Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection

EXERCISE

Autonomic Landmarks—Stories of Landmark Moments

BACKGROUND

Landmarks give structure to our environments, forming cognitive anchors, marking points of orientation, and becoming references for communication. Autonomic landmarks are the internal reference points that mark the experience of states. We have personal landmarks that represent the embodied experience of a state and are stored in our memory. This is a moment that stands out from all the others, a moment you can look back on as a defining experience of an autonomic response. Identifying the landmark moment for each state is a way to quickly bring the properties that personify the state to mind.

STEPS

1. What are the stories of your dorsal vagal (collapse or shutdown), sympathetic (fight or flight), and ventral vagal (safe and connected) landmark moments? To make it easier to think about your states, you can give them descriptive names in addition to the physiological ones. Take time to look back and locate the moments in your memory. Find the times that stand out and become the archetype for each state.

2. Landmarks are recognizable by their names and characteristics. Write a story describing the landmark moment. Make sure to identify the concrete details of what happened, how you responded, what your body felt like, and what you thought.

3. When you are done, read through the story and identify the crucial moment. Use this to give the story a name.

EXERCISE

Ventral Vagal Anchors—Anchoring in Safety

BACKGROUND

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an anchor as “something that serves to hold an object firmly; a reliable support.” A ventral vagal anchor holds the connection to the energy of your ventral vagal system when experiences threaten to pull you into a sympathetic or dorsal vagal state. Your ventral vagal anchors help you find the way back to regulation and stay there. These are autonomic cues of safety that can be found in the categories of who, what, where, and when. You can use your anchors by reconnecting to the anchor or by activating the memory of the anchor. With regular practice, ventral vagal anchors strengthen your capacity to return to regulation.

STEPS

1. Who. Reflect on the people in your life and make a list of the ones who bring you a feeling of being safe and welcome. You might also have a pet who fills that role. First identify a person or pet who is present in your life. Then, if you wish, you can expand your search to also include people who are no longer living, people you haven’t met but who bring your ventral vagal state alive, and spiritual figures.

2. What. Think about what you do that brings your ventral vagal state alive. Look for small actions that feel nourishing, relaxing, and inviting of connection. Keep track of the things that bring moments, or micro-moments, of ventral vagal regulation.

3. Where. Take a tour of your world and find the physical places that bring you cues of safety. Look around your home, your neighborhood, your community, your workplace, a place you feel a spiritual connection. Bring to mind the everyday places you move through. Take note of the environments and name the ones that activate your ventral vagal state.

4. When. Identify the moments in time when you feel anchored in your ventral vagal energy. Take a moment to go back and revisit those experiences. Bring them into conscious awareness and write them down.

5. Create a portfolio of your ventral vagal anchors. Decide how you want to gather your anchors together in one place: write them in a notebook, illustrate them in a journal, make a list and hang it in a prominent place, write on sticky notes and put them around your home and at work in places that are easy to see. Experiment and find the way that works for you, making sure you have easy access to your anchors.

EXERCISE

Befriending the Hierarchy

BACKGROUND

With the ability to name your states and recognize the shifts that happen between states, you can represent your experience of moving along the hierarchy. Portraying these movements in different ways expands that connection. As you engage in the process of designing hierarchies, you are engaging in an act of befriending.

STEPS

1. Draw a vertical line, divide it in thirds, and mark the three states (ventral, sympathetic, dorsal, or the words you choose to name your states).

2. Imagine moving along that line and feel the autonomic state shifts.

3. Illustrate the small increments of change that happen as you travel down and up the hierarchy using:

•color to represent your states and transitions from state to state, blending shades to illustrate the full range of the autonomic hierarchy

•words to label the continuum of your experience from dorsal through sympathetic to ventral

•photos of faces to show how the many ways your states are expressed

•images of animals to represent states

•pictures of places that bring the points along the continuum to life

•nature scenes that portray the many stops you make along the hierarchy

•names of songs that carry the energy of states

4. Create a few illustrated hierarchies to get a sense of how different designs work for you. See if you resonate with one particular way of representing the hierarchy or if you connect with several different styles.

5. Choose one or more hierarchies and create an ongoing practice of using it (or them) to find your place and name your state.

EXERCISE

Autonomic Trees

BACKGROUND

A tree is a commonly used metaphor. The tree of life is often used to illustrate both evolutionionary processes and patterns of relationships. Using a tree metaphor, you can investigate your autonomic experiences: with trees representing regulated responses and ones representing reactive systems. There are many ways to dive into discovering the qualities of autonomic trees, and each brings its own pathways to befriending the embodied experience of your autonomic nervous system.

Art: Making art is a safe way to explore autonomic states. Creating images of regulated and reactive trees invites you to bring your autonomic states to life and befriend them through color and design.

Writing: Sitting down to write the stories of regulated and reactive autonomic trees requires a stance of curiosity that lends itself to befriending.

Movement: Imagined or enacted movement is a way to feel the rhythms of your regulated and reactive trees. Autonomic trees can feel as if they are stomping and swaying, their trunks bending or twisting, their branches reaching up and out, and their spring buds emerging or autumn leaves falling.

STEPS FOR AUTONOMIC TREE ART

1. Set up your creative space. Gather various-sized papers and other art materials.

2. There are thousands of species of trees, many living only in one specific place in the world. Your regulated and reactive trees live in your personal world and have their own unique characteristics. Visualize their roots, branches, and leaves. See their forms, shapes, and colors.

3. Create your trees. You might design a tree that illustrates all three states, one regulated and one reactive tree, or a family of regulated and reactive trees.

4. Reflect on your designs. What autonomic experiences do they represent?

5. Periodically return to your trees and connect to your personal tree kingdom.

STEPS FOR WRITING TREE STORIES

1. If you have created your tree maps, you can use those as an entry point for listening. Otherwise, bring your regulated and reactive trees to life by focusing on an internal image.

