FIGURE 5.1. Daily Pie Charts
CHAPTER 5: ATTENDING EXERCISES
EXERCISE
Autonomic Alphabets
BACKGROUND
Looking beyond the primary description of a state creates an expanded understanding of the ways each of your states can be experienced. Finding the variety of flavors of each state encourages you to become aware of the subtle ways your states shift.
STEPS TO CREATING YOUR ALPHABET:
1. Find a word that begins with each letter of the alphabet to describe qualities of your autonomic three states. (You may have to get creative with the letter X.)
2. Begin by creating your dorsal vagal alphabet.
3. Move up the hierarchy and create your sympathetic alphabet.
4. Continue to the top of the hierarchy and create your ventral vagal alphabet.
5. Use your alphabets. When you notice a familiar feeling, a quality you identified in one of your alphabets, stop and name the state. When you notice you are in a state, go to your alphabet and find the quality.
EXERCISE
Autonomic Names
BACKGROUND
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks “What’s in a name?” In fact, your name is often the first label you are given, and is an important way you identify who you are. Looking at your name through the qualities of autonomic states invites you to experience who you are in different ways.
STEPS TO WRITING YOUR NAME:
1. Use the letters of your name to describe who you are in a dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral state.
2. Create several autonomic name descriptions for each state and compare the effects.
EXERCISE
Autonomic Short Stories
BACKGROUND
Adding language to autonomic events is a way to become acquainted with states and state changes. The plots of your short stories illustrate a slice of an autonomic experience. This is a quick writing exercise designed to bring attention to a specific autonomic point in time and spend a moment getting to know it.
STEPS
1. Use these five prompts to write your autonomic short story. Spend no more than a minute or so on each.
•My autonomic state is . . .
•My system is responding to . . .
•My body wants to . . .
•My brain makes up the story that . . .
•When I review my short story, I notice . . .
2. When you feel a state change, take a couple of minutes to listen in and follow the five prompts.
3. When you want to appreciate where your autonomic nervous system has taken you, follow the prompts and write a short story.
4. Track how your stories change as your autonomic responses begin to reshape.
EXERCISE
Attending over Time
BACKGROUND
While atomic clocks measure time with precision and accuracy, it seems your personal experience of time is changed by your state of engagement with it. Time sometimes seems to stand still and other times fly by. You can feel stuck in a state of dysregulation or unable to hold onto a state of regulation. Using increments of time to attend to state changes adds chronology to your understanding of how you move through daily experiences. Attending over time, both in short and long intervals, invites you to see the ongoing ebb and flow of your autonomic nervous system and the ways it responds both in moment-to-moment shifts and in patterns over time.
SHORT-DURATION ATTENDING STEPS:
1. Decide on a 5- or 10-minute increment as your measure of time. Use the following series of prompts to check in three times over that span of time.
•In this moment my autonomic state is . . .
•And I am feeling . . .
•Now my autonomic state is . . .
•And I am feeling . . .
•And now my autonomic state is . . .
•And I am feeling . . .
2. Repeat this exercise a few times a day for several weeks.
3. Look for any patterns that emerge. When are the times you respond flexibly and when are the times you get stuck? Are any changes happening over the course of tracking?
LONG-DURATION ATTENDING STEPS:
1. Longer time periods offer an expanded, bird’s eye view of your experience. Decide on a timeframe to use. You can experiment with doing the exercise in the morning, at the end of the day, or even once a week.
2. Answer the following four questions.
•Where am I? The starting point is where you are right now. Begin with noticing your current state.
•Where have I been? From your present reference point, reflect back and notice any state changes.
•What does this mean for where I might be heading? With an understanding of your movement from past to present, bring curiosity to the trajectory you have found. Is there a pattern? Does it make sense to you when you see it clearly?
•What do I want to do now? Is this a path you want to follow or a pattern you want to interrupt?
