[Music] I will get started this is lovely and it's lovely to be with all of you good good afternoon it's good morning for me but good afternoon to most of you I think so let's let's dive in and let's start with this very first um quote the ticknot Han quote Earth will be safe when we feel in us enough safety and if we're going to really explore today how the nervous system is going to help us feel safe find safety create Pathways of connection so the autonomic nervous system is the platform for our lived experience it really is the heart of our daily living experience excuse me um it's our internal surveillance system that's at work all the time listening to what's happening um in our worlds and it's this lovely um biological resource that we all have inside us and we want to make sure we understand this piece that the nervous system is the common denominator in our human experience and it's organized in basically the same way and then it's shaped individually by our experience so we're going to both understand the broad organization and you're going to get an experience of befriending your own particular patterns and the nervous system is really where our stories begin this this lovely figure on the right the autonomic State then gets fed up to the brain where we create a story so even though we think that our brains are the ones that are reading the way that they're creating our stories what in fact is happening is the nervous system is sending energy and information up the pathways to the brain and then the brain is taking that information and making a story to try and make sense of what it's receiving from the body so co-regulation let's start there so we have these two experiences going on all the time we have a drive to survive and a longing to connect and sometimes they work in concert with each other so that are longing to connect and our drive to survive are helping us move forward and to approach into connection into creating these deep um wonderful relationships that that we navigate with and oftentimes this longing to connect and a drive to survive are operating come into connection with someone but we can't quite do it right instead we end up being anxious or argumentative or running away or disconnecting and just disappearing from the relationship and that's when our drive to survive is getting these cues of danger that say don't connect don't connect those are built in to our nervous systems through our past experiences and then we travel these familiar pathways so you might begin to think you know am I in a moment where Am I Longing to connect in my drive to survive are coming in the same direction or is this experience of my so wanting to reach out to this person and come into connection and yet something stops me and that's your drive to survive so here is a quote Stephen Georges is the developer of polyvagal theory and a dear friend and colleague this is his quote trauma is a chronic disruption of connectedness I think that's a really lovely way to think about trauma it's very simple it's very clear and if we're looking at trauma through the lens of the autonomic nervous system this is the experience in a nutshell chronic disruption of connectedness and our trauma stories are carried in these states of dysregulation our nervous system dysregulation so we're gonna play around with how do we stay in connection and how do we begin to create Pathways of protection where we have Pathways of or how do we create Pathways of connection sorry where we now have Pathways of protection we are in an ongoing autonomic conversation right this conversation is happening every micro moment we are alive and it's happening between us and ourselves between us and others between us and the world around us and between us and spirit So In This Moment your nervous system is in those four streams of conversation your nervous system and my nervous system are beginning to get to know each other we're having an autonomic conversation where your system is looking for cues of safety and danger and my system is sending hopefully accuses safety towards you although it may be sending cues of danger there may be something in my voice in my appearance in my movements even in my environment here and back it's a cue of danger to you so I'm taking a moment just to settle in and really anchor in my ventral and send you a welcome you're looking at you to send you this welcome into this exploration we're going to go on and see if your nervous system receives that so my nervous system is looking for cues of safety and it's interesting to do that when I'm looking at slides and seeing my own um image right and not hearing from you or seeing seeing you so I will look forward to hearing from you when we get to the chat so we are continuously broadcasting and receiving we are always downloading and uploading information and our work is to stay tuned into this conversation so we have to learn how to do that and then learn how to stay tuned in turning toward this autonomic conversation that's going on so when we send cues of safety we also send an invitation to come into connection I love that that image that sculpture you know two two and a whole very connecting when we receive cues of safety we feel an autonomic welcome and we feel safe to move into connection and to come into co-regulation with another being like co-regulation back and forth in ebb and flow being with will be send cues of danger or we will receive an autonomic warning from another nervous system when our nervous system takes in that oh there there's a there's a warning being sent to me our reactivity increases in our adaptive survival responses are reinforced so that drive to survive is reinforced when we receive These Warnings autonomic nervous system warnings I don't have to say anything no words needed for me to send a cue of danger out into the world so here we have this beautiful image of what is the social engagement system and these are five cranial nerves that you see coming together in the brainstem and they control our eyes ears voice face and head movements this is your nervous system this is cranial nerve 10 which is the circuit that's going to the heart in that picture that's connecting with these facial nerves these other cranial nerves that allow us to have eye gaze and listen and our voice to send messages on our face to move our head to move this is the social engagement system I want you to take that in for a moment that beautiful image all lit up this is a a human being who is ready to come into connection is sending user safety and looking out