connection, that you and I are experiencing now we hope so that we can communicate, connect, our prefrontal cortex, our brain works with us when we're in this place of regulation. When the world feels too challenging, the next place we go is to sympathetic fight and flight. And we probably all know what that feels like, that cortisol adrenaline flooding us.

And when we go to that place, our prefrontal cortex no longer works in the same way. So we lose access to planning and thoughtfulness and awareness. And we move into this survival response. So the nervous system now says, I don't care about anything else but survival. And fight or flight does not resolve the situation.

The third place the nervous system can take us is into dorsal shutdown collapse disconnection. And so whereas sympathetic is a overwhelming flood of energy, chaotic disorganized energy, purposeless energy, dorsal is a draining of that energy. And you might think of it time recently when you felt sort of that just going through motions, but I'll have the energy to really be here, be present or care. That's a dorsal flavor. In its extreme, it's sort of curled up

in a fetal position, unable to move or dissociate it, but its first flavor is just going through the motions, not really here. And we go through these all the time, in little ways, all the time during the course of the day and then in big ways when we're challenged by Experiences that are just overwhelming Just to clarify some terminology for folks People who listen to the show may already know that sympathetic nervous system

But it can be confusing because it sounds good sympathetic. This is awesome But actually the sympathetic nervous system. that's fight or flight or fleet. That is side or flight, yeah. Or fight flight or freeze rather, yes. I guess dorsal is freeze. Well, it's interesting because they're actually two kinds of freeze. There is a freeze where everything is flooding through your body, but you can't move. That's that deer in the headlight sort of experience. And that is a combination of the sympathetic fight flight and the dorsal immobile. So it's an interesting thing. So yeah, sympathetic fight flight and dorsal is collapse shut down. And then ventral is engaged, be organized, move through the world in that way.

So we go through this in microways throughout the day, assuming that we're not in an emergency where we're going through it in a macro way. Just trying to take like back on my own life from, examples of dorsal just because that's somehow the most intriguing to me. There are times when I'll be in a difficult conversation, I remember when my wife and I did couples counseling, I would just get so tired and dissociative with, you know, no reason really. And I wonder if that is just a version of what you're describing.

Yeah, see there's no brain reason, no logical reason, but the nervous system, neurocepting, if we want to use that, neurocepting, cues of danger. And the nervous system, I think, always works in service of our safety and survival. And so in that moment, the nervous system felt you were in danger, and it enacted a survivor response. It took you into that tired, sort of, not here. Can't respond place. And if you know that, and if your partner knows that, the story becomes a very different one, right? The story doesn't become, oh, Dan just doesn't want to do this. Here we go again. He's just not paying attention. The story becomes, oh,

dance nervous system is dysregulated in a way that he can't be present. And that's a very different story. Right. So if you're fluent in polyvagal theory and your partner is too, you could just call out a dorsal right now. It's not that I don't care, but something that may be below the level of conscious awareness is going on here. Right. And my goal in life is to help people to become fluent in this because it changes the way

we look at others. It changes the way we can have curiosity and self-compassion. And I can be curious about what's happening to somebody else rather than going immediately into the story, the story of shame, blame, judgment, criticism. I'm so good at that. Yeah, most of us are. You're taking that away from me? Well, I'm offering you a different pathway.

I don't know, what do you think it might be like to not immediately go to the judging story about self another, you know? I think it would be a much more supple and smooth life than the one I'm leading now. Yeah, and, you know, the thing I would like to say is that as you enter into that place and have a more flexible nervous system, that then gets transmitted to the people around you.

And so the way we move through the world impacts the world, which I find fascinating. I find it's a huge responsibility, but I also find it's a great opportunity. Right. So is that the third level, which is co-regulation? Yeah. Co-regulation and co-regulation is, we call it a biological imperative. It's something we need in order to survive. We come into the world. It's something we need in order to survive. We come into the world, we need another human to be there with us. And for many of us, the biological expectation is, you come into the world and you get met by a regulated nervous system. Someone who cares and is ready to welcome you.

And for so many of us that didn't happen. And so that co-regulation didn't emerge the way it needed to in the beginning. It is a lifelong need. And when I say that to some people, it sounds terrifying. You mean, I need to be safely connected to others forever to live a life of well-being, yes. Yeah. And then, however, we all have our own sort of needs for how much.

