Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection

EXERCISE

Rules of Reciprocity

BACKGROUND

You don’t require reciprocity, proximity, and face-to-face interactions all the time. In fact, well-being is found in a balance of time with others and time by yourself. You have your own reciprocity requirements, and when they aren’t met, your body feels the absence. Without the right measure of reciprocity, your autonomic state begins to shift from readiness for connection to preparation for protection. Incorporating a therapeutic dose of reciprocity (the amount necessary to bring the desired effect) into your daily living means first knowing your needs and then building sustainable connections and opportunities to meet those needs.

STEPS

1. Fill in the following equations to find your reciprocity rhythms. Recognize the signals that you’ve been on your own for too long, you’ve spent too much time connected with others, or you’re in a sweet spot of symmetry.

2. Reciprocity is not a static experience. Return to this practice regularly to track when you are out of balance or in a resourcing relationship to yourself and others.

3. Take care of your connections.

•Write reciprocity intentions that describe how you are going to pay attention each day to ways you are in and out of reciprocity. Examples might be, “I will track my reciprocity rhythms and take action when I’m out of balance” or “At the end of the day I’ll reflect on my moments of reciprocity.”

•Create time and space for reciprocal interactions. Identify when, where, and with whom you can build predictable, sustainable opportunities for connection into your life.

EXERCISE

Personal Connection Plan

BACKGROUND

What does a map of your pathways to connection look like? Your personal plan brings a dual focus: what’s working (the things that are already in place) and what’s wanted (things to explore and invite in). The questions in this exercise reference people, but feel free to add pets to your exploration.

STEPS

1. Identify what’s working.

•Who are the people in your life with whom you feel a connection?

•What are the things you do together that foster that connection?

•What are the things you do to nourish your sense of connection to self?

2. Identify what you want.

•Who would you like to invite into connection?

•What might you do to explore new connections?

•What would you like to explore on your own?

•How does interacting with others in a playful way fit into your connection plan?

•How do moments of shared stillness fit in your connection plan?

3. Fill in the boxes to create your personal connection plan. Update your plan as you try new things and make new connections.

EXERCISE

Clusters of Connection

BACKGROUND

There are many ways to reach for reciprocity. There are many pathways to connection. Who you connect with and how you connect is an individual experience. Find the ways your autonomic nervous system feels nourished and create relationships with people (and pets) that nurture your sense of being woven into a resilient network.

STEPS

1. Look at the people in your life.

•Make a list of the people to whom you are connected. Listen to your autonomic response as you think about each person. Using a scale of 1–3, loosely connected; 4–7, pretty connected; or 8–10, very connected, identify how close you feel to these people. You may find that you have several people in the 4–7 pretty connected range or one person in the 8–10 very connected range and feel very safe and supported with either configuration. It isn’t a particular number of connections that matters, it’s the ways your personal autonomic needs are met by those connections.

2. Look at how often you connect with people in your network. A match with others feels resourcing while a mismatch between your wish for connection and your experience of connection is painful.

3. Look at the ways you connect.

•Create a pie chart to map your kinds of connection. Use the communication categories that fit for you. The two examples in Figure 8. 3 show very different connection profiles, but each person identified feeling deeply connected to their network.

4. Look at what you do when you connect.

•quiet moments

•physically active adventures

•go out or stay in

•favorite activities you love to return to

•new things you want to try

EXERCISE

With Gratitude

BACKGROUND

Sometimes gratitude comes in the form of life-giving or lifesaving events (a stranger donating a kidney, someone not leaving your side when you are in the depths of despair) that irrevocably change the way you think about and move through the world. More often the gifts of gratitude come through ordinary, everyday experiences. Simple interactions with people (holding a door open, offering a smile, recognizing someone’s contribution), pets (your dog greeting you at the door, your cat nuzzling you awake in the morning), or in nature (the return of the sun after a stretch of rain or the rain after a period of drought, the first hint of spring) are opportunities for gratitude. Gratitude is good for your body and brain (fewer physical complaints, better heart health, less depression and anxiety, more happiness). A gratitude practice helps you see the small, everyday experiences of goodness that might otherwise pass by unnoticed.

STEPS

1. Keep a gratitude list. Make a practice of noticing what you might otherwise take for granted.

2. Find ways to express your gratitude. Say thank you. Return the favor.

3. Use a breath practice to deepen into appreciation.

•Imagine breathing into the beginnings of your ventral vagus at the base of your skull. Follow the pathway as it makes its way to your heart, and then breathe out of your heart. Follow this cycle of breath and imagine your autonomic nervous system supporting your experience of gratitude.

•Breathe in with a word that acknowledges a moment to be grateful for. Breath out with a word that expresses your gratitude.

EXERCISE

Compassionate Connections

BACKGROUND

Through the eyes of compassion, from your own regulated nervous system, you can see another person’s dysregulated system, respond with regulation, and connect with kindness. From the energy of your ventral vagal system, you can also connect inside and be with your own suffering in an act of self-compassion. Ongoing experiences build the capacity for connecting with compassion. Find the combination of practices that brings your ventral vagal system alive. Create your own compassionate connections.

STEPS

1. Create a compassion statement using the language of the autonomic nervous system.

•Use language that recognizes another person’s dysregulated state and names the ways your ventral vagal state helps you see them with compassion.

•Decide on a timeframe for using your statement. You might choose to create a new statement each week or each day.

•Notice people in need of compassion and use your statement to send a message either in silent thought or in spoken words.

2. Make this three-step compassion practice a routine part of your day.

•Find your ventral vagal anchor.

•Look through the energy of your ventral vagal system. See the other person not as bad or unworthy but as dysregulated, pulled into sympathetic or dorsal vagal protection, and unable to regulate.

•Hold the other person in your ventral vagal energy. Let your nervous system send cues of safety toward theirs.

3. Create a self-compassion statement using the language of the autonomic nervous system.

•Use language that acknowledges your own dysregulated state, identifies that dysregulation is a normal human experience, and reminds you that your autonomic nervous system knows the way back to regulation.

•Decide on a timeframe for using your statement. You might choose to create a new statement each week or each day.

•Notice when you are in need of compassion and say your statement to yourself either silently or out loud.

EXERCISE

Awe Inspiring

BACKGROUND

You feel moved when you are awe-filled and motionless when you are awestruck. Awe lives along a continuum of ordinary to extraordinary. Some moments stop you in your tracks and demand your attention. Other everyday moments pass by without being recognized. People, nature, architecture, the arts, spiritual experiences, and inexplicable events each have the potential to elicit feelings of awe. Where are your moments of awe each day that are waiting to be discovered?

STEPS

1. Build a reservoir of awe memories.

•Remember a moment of awe.

•Replay it in your mind and bring the richness of it back into full awareness.

•Revisit it in writing to deepen the experience.

2. Notice where in your life you find awe.

•Certain people inspire awe. Who are those people for you? They may be people you know and have a relationship with or people you know of and admire.

•Places, the architecture of a particular structure, and natural formations in the outside world routinely bring experiences of awe.

•Art and music predictably activate awe.

•Spiritual experiences are awe-filled.

3. Either physically or through a memory, return to the awe-inspiring people, places, and events you identified in step two. Returning in person or revisiting in memory brings the experience and your ventral vagal response alive again.

4. Be open to the inexplicable events that unexpectedly appear. Let go of the need to understand and explain those moments and let in the experience of awe.