The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.
—HIPPOCRATES
The autonomic nervous system “plays a central role in regulating energy and information flow between the brain, body, and environment” (Rejeski & Gauvin, 2013, p. 660). Trauma interrupts the ability to regulate and flexibly move between autonomic states. Fight, flight, or shutdown prevail, while the state of calm and connection is fleeting (Williamson et al., 2015). When the ventral vagal state of safety is missing, life is an exhausting mix of intense mobilization and withdrawal. Navigating daily living is focused on limiting the possibility of being activated into a state of dysregulation. The path to regulation and social connection is hidden by habitual protective responses.
Shaped by experience, the autonomic nervous system acts in service of survival, responding to cues of safety and danger in the present moment based on experiences in the past. “Visiting the past in therapy should be done while people are, biologically speaking, firmly rooted in the present and feeling as calm, safe, and grounded as possible” (van der Kolk, 2014, p. 70). Regularly engaging in practices to retune neuroception and reshape habitual response patterns helps your clients build this biological platform. The continuing opportunity to exercise the neural circuits of regulation and connection is essential for physical and psychological well-being (Flores & Porges, 2017). This chapter presents daily practices in the categories of energy, sound, movement, breath, environment, and reflection to help your clients shape their autonomic nervous systems toward safety and connection.
Finding actions that stretch but don’t stress the autonomic nervous system is at the heart of shaping. When the autonomic flavor is one of dorsal vagal protection through conservation of energy, taking small steps toward mobilization begins to create new patterns. When the system is in the mobilizing energy of sympathetic protection, an intentional release of that energy begins to build new pathways. When in a state of ventral vagal regulation, it is essential to celebrate and deepen the experience.
This exercise offers clients a way to map the range of actions they can use to find their way back to ventral vagal regulation and stay there when they arrive. Each state is individually mapped, identifying actions on a scale of passive to active in the two categories of self- and co-regulation. It is helpful to regularly review this scale and revise it as new resources are recognized.
BACKGROUND
Activities that shape the autonomic nervous system fall along a scale of passive to active. There are times when thinking about moving, remembering a connection with a friend, or simply looking up toward the sky is the right choice and other times when you need to take action, put your body in motion, or head out into the world and seek social connection. Choose an experience that brings a return of energy when the dorsal vagal immobilizing collapse is present, a way to safely discharge energy when feeling the frenetic activity of the sympathetic state, and an action that deepens the feeling of regulation when anchored in the safety of ventral vagal.
STEPS
1. Label your state in the box at the top of the Energy and Actions map. Identify your state through its biological name (dorsal, sympathetic, ventral) or name it in a way that has meaning for you.
2. For sympathetic and dorsal vagal states, move along the line between passive and active and identify actions that take you in the direction of a return to the ventral vagal state of regulation. Use the left side to identify self-regulating actions and the right side to identify co-regulating actions.
3. For your ventral vagal state, move along the line between passive and active and identify actions that deepen your experience of safety and connection. Use the left side to identify self-regulating actions and the right side to identify co-regulating actions.
4. Complete a map for each state.
5. Use your maps to find a resource that is in the range of energy that fits your needs in the moment.
6. Update your maps as you create additional resources.
FIGURE 6.1. Energy and Actions Map and Example
TIPS
A resource is an action that moves your clients up the hierarchy toward ventral and, once there, helps them stay there. Goldilocks and her experiences with too much, not enough, and just right can be useful in helping your clients understand how the autonomic nervous system connects with resources. When your clients can match the energy they have available with the energy that is required for a particular resource, they can choose the action that fits the autonomic need of the moment (Figure 6.1).
Sometimes simply navigating a day filled with responsibilities feels like an autonomic challenge. These are glimmer days, when noticing micro-moments of ventral vagal energy can help you stay regulated and ready for connection. Other days feel more open with time to pause and deepen into the longer experience of a glow. Both experiences shape your system and strengthen your connection to ventral vagal regulation.
This exercise engages clients in an active search for micro-moments of regulation. Looking for these moments brings a new level of autonomic awareness. Finding them begins to change clients’ expectations around their daily experience.
BACKGROUND
Glimmers are the micro-moments of ventral vagal experience that routinely appear in everyday life yet frequently go unnoticed. To ensure survival, human beings are built with a negativity bias. This means you are biologically wired to pay more attention to negative events than positive ones and can often miss the ventral vagal moments that coexist with moments of dysregulation. Things like seeing a friendly face, hearing a soothing sound, or noticing something enjoyable in the environment go unnoticed. A fundamental step in shaping your system is seeing a glimmer, pausing to take it in, and then beginning to look for more.
STEPS
1. Set an intention to look for a certain number of glimmers each day. Choose a number that feels doable to begin. If glimmers are an unfamiliar experience, watch for a single glimmer. As finding glimmers becomes easier, set a new goal.
