Lorne Brown:

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Today I have Dr. Steven Porges with us, and I’m going read his bio because when somebody has done the work he’s done in the contributions out of pure respect, I think it’s important to let people know who you’re listening to. And also, I’m hoping that when you’re hearing from some of his background, it will inspire, motivate you to listen to the end of this podcast, um, because maybe there’s some tools and ideas here that can transform your life. So Dr. Porges is a distinguished university scientist at Indiana University, where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium with the Kinsey Institute. He holds the position of professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina and professor of Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. I’m Dr. Porges, served as president of both the Society of Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Association of Behavior and Brain Science, and is a former recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award.

His research has been cited in approximately over 40,000 peer reviewed publications. And I will share that. I was just at a conference before we recorded. I got back last night and the majority of the speakers were quoting Polyvagal Theory and Dr. Porges work. So I’m so fortunate to be having this conversation today. Speaking of the polyvagal theory, it was in 1994 when he proposed this theory. It’s a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasis, the importance of physiological state, of the expression of behavior problems. You know what, I’m not going to read anymore. I’m going to actually talk to, um, Steven here today to find out more about the polyvagal theory and how this affects our emotional and physical wellbeing. And as I always share with my audience, when we talk about the things that can cause trauma and interfere with our health and wellbeing, I would never bring something up if I didn’t know that there were tools to help regulate and shift that.

And that’s why I brought Dr. Porges on. Steven, thank you very much for taking the time today. Oh, you’re quite welcome. And thank you for inviting me. I kind of wanted to start my first question for you because of my background in Chinese medicine and see how it fits with polyvagal theory. And in that question, I would love you to start to define what Polyvagal theory is as well. And it comes from the idea that in Chinese medicine, the number one cause of disease is our emotions and, and our inability to basically regulate and they lead to physical illness. Does this work with the polyvagal theory or is that in conflict?

Stephen Porges:

Well, I would say if any model is helpful, it will actually find a commonality or common roots with polyvagal theory. Because what polyvagal theory is about, it’s about literally honoring and respecting what your body is telling you. And so you first have to listen, and this becomes really the part of really what you’re saying about emotion. I throw out the word emotion. I don’t even use that. I use words like a, your nervous system is in a state of threat. Just think about that and, and replace it with when you say emotional dysregulation, is your body calm and safe, or do you feel loved and you wanna be close to other people? Or are you really in a physiological state that literally repels people from you to keep you safe? So there’s an adaptive function in that, and we can see this in our behaviors.

Do we feel comfortable giving people hugs or do we give people hugs because we think it’s socially acceptable? So polyvagal theory is all about literally finding our evolutionary heritage or claiming it. And that evolutionary heritage is an understanding of this linkage between our own physiology, our autonomic nervous system, and our sociality. So that we need to be in a state, a state of calmness and safety to be social. But interestingly, social signals, cues of intonation of voice, gentleness of uh, proximity triggers to our autonomic nervous system. So it creates this, uh, cycle of co-regulation. And co-regulation is kind of that magic term within polyvagal theory. Now, if you go back to your basic question about Chinese medicine or medicine in general, you have to be asking the question, does mental activity influence our physiology? That’s all you’re really saying. And when our emotions are in states of threat, what’s it doing to our autonomic nervous system?

Is it interrupting or creating a problem in that system’s ability to regulate the organs of the body? Just think about what your autonomic nervous system is. It’s really a bi-directional system connecting the brain to all these organs to optimize the function of those organs. Unfortunately, if you go to a physician, they have very little knowledge. I’m not talking about their interest, I’m talking about their knowledge of how the brain is linked to the organs that they’re telling you how to manage. So what it results in is that you get a diagnosis of the end organ, the tissue, a biopsy, a blood test, or a functional change without an appreciation of the nerves that are regulating those organs. That’s why so many people, uh, fail. Literally, they failed the diagnosis of an internal medicine and they’re sent away and said, go see a psychiatrist. It’s in your head, it’s imaginary. Well, it’s not imaginary because when your nervous system turns off, its optimistic, uh, efficient way of regulating organs, the organs start to become dysfunctional, but not necessarily damaged. So disruption of these neural feedback systems is literally a precursor. And when you want to talk about the focus of today’s interview about fertility, if your internal organs are under a state of threat, it’s not creating through feedback through actually neural and neurochemical feedback, the environment for implantation, just the body is getting signals that are not signals that you should be pregnant under this situation.

Lorne Brown:

And can we go deeper into this discussion then, because often in the reproductive field, the, uh, reproductive endocrinologists will say there’s not enough data to show that stress can impact your fertility. And uh, on our podcast we have a psychologist, Dr. Alice Domar, and at a conference I attended, there was a question that said, does stress cause infertility? Or does Sorry, go ahead.

Stephen Porges:

No, I was just going to interrupt and say that, we’re starting immediately with a word that gets us into trouble. It’s like anxiety or emotion. What is stress? If we re operationalized the definition of stress and said, stress is really the disruption of the homeostatic functioning of your autonomic nervous system, which it is, what’s the product of that dysfunction? All these emotional regulation, behavioral regulation vulnerabilities to mental health issues, physical health issues. So when the nervous system is not in a state in which it’s supporting the regulation of its own organs, because there are defenses that it has to, it’s kinda like a Star Trek analogy. You know, you use your defense shields, but when at great expense you can’t, in the Star Trek analogy, you’re using the energy. So you can’t fight, you can’t run. And in human physiology, it’s literally the same thing. If you’re using your resources to fight or flee, you can’t optimize the homeostatic functions of health growth and restoration.

