Conversations on Healing

Welcome to the Conversations on Healing podcast, where host Shay Beider speaks with renowned healthcare leaders, practitioners, and thought leaders to explore the world of wellness, the incredible powers of self-care, and what it truly means to heal today. Join us on this journey to become more whole, healed, and connected.

Shay Beider Welcome to this episode of The Conversations on Healing podcast. I am excited to introduce the remarkable Deb Dana, a leading expert in the field of nervous system regulation and a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute. Deb is known for her groundbreaking work, partnering with Dr. Steven Porges to translate the complexities of polyvagal theory into practical, real-life applications that enrich our understanding of healing and resilience. In today’s discussion, we’ll explore the essence of polyvagal theory and how it connects to the somatic practices that Deb teaches. She will clarify the three organizing principles of our nervous system- neuroception, hierarchy, and co-regulation- and explain why understanding these concepts is really crucial for our well-being. Deb has developed a clinical training series titled, “The Science of Feeling Safe Enough to Fall In Love With Life and Take the Risks of Living,” and she’ll share the inspiration behind this work.

We’ll delve into her belief that our bodies hold the key to healing, even for those who feel broken or have been told that healing isn’t possible. We discuss her recently released ‘Glimmers Journal,” which encourages reflection on moments of joy, safety, and connection, highlighting the significance of the glimmer practice in fostering and deepening resilience. Drawing from her personal experiences, including the challenges she has faced, Deb shares how these insights have informed her understanding of nervous system work. She believes that teaching individuals to regulate their nervous systems is a very practical approach to addressing some of the major challenges that we face, even globally, in today’s world. And we’ll explore this relationship between emotional intelligence and a ventral vagal state. And the importance of viewing people, in some cases, as being biologically unable rather than unwilling to change- this perspective is a real shift in how we interpret the behaviors and actions of others. So let’s dive into this enlightening conversation with Deb Dana and discover how understanding our nervous systems can open whole new pathways to healing and connection.

Alright, well Deb, it is a true pleasure to have you on the Conversations on Healing podcast. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Deb Dana I’m really happy to be here and see where our conversation takes us.

Shay Yes, so I really, in my heart, feel that the work we’re going to talk about today is just so important and so fundamental to having a body and living in that body in, hopefully, a happy and healthy way. So a lot of what we’re going to be discussing is our nervous system, and maybe one day in the future, every child in school will learn not just the intellectual side of what a nervous system is, but actually the somatic- like the body-based- side of how you actually can work with that nervous system. So, as we sort of initiator begin our conversation today, I want to give you just a little bit of an opportunity to frame for our listeners some of the foundational 101 of what this nervous system is that we have inside of each one of us- that we have the capacity to create an effect change- and then we’ll use that kind of as the foundation or the basis for our conversation as we continue into ways that you can learn how to feel more safe and well inside of your own body on a regular basis. So I’ll open it to you to do kind of a little bit of an introduction that you think would be foundational for our dialogue today.

Deb Sure. So if we look at the autonomic nervous system- and my way of looking is through polyvagal theory development- my dear friend and brilliant human, Steve Porges. So if we think about the nervous system through that, we think of three principles that really help us understand how the nervous system works, which helps us understand how we’re human. So the first that I want to just briefly talk about is this word called neuroception. And neuroception is the nervous system’s way of listening. So it’s different from our brain’s way of listening. It doesn’t take in the information through a top-down process. It takes in the information first in the body, and then that information gets fed to the brain, where the brain makes up a story. We enter into that story, and we believe the story to be true. We believe that to be our reality, when in fact what has happened is the nervous system has taken in cues of safety, cues of danger, and made a decision about how safe you are in this moment.

And all of that energy has come to your brain, and then your brain makes up a story to try and make sense of that. So Neuroception uses three pathways that are always sending information, and I think it’s fun to just sort of dip into those as we begin to get to know our nervous system. The first is really that embodied pathway. So the nervous system is checking what’s going on inside this body that we’re inhabiting- a hard pathway for many of us to connect with right- because we often, you know, have disconnected from our bodies, for good reason. We live from our neck up, many of us. Many trauma survivors live neck up because the body’s a dangerous place. But the nervous system is always listening inside this body- listening to your heart, to your lungs, to your digestion, to your viscera, to your muscles- for the aches and pains or the ease and warmth. And it makes an assessment, does it feel safe or unsafe?