into the world for accused of safety we send messages with our eyes and I'm in the United States where I'm wearing face coverings and face masks has become almost um universally required and it's interesting to see what happens when we wander through the world with a face mask so all this is covered right and yet here is where our nervous system is looking for those cues it's around the eyes so yes the mouth is is important to have it gives other signs but if you look at someone behind a mask you can see the smile behind the mask or you can see that the warning behind the mask because it's coming from the eyes so I want you just to look for a moment just take in the eyes and just notice where your nervous system takes you does it feel invited to connect or a warning of danger let me go back a minute to that one and just leave us there for a moment and just notice what did happen in your nervous system when you saw the eyes from other humans from other mammals notice that and your brain likely tried to make up a story pretty quickly but your nervous system was really sending information to your brain so then we have our ears this other part of our social engagement system I love this quote the ear collects the spiraling energy from the cosmos I love that spiral with all those frequencies that make it up this is what our ears are doing all the time they're listening for sounds of welcome or cues of danger right I'm going to talk just for a moment about SSP which is Steve gorgeous's Musical auditory intervention it's five hours of music that has been specifically remastered to calm your nervous system and enhance this beautiful social engagement system that that we just saw in action because listening is dependent on the nervous system depended on our state and it influences whether we are feeling safe to connect or in a survival spots where we need to disconnect and listening provides opportunities to exercise these neural circuits the neural circuits that support both our physical and our Mental Health because our nervous system is the foundation of both of those both are physical and our emotional well-being is based in our nervous systems ability to be flexible so the music in this SSP efficiently conveys cues of safety so if you're interested in learning more you can go to the um their their website and if you decide you want to take the training as a code for you but let's move on to prosody which is the music of The Voice right the music of The Voice the patterns of Rhythm and sound frequency duration intensity is what your nervous system is listening to and it's going to listen to my toner voice the intonation of my voice before it takes in any information that I might be sharing because what my porosity is doing is my porosity is sending a message about what is underneath the words so it reveals the underlying intent of my words so again I'm just going to see is my voice welcoming you into connection so what we know about voice is that a monitor is an automatic autonomic you of danger so I'm going to talk in a monotone voice just for a moment and let you see where your nervous system goes and just know what it's what happened was there a disconnect was there a confusion in the nervous system where it happened inside your system I know what happens inside mine when I speak in a monotone voice and it feels very restrictive very confining and I begin to disconnect from what I'm doing so interesting for you to notice what happens right and then there's there's also there are tones of voice that that can just feel um disregulating to our nervous system it can have a familiar frequency to something in our past and we cannot understand quite why we are disconnecting but it can be because of that familiarity of the nervous system from something in the past so that's porosity and I love the research around what we call vocal bursts these are the non-language sounds that we use to communicate oh right you you get the you know what I'm trying to say by by a local burst right and the research tells us that these non-language ways of of connecting are understood across cultures and across species right we talked to our cats dogs horses cows in this way right and that they're understood with a high degree of accuracy so when we don't know what to say we can use a vocal burst because sometimes words are difficult to find the right word is difficult to find I know as a as a clinician I sometimes struggle to find I wonder what the right word to say I know what I want to say I need to find the right word to communicate that to my client and I found a vocal burst does that beautifully the same is true of my you know my friends the people I live with and Love sometimes the vocal bars is just the right thing and you will notice now that you know what vocal bursts are that as you go through the world we use them all the time so begin to tune into those vocal bursts and finally we get to head movement and just you know notice these interesting creatures who are nodding turning their heads tilting their heads so a straight unmoving head is an autonomic view of danger so if I taught the entire webinar today this way without ever moving my head I'm going to do that for a moment and just notice what happens where is your nervous system taking you as I speak to you with still atrocity but I'm not moving my head and then I'm going to invite you for a minute to try that on for size so try speaking to me even though I can't hear you talk to me for a moment without moving your head and just notice what happens inside and while you're playing with an unmoving head now speak to me also in a monitored voice so monotone voice and I'm moving ahead and notice what happens and then keep your head straight don't move your head but add porosity back to your voice and notice what happens and then finally let your head move in whatever way it wants usually there's a gentle tilt that wants to come in sometimes it's a back and forth to shake it out but just notice it happens now when you have porosity and your head is moving right I'm all right side tilter you know you can kind of notice for yourself you can go back to an unmoving ad and invite your head to move and I'll do it do I tilt left do I tilt right no research on that I'm just always curious about it to see where people where people go right or left and some people say oh I can go either so here are the elements of the social engagement system that are at work in every moment sending cues out into the world our eyes our voice our head turning until this is the way we send a message