Lorne Brown:

And it’s not so black and white. Like when you’re in this alarm state feeling threatened, your resources are being mobilized for survival. So not as many resources are available for health, creativity, and reproduction. It’s not like it’s all gone. And some people, that’s the tipping point where it interferes with their reproductive health.

Stephen Porges:

Yeah, so the, it’s a good question because you’re asking the individual difference question. And I would reframe that to say it’s really a question of resilience or buffering. And of course we know that some people have tremendous resilience. They really walk through traumatic events without being scarred. And some people are so fragile that even words in a social setting can really shift their physiology so much that their bodies experience it as a life threatening trauma. So we know that there are differences in our resilience, and I like to use the metaphor or create the, uh, con concept that our autonomic nervous system is really the indicator of that resilience. So we can literally measure it and open it, and make predictions. So polyvagal theory, I was writing a paper where I’m trying to say, how can I, let’s say simplify it or create, take home messages.

Let’s say polyvagal theory gives us an algorithm to understand how the challenges of the world affect us individually. And that’s really what you’re asking me. And the first point, polyvagal theory always emphasizes that the autonomic state we’re in is this important intervening variable. It’s in between the stimulus and response. So going back to the statement that we don’t have enough data to talk about things, what that really, this is what I would call the fallacy of the scientific method and even tells us a lot, actually told me a lot during my academic journey that I have a colleague who was National Academy of Science and he said, you should be able to do science only studying major or large effects because you shouldn’t need statistics. Okay? What it means is that if I take a hammer and hit you on the head, it’s going to create damage.

Or if I cut off your arm, your handshaking behavior is going to be greatly impeded. Those are cause and effect relationships, but most of life is not a simple powerful input and an output. It’s an input in which our nervous system literally processes and then creates the output. But the nervous system is not the same in every one. And the nervous system is not even the same in an individual at two different times. And we can always relate to that in our own memories. And we say, well, you know, there are times when I’m really buffered and people can say anything. And there are times when I’m very sensitive to what people are saying and my body reacts. And this provides us with this information that what is a body reacting to? It’s introspection, it’s the signals from inside the body that are now going to our brain and our brain’s trying to make sense of it.

So that when we go back to words like stress and anxiety, when our body is screaming at us, it’s under a state of threat. And then we don’t make the simple statement. We don’t say, my body’s in a state of threat. I need to navigate to make sure my body is no longer in the state of threat. Or I need to identify what those signals are. We gotta say I am upset. There’s too many, uh, I’m being stressed by work. I’m being affected by the way you looked at me. I, you know, we come up with all these very complex narratives that are really, uh, documenting that our physiological state is really tuned to be reactive. So let’s get down to the simplest point. We have very primitive foundational survival circuits and what emotions and stress, they’re talking directly to those foundational survival systems. And when they get triggered, the big brain with this creativity and consciousness makes narratives create scripts. So polyvagal theory says, well, maybe you are not looking at these things in a parsimonious way. Maybe the answers are relatively simple and the job of therapy on all levels, whether they’re talking about medical therapies or psychological or educational interventions, maybe the world changes when that nervous system is common and safe. And maybe it’s very different in the processing of information and healing when it’s in the state of threat or defense. Just think of that binary decision made on a very primitive brainstem level. So it sounds like

Lorne Brown:

The theory can explain then what the guests have been saying on our podcast that when you change on the inside, your perception of the external world changes. And can you explain that then with the polyvagal theory?

Stephen Porges:

Touch on that in a very, very simple way. Polyvagal theory has another system that calls, uh, basically neuroception where we detect signals of safety and threat. So we detect it reflexively. We’re not perceiving, we’re not making judgements. Our body’s detecting threats. If we shift our physiological state into a state that is more mobilized, more in a state of defense, then our neuroception, the way we detect singles in the world, is biased towards threat. Simple as that. And think about the pandemic and think about the political climate, at least in the United States following, or during the pandemic bodies, were in chronic states of threat. So it’s very easy to trigger people’s sense of, uh, literally fear. And what happens when you get triggered into the states of defense? What happens to your capacity to be benevolent, to be generous, to be patient, to be calm? It’s a challenge because under threat everything becomes proximal.

Our own personal survival starts taking on more and more importance. But when our bodies are calm, we’re this benevolent species, we’re helpful, you know, we’re supportive of others. And in a sense that’s, it sounds like it’s your journey to try to understand that and to, in a sense, proliferate states of safety for others. And we use words in different ways. We talk about compassion, kindness, but what we’re really talking about is broadcasting signals of safety to someone else’s nervous system so that their defenses can go and then they can become who they really are, which is really a nice loving human being.

Lorne Brown:

So, because you just said who they are, a nice loving human being, it makes me think of the multiple guests where they talk about consciousness and spirituality. Has polyvagal theory brought you into an idea of spirituality then? Just because of, I’m not sure of what you meant by

Stephen Porges:

Itself. Well, it’s, it’s okay. I mean, you can go there, because obviously it makes the statement that if you want a type of spirituality that is defined by connectedness with d d or connectedness with others, you can’t be in a state of defense. It’s as simple as that. So if you want options for a type of spirituality, which is through connectedness with humanity or anything else you want to connect with, you better be in a safe state. You can have a type of spirituality that is totally dissociative, and that’s what fear does. It creates a different type of spirituality. And it doesn’t lead us to caring more about others, but it creates a, uh, I don’t even wanna use the word illusion because these are personal choices. It creates a pathway where one feels selected in the connectedness, but not connected to others or other people.