2. Use the following prompts to begin to write a story for each of your trees:

•The (roots, trunk, branches) of my tree bring . . .

•When I sit under my tree, I . . .

•When I put my arms around my tree, I . . .

•When I listen to my tree, I hear . . .

3. Read your story and add any other information you want to complete it.

4. Give your story a title.

STEPS FOR MOVING TREES

1. Visualize your tree and feel its movement inside your body.

2. Either see the movement in your mind’s eye or let the movement come into physical expression. Choose the way that brings a neuroception of safety.

3. Explore the ways your tree moves. Ventral vagal regulation is experienced in many different ways along the continuum of stillness to joy-filled passion. Reactivity includes both the intensity of sympathetic mobilization with fight and flight and the absence of energy in dorsal vagal disappearance, disconnection, and collapse.

4. Repeat the process with all of your trees.

5. Build an ongoing practice of moving with your trees.

EXERCISE

Body Language

BACKGROUND

With an ability to safely connect to your autonomic states and bring that embodied experience into explicit awareness, you have access to the important autonomic information that is guiding your daily experience.

STEPS

1. Find the place in your body where you feel most connected to your ventral vagal state. Bring the qualities of that experience into explicit awareness and add language to describe it.

2. Find the place in your body where you feel most connected to your sympathetic state. Bring the qualities of that experience into explicit awareness and add language to describe it.

3. Find the place in your body where you feel most connected to your dorsal vagal state. Bring the qualities of that experience into explicit awareness and add language to describe it.

4. Connect to the three places in your body where you identified feeling each state most fully. Move from one place to another. Feel the ways your experience changes as you shift your focus.

5. Connect to your ventral vagal state of safety and connection. Tune in to how this is expressed in your body. Identify the qualities of your breath, muscle tone, and posture. Track the flow of energy throughout your body and notice any movements connected with this state.

6. Move to your sympathetic nervous system and consider the activation of the mobilizing energy of fight and flight. Tune in to how this is expressed in your body. Identify the qualities of your breath, muscle tone, and posture. Track the flow of energy throughout your body and notice any movements associated with this state.

7. Move to your dorsal vagal state and consider the ways collapse and shutdown are experienced. Tune in to how this state is expressed in your body. Identify the qualities of your breath, muscle tone, and posture. Track the flow of energy throughout your body and notice any movements associated with this state.

8. Move from state to state and notice the changes that happen. Become familiar with the ways your body moves through states.

EXERCISE

The Continuum Between Survival and Social Engagement

BACKGROUND

Between the two ends of autonomic responses, there are many points along the way. Some bring a nuanced experience of an autonomic shift while other points are where you make a bigger step from one state to another. Using a continuum is a way for you to map the progression of small steps that connect two opposite end points. To create this continuum, bring focused attention to the particular ways you move between protection and connection.

STEPS

1. Draw a horizontal line and name the two ends of your continuum. What is your label for engagement? What is your label for disconnection?

2. Start at either end. Identify the first small step out of that state toward the other end. Repeat this, marking small steps along the way until you reach the other end.

3. Mark the midpoint where you feel the larger shift from connection to protection. The midpoint is a good way to identify this moment of change.

4. Remember you are always moving along this continuum, sometimes firmly planted in one place and other times pulled from one end to the other. Stop and see where you are. Use the midpoint to first see if you are on the side of protection or closer to the state of connection. Then identify more precisely where you are on your range of responses.

5. Return to your continuum and practice placing yourself on it until it becomes second nature for you to know where you are and in which direction your autonomic nervous system is taking you.

EXERCISE

The Social Engagement Scale

BACKGROUND

Rather than a straightforward on or off mode, the social engagement system can be online and bring a range of responses. Sometimes you may feel a pull to enter into conversations and at other times feel a deep contentment in sitting back and listening. One moment you may be moving in synchrony with another person, while the next brings the joy of being an observer. Between the two ends of engagement there are a variety of experiences. In addition to the expected everyday fluctuations, the capacity for social engagement is impacted by illness and wellness. In a state of illness, the social engagement system retracts, responding to the physiological demand to attend to internal conditions. In a state of wellness, the social engagement system is at work in the external environment, seeking and signaling readiness for connection.

STEPS

1. Use the scale to fill in your personal experience of the points between “open and engaged” and “internal and engaged.” Start by naming each end and then label the points between.

2. Consider where you are right now. Stop and find your place on your scale.

3. Reflect on recent experiences and see where you were on your scale.

4. Look at when your place on the scale fits with the environmental and relational demands of the moment and when there is a mismatch.

5. Recognize any patterns to your placement on the scale. Look for people, places, and experiences that predictably take you to a certain point along the scale. Become curious about the characteristics of the interactions that activate that response. Get to know your personal social engagement profile.

EXERCISE

A Neuroception Notebook

BACKGROUND

Neuroception, the messages the autonomic nervous system receives and records from inside your body, in the environment around you, and between you and other people, provides a valuable stream of information when brought to conscious awareness. When you bring perception to neuroception, you can find reminders of ventral vagal possibilities and identify moments of messiness and distress. Keeping a neuroception notebook is one way to bring explicit awareness to the ways the autonomic nervous system is working in the background shaping your life.

STEPS

1. Divide a notebook in sections for the three categories of neuroception: ventral vagal safety, sympathetic danger, and dorsal vagal life-threat. Use your own words to name the sections.

2. Carry the notebook with you and write in it as you feel your state shifting. Or create time at the end of the day to look back and reflect on your experiences.

3. Look for the specific cues that activated your state changes. Write down the cues of safety, danger, or life-threat you have identified.

4. Find any predictable patterns in the cues that move you toward connection or into protection.