2. Notice when you feel a spark of ventral vagal energy. Look for glimmers in your daily activities. Glimmers happen regularly, but because they are micro-moments you need to be on the lookout for them.
3. See, stop, and appreciate your glimmers. Create an easy way to acknowledge a glimmer when it happens. You might bring attention to the moment by simply saying “glimmer” or with a small movement (perhaps your hand on your heart).
4. Track your glimmers. Create a daily glimmers notebook or keep a running list.
5. Look for glimmers in specific places, with particular people, at certain times. Find the ways your glimmers routinely appear.
6. Share your glimmers. You might text your glimmers to a friend, make talking about daily glimmers a family nighttime ritual, or share your list of weekly glimmers to share with your therapist. Find the way that works for you.
TIPS
As glimmer experiences accumulate, your clients naturally turn toward finding more. Creating a practice of recognizing glimmers is a reminder to your clients that among many experiences of dysregulation, there are also regularly occurring micro-moments of regulation. Just a simple acknowledgement of those moments can temper the intensity of your clients’ responses to the challenges in their daily lives. Glimmers also predictably happen in your therapy sessions. Look for them and stop to name them.
This exercise builds on the skill of recognizing glimmers to create a more expansive ventral vagal experience. When clients hold a glimmer in their awareness for a longer period of time, the experience deepens and the story that accompanies it comes to life.
BACKGROUND
When you recognize the micro-moment of a glimmer, you feel the spark of your ventral vagal system. Just as sparks can be used to ignite a fire, glimmers can be turned into the deeper experience of a glow. With a glimmer, you pause just long enough to acknowledge that a ventral vagal moment is happening in the flow of your day. With a glow, stop and celebrate the glimmer. Take time to soak it in and give it deeper meaning.
STEPS
1. Notice a glimmer and stop and let the experience fill you. Move beyond a few seconds and stay with the experience for a half a minute or more. Give the glimmer time to become a glow.
2. Feel what happens as you move from connecting for a micro-moment to a longer experience of taking in.
3. Listen to the story that accompanies the glow.
4. Describe your experience of the glimmer and the glow. Notice how the experience changes. For example, a particular glimmer moment might be described as quick hit of happiness that brings a smile, and when you turn it into a glow, the experience feels like basking in the warmth of the sun while breathing a sigh of contentment.
TIPS
Once your clients are skilled at noticing glimmers, introduce this exercise. Practice in your sessions so your clients get the feel of holding a glimmer in awareness for a longer length of time. Glow moments are still relatively short (up to a minute), which makes them accessible for most clients but can, for some clients, activate a sympathetic or dorsal vagal survival response. Work with your clients to increase the time they hold a moment in awareness and stay in the experience of ventral vagal deepening.
SHAPING YOUR STORY THROUGH SOUND
The world is never quiet.
—ALBERT CAMUS
Sound is one of the ways the autonomic nervous system experiences the world. When you speak, you are not only creating a story through language, but with prosody (the music of the voice that is felt in rhythm, loudness, and pitch). You are also telling a story about your autonomic state. In interesting research, people reported that when their voice was computer altered, their level of anxiety changed. This self-reported experience was measurable in physiological changes (Costa et al., 2018). In one project, participants recorded a short story that was then computer altered so their voices reflected happiness, sadness, and fear. As participants listened to the modified recordings, their physiological responses changed and they reported feeling the emotions portrayed in each recording (Aucouturier et al., 2016).
When listening to music you often experience a state of absorption or flow (Hall, Schubert, & Wilson, 2016). Music is a portal to safely connecting to, and even enjoying, distressing emotions (Herbert, 2011). The tempo of a piece moves you: heartbeat, breath, movements, and likely cognition all synchronizing with the music (Chanda & Levitin, 2013), while the frequency of music in the range of the human voice is a kind of musical prosody that encourages physiological regulation (Porges, 2010). Since music is an autonomic regulator, you can choose musical selections that safely move you in and out of states of activation. (See The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, pp. 88–90 for a description of using musical maps.) Face and head muscles are used when you both listen to and produce music, and the middle ear muscles support listening (Porges, 2010), so whether you are listening to music or making music, you are engaged in an autonomic exercise.
This exercise is a way for clients to get to know how different tones of voice change the way they feel. By manipulating their tone of voice and tracking responses, clients begin to become aware of how the way they speak impacts their own experience and can begin to look at how the sound of their voice impacts the way they are experienced by others.
BACKGROUND
The autonomic nervous system uses tone of voice as a way to discern safety. You respond to intonation before you take in information. The way you speak changes the way you feel, the story you tell, and changes the way people around you hear what you are saying.
STEPS
1. Experiment with the ways your voice impacts the way you feel. Tell, or record, a short story in different tones of voice. Notice where the different tones of your voice take you on your autonomic map.