So I think spirituality can take different venues. Polyvagal theory is really an advocate of a spirituality that is dependent upon connectedness with other humans to create this sense of safety cooperation. And in a sense, if we go back to the history of humanity, spirituality was not what had both individual activity, but also a lot of group work that enabled a sense of solidarity where vigilance of the individual disappeared or wasn’t needed. But even if we go into the notion of an individual, like deep meditation or deep prayer, you can’t do that if you’re in a dangerous, physically dangerous situation. Because your body has to take care of yourself, take care of you. So the threshold to be defensive is going to be low. So it’s a privilege to be able to be in a meditative state in an environment where you say, look, I don’t have to worry. I can now do that. So spirituality is dependent on polyvagal terminology, in a sense, being physiologically safe.

Lorne Brown:

And I wanted to circle back and thank you for that, Dr. Porges. I wanted to circle back to resilience. Because you had said that people have different levels of resilience. And I would think that, oh, if I’m somebody that’s struggling with my emotions and physical body, I would almost take that personally. Like, oh, I don’t have good resilience. The question I have for you on this is, is it predetermined? Like what determines our resilience? Where does this come from? Is it, where does it come from?

Stephen Porges:

You don’t have to elaborate because you moved, you moved into a very western cause and effect world, and in doing that, you took the control from inside and placed it outside the body.

Lorne Brown:

Can you explain, I’m, I’m unpacking that

Stephen Porges:

What you need by that. Okay, I’m going to unpack it because we live in a world that is very driven by cause and effect thinking and so we basically anticipate and we treat others this way. We say, if I got through this, let’s say a challenging traumatic situation, why didn’t you? And if you don’t, something’s wrong with you. And we place it now as an intentionality and motivation. So we basically don’t appreciate what we have within us that enables us to deal with input, output, relationships, cause and effect. So we’re not appreciating the uniqueness of who we are. And this is where a lot of shame and blame comes in and literally cruel behavior of children in school systems and children inside the family. So what we’re not saying is that our job as human beings, let’s forget the parents or teachers, is to enable others to feel safe enough that their bodies can be in a state that enables them to express who they are.

And through the expression of who they are, here’s the gift. Their nervous system starts to reorganize and starts to take care of itself because the body does not have to live in states of threat. So mental and physical health improves, and then emergent properties of creativity, engagement, and sociality start to come out. So if you think that our behaviors are driven by our intentions, then you reward and you punish and you create motivational systems that define the world we’re in today. And we can say, well, you know, it’s, it’s a very useful model if the task is lever pressing. And this is really, if you wanted to, uh, go back to my graduate school days, we started looking at different reinforcement programs or patterns as increasing output. If the output is simply pressing a lever, you don’t need much higher brain resources or creativity.

But if you want to solve serious problems, you need to literally use the big brain. You need to be creative, creative. If you want to enable others to solve problems, you don’t increase the motivation to solve the problem. You invite them into an environment where they feel supported to be creative. It’s kind of like this notion of being supported sufficiently to be in a meditative state, to be supportive sufficiently to be creative. Now I’m talking to you as a, I would say an addictive professor and who entered, uh, the academics, uh, at a very young age with the expectation that it would be like a meditative environment. That if I were to, if I were into that to do problem solving, to do creativity, that the environment would be protective of me. Interestingly, that’s not how academics are about, in fact, academics are a lot of the attributes and sometimes, uh, very similar and sometimes even more pronounced as business.

It’s a bottom line professional, whether it’s productivity or grant dollars or impact and rec recognition. And if you want to be creative within it, I mean within it and not being pushed out of it, you better understand the rules of that environment, which is productivity, grant writing, you know, and, but if you are in a sense, understand the rules, it is a remarkable profession and life because you can be creative and there is no other profession that enables you to literally follow your ideas. It is, it’s totally in retrospect, when I sit back and listen, I spent decades complaining. It was part of my persona because it wasn’t perfect. I had wanted an idealized environment. It respected curiosity and exploration and even boldness. But it provided me with this portal to become who I am and to study in a way how other people become who they are.

Lorne Brown:

In this creativity, I’m understanding it requires us to our body to feel the nervous system, to feel safe,

Stephen Porges:

Safe enough. It doesn’t mean, see, we get confused. We say we need to feel safe, and then we can just sit back and watch TV all day safe enough that we can explore our ideas. So what does it mean? We don’t have to worry about intruders, we don’t have to worry about food. We have sufficient resources. And this was the game plan, I would say, for academics not to be wealthy, but to be quite, safe enough. You know, so not, you’re not food insecure, shelter insecure. You could live a good life. I was very shocked with how it transitioned during my own experiences because of the world of federal funding and, and let me basically put it on the table, I was very well funded by the government. I’m not complaining about that part, but the world of federal funding when I entered academics was a major player, and a minor player. But within a few years, I’m talking about five to 10 years of post PhD, it became the major vector in how people structured their lives. But I entered it with a different, I would say metaphysical expectation of, of what it would be to be a professor

Lorne Brown:

I wanted to, because I’m thinking of my audience and, and myself, and they’re like, okay, if my body’s under threat, it impedes my creativity and for, for our audience, okay, I’m learning that it can somehow and negatively impact my wellbeing and my reproductive health. So how do I be safe? Like how do I, what do I need to do to be safe? And, and I, and I think that’s the key is, okay, so

Stephen Porges:

The doing part. So, the doing part, again, we met rapidly shifted to the paradox and the paradox. I used to call it what was the alchemist dilemma? That if you wanted to make gold out of lead, you’d boil the lead and not think of the word hippopotamus. That was what I remember. So then, then the lead would become gold. Because what you’re asking is how do you become safe without focusing on I need to be safe? Because in saying I need to be safe, you’re already in a state of defense. So the secret of this, as I start to unfold it through my, this is now the intellectual journey that starts to map onto the own bodily journey, is that there are signals of safety in the environment all the time. They’re basically blatantly being shown to us. We know that when we look at a crying baby and how the mother calms the crying baby, an effective mother uses intonation of voice and suddenly the baby stops crying.

In fact, even this past year we did a study in which mothers basically stop looking at, froze their faces called the still face procedure. And the babies go, this is like a six month, nine month old baby. The baby’s go basically ballistic. If the mother stops the interaction, they’ll start first to try to calm the mother. And then they may go into a tantrum and it’s only two minutes of freezing the face. Two minutes of play before and then two minutes of recovery. Well, we looked at the intonation of the mother’s voices and the baby’s heart rate on the recovery and the mother’s intonation voice determined whether the baby’s heart rate slowed up after when she kind of had that recovery or reunion and whether the stressful behaviors were suppressed. So it wasn’t that she was talking to the baby, it was whether the pitch, the modulation of the pitch, was more melodic.

If it’s more melodic, it was a signal to the baby that you’re safe. This is really part of an evolutionary journey of mammals. All mammals have this neuro regulation in which, uh, the neural reregulation of laryngeal pharyngeal, basically vocalizations and facial expressions also, and even listing the muscles in the middle ear, the regulation of that is linked in the brainstem to the vagal of the heart. So that when our voices are melodic, when we talk, we’re broadcasting our physiological state. And this is the linchpin of the development of humanity from social mammals, that mammals learn to signal each other, that they were safe enough to come close to literally to, to cooperate if the vocalizations were melodic. And if you watch cats, dogs, you know, you uh, even horses, you can hear in their vocalizations whether you can approach them. And like if a dog has a low pitch vocalization, you, you go back.

The point is, this is wired into our system because the frequencies, if you’re dealing with low frequency roars, that’s wired into our DNA as a threat cue. And that’s why thunder and earthquakes, we go into the same bit. Our bodies go into kind of literally a startle defensive mode reflexly. And so we do that with vocalizations. And this is called like a neuroception of danger or threat. But mammals had this remarkable ability to have a neuroception of sickles of safety, which downregulated threat responses. And that is your question. So intonation of voice. So we use words like connectedness, co-regulation, trusting friendships. Who are you safe with? Well, we tend to be safe with people whose voices are more melodic. They’re not yelling at us, they’re not tightly, you know, high pitched without prosody. So if a person that you are engaging or talking to has a high pitched squealing voice, how do you feel? You say, well, that you’re already interpreting that person’s anxious or tightly wrapped. Whatever line would you use If the person has a booming low frequency voice, say what? Why is that person so angry or forceful? So we make these interpretations and that is your own neuroception interpreting that person’s voice. 

Lorne Brown:

When you say neuroception, we’re not con, it’s our nervous system. It’s behind. It’s like we’re not thinking about digesting our food or breathing. It’s happening. And this is the same

Stephen Porges:

Idea. It’s, it’s happening. The issue is, this is a very important point you’re bringing up. Because when I start to build this concept or model, I want to use the word perception, which is really what you’re reaching for. But perception implies an awareness of, I perceive this. I didn’t. So now what would happen, especially in the world of trauma, is that my body reacts or doesn’t react. And suddenly I am blaming myself for not perceiving a threat. And now I’m basically hitting myself also for being injured as opposed to saying my nervous system was doing what it thought it should do for me. And we have to live with that and we have to understand it. But it’s not guilt, it’s not shame. So the magic word here is detection. Detection of signals of safety. And what made the human, or let’s say the social mammal nervous system very special, was that it could downregulate threats through the broadcasting of cues of safety to one another.

And this is really extremely important. If we look back at, let’s even just talk about humans because we know more about humans. What is, how have humans dealt with threats? Well they basically try to find or try to gravitate towards individuals with whom they trust. So they basically co-regulate with another to calm down. And now we move into, yeah, 2020, the pandemic. And what happened then? Pandemic is a threat queue. So our bodies become destabilized. Historically, what do human bodies do when they get destabilized? Well, they gravitate to social interactions, to hug, to calm, to be in group settings. But what do the pandemic do to us? It made those settings threats as well. And we’re still getting over that.