So that’s the first pathway- the inside pathway. But then there’s an outside pathway, though. The nervous system is also listening into the world around us. So in this moment, your nervous system and mind is doing the inside work, but it’s also doing the outside. It’s like taking in what’s in our space; I’m taking in what’s in your space, because that’s another outside pathway. And our nervous systems are feeling either welcomed in the space or as if there’s a warning in the space. So that’s going on all the time. Every place we move through, the nervous system is judging: safe or not safe. And the third pathway is this lovely pathway of between. It is that relational pathway- but relational, not brain to brain, but relational body to body, nervous system to nervous system. So my system is taking in cues from your system. It sees your face, it sees a smile, it feels you leaning in, it feels you sending energy that feels safe and welcoming.

Mine is, I hope, sending that to you as well, so that we enter into this connection that’s based on feeling welcomed by the other nervous system. So that’s neuroception, and if you think about it, that’s a lot of information coming in at once, right? So we often don’t pay attention to it. We have to learn how to turn toward and pay attention to that information, because whether we’re paying attention or not, that information is being fed to our brain, and the brain is then making up a story- sometimes a pretty fantabulous story. I know my brain can make up some pretty crazy stories when it gets information that feels like there’s a bit of danger around. So, that’s neuroception, and neuroception moves us somewhere on the hierarchy, which is the second organizing principle. The nervous system has three basic states to choose from, and then it has a lot of blend.

So we have a little of this, a little of that. But if we think about the three basic states, we have ventral- safety and connection. And I know that’s a scientific word, so I’ll put it out there: ventral. We can call it the place of okayness, of safety, connection, welcome, regulation, but its scientific word is ventral. And that’s the place that I think we humans truly long to be. And I believe our nervous system knows how to bring us to that place. And that sustaining belief really helps me in my own personal life as I go through the day, and helps me in my work with others- to help them sort of move into that place of trust that the nervous system knows what it’s doing. When it’s taking you into this place of safety and connection, you can trust that it’s okay, because it also takes you to survival states, which are the other two states that the nervous system can choose from.

So when the neuroception is one of feeling a bit uneasy- a bit, a flavor of danger, perhaps- comes, the nervous system takes you first to, it’s called sympathetic- it’s fight and flight. And most of us know fight and flight, right, that anxious, angry place where I feel overwhelmed, flooded with energy, too much going on, chaotic, can’t think, hypervigilant- all of that drivenness that comes from that sympathetic survival state. And again, the nervous system takes us there because it has made an assessment through neuroception that we are in danger. And this behavioral response, this body response, will keep us safe, right? So again, that the nervous system’s not saying good, bad- not judging moral meaning or motivation- it’s simply enacting a response to keep us safe, to help us survive. So we want to remember that as we go through our thinking about the nervous system: it’s simply taking you where it thinks you need to be to survive.

And sometimes that feels pretty crazy. Sometimes I’m thinking, “I don’t know how I got here, I don’t know why I am here,” but if I turn toward my nervous system, I know my nervous system has a thought about that. My nervous system thinks this is where I need to be. So then finally, the third survival strategy is the total opposite of sympathetic. Instead of being flooded with chaotic, disorganized energy, it all drains from my system. And now I’m in a place of feeling collapsed, of feeling I have no energy, I’m just going through the- or perhaps I’m not even moving. And the thoughts that come are like, “It’s hopeless, give up, Why bother?” And even when I talk about it, I feel it sort of stirring in my system, because it’s a state that pulls very quickly. So again, nervous system makes a judgment: if you’re in danger, take you to sympathetic. If that doesn’t help, it’s then going to take you to dorsal, right? Because it’s the path of last resort. It says: Go here. Disappear. Become immobilized. Become invisible.” And maybe you’ll survive to come back to life another day. So again, that’s the nervous system. That’s the neuroception and hierarchy. The third organizing principle that’s really important to recognize is co-regulation.