2. Track the way the same word spoken in different tones of voice elicits a different state and feeling. Choose a word, speak it in different ways, and follow the ways your states and feelings shift. Try out a variety of words and notice the specific ways of speaking that elicit certain states and feelings.
3. Talk about a difficult experience using different tones of voice. Track what happens to your autonomic state. Find the way of speaking that brings you into a ventral vagal state. Notice the way of speaking that helps you see options and take regulated actions.
4. Find a friend and experiment with sound. Talk in different tones of voice and get feedback on their response. Ask your friend to do the same and track your own responses.
TIPS
Tone of voice is a fundamental way neuroception assesses safety or unsafety. A small change in the way a word is spoken can create a large-scale shift in autonomic state. Pay attention in sessions to the messages that are being sent through your and your client’s tone of voice. Bringing these messages into explicit awareness often leads to a new insight. Help your clients create a habit of listening to the way they are speaking.
BACKGROUND
Music is all around you, affecting your physiology and your feelings. Along with activating a ventral vagal response, music has a paradoxical effect that allows you to safely connect to, and even enjoy, your sympathetic and dorsal vagal states.
STEPS
1. Take an inventory of the way music is a part of your life.
•Music listening: Do you regularly listen to music? Have a favorite radio station? Favorite songs or artists? Do you go to hear live music?
•Music making: Do you make music? Do you play an instrument or sing by yourself or with others?
2. Assess how much music is in your everyday life.
•Is there enough music in your daily experience?
•Do you miss music and want to hear more?
3. If your everyday experience is already filled with music, acknowledge the role of music in your life and identify the ways music is a regulating resource.
4. If your inventory brings a recognition that you have a desire for more musical moments, begin to look for ways to add music to your daily experience.
5. Identify the particular pieces of music that take you to different places on the autonomic hierarchy. Sing along, play along, or move along with the music. Use different selections to safely join with your sympathetic and dorsal vagal states and dive into all the flavors of ventral vagal.
TIPS
Music is a readily available resource, which makes it something your clients can easily explore on their own and you can bring into your sessions. Create connection by listening with your clients to their selections. Add the experience of reciprocity by sharing your own music preferences.
All that is important is this one moment in movement.
—MARTHA GRAHAM
Movement is an essential life process. When you catch something moving out of the corner of your eye, you turn your attention to look for something that is alive. A leaf blowing, a candle unexpectedly flickering, and shadows in the sunlight each bring a sudden sense that something alive is nearby. Humans, like all living things, respond to stimuli with movement and how that happens is in part regulated by the autonomic nervous system.
The ability to turn toward and fully experience body sensations as you move is therapeutic (Lucas, Klepin, Porges, & Rejeski, 2018; Rejeski & Gauvin, 2013). Movement practices are a form of autonomic exercise that shapes the system. Both the actual physical act of moving and bringing movement to life in your imagination activate the autonomic nervous system (Collet, Di Rienzo, El Hoyek, & Guillot, 2013; Demougeot, Normand, Denise, & Papaxanthis, 2009).
This exercise helps clients identify a continuum of movements for each autonomic state. The continuum can then be used as a guide to safely navigate dorsal vagal and sympathetic moments and maintain a ventral vagal experience.
BACKGROUND
Movement occurs along a continuum of expression: simple through complex, micro-movements to full body motions. Each autonomic state has different levels of energy that you can connect with and use to shape your experience. Intentional use of movement is a way to engage your dorsal vagal and sympathetic states, making them less intense and persistent, and it’s also a way to deepen your ventral vagal capacities.
STEPS
1. Choose an autonomic state. Using a line to represent ways you move, identify movements at either end. Look for movements that engage the least and most energy available to you in the state.
2. Identify movements that happen between the ends. In dorsal vagal, look for movements that begin to gently energize you. In sympathetic, look for movements that use the activated energy in organized and safe ways. In ventral vagal, look for movements that prolong the experience.
3. Design a series of movement lines to bring awareness to the range of movements that are possible in each autonomic state.
FIGURE 6.2. Movement Continuums
TIPS
Clients are often surprised to realize they can use organized movements (Figure 6.2) to shape their experiences of dysregulation. From a state of dorsal vagal conservation, movement needs to be gentle and often involves imagining a movement before enacting a movement. Simply being in a place where other people are present without a requirement to connect can bring the right degree of autonomic challenge to support beginning mobilization. In the intensity of sympathetic mobilization your clients are looking for an organized way to use and safely discharge their energy. Because the ability for clear thinking is impaired in a dorsal vagal or sympathetic state, having a movement continuum as a guide supports your clients when their autonomic state makes it difficult for them to make a choice and is a reminder to recognize and savor their ventral vagal experiences.