Lorne Brown:

Can you highlight this? Because it’s an observation for me and colleagues that since the pandemic, it seems like the anxiety is heightened. And so I’m wondering from the polyvagal theory, the masking, the news, the isolation, could that have impacted our nervous system and continues to impact it? And then we’re thinking of doing more community events, although it’s a little bit challenging to get people to do the community events. Yeah. But to bring the community back. But I, I’m curious as people like to go, oh, the pandemic’s kind of over, so we’re better now. And I’m wondering from the polyvagal theory, has this imprinted on our nervous system? And I don’t know if that’s the right word to use,

Stephen Porges:

But, well, I used the term returned, our nervous system. So if we talked about trauma, trauma, retunes, nervous systems, and even people’s reaction. Remember, let’s go back to resilience for a moment. We did a study in the early phase of the pandemic to see how people were doing, dealing with it in terms of anxiety, depression, and worry. And we were looking at two primary variables, whether they had an adversity history, trauma history. So was trauma history, literally a preexisting condition. I did change their reaction to the pandemic. And the other one was a scale of autonomic state autonomic reactivity. I developed it, it’s called the body perception questionnaire, but basically it deals with autonomic reactivity. And it’s a good surrogate to describe whether or not the autonomic nervous system had been returned to be locked into states of threat. So what happened was, of course, and this is only people who did not get covid, it’s early on, about 2000 people in the study are well designed in terms of population sampling.

An adversity history was related to worry, depression and anxiety. However, much more of the variance, uh, if you looked at trauma history and or adversity history, and then how that went to autonomic activity and then autonomic activity to outcomes during the pandemic, that was the pathway. So if the autonomic nervous system was retuned to be at a state of defense, you accounted for so much of the variance of the mental health variance. Now the interesting, I would say, the more interesting part, so that starts off by saying, yes, trauma is a preexisting condition, but if your nervous system didn’t get retuned, you’re fine. Meaning if you had that resilience and the system didn’t get locked into it, it’s an event. It’s not literally a causal pathway. Now we had a hundred people in this first wave early in the pandemic who got covid. So of that hundred, when we looked at literally a decision making, uh, algorithm, so we have a hundred who got it and close to 2000, who didn’t, even with that imbalance in the sample size, if they had a high adversity history, 75% of those got covid.

If they had virtually no adversity history, they didn’t get covid. If you look at mental health adversity, the curves look the same way. If you look at physical health adversity, it looks the same way. So the point is that if the system reacts, okay, so if you basically have this wonderful world and where you are buffered, and this is going back to your developmental interests, that people have a greater resilience. Now the issue is if you don’t have this wonderful buffering world, you still have people whose systems have sufficient resilience not to be retuned by the threat cues. The beauty of the world that I have been invited into, which is the world of trauma, are two things that I’ve really learned. One is that some people can experience the most horrendous, uh, events and they come out literally quite normal, quiet, uh, resilient. Uh, but the other part of this whole story is even if they get severely dysregulated, they carry with them a vision of what they want. They tell us what is important to them. What’s important to them is they wanna feel safe in the proximity of another. It’s really, it’s like locked into their nervous system. They have this history of being abused, yet they have a mental image of a great desire to be safe in the arms of another. It tells you what it is deep in our d n a of what it is to be a successful human being.

Lorne Brown:

I’d love some clarity on that. because I’ve heard many times that it’s not the event, but how you internalize the event that determines the trauma in the body. Yeah. And then you shared the clarification. I, I wanted because and that’s where they’re calling it Big T and little T and you shared some people have had crazy trauma and yet they’re relatively normal. What I heard there though is some people, is it like their attitude towards life? Because that’s where I wanted clarity. You’re saying that they know what they want, they want that proximity, they want to feel safe. Can you talk more

Stephen Porges:

About that? They have a visual, literally a visualization of what a healing or a healed nervous system would be like. They don’t have to be taught that they want to be close to another. They know their bodies tell ’em they can’t be close. And that’s why they’re in therapy. Mm-hmm. They’re not being, the psychoeducation is not that They need to be given a rationale why they need to interact with people. They’re telling you they want to, but their body says no. That becomes this whole issue. Why their body’s saying no is the important first start. Because what you’re doing is listening to the fact that your body’s in a state of defense. This is the important beginning of a therapy. It’s the acknowledgement that the body shifts into a defensive state and you are aware of it. For many people, they’re not aware of it, although they create narratives that justify their defensiveness.

So they don’t see their body as being part of the journey. They see the other person as doing something to them. And the part of what polyvagal theory says is it really says, if I can get cues of safety that my nervous system accepts, then I become different. Now that important word accept. Now this is a tricky one in therapy, and I have to also, for all disclosure, I’m not a therapist. But this is what happens, is that if you carry with you a severe adversity history and you are bombarded with cues of safety, your body will initially kind of become accessible. But the nervous system through this interceptive feedback where it now maps those visceral feelings with memories, shifts now into vulnerability and says, I’m getting out of there. And you see this within clinical settings as well, where people who start creating relationships, but they can’t get too committed.

They have to get out of there because the accessibility is challenged by their own vulnerability. And this is where, uh, understanding of our own physiological state and the mapping of that and understanding that cues of safety initially for those with adverse histories can be signals of vulnerability. Now the therapeutic model, and this is where it’s being used in many, many different, let’s say approaches, is uh, we would use the word resolving or titration or pendulation, the word used in somatic experience, but basically little bite-size periods of accessibility and where your nervous system can get jolted, but can now in a way go through a neural exercise where it’s learning that that accessibility is not vulnerability. So it’s a titration, it’s a neural exercise. And we have to think of trauma therapies as neural exercises that enable our bodies to remain in accessible states of safety for longer and longer periods. And then to sense, be able to allow what comes out of those states. And that is the spontaneous e emerging properties of engaging others.