3. Repeat this exercise over successive days or weeks and track emerging patterns.
EXERCISE
Daily Pie Charts
BACKGROUND
We tend to give our days a label—this was a good day or a difficult day, a quiet day or a busy day—based on one particularly intense moment or on a string of related experiences. When you name your days in this way, you often miss the moments that didn’t fit the pattern. When considering the day through an autonomic lens, looking at the relationship between states and the relative amount of time spent in each gives a more complete picture of your daily experience. With a pie chart, ventral vagal, sympathetic, and dorsal vagal experiences are seen as part of an integrated autonomic system. The global flavor of your day is a result of the contributions of each. The design of a pie chart (Figure 5.1) offers an uncomplicated image of the overall sense of a day and brings the feeling of the day alive in shape and color. What name would you use to describe each of the days illustrated here?
FIGURE 5.1. Daily Pie Charts
STEPS
1. What does your autonomic pie chart look like? Use a blank circle each evening to review your day.
2. Choose the colors you want to represent each state and divide your pie into ventral vagal, sympathetic, and dorsal vagal pieces.
3. Name your day.
4. Make a collection of your daily charts. Use your collection of daily charts to get a sense of your autonomic experience over a period of time. With a series of charts, you can look at the ebb and flow of states and the impact on your general autonomic experience.
•Is there a day of the week that repeatedly brings the same autonomic responses?
•What is the overall tone of a week?
•Is there a pattern to your weekends?
•If you are in a time of transition, use your pie chart to see how your autonomic nervous system is responding.
EXERCISE
Daily Tracker—Three Different Things
BACKGROUND
An end-of-the-day reflection during which you listen to the subtleties of autonomic change is a good way to look back at the autonomic path you’ve traveled. With a habit of autonomic reflection, implicit knowing and explicit awareness combine to bring you into a deeper understanding of the ways the autonomic nervous system shapes your days. Remembering that the autonomic response is always considered an adaptive one, don’t look for what is better, but instead look for what is different. A regular tracking practice brings attention to the small shifts in patterns that highlight the ways your system is reorganizing.
STEPS
1. Review the day and identify three different ways your autonomic nervous system responded.
2. Bring attention to what happened. You might notice a slightly less intense response to an event or an easier recovery into regulation. Or maybe you recognize a different kind of response—sympathetic mobilization in place of a dorsal vagal collapse or a moment of ventral vagal connection instead fight or flight.
3. It’s equally important to attend to what didn’t happen. The absence of a reaction is also a good measure that a response pattern is changing and that your system is moving toward regulation.
4. Keep a journal of your daily “three different things” experiences. As small changes begin to add up, new autonomic patterns take root.
5. Review your daily journal periodically to see how your responses are changing. Look back over the range of autonomic responses and consider the larger picture of change that is happening. Is there a shift? If so, in what direction? Consider the intensity, frequency, and duration of your states and state changes in your reflection.
EXERCISE
The Autonomic Request for Connection
BACKGROUND
The autonomic nervous system is a relational system. Through your biology you are wired for connection. Eyes, voices, faces, and gestures telegraph cues that it is safe to explore a relationship. The elements of the social engagement system are essential to assessing safety and danger. Yet, through the ways the nervous system has been shaped by your personal experiences, you might miss or misread those invitations.
An ongoing stream of signals of welcome and warning are received and sent through the pathways of the social engagement system. The muscle around the eyes (the orbiculares oculi) opens and closes the eyelid and contributes to the wrinkles around the eyes that express emotions. This is where the nervous system looks for signs of warmth and an invitation to connect. Prosody (patterns of rhythm, tone, frequency in the voice) is an important nonverbal signal and sends messages of welcome or warning to another nervous system. Facial expressions convey social information. An unmoving face is seen as sign of danger, while a mobile face is experienced as alive and sending social information. Finally, turning and tilting the head signals availability and interest.
You can begin to understand the conversation that is taking place between two nervous systems when you are aware of the cues you are sending and can accurately interpret the cues you are receiving. As you become familiar with this way of listening, you’ll find you are able to navigate relationships more skillfully.
STEPS
1. Make a practice of looking at eyes, listening to voices, seeing facial expressions, and watching for social gestures. Bring explicit awareness to your present-moment experiences with another social engagement system. Use the following prompts to build skill in noticing:
•Their eyes are signaling . . .