And I think we live in a world that often prioritizes self-regulation and independence- “do it yourself, figure it out.” The nervous system would say, “Please, can I connect with another safe human?” Right. Because that is what helps me feel safe, helps me feel alive and thrive. So that organizing principle is one we want to be keeping in mind all the time. And the nervous system, again, will lead you toward a nervous system that feels safe. Right? And so if you ever have had that sort of moment when you met somebody and you thought, “Oh, I’d like to get to know that person more,” that’s your neuroception sort of feeling, “Ooh, this person feels safe,” and your co-regulating capacity saying, “Yes, I could co-regulate with this person.” On the other hand, you might’ve had a moment when you felt you met somebody and thought, “No, thank you.” Again, that’s your neuroception. Feeling, intuitively, there’s something that feels a bit unsafe- “I’m going to walk out the other direction.” So this is the brilliance of your nervous system, right? Through these three basic organizing principles, which are just always bringing information, always working.

Shay Yeah. And I’ve heard you share that you feel like each one of us should really have a basic understanding of how our nervous system works, and bring that perception to neuroception so that we understand that whole process. And can you explain- like why do you think that’s so foundational and important for all of us?

Deb Sure. Yeah, and I’m glad you named that, because I do. It is a passion of mine that I truly believe we need to understand our nervous system, because then our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors make sense when I look at them through the lens of the nervous system rather than through a cognitive trying to make meaning. Through the lens of the nervous system, it makes perfect sense why I have gone into anxiety- because there are a lot of cues of danger coming at me. And if I know where I am- I’m in sympathetic anxiety, in that flight stage- then I know, “Ooh, what do I need to do?” So we know where we are, then we can pick a resource that helps us resolve the issue. And I also think when we look through the lens of the nervous system, it helps me look at other people differently.

Instead of making a story about their motivation or making a story about their willingness to engage or not, or their willingness to do something, it’s not that- it’s their ability. It’s not that I’m unwilling; I’m biologically unable because unless I’m in that state of ventral safety and regulation, I can’t be compassionate. I can’t be curious. I can’t co-regulate with you. I can’t offer a sense of welcome and safety- not because I don’t want to, because most of the time when we’re dysregulated, we so long to be out of the state of dysregulation. So it’s not that I don’t want to, but my biology has shut the door to those capacities because it’s now taken me to survival. So it’s a very different sense of moving through the world whether I’m in safety or survival. And I think if we could understand that first with our own system and then looking at another system that way, we’d move out of blaming, shaming, judging ourselves certainly, and others, and we could move into some curiosity.

I always reach for curiosity first. Compassion is also a quality of that state of regulation, but for me, curiosity comes first. It’s the easiest reach. I can be curious- I wonder what’s happening for that person in their nervous system- then I can reach for compassion. I think for me, and perhaps for many, self-compassion is the hardest to reach for, but self-compassion as well is anchored in that autonomic state of regulation. So if I’m not in regulation, I can’t be any of those things. I am not able to be curious, to be compassionate, to be self-compassionate.

Shay Right? And it’s interesting that these ideas that we’re talking about, and this idea of polyvagal theory specifically, is actually relatively new in our understanding. I think it was 1994 when Dr. Porges first presented that at a conference and then published a paper subsequently, and you have been credited as being the leading translator of that scientific work of polyvagal theory and really moving it into an embodied practice so that people can it as a sustainable skill, where it’s something you can work with on a day-to-day basis. I’m interested- as you’ve shifted your work into the somatic practices- I understand now you’ve developed a training series, I think it’s called, “The Science of Feeling Safe Enough to Fall in Love with Life and Take the Risks of Living”. And I know you do a number of different teachings and you’ve written books, and there’s a whole variety of offerings that people can learn about on your site and through your books and trainings. I’m curious: what for you has been the desire and the passion to take this incredible new look at the science behind how our nervous system actually functions and then turn it into something that’s very practical within our own physical selves?