Movement is not always an option. Personal and environmental circumstances sometimes make it difficult to take an action. When that happens, imagined movement is the next best choice. This exercise helps clients connect to the benefits of movement through imagery.
BACKGROUND
Motor imagery is a way for you to be in motion when the environment you’re in doesn’t support moving, when physical challenges make moving difficult, or when making a movement doesn’t feel safe and instead activates a protective survival response. Imagined movement practices, either as a replacement for or as a complement to movement, are another way to get the benefits of moving and experience safely moving through space.
STEPS
1. Identify a movement you are drawn to but haven’t brought into action yet. Play with it. Imagine yourself safely bringing the action to life. See yourself doing it. Sense your body moving on the inside. Feel the emotions that accompany your moving. Hear the story of who you are as you move.
2. Once you get the feel for imagined movement, create a series of movements. Use your imagination to move in ways you have always wanted.
3. Make time each day to bring one of your moments of movement to life on the inside.
4. Notice if, over time, using motor imagery invites bringing the movement out of your imagination into the world or if it is autonomically nourishing when it remains an imagined experience.
TIPS
Movement is a good example of needing to find the right degree of challenge to have an action be resourcing rather than dysregulating. Some of your clients will find that imagining certain actions supports their ability to feel safe enough to then enact the action in real life. Other clients are nourished through imagining a movement, but a sympathetic flight or dorsal vagal immobilization response takes over when they think about their private, internal experience becoming visible. However your clients sense and see themselves safely bringing a movement to life, the experience of being a mover brings new information that can be integrated into the story of who they are.
Walking a labyrinth activates a subtle pattern of mobilization and calm and opens the mind to new experiences. This exercise offers clients multiple ways to engage with labyrinths, create repeated experiences of autonomic shifts, and explore new ways of thinking.
BACKGROUND
People have been walking labyrinths for centuries. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has one path and no dead ends. Often thought of as a path to transformation, when you enter a labyrinth, there is a release of connection to the everyday world, a sense of receiving wisdom when you reach the center, and a subtle shift in your sense of yourself and the world when the circuit is completed. When walking a labyrinth there is first a slight increase in mobilization followed by a return to calm making this a gentle autonomic exercise.
STEPS
1. Investigate labyrinth-walking options. The location of thousands of labyrinths around the world as well as access to virtual and printed ones are available at https://labyrinthsociety.org
•Walk a full-size labyrinth.
•Navigate a virtual labyrinth on your computer.
•Trace a printed labyrinth.
•Walk a labyrinth with your fingers using a finger-walking guide.
2. Identify your physiological response to each of the different labyrinth-walking options. Which ones feel the most regulating?
3. Notice any ways your thinking shifts over the course of your labyrinth walk.
4. Keep track of the stories about yourself and the world that you connect with on your labyrinth walks.
5. Find an easily accessible form of labyrinth-walking you can use to return to regulation when you notice a rise in stress.
6. Combine different forms of labyrinth-walking to create a regular practice.
TIPS
With the variety of ways to connect with a labyrinth, this becomes an accessible way for your clients to reduce psychological and physiological stress and gently shape their systems. While using labyrinth walking as an autonomic shaping exercise, your clients may experience an accompanying shift in the ways they think about themselves and see the world.
We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water.
—ALEXANDER LOWEN
Breathing, thinking, and feeling are tied together through the autonomic nervous system (Ma et al., 2017). Autonomic regulation and a story of safety happen when the heart and the breath are in harmony. This cardiorespiratory synchronization is a function of the vagal pathways. While breath is an autonomic process that works without need for conscious attention, breath can also be consciously shaped. Intentionally regulated breath practices can initiate a state of calm, activate a needed moment of mobilizing energy, increase the capacity for attention and alertness, and enliven the social engagement system (Gerbarg & Brown, 2016).
Engaging in simple breath practices has a positive effect on physical, emotional, and relational well-being. Breath counting increases heart rate variability while decreasing sympathetic activation (Kim, Bae, & Park, 2016). The general rules around breath practices are slow extended exhalations and resistance breathing bring more ventral vagal tone; fast, forceful, and sharp inhalations or irregular breathing mobilize a sympathetic nervous system response; matched inhalations and exhalations maintain the system in a ventral-sympathetic balance (Gerbarg & Brown, 2016). Because breath practices dynamically alter the autonomic nervous system, they are both therapeutic and preventative interventions (Jerath, Edry, Barnes, & Jerath, 2006).
This exercise uses a breath map to help clients bring attention to the particular ways of breathing that accompany their dorsal vagal, sympathetic, and ventral vagal states (Figure 6.3).
BACKGROUND
There are many ways of breathing. Sometimes breath comes in a quiet and rhythmic cycle and other times it arrives in an erratic and stressed way. Different rhythms of breathing change your physiology, making breath a direct route to shaping your autonomic responses. Use the autonomic hierarchy to map the many kinds of breaths you breathe each day.