•Their tone of voice sounds . . .
•Their face is expressing . . .
•Their gestures convey . . .
2. Identify the specific characteristics that invite connection or prompt a move into disconnection. Exactly what is it about the other person’s eyes, voice, face, and movements that sends cues of safety or danger to your nervous system?
3. Ask yourself if your response is a match for the present-moment situation or linked to a prior experience.
4. As you get to know your responses to another social engagement system, bring attention to your own end of the interaction using the same questions.
•My eyes are signaling . . .
•My tone of voice sounds . . .
•My face is expressing . . .
•My gestures convey . . .
EXERCISE
Pathways to Playfulness
BACKGROUND
You can be playful both by yourself and with others. Playfulness and a sense of well-being go together. A playful attitude supports seeing new perspectives and being able to cope with adversity. As Dr. Seuss (1960) said, fun is good.
STEPS
1. Get to know yourself as a playful person. Look at the conditions that support your sense of playfulness:
•Identify where, when, and with whom you feel your sense of playfulness emerge.
•Identify where, when, and with whom you feel your sense of playfulness disappear.
2. Track your experiences of the different kinds of playfulness. Identify where you find yourself on your autonomic hierarchy when you engage in, or think about engaging in, these kinds of playfulness:
•playing with others
•playing with thoughts and ideas
•spontaneous play
•daydreaming
EXERCISE
Playful Moments
BACKGROUND
Playfulness is an important quality that contributes to well-being. As you find ways to create opportunities for moments of playfulness, you can become a more playful person and experience the joy and creativity that accompanies that.
STEPS
1. Notice how often, easily, and intensely you engage in a playful experience.
2. Increase your playful experiences. Find the ones that bring a smile and the ones that bring energy and play in those ways a little bit more.
3. Expand your playfulness. Experiment with experiences in the kinds of play that aren’t in your play repertoire.
EXERCISE
Personal Preferences Around Solitude
BACKGROUND
Distinct from loneliness, which has been shown to have a multitude of negative physical and psychological outcomes, entering into moments of solitude has positive benefits for well-being. Practicing a moment of solitude is an autonomic exercise that creates an experience of feeling centered and peaceful.
STEPS
1. Locate the experiences of solitude and loneliness on your autonomic hierarchy. Feel the difference between them.
2. Explore where in your daily environment you find solitude.
3. Nature is often where people go to find a private place to escape to when they are surrounded by the demands of the day and the autonomic nervous system is needing room to breathe.
•Reflect on your daily experiences to discover where you choose to find solitude.
•Identify what kind of natural habitat are you drawn to.
•Notice where in your everyday natural environment are the places you can predictably visit and feel the benefits of solitude.
4. Solitude is a state of being and doesn’t have to take place in isolation. Solitude is also found in spaces where there are other people.
•Identify the places and spaces you visit every day that include other people and also offer you an opportunity for a moment of solitude.
5. Notice when you reach for solitude.
Consider what is happening in your life that prompts you to seek quiet.
•Look at your physical environment.
•Consider the actions of people around you.
•Reflect on the number, frequency, and kinds of requests for your time and attention.
6. Identify how much solitude you need.
Focus on your moments of solitude and the length of time that brings a sense of nourishment.
•Consider when a few moments of solitude meet your need.
•Compare that to when you need a longer experience of solitude to feel nurtured.
•Notice how you know when your system has taken in enough solitude and you’re ready to rejoin the world outside yourself.
EXERCISE
Attending to Stillness
BACKGROUND
Over the course of evolution, humans developed the ability to become still as a way to rest and renew. Sometimes, instead of feeling nurtured by stillness, the beginning of calm can bring cues of danger and a sense of vulnerability. As your autonomic nervous system begins to move from action to quiet, you might feel your sympathetic nervous system reacting with mobilizing energy or you might feel pulled into dorsal vagal collapse. Bring curiosity to identifying the elements that add safety to your experiences of rest so you can find your way to the places where you can receive the benefits of moments of quiet.