And so in my experience, I don't need as much connection to others as some other people in my life. And yet I know how much I do need. You know, and so as you think about your life, you think, oh, you know, I'm pretty good on my own for a long time, but then I need, right? And what we need is to feel safe with another person. So we need to be met by a regulated nervous system. And that's a life-long need. Do a cat's count? Yes, mammals, cats, dogs, yes. I mean, we do also need a human, but for many of my clients in the beginning,

it was their pet that was their co-regulating safe mammal. And then it was me because I could predictably show up. And then we begin to feel safe that, oh, maybe there's another person in the world who's safe enough, regulated enough, predictable enough. You know, and those people are not always there to co-regulate with us because they have their own nervous systems that have their own moments of dysregulation, which is if you talk about couples, we depend on our partner moments of dysregulation, which is to talk about couples,

we depend on our partner for co-regulation, and that's not always present and available. And so we have these ruptures, and we make repairs. In that strength and sub-relationship, we have a rupture where you move into a dysregulated state, and I'm thinking, where'd he just go? And then you come back to regulation, and we make the repair, we come back into connection,

nervous system to nervous system and brain to brain. That strengthens our relationship. You talked earlier about co-regulation, giving you a sense of responsibility because how you are matters. Is it possible that it's also an opportunity in that you can kind of create the world you want by being a vector of,

I don't love this term, but safety. Mm-hmm. Yeah, just say you don't love that term safety. Well, I don't love the term because it's kind of to regure right now the type of thing that people are saying on college campuses and it can come off as a jargonny, so that's why I don't love it. Yeah, and I love that you brought that up because I use safety danger because it's the easiest way to teach people

that kind of understand safer, unsafe safety danger. But for many people, safety's not the word they want to use. And so when I'm working with people, I always invite them, what word would you use to describe this place? It could be connected, disconnected. It could be approach avoid, welcome, warn. Words can become sort of

jargony and they also don't always fit for all of us. So yes as we go back however we can use safety or welcome whatever we want to use for the word and yes it is an opportunity if I am regulated and I am in connection with other people their nervous systems feel that regulation and their nervous systems begin to feel the ability to regulate as well, come into connection. And I think that's a really beautiful thing. The other is also true, however, if I'm dysregulated, then I'm sending warnings to all of the nervous systems around me. The same is true if I'm in a one-to-one relationship or I'm with my family or my colleagues,

or if I'm simply walking through the world, or I'm out in the world doing the grocery shopping, nervous systems are still communicating. It feels a big responsibility, it's also humbling to know that each of us impacts the world in this way. So as I'm out in the world, if I'm feeling distressed, I'm noticing,

oh, yeah, I was one of those people who added to the level of distress in the world today. And so the next time I'm out, feeling regulated, I'm going to really notice, oh, today, I'm sending regulating energy out. I always just look at things through the selfish lens because that's my wiring and if you're walking through the world as regulated as you can be at that moment and your small interactions with somebody who's delivering something to your house or the barista or whatever, and then

your larger interactions with your family members and friends and coworkers, you can just make your world cozier. Yes, it's a circular experience, right? Because as you are sending that out, you're also receiving back and then it can build micro moments add up to create bigger moments. I love that thinking about this. It's micro moments. We're looking at micro moments and those micro moments have meaning. Coming up, Deb explains how even if we've spent our whole lives building up patterns of

self-protection, calcified layers of armor, we can still change our nervous systems using simple exercises and practices which she will lay out for us coming up. Hey I'm Ericia and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wunderies Podcast even the rich where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance.

But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Ru off course. In our series RuPaul Born Naked, we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Barbara Friedrichson who's been on the show.

She wrote a book called Love 2.0. I'm stealing a lot of her ideas and a lot of my work, which is to create a sort of a broader more, if I'm used to fancy word, capacious understanding of what love is. And she sort of defines it down, usefully from Tom Cruise declaring, you complete me to just how are you with the professional shows up at your house to fix something.

Right, and Barb Fredrickson, the work is beautiful and she talked about an upward spiral, which is what we're talking about here, the micromumins build, and we have more access to this regulating ventral energy. And her research actually has showed that our baseline of ventral energy can increase. We can change our nervous system. I think that's the hope that Polyvagal theory brings, that we can reshape, even if we have had a lifetime of patterns of protection that are embedded in our system and we move into them easily and we have not had many experiences of feeling safe in connection,

that can change. And that, I think, is so wonderful at working with clients. It's important, but just for curious human beings knowing you can shape your nervous system in new ways. If anybody's curious to learn more about Barbara Fredrichs, and she was on this show, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. But to pick up on that extremely intriguing thing, you just said, you can change your nervous system, which sounds like what we should title this episode. How do we change our nervous system? We change our nervous system by doing small things over and over.