Lorne Brown:

I’m so curious and I’m hoping I can share with you a kind of approach that I use in my practice. And I want, I want you to dissect it, I guess through the theories of polyvagal theory of what could be happening. Because, it’s one of those. So I have this approach that I call when I work with patients and I use acupuncture. So I got some body work going on on my patients, hopefully listening to that relaxation response. And we call it notice, accept, choose again. And so the notice part is to notice I’m triggered. So basically notice I’m feeling something and, and the idea is to, we do some good in good breathing, in and out breathing. And as we bring awareness to it, the notice is notice that I’m being, but everything that happens is neutral. Mm-hmm. And I give it the meaning to the lens of my subconscious so I can choose not to take it personally.

And then, yeah, it stands for, for accept, I like to use a tool e f t on, on that in the accepting meaning, can you be willing to be uncomfortable and feel these feelings, observe them. And we use tools. Why? Because I’m that type of person. When I read Eckhart Tolle’s book, the Power of Now just being the present, I was like, sounds great. How to do that. And so I use some techniques to get me to what I think is in the present moment, which would be tapping. Mm-hmm. Which means surrendering to what it doesn’t mean you’re resigned to it, you prefer it. Just noticing. That’s how I feel. And then when we get into a state of, but I think you’re going into the resistance is down or you’re in presence, how do you know this? There’s a sense of relief. And then choose again, which reminds me of how do you want to be, now that you’re in that state, if you, how do you want to be? If you could see yourself five years from now, now what would that be like? Can you tell me what is happening there from the polyvagal theory? And does any of that make sense? What I’m sure well,

Stephen Porges:

It all makes sense, but we have to go slowly now. Because you basically had a long timeline of events. So let’s start with your fire and let’s go through your points again. Start with the first point. And we’re going to, the word I’m going to use is not dissect, deconstruct, deconstruct de is the word that I used. I like that. Because you can actually see the processes in front of you when you take literally the veil, the skin off, and look at the nervous system, what it’s doing.

Lorne Brown:

And I thought this is a process of how to know. Yeah. So notice, just notice you’re triggered, Bre, when you notice that you’re not feeling comfortable, breathe,

Stephen Porges:

Just notice. Put two things together. Just, okay, so

Lorne Brown:

Just notice

Stephen Porges:

Okay, the just notice is an extremely important aspect, but it’s not just notice. I mean those are the words you’re using, but it’s being very careful not to evaluate what you’re experiencing. So you become on a journey of exploration of your own bodily feelings. It’s kind of like, oh wow, what’s happening to my

Lorne Brown:

Body? The invitation brings a sense of curiosity.

Stephen Porges:

Yeah, exactly. Now the part that you, the second part, the reason we had this separated is that you already put a toolkit onto it when you did the breathing. And the toolkit is extremely polyvagal because during exhalation, the vagus works and calms you during inhalation. The vagus literally lifts it off. So the breathing that you’re doing, I would think would be more like more rapid inhalation and very slow exhalation. Yeah. Because that creates a state of calmness. And in fact, you can, I actually used to do experientials at my workshops where I would have people breathe in different ways, looking at each other and then shifting off. And when they would take long inhalations and short exhalations, they’d think the person across from them who was their partner watching was, did they do something wrong? You know, why are they evaluating? They would see their physiology by dampening that vagal break and get them to feel they were being evaluated.

But when they went into the phase of long exhalations, they would say, whoa, what an attractive person. I’d like to get to know that person. They would start seeing all the warmth. And what I learned, I had to learn from the people there. It wasn’t solely that the person breathing face was changing, the person’s breathing face was changing and triggering the observer’s faces. So we use words like mirroring, but in polyvagal terms we would say neuroception, the signaling is different. So with the slow exhalation in a clinical setting, you’d say the face is softening, the upper part of the face is coming to be more alive. The facial expressivity is there and the person starts to radiate. We come up with all kinds of words. But really the neuro reregulation of the upper part of the face is now getting on there because it’s linked in the brainstem to the regulation of that ventral vagus. So the physiological state that I’m in is going to be radiated in the intonation of my voice and facial expressivity. So you gave it a toolkit to emphasize a calming mechanism that now placed the context for the awareness of that bodily state.

Lorne Brown:

And we, a quick tangent is you the practitioner or the other individual, the human being. Let’s just, you’re like wifi, because you said you are what? You were radiating, what’d you say? You were, what was the term?

Stephen Porges:

Broadcast. Broadcast,

Lorne Brown:

Yeah. Yeah. And so this is how you can also help impact your other human beings by regulating your nervous system. Breathing. Yeah. You are a broadcaster. I use the term you’re like wifi.

Stephen Porges:

Yeah, exactly. But here is the other part. If you gaze avert or turn away, you’re also broadcasting something else. Now you’re broadcasting literally a signal of threat, uh, because you’re disengaging.

Lorne Brown:

It’s interesting because I do my best to be conscious when I’m with my patients. And I do have to leave sometimes if they’re talking to sit and talk and not have my hand on the door, like, I’d become very con because because I started you could see it in their face. Mm-hmm. Even that’s a polyvagal thing again. because now they’re feeling there’s a threat there. You’re not listening to them. So I wanna go back to this note because something, I’m just so curious and, and I wanna see how this fits. So there’s the noticing part, and the reason the noticing came up was that it was that Viktor Frankl quote. Yeah. What I interpreted is, in every situation, there’s a moment where you either unconsciously, habitually react to your subconscious programming, or in that moment you can consciously choose to respond. And I find the NAC is that interruption that gives you space to consciously choose to respond. And it takes practice. And so notice I’m triggered, right, with curiosity and then the exception.