out into the world whether we're saying oh I'm available and ready to connect I'm a safe presence in the world or stay away I'm warning you I am not in a place where I can connect right now so I'm sending that I'm also looking so that was co-regulation where I start the first organizing principle and before we move to neuroception I just wanted to say that co-regulation is where we begin when we enter the world right we need another being to help us we don't survive without being connected to another human being our longing when we come into the world is to be met by a welcoming regulated energy that the person whose arms we are in is is welcoming he's sending those cues of safety right that doesn't happen for all of us right and and so if we don't land in a system with a person or people who we can co-regulate with who send those cues of Welcome will predictably show up for us in that way then we have to learn to self-regulate before we really should be doing that right the trajectory as we co-regulate and then we suffer from our place of safety so if you think about your own world you think you know were there people who I safely could co-regulate but who I learned how to send and receive cues of safety or was my world you know filled with people who sent warning or were there some of each I mean most of us have some of each and again we don't need to be in that co-regulating relationship all of the time you know the research tells us that about 30 of the time we're in that place of feeling that that the welcome all the time right it's that the other 70 of the time um we are with someone who recognizes there's been a misattunement what we call a rupture and they come and they make a repair they reconnect they then send accused of safety they send an autonomic welcome so what we know is that without a ventral vagal anchor you know without a system that can't use the regulating influence of our eventual Vegas we have health challenges our relationships are in distress and we suffer in our daily experience it's what I'd like to do is we're getting ready to end this is to the central Bagel anchor practice so we're going to identify the predictable who what where and when of your ventral system okay so again if you have paper and income right on it it's a local way to begin to to identify and remember your anchors let's start with who so who is a person in your world who when you are around them or when you think about them your mental system feels welcome you feel that welcome you feel safe to engage who is a person and again for many people from people have been dangerous then who may be a cat in the beginning as a clinician I take the responsibility to show up as a home for my client and I am very willing to be there who as we're creating more regulation so find a who for your system and after we get good at who the who can be um a spiritual being the whom can be someone who was alive is no longer alive but still brings you that sense of welcome can be someone who you don't know but also brings you that welcome but as a first starting place I'd like you to find a who that is a living breathing nervous system that you can connect with so then we'll move to what what is some simple practice you can do some simple thing you can do that when you do it predictably gives you a micro moment of control predictably feels safe and welcoming and again this is not a large practice this is a tiny moment so for me um you know I live in Maine and my back windows look out onto Woods and so a what for me is to Simply look out the back window and as I do it right now we have a beautiful um it's morning beautiful blue sky and seeing the tops of trees and the trees are blowing because it's windy out so that's a that's a a what for me a ventral vagal anchor what for me so what is something you do short little something you can predictably do so then let's move to where where is a place in your world where when you are there or remember being there if you can no longer go there at the moment brings you that ventral vagal sense of oh yes safe welcome where is a place again I live near the near the ocean and so my wear is by the ocean and up until recently I've been unable to go to nowhere because my my ocean my particular stretch of ocean has been closed to to people so but now I can go back to my where my nervous system is very happy about that so where is aware for you and then finally a win when is the time time of day day of the week time of year time when something happens when you feel that predictable tinkering I tell people I'm a morning person an early morning person so that that is a win for me that getting up first thing before the world wakes up and I'm by myself in this moment it's eventual when an anchoring win for me so it can if you found one who won what one where that's a great starting point this is what I do with my clients we do this together and we find one of each and then the creative practice of turning to these when you notice that you're either not anchored in ventral or you're moving out of ventral so that comes back to the question where are you on your map and if oh I'm not in ventral I can grab an anchor to help me return there or if I notice oh I'm I'm on the verge of leaving ventral grab an anchor okay we can also use these to deepen our capacity to be in control right I can I can bring my who to mind and I can just simply be with that experience for a bit of time and deepens that connection so ventral vagal anchors are a lovely way to start to Resource your nervous system right to help you have more capacity to come back to ventral because remember we are not um unhealthy either physically or psychologically unhealthy simply because we leave ventral it's when we leave and get stuck in one of those adaptive survival states that we suffer so flexibility of being able to come back of finding our way back home to ventral is really makes for a resilient system so flexible system is a resilient system or resilience system is one that's filled with flexibility so these anchors are a way for us to do that thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed the show if you'd like to hear the full version you can do so with the weekend University premium membership this gets you access to your master library of over 230 talks and interviews with the words leading psychologist professors and authors as well as transcripts CPD certification quizzes and unlimited access to the recordings from our annual conferences for more information please go to the weekenduniversity.com forward slash membership