And some of the ways we do it are by finding these micro moments of control and noticing the bringing them into explicit awareness. You know, one of the things that I talked about all the time, what I call glimmers, we have these moments, micro moments of regulating energy, a glimmer of that place of okeness. We just move right by it because our built-in negativity bias doesn't allow us to see it. So we have to be on the lookout for those glimmers for those micro moments. And when we find one, we want to stop just for a moment, save it and

recognize it. I like to give people easy practices, right? Because then they're more willing to try them on for size and they have a positive response. So looking for glimmers is one way and as you find one, you begin to look for another and another. So again, it builds on itself. That's one of the ways that we do it. Their breath practices, their movement practices, there's so many practices that we can do that build ventral capacity that help us come to ventral and stay there longer. And I do want to put in that the goal is not to always be in ventral.

That's an unachievable goal, nor is it one that is desirable. The goal is to be regulated when I can and to know when I've moved out of regulation into a survival response and be able to find my way back to ventral. Ventral is a home. Every human being has a biological home in this place of regulation. It is built into our biology, right? Even if you've had a trauma-saturated life, your biology still has that place of ventral that you can find your way to.

We uncover those pathways, which is a lot of the work that we do. So even when we get taken out and go to, I call it our home away from home, go to one of the survival responses that's so familiar to us. My home away from home is in dorsal disconnect collapse. I'm really good at taking that step back and not really being here. Yours might be sympathetic, don't know,

that place of overwhelming energy. But when we go to our home away from home, the work is can I find my way back? That's when we build flexibility and flexible nervous system is what we're looking for. So noticing glimmers, breath practices, stopping for a moment to sigh. Right? Sying is one of the simplest breath practices. We do it spontaneously many times an hour, but we can also intentionally sigh. So if you're in a place of dorsal hopelessness to spare, collapse, you can breathe a sigh of despair, and bring awareness to it, and it begins to just interrupt that just a bit. A sigh of frustration in sympathetic,

disrupts it just a bit, and then when we are back in ventral, a sigh of relief that we got there, or a sigh of contentment that we are there. So that simple sighing is one thing that I love to invite people to do. Now let's keep talking about these little practices that we are there. So that simple sign is one thing that I love to invite people to do. Let's keep talking about these little practices that we can do. It's just to go back to your glimmers of Okanus exercise. The little example that comes to mind for me that I think I probably

didn't appreciate as much as I should have, but just before this podcast that was writing and then I decided to take a micro break and went in the other room and we have a six-month-old cat, Ozzy Mandeus and he unfurled and showed me his belly and purred and so like I got in there and you know gave him a kiss and that all happened somewhat reflexively but if I had noted this is a glimmer of okeness and then I accumulated enough moments from Aussie or my wife for just some view out the window throughout the day and was conscious about that. That is part of the training of the nervous system. Exactly.

And the glimmer of okinus with your cat will happen over and over and as you bring sort of that awareness to it and even as you remembered it and reflected on it, did you feel it come alive again? Yeah, that's interesting how you can just kind of bring the taste back. Yes, and that's your biology bringing the taste back, right? It's a brain body combination because your brain is remembering the experience

and putting language to it, but your body is bringing it live again. And that's the beauty of these things, is understanding that even in a trauma saturated life, the nervous system also has these glimmers, these moments, micro moments. And so understanding that the nervous system can do both, can be both deeply dysregulated

because of what's going on in the world, and have these micro moments of a glimmer of alkeness. If we can catch those and then reflect on them, we bring it alive and in the nervous system, it strengthens that pathway, which is really what we're doing. The pathway's in there, we're uncovering it, we're strengthening it. So now when you next time you go see your cat, you're going to think, oh yes, and you'll feel it. So now when you next time you go see your cat you're going to think oh yes and you'll feel it and then it becomes a different experience right. I call them anchors,

ventral vagal anchors. What are the things? So people places the objects, the times when we predictably can feel those moments of okness right. You talked about maybe looking out the window. Nature often brings a moment of okness. So looking out the window, I often look out the window just to feel, oh, connected to something. Objects, I live half my time in Maine by the sea. And so I have beach stones all around. And when I just need a moment to remember, oh, yes,

I have this regulated place, I grab a beach don't. We have things we wrap up in. You have a favorite thing you wrap up into stay warm. It brings that experience alive, a biological experience of Okinawa's alive. And then we give it meaning with our brain, but before it hits that brain place, it's an embodied experience. And I think that's really lovely to remember. The brain's job is to really make sense of what's going on in the body.