Stephen Porges:

Well, yeah. What you’re doing is tuning your own introception, your bodily feelings. So you have a sense, we tend to go through life not turning off the feedback loop from our own visceral, because we’re basically, uh, it comes from early childhood about sitting in a room, going to school, not not really listening to what your body’s saying. And it just keeps going on through work, through relationships, um, not listening. So part of what you’re saying is opening up the spout again, the feedback loop of what your body is screaming at you. And sometimes as a therapist, it’s telling you gentle things. It doesn’t mean it’s screaming at you, but with the awareness of use, literally you’re using your body, uh, as a polygraph. It’s reacting. You’re aware of your physiology and you’re aware that your physiology is responding to the other. It’s quite an amazing gift that we have in our own bodies.

Lorne Brown:

And this is the part where there’s this willingness to be uncomfortable. Because for me, when I get triggered and I notice it, it doesn’t, I don’t like the feeling. That’s why I’ll do other behaviors to distract myself. Yeah. And it requires that curiosity and willingness to feel. Because I think most of us, myself, I’ll talk about me as I think I’ve been, you know, through work and through everything. I’m looking to numb it to not feel it, because I don’t like how it feels. And now I have to, it’s paradoxical or counterintuitive because rather than that expression, what you resist persists. So rather than work harder, I’m going to watch TV now. I’m going to look at it and I’m going to, and it, and then it gets a little bit more intense. And this is where it goes into the accepting part where there’s many tools that you can bring into accepting my favorite tool right now, one of them that I use is emotional freedom technique. I may use a buyer Katy inquiry process. She has this questionnaire, but combines them. And it’s just about so I can be present and experience these feelings. And I think what’s happening, Steven, is that I’m not fully in it. So I’m not at the full effect of it because there’s a witnessing going on. So I’m close enough to it that I feel it, it’s uncomfortable. Yeah. But I’m far enough away from it that I get to observe

Stephen Porges:

It. You, you’re doing something else. So e ft that you were mentioning, you’re talking about tapping correctly. Yeah. I make sure I’m the

Lorne Brown:

Right thing. The freedom technique.

Stephen Porges:

Yeah. Yeah. But what you’re doing is mobilizing. So yeah, I’ve talked to the energy psychology groups and I reinterpret or deconstruct what they do in a different way. And I said that tapping in their world is very much linked to Chinese medicine and acupressure acu points in areas or even pranayama yoga. Because it’s a lot on the face. I’m saying. Well, you know, a lot of it has to do with the fact that you are mobilizing while dealing with a deep visceral feeling of trauma or threat. Uh, especially immobilization, which in polyvagal terms literally triggers shutting down withdrawal. Dorsal vagus in, in polyvagal terminology. But if you are moving, it’s incompatible to shut down. So it’s kind of like what the dance movement therapists are doing. But you’re not with tapping, you’re not moving the whole body. You’re in sense, you’re giving intentionality to an action. And that action now clearly neutralizes, which it does in the theoretical model. EFT neutralizes the potency of that visceral feeling. And it has to, because mobilization will do that.

Lorne Brown:

Two questions on that then with the tapping part is one is because of the face and expression, we’re tapping so many points on the face. Is there a polyvagal theory reason tapping on these points could be doing something?

Stephen Porges:

Okay, on which level? Uh, do you want to use the theory? If you use the theory saying that no movement is important, it takes you out of that. It’s parsimonious. You could tap anywhere. If you go into let’s say the emphasis on the social engagement system, then places like the upper part of the face are extremely important because of the location of the trigeminal and facial nerve efforts. So you can literally build a model that stimulates the feedback loop of what is called in polyvagal terms, the social engagement system, which is the immunoregulation of the striate muscles of the face and head with the vagal regulation of the heart and the bronchi.

Lorne Brown:

And then over dinner at the energy psychology conference with Peter Stapleton, we were talking, because her research, they’ve shown it dampens the amygdala lowers cortisol levels. And then she said it was okay to ask you. because I think, you guys have been looking at some research, you guys have seen some v vagal tone changes with EFT is that

Stephen Porges:

My colleague has looked at their literature. I haven’t looked at

Lorne Brown:

It. Okay. And I, so and I think that was what they’re even seeing change in vagal tone.

Stephen Porges:

They should, you know, if, because the subjective vagal tone is not ortho to the subjective experience. So if people are feeling calmer, more in control, it will be, it will project to those variables.

Lorne Brown:

And then the choose again, when there’s a sense of peace or relief that comes over, I invite them to choose again to visualize, to feel how it is.

Stephen Porges:

Okay. But basically what you’re doing now is utilizing the bottom up and now here comes the top down. Okay. The top down has now interpreted and re-opped the bottom up experience. That’s what you’re doing in that next phase. So ra,

Lorne Brown:

So bottom up is the feeling, yeah.