STEPS
1. Begin by bringing awareness to what kind of breathing happens in your ventral vagal, sympathetic, and dorsal vagal states.
2. Experiment with different kinds of breath. Notice how each impacts your autonomic state. Identify breaths that are mobilizing, calming, disconnecting, and connecting.
3. Create a breath map.
•Using a line to depict the autonomic hierarchy, come into connection with each state and feel the ways of breathing that happen there.
•Breathe in different ways and see where the breath takes you. Place those breaths on your breath map.
4. Use your breath map to find your place on the hierarchy.
TIPS
Since this is an exercise that identifies rather than modifies breath, creating a breath map is a good way for your clients to get to know how their autonomic state and breathing are connected and sets the stage for the next exercises.
FIGURE 6.3. Sample Breath Map
This exercise offers clients a way to experience how breath is affected by the actions of the diaphragm and begin to play with shaping their breath in different ways.
BACKGROUND
The diaphragm is the most important muscle in the process of breathing. The diaphragm divides your torso into two parts: the chest cavity inside the ribcage where the lungs and heart reside and the abdominal cavity where the stomach, liver, intestines, and adrenal glands are found. With each breath cycle, the diaphragm changes shape. On an inhalation the muscles of the diaphragm contract and the diaphragm flattens, stretching the lungs to make room for more air. On the exhalation the muscles of the diaphragm relax, restoring the natural curve of the diaphragm to help push air out. When you need extra strength to lift things, during exercise, or in a sympathetically charged state of fight or flight, your breath moves up from your belly to your chest. While this is necessary in the moment, if used for prolonged periods, chest breathing brings anxiety and fatigue. Belly breathing on the other hand emphasizes moving the abdomen, letting it fill and expand on the inhale, empty and contract with each exhale. Belly breathing engages the diaphragm, deepens the breath, and activates the ventral vagal system, inviting a return to regulation.
STEPS
1. Get a feel for the way your diaphragm works.
•Hold your hands in front of you, fingers interlaced, elbows at your side. In this position, your hands take on the shape of the curve of the diaphragm.
•Inhale, raising your elbows pointing them outward and let your fingers flatten.
•Exhale, relaxing your arms letting your elbows fall to your side as your fingers return to the shape of the curve.
•Follow this cycle, letting your motion reflect the rhythm of your breath as you imagine the action of your diaphragm.
2. Play with changing the rhythm of the motion and synchronizing your breath. Speed the motion up and slow it down. Track the ways your autonomic state shifts with different breath rhythms.
3. Listen to the stories that accompany state shifts.
•Practice connecting the action of your diaphragm with your breath and listening to the story.
•Breathe into your chest and track the way your autonomic state changes. Bring awareness to the stories that accompany the change.
•Breathe into your belly and track the way your autonomic state changes. Bring awareness to the stories that accompany the change.
TIPS
Beginning to attend to the mechanics of breath is a safe starting point for most clients. Do these exercises with your clients to support their ability to bring attention to the interactions of the diaphragm and breath and stay in a ventral vagal regulated state. Once your clients have confidence in that ability, they can continue to explore breath on their own.
This exercise offers clients simple and safe ways to actively engage breath as a way to resource regulation.
BACKGROUND
Some of the ways to follow your breath are to attend to each cycle, track the ways your breath moves in your body, add movement to your breath cycle, and create a mantra to tie intention to inhalation and exhalation.
STEPS
1. Count your breaths. Breath counting (counting each exhalation) has been a part of mindfulness training for over 1500 years.
•Begin with short sets—between 3 and 10 exhalations. Experiment until you find the number that brings you into the ventral vagal place on your breath map.
•Count to that number of exhalations and begin again. Experiment with repeating the cycle two or three times to find the number of repetitions that brings a balance between challenge and nourishment.
2. Find the places you feel breath moving in your body.
•Some of the common places to find your breath are the abdomen, chest, heart, throat, just under the breastbone, in the side ribs, and in your lower back.
•Choose two places and put one hand on each. As you inhale and exhale, feel your breath moving between your hands. Find places that offer an easy pathway to feel the breath flowing between your two hands.
3. Create a mantra. The use of mantras is common in mindfulness practice and is a way to bring focused intention to your breath.
•Find a word or a phrase for each inhalation and exhalation that brings awareness to:
•the feeling of energy rising and falling (mobilize, calm)
•sensing inward and outward connection (tune in, reach out)
•moving between action and rest (attentive, peaceful)
Honor the ways your autonomic nervous system and breath are interconnected. Let your breath and body guide you in finding your own words and phrases.