So it creates these wonderful stories, right? It creates some amazing stories that emerge from the autonomic state, from either ventral sympathetic or dorsal. And one of the practices that I talk about and I love to do is to take a very simple experience and look at it through each of the states and hear how very different the story is. And I don't know if you have an experience, you want to think about or I can use an example, but it's fascinating to just see that my state creates my story. Is that not wonderful? I'm just trying to think about how this would work. You pick an experience and you look at it through

ventral dorsal and what's the third? Sympathetic. Yeah, so we were flaked on it. You really hear how this one experience is interpreted three very different ways by the brain because of the state we're in. So I can use an example in getting ready for this podcast, you know, having to arrange a space. And the one thing that I needed to do was hang some moving blankets to deaden the sound. And I tried really hard to do it myself

and couldn't do it. So if I look at that through three states, my sympathetic fight flight, I got really angry about it in this sort of, I can't believe that I can't figure this out by myself. What is wrong with me? I am so stupid, I might as well just give it up now. Really angry around that. Indoor soul. It was this despairing hopefulness. I'm just gonna give it up and I'm just gonna cancel everything because I can't do this. Inventual, it was, you know, my son-in-law came over and did it with no problem and inventual it was, this is really cool. I could ask for help. My son-in-law appeared and we actually had some fun figuring out how to hang these things. The experience is exactly the same. It was hanging a moving blanket.

But the story about it is so different. And all of those stories were available to me. They all live inside my nervous system. It's fascinating. And this is a practice you would recommend we do once and well. Yes, absolutely. I invite people to get good at listening. I call it the story of three states. Listen to the story of three states. I usually do it as a reflective practice because when I'm in the middle of it, it's hard to remember. There are two other stories, right? When I'm in the midst of a survival response, it's hard to say, wait a minute, there are two other stories. But as a reflective practice, it really begins to build that awareness, that, oh, there are three states circulating inside here all the time. And if I get better at finding ventral, that's the story that I'm going to be hearing more

often. So let's stay with getting better at finding ventral. You mentioned other kinds of exercises earlier, I believe you used the word movement. Yes. So, movement is a really wonderful way to move through the states. And I often do a practice of inviting movement to move ventral, too sympathetic to dorsal and back up again. Because, again, remember, we go through these states in an order, in a predictable order.

And so part of our work to build flexibility is to be able to move down the hierarchy and back up. And movement can be very activating of a survival response. So I often start with imagining movement before you actually enact the movement. Because even for me, often you're really getting to know my nervous system, aren't you? But even for me,

enacting a movement when there are other people around, challenge my capacity to stay regulated. Because your motor cortex, when you imagine movement, comes to help. And so you get some of the same bang for the buck to begin with. Just find a movement. And I usually do hand movements, but you can do a full body movement that feels regulating. Find a movement that feels regulating and just notice this is connecting

with your ventral regulated nervous system. And everybody's movement's gonna be different. I do find that ventral movements have a rhythm. They often have a circular flow to them. And so once people find that movement, then they can imagine it when they want to reach for ventral. They can enact it. And they can do that over and over. And their body becomes used to, oh yes, ventral, oh yes, ventral. And then sympathetic, when you're in sympathetic, when you're in that place of overwhelming flood of energy, chaotic disorganized, the work is to let that movement come to life, and

it's usually jagged and disjointed movement, and then very slowly see how it might begin to come into a bit more of a rhythm and regulation because as you allow the movement to change in that way don't stop the movement. We're not trying to stop what's going on. We're simply trying to help it organize in a different way so that we then come from sympathetic back up to ventral. So that's the sympathetic challenge which I think is lovely and when you're feeling some of that mobilizing energy that feels like that's the sympathetic challenge, which I think is lovely. When you're feeling some of that mobilizing energy that feels like it's going to be too much,

take that energy out and do something. Go for a walk. Go for a run. Find a way to let the movement move you in a way that doesn't then turn into this anxiety and anger. And then endoreal, because dorsal is this absence of energy. So in dorsal, it's very hard to bring movement back, right? We're in this immobilized sort of shutdown place. And so oftentimes in dorsal, it truly is imagining some energy coming back in.

It might be just noticing the breath, not trying to do anything, just noticing, oh yes, I am breathing, my heart is beating, because something's always moving in our body, wrongs heart, something, blood flow, and then to just invite a very gentle movement. A reminder that, oh, I'm here, I'm present, because that brings us back into this moment in time, because Dorsal is really experienced of being lost, floating, untethered. So we want to bring a movement, sometimes just rubbing your feet on the floor, right? And people will find their own movements. I like to say there's no right way to do this.