Stephen Porges:

Into feeling. And then you manipulate it with breath and you manipulate it with your tapping. And now the feelings are there, they’re going up. And now you are doing a different interpretation of the feelings with curiosity. And that interpretation is now top down. So there’s a dynamic bottom up, top down. And the goal is that those bottom up feelings are not disruptors anymore. They’re experiences without

Lorne Brown:

Disrupting. Can I say we’re reorganizing the nervous system through this process?

Stephen Porges:

Of

Lorne Brown:

Course. And developing resilience through this process.

Stephen Porges:

Right. Because you can say what is not being resilient, it’s disruptive. Disruption of hype, of homeostatic functions are what you would call in your world maybe emotional dysregulation.

Lorne Brown:

Well we are looking for balance. So we’re looking to support the environment of the body to do what it’s meant to do. Yeah. And so as our time is coming to an end today, I want to talk about some resources that may be available to people to help them regulate the nervous system. We’ve talked, I hope to communicate that even though there’s not a lot of data, although Alice Doer’s podcast shows that there is data about filling threat stress, how it affects your fertility and physiology. What can we do to empower and support the individuals that are looking to grow their family? And this whole journey feels like a threat to them if it’s not going to work. Yeah. And we know that if they can feel safe, more safe and opens up the resources for creativity and feeling good, healing and reproduction, can you share some of the resources that you have available that people can look into to help them learn

Stephen Porges:

More? So we wanna kind of reframe the term safe enough and what you want in your work safe enough to have a family. So it means that a type of optimism, a type of growth phase, a type of shared, especially wanting to be shared now everything about being a social mammal is about trust and sharing. So this issue of fertility has a lot to do with significant others in the relationship. So it’s not an individual, it’s a unit that has to create this ambiance of safety. Now in terms of tools, we created Polyvagal Institute. It’s a not-for-profit. And its goal was really to spread polyvagal principles into adjacent areas, not just mental health, but education, medicine, uh, sports coaching. It’s turning out to be a really interesting journey. And you can go, uh, to that website and there are courses that are being offered. Its polyvagalinstitute.org is the website. And there are certain things on my own website, which is stevenporges.com.

Lorne Brown:

Yeah, Google Steven Porges. And you’ll find his website. Yes. And we’ll put it in the show notes.

Stephen Porges:

Yeah. And what I really wanna push is the first readable book that we’ve written. And I wrote this with my son Seth, and it will be out in September. It’s called Our Polyvagal World, how Trauma and Safety Change Us. It’s being published by Norton, but it’s readable and people who have read some of my other stuff may not Well understand what I mean by saying it’s readable. Seth was a journalist and also a movie maker. So he actually has a good voice. It’s, and um, he tested it with his peer group and it was very accessible to them. It’s not a heavy read, it’s an easy read, but it carries all the principles. And now that relates to this really expanding world that we’re in and that we need to really be very respectful of our own bodies. And what I would often say is our evolutionary heritage.

We need to understand the gifts that are embedded in our nervous system, in our DNA and the true gift, the word I use, our gift is a gift of accessibility. It’s kind of an interesting way of conceptualizing a gift, but the fact that we can be safe enough to allow others to come close to us is quite an evolutionary gift. The interesting part of it, as we do that others become safe in our presence. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving. And in the world of fertility, that’s in part what you’re even saying on a metaphor level. You wanna be safe enough to allow a new life to emerge.

Lorne Brown:

Steven, I wanted to share a quick thing before you jump off, if I may. 

Stephen Porges:

Yeah, sure.
Lorne Brown:

Um, you just gave me an understanding of something that’s a phenomena that is understood in the in vitro fertilization world that they’re aware that many individuals or couples women will drop out of an IVF process, not due to financial reasons, but due to the emotional, they call it the emotional stress. And it takes sometimes two to three cycles to get a baby, but they drop out because of how difficult the process is. Yeah. And that makes me think of your, the freeze part, right? Like the dis like, and then when there’s an observation and that like for example, acupuncture helps with anxiety and the IVF process that those that are seen acupuncture’s for example, or other types of alternative where the emotional needs are being met mm-hmm. That they stay in care longer and do the IVF cycles. And so I’m seeing the polyvagal theory I work there.

Stephen Porges:

Yeah, absolutely. They’re the alternative medicine or the integrated medicine, whatever terminology you’re comfortable with or even the functional medicine people understand the importance of the relationship in medical care. Unfortunately medicine is basically a commodity and it’s run by business people. And even for the physicians, it’s not a rewarding profession because it took humanity out of medicine. It’s really tragic, it took away the power of the co-regulatory input of another person to facilitate the body’s own healing.

Lorne Brown:

And my role with this podcast and what I’m seeing with the local clinic I work with is patient-centered care where we’re doing our best to bring humanity back into the process.

Stephen Porges:

This happens to be one of the goals of Palliative Institute and we were working with a few health providers to try to change the, uh, culture of the clinic. Yeah.

Lorne Brown:

Fantastic. I wanna say thank you very much for your time because you are a well sought off person. Thank you for what you share. Thank you for making me feel safe during our interview as well today

Stephen Porges:

nice meeting and thank you for the warm and welcoming comments.

Lorne Brown:

Those, um, the mentioning of the book and those websites are in the show notes. And thank you.

Stephen Porges:

Thank you very much, Lorne. It was a real pleasure to meet you and talk to you.

Speaker:

If you’re looking for support to grow your family contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to Acubalance.ca. That’s Acubalance.ca.

Lorne Brown:

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites Lorne brown.com and acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.