4. Take breath outside your body and add movement.
•There is a strong connection between breath and posture. Experiment with changing postures (lying down, sitting, or standing; posture slumped, straight, or slightly curved) and listen to the story that accompanies each shift.
•Integrating breath and arm movements strengthens the muscles used in breathing and increases lung capacity. Experiment with adding arm movements to your breath cycle. Try it both seated and standing. Let your body lead the way. Invite your arms to illustrate your inhalation and exhalation. Notice how your movements change when the quality of your breath changes. Find a pattern that feels restorative and create a daily practice of moving with your breath.
5. Add a sigh. Sighing resets the respiratory system, affects your physiological state, and impacts the story that emerges. Humans sigh many times an hour and those spontaneous sighs are a sign your autonomic nervous system is looking for regulation. You can intentionally sigh to engage your system in that process.
•Become aware of the times you spontaneously sigh as your system looks for regulation. Make a practice of noticing. Spend a moment actively appreciating the wisdom of your biology.
•Intentionally sigh. Experiment with a sigh to interrupt a sympathetically activated moment or to bring some energy into a dorsal vagal moment of collapse. Create a habit of bringing a sigh to a difficult situation. Breathe a sigh of relief or sink into a sigh of contentment to deepen a state of regulation and nourish a story of well-being.
TIPS
Breath is an autonomic action that can be intentionally manipulated and is a direct route to influencing autonomic state. When your clients use these exercises between sessions, they are practicing regulation. When you join your clients in following their breath it becomes a co-regulating activity. Watch for your clients’ sighs during a session and name them as a way their autonomic nervous system is helping them regulate.
SHAPING THROUGH THE ENVIRONMENT
Outdoor Environments
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.
—JOHN MUIR
The American naturalist and conservationist John Muir found spirituality in nature. He intuitively knew the importance of connecting to nature for well-being. Decades after his death, science confirms what Muir knew: nature nourishes the autonomic nervous system. We now know that nature contributes to resilience (Wells & Evans, 2003) and is associated with feelings of safety (Maas et al., 2009). Walking in a forest environment is an autonomically regulating, restorative experience (Kobayashi et al., 2018; Song, Ikei, & Miyazaki, 2017, 2018), and following a period of distress is a way to calm intense emotions, evoke a state of relaxation, and bring a return of ventral vagal energy (van den Berg, et al., 2015). Looking out at a forest landscape or just viewing an image of a forest scene can restore autonomic balance (Joung et al., 2015; Kobayashi et al., 2018; Song et al., 2018). Both mental health and general health are also positively impacted around environments that include water (de Vries et al., 2016). We have a deeply embodied, emotional, and communal connection to coastlines (Bell, Phoenix, Lovell, & Wheeler, 2015). In the same way viewing forest scenes is restorative, images with water bring an autonomically regulating effect (White et al., 2010).
Because we can’t always get out into nature, we bring nature inside. Caring for indoor plants reduces sympathetic activity (M. S. Lee, J. Lee, Park, & Miyazaki, 2015). Flowers in offices bring physiological and psychological relaxing effects (Ikei, Komatsu, Song, Himoro, & Miyazaki, 2014). Simply having flowers in a room can reduce feelings of loneliness (Mojet et al., 2016), and the presence of a single flower invites people to move closer (Haviland-Jones, 2005).
Connecting with nature is a restorative experience, bringing the autonomic nervous system into a state of ventral vagal regulation. Creating an ongoing connection with nature is a preventative experience and an autonomic exercise that shapes the system toward well-being.
This exercise offers ways for clients to use the natural environment, either in reality or through images, to come into a ventral vagal state and deepen the experience.
BACKGROUND
It is a generally accepted that the green effect (the impact of being in green spaces) is a powerful contributor to physical and psychological well-being and that being in a blue environment (around or in the water) reduces stress and enhances well-being. Even the simple act of directly connecting to the earth’s surface, known as grounding, is an autonomically regulating experience. Drawing on the power of the environment and feeling nurtured by nature is a natural way to shape your system toward well-being.
STEPS
1. Head outside into the natural world.
•Walk in the woods. Forest bathing, a term coined in Japan in the 1980s denoting the benefits of being in a forest environment, is regulating and restorative.
•Find the green spaces around your home and work. Regularly return to the places that bring you into a ventral vagal state.
2. Find your way to water.
•Being by the water is an autonomically regulating and restorative experience. Locate the places around you that offer you the opportunity to be in a blue environment. Look toward the ocean, rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, and fountains in city parks.
•Being in the water brings its own benefits. Cool water experiences have been shown to bring a sympathetic nervous system response, and immersion in warm water lowers sympathetic activation and increases ventral vagal influence. Find a way to immerse yourself in the temperature of water that fits your autonomic need in the moment.
3. Make a physical connection to the earth’s surfaces.
•Walk barefoot in the grass, on the ground, or in the sand.