There's just the way of your nervous system. So the work is to befriend your own nervous system and get to know what works for me. You also mentioned breathing exercises. You talked about size, but are there slightly more elaborate breathing exercises we should think about? There are and again breathing is an autonomic nervous system experience. It's regulated by the nervous system Right, and so as we begin to by the nervous system, right? And so as we begin to change our breathing, we're directly contacting the nervous system. So it is a great regulator, but it's also an intense activator. As we have gone through life, our body has found a way of breathing that it uses. And there's a good reason for that. And if you have a trauma history,

your breath pattern has been created to make sure that you can manage your way through the world without coming into connection with parts of that trauma history that may be overwhelming. So again, we want to be very careful and dipitone into breath practices as we begin because it can be really challenging for people. That said, yes, in general, a longer exhale is a way to

bring more ventral. So changing the ratio of inhale to exhale so that your exhale is longer than your inhale brings more ventral. Resistance breathing brings more ventral and resistance breathing. The easiest way to think about it, I love thinking about is, you know, blow through a straw. That's resistance breathing. If you want to have some fun with it,

get some bubbles, right? And blow through the bubble wand because in order to do that, you have to have a long, slow exhalation, and you usually push your lips to do it. And so it brings a bit of joy to the experience as well. So I just want to encourage people to sort of experiment, see what works for you and don't feel like you're a failure or broken in some way if something doesn't work for you.

It's just that your nervous system says, oh, this one's not for me or this one's not for me right now. Again, that this sort of this welcoming experience of there are lots of ways you will find to bring more of mental to your nervous system. One of the things that I do think is sort of universal is music. And music can be a way that we find our way to ventral, but it also can be a way that we can be with sympathetic and dorsal in healthy ways. We can even enjoy some sympathetic and dorsal through music, right?

So think of some of the songs that sort of bring that sympathetic fight, you know, to life and you can be with and it feels, oh, yes, right? And then think, think of some of the songs that might bring you some of that dorsal despair or hopelessness. And yet you can be with it and not feel alone in the world. So it's lovely. And then Ventral, what are the songs that just fill you with the many flavors of Ventral? It could be just fun, joy, happy, or it could be Jonathan Haite talks about elevation,

right? That experience of awe and elevation, the more self-transcented experiences, it could be that music can take us to those places as well. You're talking about self-transcented experiences. You talk about it in your book as a way to care for our nervous system. Can you elaborate on that? They're based in the nervous system.

The nervous system is part of these experiences of awe, gratitude, compassion. Compassion is only possible for us when we have enough ventral energy active in a live inner nervous system. You can't find compassion from sympathetic, survival, or dorsal disconnect. So again, as we practice compassion, we are engaging with that ventral experience, but I think if we could talk about awe for a minute, I love awe because we have these extraordinary moments of awe, and you might think of sometimes in your life when you had that extraordinary moment of awe, but we also have every day moment of awe.

And again, we miss them if we're not looking for them. And so if you are in the lookout for everyday moments of awe, you'll begin to find them. And we find certain environments, bring that alive for us. And so we're called to return to those environments. You know, for me, again, when I'm home and main, the beach is an awe environment. I know I can go to the beach and I can feel that sense of awe is feeling small but connected to something much larger than yourself. That's the experience of awe and your nervous system is part of that experience and that's available for all of us, available to everyone. Speaking of main, I find that one good way to get disregulated is even in the dog days of summer to put a toe in the ocean

because so ridiculously cold. Yeah, it is and yet I will say I love to walk the beach and I walk in the water I cannot walk on a beach and not walk in the water. I'm only like up to just about my ankles But I have to have my feet in the water. There's something so nourishing to me about that. So, see, there's a way that you and I, if we were walking the beach, I'd be walking in the water and you'd be walking a couple of feet up on the sand. If you had a coat of armor, I would go in the water. If we took this as an example and say, you know, you and I, we're trying to connect.

And I'm saying, oh, let's go walk the beach and let's go walk in the water. You're a nervous system. We're saying, no, thank you. And then it would be interesting to know how would you then relay that to me? Actually, I'm kidding. I think walking on the beach in the water or out would be awesome. No, okay. All right. It's just an interesting way to have a conversation. It's like, oh, it's not that you're saying, oh, I don't want to do what you want to do. You're not dismissing what I want to do. You're saying, maybe not what pulls me into the ability to have a true, deep conversation

with you, right? Working with couples, you find this all the time. Nervous systems regulate around different things and disregulate around different things. It may be that one partner has this need to be nourished in this way, and the other one says, my nervous system can't do that. That's a beautiful thing to acknowledge. Not to say, I can't do that,

but oh, my nervous system just can't do that, or at least can't do it right now. Again, a very different experience. So if I'm here, you're correctly, we can get better at understanding our own nervous systems, but also back to that phrase you used earlier, neuroception. Can we get better at reading understanding our own nervous systems, but also back to that phrase you used earlier, neuroception, can we get better at reading other people's nervous systems and how?