STEPS
1. Identify restful and restless environments.
•Many people label environments with lots of people, activity, sound, and movement as restless. Workplaces and the daily commute are two environments that are often cited as mobilizing and not restorative. In comparison, the natural environment and at home are often identified as places to rest and renew.
•Find the environments at the two ends of your experience—places that bring you a feeling of restlessness and places that offer you the opportunity to rest.
2. Attend to the qualities of the spaces that bring you a rhythm of rest
• location
• size and shape of the space
• colors, sounds, and textures
3. Consider when you want to be by yourself and when you want to be with others (people or pets).
4. Make a list of the combination of qualities you’ve identified. Go out and find places that offer those.
5. Create a plan to regularly visit the places you identified as offering the opportunity for rest.
6. Create your own space, incorporating qualities you identified that support you in resting in a moment of stillness.
EXERCISE
Savoring Snapshots
BACKGROUND
To savor is to take a moment of ventral vagal regulation and the feeling of a sense of safety and experience a story of connection to self, to another, or to nature. Savoring is a quick practice whereby you capture a ventral vagal moment and hold it in your conscious attention for just a short time. Moments to savor routinely happen in the course of everyday living. Because a 20- to 30-second snapshot is all that is needed to benefit from the practice, it is easy to do during the natural flow of your day.
STEPS
1. Look for a ventral vagal moment to savor, bring it into conscious awareness, and place your attention on it for 20–30 seconds. In the beginning, if the experience of savoring is challenging, start with micro-moments of savoring (5–10 seconds). Each micro-moment shapes your system. Over time, your ability to savor will build to the 20–30 second maximum that defines a savoring experience.
2. Practice savoring each day. Begin with finding one moment to savor each day. As savoring becomes easier, increase the number.
3. Track your savoring moments.
•Keep a savoring notebook or a joy journal.
•Reflect at the end of the day to find and savor moments you may have missed.
•Create an agreement to share savoring moments with a friend using technology or in person.
•Organize a savoring circle—online, in person, or a combination of the two.
•Create a savoring album using simple illustrations of your savoring moments and adding captions.
4. Establish a habit of savoring.
•Remind yourself that moments to savor are common occurrences in everyday life.
•Be on the lookout for the small moments that bring you into a ventral vagal state.
•Set a goal to see and savor a certain number of moments each day.
•Invite a friend to savor with you.
EXERCISE
Attending Through Art
BACKGROUND
Art comes in many forms and no special training is necessary to benefit from seeing it. Art speaks to the body through your autonomic pathways and brings responses that can lead to new ways of thinking about yourself and the world. Finding ways to invite art into your life is an act of listening to your autonomic nervous system and discovering the particular ways you connect.
STEPS
1. Explore the ways that are easily available to you to see and be with art. Museums, artists’ workshops, public art spaces, arts festivals, and an illustrated art book are just some of the options.
2. Identify the kinds of art you are drawn to. View different kinds of artwork (photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, ceramic, mosaic, textiles, and other forms of art) and notice how you respond.
3. Decide how and how often you need to connect to art in order to feel as if you have enough art in your life.
EXERCISE
Attending in Nature
BACKGROUND
Nature, both in real life and through viewing images, offers relaxing and restorative opportunities. Abundant in the natural world are fractals, simple patterns that repeat over and over creating increasing complexity (the nautilus shell, a leaf, a pinecone, broccoli buds, dandelions, ice crystals, clouds). Viewing fractals for just a few moments brings a regulating autonomic response. Find the particular places and ways to connect with nature that bring your ventral vagal system alive.
STEPS
1. Attend to the natural environment around you and track your responses. Identify the places that bring you into ventral vagal regulation, sympathetic mobilization, and dorsal vagal disconnection.
2. Visit the places that are regulating for you either in person, through images, or in a combination of both.
3. Look for fractals as you move through your day. Stop for a just a few seconds to take them in.
4. Find images of fractals or objects that have the characteristics of fractals and notice the ones that bring an intense ventral vagal response. An internet search will bring up a wealth of images, and the plants and trees around you offer living examples.
5. Display fractal images or objects in a way that you can easily return to them. (A screen saver, photos on your phone, or a flowering plant or cactus in your home or office are some suggestions.)