•Dig your hands in the dirt or in the sand.
4. Bring the outside in.
•Add flowers and plants to your home and work environments and benefit from their autonomically regulating effects.
•The smell of clean air and wet earth is something all animals and especially humans are sensitive to. Track what happens in your body and where your autonomic nervous system takes you when you encounter those smells.
•Experiment with scent. The smells found in nature are powerful activators of autonomic states. Juniper, lavender, rose oil, and bergamot are some of the scents that have been shown to bring relaxation and regulation. Rosemary, grapefruit, and fennel increase alertness.
•Discover the fragrances that your autonomic nervous system finds renewing. Experiment with different ways to use them. Living or dried objects from the natural world, candles, essential oils, and body creams are some possibilities. Incorporate your chosen fragrances into your everyday experience.
5. View nature.
•Looking out a window at the natural world for as little as 5 minutes facilitates the return to regulation following a distressing experience.
•Images can be used to complement your time in nature or as a stand-in for spending time in nature when opportunities in real time are limited. Find pictures of nature that are autonomically regulating for you.
TIPS
Whether or not your clients have physical access to water or green spaces, they can realize the autonomic benefits of connecting to nature. Help your clients find ways to get out into the natural world when possible and use images as another way to connect to nature. If you work in a place where you have access to outside spaces, consider moving outside for a session.
Indoor Environments
This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me.
—HERMAN HESSE
Along with the outdoor environments you move in, you inhabit indoor environments. Through the pathways of neuroception, your homes and workplaces send cues of connection to meet your needs for co-regulation or signals of protection that bring feelings of isolation.
A Ventral Vagal Space of Your Own
This exercise brings clients’ attention to the indoor environments they inhabit. Using their autonomic responses to places and objects, clients assess what brings comfort or discomfort and create spaces to nourish their nervous systems.
BACKGROUND
Danish people have one all-encompassing word for a lifestyle that brings well-being. Hygge describes a way of living that is cozy, caring, content, friendly, and safe. This speaks to our longing to create and inhabit environments that are filled with cues of safety and inspire an enlivening of ventral vagal energy. Bringing these qualities into your home and workplace in small and simple ways is an act of autonomic shaping.
STEPS
1. Listen to your autonomic nervous system and become aware of what is present in your environment.
•Look around your home and see where your sympathetic and dorsal vagal systems begin to activate. Identify what brings those states alive.
•Consider the objects around you that bring a flavor of dissatisfaction or unease.
•Look around your home and find the places that feel cozy, comforting, and connecting. Identify what makes them feel that way.
•Notice the objects around you that inspire safety, contentment, and warmth.
•Do the same with your workplace.
2. Make a list of the places and things in your home and work environments that bring a feeling of safety and connection. Identify the specific qualities that feel regulating and nourishing to your nervous system.
3. Bring curiosity to what might be possible. Look for spaces at home and at work (a room, a corner, or even a shelf) that could become a place of ventral vagal inspiration for you.
4. Find objects that bring your ventral vagal system alive and bring them into your space. Make small changes and track your autonomic response to each. Remember, small moments add up to a tipping point. Look for the moment when a space feels welcoming. Stop and take that in.
5. Ventral vagal spaces are filled with abundance, but abundance does not mean that your spaces are filled with lots of things. Abundance and scarcity are felt not in the presence of absence of objects but in your autonomic states. Find the balance of open and filled spaces that brings you an autonomic feeling of abundance.
TIPS
When your clients look at their homes and workplaces, they come into contact with a range of autonomic experiences, including disorganized and chaotic environments that mobilize the sympathetic system, ones that are dull and disconnecting and bring a dorsal vagal deactivation, and places that feel safe and welcoming and inspire a ventral vagal response. Because there may be a disproportionate number of elements of dysregulation, it is important to help your clients stay connected to the formula for change—small and often—and track the subtle shifts that happen. Creating ventral vagal–inspired places utilizes processes of closely tracking autonomic responses.
Time and reflection change the sight little by little till we come to understand.
—CÉZANNE
For centuries, people have used writing as a way to make sense of their lives. Writing brings a special kind of awareness to thoughts and feelings. Expression in written form has short-term and long-term autonomic regulating effects (Beckwith McGuire, Greenberg, & Gevirtz, 2005). Writing about a past distress can reduce your autonomic response to a new stressor (DiMenichi, Lempert, Bejjani, & Tricomi, 2018), and writing about satisfying experiences can decrease stress, anxiety, and depression (Bhullar, Schutte, & Malouff, 2011).
Compassion practices increase heart rate variability, a marker of ventral vagal influence (Kirby et al., 2017), and self-compassion practices show an increased flexibility of response to stressful experiences (Friis, Consedine, & Johnson, 2015). Loving-kindness mediation has been shown to increase baseline vagal tone, which in turn impacts positive emotions and social connection (Kok et al., 2013).