Yes, we can and we want to be careful about it as well, because we often make assumptions, and the assumption can be wrong. So what I'd like to say is we feel something coming from another nervous system, and we can be curious about what's going on in that nervous system, but I hesitate to make a assumption about it.

So if you and I were having a conversation and I was feeling some sort of cues of frustration, disconnection, something is sending me a message that we're no longer in this flow, then I'm going to be curious about that. I'm not going to immediately go to, oh, I am really bad at this, or he's really being mean. I'm going to go to, oh, something's going on.

I wonder what. And then I'm probably going to name it and say, you know what, I'm just noticing, it feels like something interrupted the flow we were in. Is there something going on on your end? Because then we can enter into that conversation. I noticed it for me. Something happened. I'm going to name it and then be curious. Yes, because people generally don't like to be told what they're feeling. No, please don't. Right. Yes. And so part of this way of connecting is to always be curious. My responsibility is to know what's happening in my nervous system and the

be curious about what's happening in yours. Not make any assumption or even think I know what's happening, but be curious. Coming up after this quick break, Deb talks about what she calls restoring. She also talks about the role community can play and regulating your nervous system, and how understanding the vagus nerve, V-A-G-U-S nerve, can help us make sense of and improve the whole world. Keep it here. What is a vagal break? So vagal break is the word that Steve gave to this specific circuit.

It's a ventral vagal circuit that runs from your brainstem, your medulla, to the sinusoidal note of your heart, which is your heart's pacemaker. So the vagal break really controls your heart rate. And the beautiful thing about this vagal break, spelled B-R-A-K-A, like a break, right? It works like all breaking actions. It allows us to speed up and slow down. And it does this on every inhalation. It allows the heart rate to speed up a bit.

And on every exhalation, it then slows the heart rate down again. So the beauty of the vagal break is that it allows us to have access to this sympathetic system's mobilizing energy but without bringing fight and flight survival responses on board. So when I need a little more energy to run to the door and make sure the cat doesn't get out, my vagal break releases a bit so that I little more energy to run to the door and make sure the cat doesn't get out, my vagal break releases a bit so that I have that energy to go, do that. And then it re-engages so that I can relax afterwards.

So the vagal break is in a exquisite part of our nervous system and such an important part. And people often say, oh, Deb, I think my vagal break is broken. And I say not broken because on every breath cycle it's working, but probably not working as efficiently as you'd like it to. And the reason we work with increasing the efficiency of the vagal break is that the vagal break allows us to make transitions between things.

It allows us to become active and calm. It allows us to have a conversation. My vagal break releases a bit when I'm talking, and then it re-engages so that I can listen. So you might think about people in your life who have a really hard time in conversation, that back and forth is really hard. Vagal break is really working to bring that smoothness.

And again, just like the nervous system can be reshaped, we can increase the efficiency of this vagal break by working with it. How? So, again, breath practices, exercise the vagal break. Play exercises the vagal break because we get loud and boisterous and then we have to calm down. Anybody who has kids knows, you know, it can go wrong pretty quickly, right? Kids will be doing that lovely rough and tumble play and then somebody be crying and somebody be screaming because the vagal break couldn't hold them in that place.

It went off and then it became anger or frustration. So playfulness, even movement, as we go out and walk fast and then slow, vagal break releases reengages. Anything that requires you to speed up, slow down, engage, less engage, you know, active calm. Anything that requires you to do this exercises your vagal break. Could you get a little technical about what vagal means? Yes, and again, poly vagal. Steve's wonderful work decades ago now, and he started this work working in neonatal intensive care units looking at premature babies.

And polyvagal just means there are two vagal pathways. The vagus nerve is cranial nerve 10. So it exits your brain stem and moves down throughout your body. And it is the primary component of your parasympathetic nervous system. Right? And so Vegas, Craneal Nerve 10, has two basic components. It has ventral vagal and dorsal vagal. Same nerve, but two very different components and brings two very different experiences to

life. Ventral bringing this safe social connection, organized, moved through the world, and dorsal bringing this disconnect club shutdown. So what Steve did was really identify this dorsal vagal experience for premature babies where heart rate gets so slow that death is at issue because the dorsal vagal nerve has taken over and it slows the heart rate. So when we enter that dorsal vagal survival response, our body goes into conservation mode. Heart rate slows down, breath slows down, digestion stops, everything slows.