Your brain and body are intimately connected, autonomic state and psychological story forming experiences and expectations that are sometimes nourishing and sometimes painful. Through the art of reflection, you have the power to shape your system in the direction of safety and connection.
This exercise uses writing to add language to autonomic experiences. Creating a practice of listening and using the information to write stories of sympathetic and dorsal vagal challenges and ventral vagal victories helps clients bring explicit awareness to what are otherwise implicit experiences. Adding that awareness often leads to new insights.
BACKGROUND
Your autonomic states carry a wealth of information. Adding words brings a different kind of awareness to your autonomic stories. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer, your autonomic nervous system benefits as you listen to your state and begin to put words on paper.
STEPS
1. Think of a time when you experienced a dysregulated response. Take just a few minutes to write about it. Listen to your sympathetic or dorsal vagal survival state and write what you hear.
2. Think of a time when you felt the flow of ventral vagal energy. Turn toward that experience. Listen and write what your ventral vagal state wants you to know.
3. Choose a period of time and set an intention to write about an experience from each autonomic state. A suggested timeframe is once a week over the course of 6 weeks. After the initial writing period, if it feels like a positive experience, set the next intention.
4. Find someone to share your writing with or bring your writing to your therapy sessions. You hear your stories in a new way when you tell them to someone. In the telling, deeper awareness and different insights often emerge.
TIPS
For many clients, writing about autonomic challenges and successes becomes a part of their ongoing shaping practices. Invite your clients to share their stories with you and notice with them any ways their perceptions change as they put language to their experiences. Sometimes this is a subtle shift in understanding and sometimes there is a transformative insight.
In the midst of therapy, these autonomic experiences can be missed, and writing is one way to bring them into awareness.
This exercise is based on the practice of loving-kindness meditation. Using the focus of the four traditional phrases—happiness, health, safety, ease—clients are asked to find the particular language that represents their autonomic experiences and write their own statements.
BACKGROUND
Compassion emerges from a ventral vagal state and then shapes your system toward experiencing more ventral vagal energy. Loving-kindness meditation is an ancient practice that focuses on self-generated feelings of love, compassion, and goodwill toward oneself and others. Loving-kindness meditation engages the power of the ventral vagal system first through self-compassion and then by offering compassion to others.
The traditional four phrases of loving-kindness meditation are, “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I live with ease.” Some variation of these four phrases has been used for centuries. Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, two giants in the field of meditation, note that it’s okay to adjust the words to find the phrases that are most personally meaningful. What words bring these statements alive for you? Let your ventral vagal state guide you.
STEPS
1. Look at the four categories (happy, healthy, safe, and living with ease) through the language of the autonomic nervous system.
•Find the words that you would use and write your own four phrases. Here is one example of the four phrases:
–May I find glimmers every day.
–May I be nourished by the flow of ventral vagal energy.
–May I be filled with a neuroception of safety.
–May I live in the rhythm of a regulated nervous system.
2. Say your phrases out loud. Listen to the words and feel how they land in your system. You’ll know you’ve found the right words when you feel a deep connection to your ventral vagal system.
3. Say the phrases to yourself (“May I”). Then send the phrases to others (“May you”) beginning with someone you feel safe and connected to, then a neutral person, then someone you may have an unrepaired rupture with, and finally to all living beings.
4. Share your four phrases with someone else. This might be a friend, a family member, or your therapist. Say the phrases to the other person and also have them read your phrases back to you. Notice what happens when you offer and receive your unique phrases. Track your autonomic response to the experience of first offering compassion and then of receiving compassion.
TIPS
This exercise uses the ancient practice of Metta meditation as a structure for your clients to find language that reflects the ways their ventral vagal system can be engaged for well-being. Particular words bring different autonomic responses. Help your clients move out of a cognitive decision-making process and discover the wording for each phrase by attending to their autonomic experience.
CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY
Neural exercises create a resilience platform for everyday regulation (Flores & Porges, 2017). When your clients have ongoing experiences of returning from protection to the regulation of connection, their autonomic nervous systems are working out. As with other forms of exercise, autonomic exercising is good for physical and psychological well-being. Over a century ago, William James (1890) implored us to see the nervous system not as an enemy but as an ally. It’s important for you clients to cultivate an attitude of understanding and respect for the rhythms the autonomic nervous system has created as they enter into practices to shape their systems. Shaping is not about one specific practice. It’s through multiple autonomic pathways that a more flexible pattern of response is created, and the autonomic nervous system begins to move toward connection. Some exercises in this chapter involve active engagement while others quietly invite in a new pattern. Help your clients consider what fits their needs in the moment. Learning to listen to the wisdom of the autonomic nervous system and honoring the right degree of challenge is the foundation for change.