There's just enough energy to keep us alive. And for premature babies, that was really dangerous. So he was the first one who really defined these two parts of the Vegas nerve. Polyvagal is these two aspects of the Vegas nerve. As ventral is overseeing the system, so to speak, ventral is in charge. Sympathetic and dorsal work in the background. Sympathetic does its regulating role of bringing you energy, helping with your heart and breath rhythms, and Dorsal's job is to bring you healthy digestion.

So that's a system that's in healthy homeostasis, right? Ventuals in charge sympathetic and dorsal work in the background. It's only when ventral is pushed offline, that then sympathetic comes on to rescue us or then dorsal comes to rescue us. So again, we're talking about a system that's needing to be in relationship, three states in relationship with each other. When you talk about practices to help us reshape our nervous system,

change our nervous system, I believe you draw a distinction between bottom up versus top down. What is that all about? The world of therapy has been a top down world for a long time and now there are many more bottom up practices. Top down is using my brain to create change. Bottom up is this embodied experience of creating change. And really what we're talking about is bottom up has to meet top down. They both have to cooperate.

Again, it's an embodied brain, it's a mind-body system that work together. Body brain is Dan Seagal's word for this experience. And really what we're talking about is nervous system and brain are connected and communicating all the time. What I'm talking about are bottom up experiences, but I'm bringing them to life in top-down ways, because I'm giving people practices to do things to engage in, which is more of a concrete top-down experience to bring a bottom-up to life. What is re-storing? Don't you love that word.

I really love that word. Re-storing, this is the last piece when I'm working with people. As we regulate, we reconnect, we reshape pathways, and then we re-story. Because the story, again, emerges from your autonomic state. So as the state changes, the story is going to organically change as well. So this is a good example of top-down or bottom bottom up. If I'm wanting to work with someone to help some change, have a moment of change, whatever it is they're wanting to change, I can start with the story they bring to me, I can start with the behaviors they bring to me, I can start with the feelings they're stuck in, or I can start with the state. or I can start with a state. If I start with a state, the feelings, the behaviors, and the stories will organically

change as the state changes. So I discovered it feels like the easiest way, the best way to go is start with state, everything else will change. And the last piece is the story changes. And it's important, as our nervous system reshapes to explicitly notice name right that story, to hear the new story. That's the re-storing process. That last piece to really put it into language and words or image art, however you want to

story. Sometimes people re-story through movement. They dance the new story or they draw the new story. I'm a worried person, so I usually write the new story, but it is an important step to really bring that appreciation to the new story that has emerged from the work that we've done to reshape the nervous system. Sounds like there's a lot of power and agency in that. Yes, there is power in that. My nervous system is going to work on my behalf anyway, but when I can engage with it, partner with it, then it feels very different. I know

it's always going to be there for me when I need it. I don't have to worry about that. It's going to do what it needs to do to help me survive, but I can also partner with it. And it becomes a very different experience. When it comes to changing our nervous system, and you've touched on this already, but you listen to the book, a powerful lever is community or other people. Is there more to be said on that score? Community is so important and also so challenging all the time for people, communities challenging, especially in the times we're in now, find the community and connecting has been challenging and actually

the restrictions that we're in with COVID-19 have been a true challenge for our nervous system biologically a challenge, right? Because again, we long for connection for actual proximity to other nervous systems, not just doing this lovely screen to screen, which yes, it's better than nothing. And again, community for you might be 10 people. For me, it might be two. There's no rule.

Community is based on the people that you can find to connect with who share your way of moving through the world, for me, community as people who speak, you know, the autonomic nervous system language, and I can communicate with them around that, and I feel safe and welcomed. So, community are people you feel welcomed to be with, you know, in my regulation and in my messiness. That's community, because I'm certainly not always regulated. I have many messy moments and community are the people I can reach out to in those moments and I know that they will understand and they will reach back and community is so important for

well-being. For many people, community is hard to find. So many people are living in isolation or living with people for whom their nervous system doesn't feel safe, doesn't feel okay. As I become more regulated, I'm drawn to people who are regulated as well. I may have to downsize some relationships and that's painful. Right. We think about friendships. We think about family members who are just so difficult for us to be around because our nervous system really feels in danger or feels dysregulated around them and we can't figure out how to navigate that and so we downsize

that relationship so it's both about downsizing but then finding the people with whom we do feel welcomed. We do feel as though I can show up in all of my nervous system states and it's okay. And I will be welcomed and the other person will understand this experience I'm having. That to me is community. And I have a very small community, very small, call it my microcommunity, right? But they are dependable, predictable, and we have created a communication pattern where if I'm struggling, I can send an emoji, and they respond back, they know. So it's creating those patterns of connection that understanding with another person, people that creates community.

And then, as we feel safe in community, we then might find our way out into the world into other communities and larger communities. Because if we look at what's going on right now, we have a world that's polarized. If we look at it through the nervous system, we have a world that is so many people are stuck in fight or flight. And then we have a huge group of people who are in collapse, shut down hopeless despair, give up. And what we know is that unless or until we have enough people who are regulated and can offer that welcome, we can't have these difficult conversations.

We can't connect, because survival response has cut us off from connection. So finding a community where you can feel ventral regulated and welcome is the first step, because then I can begin to reach out to others from that place. But also in a world where so many people are in sympathetic or dorsal, those of us who have some capacity to stay in ventral, it's like a public service to be out and mixing. Yeah, it's our human responsibility, right? At least that's what I call it.

I like your public service. It's our responsibility as humans to find our way, to shape our systems and to offer that. We come to regulation, we come to ventral, but then benevolence is the active use of that ventral vagal energy and service of healing. So it's not simply I get there and I'm experiencing well-being, but then I can actively use this ventral energy and service of healing. And it's good for you and the other people and that's the upward spiral. use this ventral energy in service of healing. And it's good for you and the other people, and that's the upward spiral. Right.

Before we close here, just on the subject of levers that can be pulled to change your nervous system, you didn't talk about the type of things that we get lectured about a lot, like sleep, exercise, meditation, diet, et cetera, et cetera. Are those important? Yes. And it's always an and right right? Yes, and if we think about sleep is a complicated nervous system experience. So sleep is important, but if I nervous system is dysregulated, I can't sleep. Exercise is important, but if I'm exercising because I think I should, I may not be getting the nervous system benefit of it. I may be doing

it out of a fear, out of a sympathetic drive, because if I don't something bad is going to happen, and I don't get any nourishment from it in that way, think about food. Yes, you know, everybody's telling us what to eat or not eat. If I'm regulated, I'm going to make those choices. If I'm doing it because again, out of fear, I may decide not to eat the junk food, but then I'm going to binge on junk food at some point. So again, it comes back to, for me, anyway, regulated nervous system allows me to interact with the world differently.

If I'm experiencing symptoms of psychological disorder or a physical illness. Again, if I can come to a more regulated nervous system, what we're finding is those symptoms begin to reduce and resolve. We're even finding that in the world of chronic pain that as we regulate the nervous system, chronic pain begins to reduce and resolve. So for me, I just keep coming back to what's underneath. So what's underneath my eating habits, my sleep habits, my physical exercise back to what's underneath. Right. So what's underneath my eating habits,

my sleep habits, my physical exercise habits, what's underneath it? And the research on meditation is profound and amazing. And if you are a trauma survivor, if you have a history where slowing down and attending in a different way is dangerous, meditation is really hard to get to. And so I always start with people just to ask you and then to have a mindful moment, which then micro moments can build, but a mindful moment.

And I like to tell people, ask your nervous system, right? What kind of meditation, what mindful moment is right for you? You know, our inboxes are flooded with five things to do to whatever or 10 things to bring well-being. Ask your nervous system because I discovered in the beginning of the pandemic when my inbox was flooded with this, it was like, wow, something must be wrong with me. Because nine of those 10, my nervous system says, no, can't do that. And so that led me to invite people to make their own menu,

make your own menu of things that you can reach for. And we want to have things that are easy and things that are more challenging, things that take no time, more time, so that we have a true choice, right? When we have that choice, then we're going to reach for regulation in a way that will move us forward.

Instead of feeling, oh, there's something wrong with me because I can't do this. Final question, it's not really a question. It's a prompt. If you could shamelessly plug your book, any other books, any other content you're putting out into the world so people can learn more, that would be grateful. Well, thank you. I'm terrible at shamelessly plugging anything, but I do love my new book, Anchored, which is the first book that I wrote for curious human beings.

My other books, The Polyvago Theory and Therapy and Polyvago exercises for safety and connection are for a more clinical audience. And so I love this moment in time when I'm beginning to reach out to regular human beings because I do think this is a way for every human to understand themselves and move differently through the world. So my website, rhythmofregulation.com is probably the best place to go.

You can see what I'm up to. Deb, thanks so much for coming on. Great job. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks again to Deb. Love that interview. Thanks also to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davie, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Plant. And also the folks over at Ultra

Violet Audio who do our audio engineering. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode with Paul Gilbert, founder of something called Compassion Focus Therapy. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode with Paul Gilbert, founder of something called Compassion Focus Therapy. We also talk about the Vegas Nerve quite a bit in that interview and it's another good one. So we'll see you all on Wednesday. Hey, hey prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. for its survey at Wondery.com slash survey.