Deb Yeah, it’s interesting because I’ve always been curious about the biology of suffering in the biology of healing. And so I did a lot of work before I discovered Steve’s work- understanding the brain and having opportunities to actually be in a histology lab where they were sectioning human brains, which was an amazing experience for me. It just touched me in a way to hold a human brain in that way. I thought, “Oh, it’s quite amazing how we are put together and how we can shape ourselves in new ways.” Then I read Steve’s first book and discovered the biology of the nervous system, and I thought, this is where I need to go now, because the nervous system is again giving information to the brain. So it’s this from body to brain experience, and I thought, I need to know more about that. And so I read his work, and I’m one of those people who want to take what I’m learning and make it accessible for my work with clients. And so that’s what drove me to think: So this hierarchy- hierarchy is big in understanding the nervous system. We move through these states in a specific order, really helpful to understand- but how do I bring it to clients so that they can work with that? And that became my ladder. So it was little things: How do I take Steve’s brilliant work, the science of how we are human and bring it into everyday use- the clinical application and then the everyday curious human use? Because again, we all have a nervous system

And I truly do believe we should all understand how it works, because every moment that we are alive- breath we take- the nervous system is being shaped. And that, I think, was my work was with complex trauma survivors and how do we bring the hope to this work? And so the hope lives in the fact that the nervous system is shaped by your experience. So how you came into the world and have lived until this moment is powerfully shaped your system, and your system is being shaped every single moment going forward. So we’re not stuck in the adaptive survival patterns that have become habitual for us. The nervous system can be reshaped and shaped towards connection. So that belief, again, there are a lot of beliefs that I carry about the nervous system that inform my work- that belief that I could bring to my clients.

The science tells us your system can be reshaped, and in fact is being reshaped every moment- that held hope for my clients. And when I began to see them being able to map where they are on my ladder map and have that make a difference- that even just knowing I am in sympathetic survival right now and I can put myself here and I know all of the qualities that happen for me here- that’s a powerful intervention in and of itself. So this mapping and tracking that are all the basic parts of befriending your nervous system. Even if we did nothing else but learned how to track the nervous system and know where I am, and then have a resource to reach for to help me come back to regulation, many clients would do that work and they would be living a different life. They could navigate the world differently.

And oftentimes we never even touched their trauma. We never processed the trauma because as their system became more regulated, it all began to organically shift on its own. I think that’s amazing. As we become more regulated, the story changes without us having to go and listen to it explicitly. We do do that as well. I’m not saying we don’t do that, but for many of my clients becoming more regulated was something that they had longed for all their life. And when they found their way to it, the whole world changed for them. So I love experimenting with things, and you’d probably laugh if you saw- in the beginning, my colleagues were so wonderful- I was part of a small group and I would come in and say, “Would you try this worksheet? Would you try this practice? Would you see if this works?” And most of them were able to work and we could tweak them and we could make them really useful.

Some of ’em, they’d look at me and go, “Oh, that is never going to work.” And you’re right, we threw that one right out. So there are a lot of things that never made it out of my sort of imagination. And then other things that have become- around the world, people are mapping their system in certain ways, which I love. I love that people are looking at: How do I get to know my nervous system? I think that it’s pretty- my heart feels full every time somebody emails me and said, “Oh, I mapped my system where I discovered this about when I was in a moment.”

Shay And also just this idea that a lot of information we tend to often think, particularly maybe in Western culture, that everything is top down, goes from the brain, it tells the body what to do. And actually that’s not truly how it goes. That roughly 80% of the information goes from the body up to the brain, only about 20% the other direction. And so that is why neuroception is so powerful, right? Because, because we’re constantly scanning, then that scanning is providing information that’s going up, like you said, to frame the story, to create the picture that we’re perceiving about the world in which we live.

Deb And if you think if you’re living in a brain-centric life, if you’re living neck up and you rarely get to dip into what’s happening in the body, think of all the information, you’re missing so much information that is available to us that is being fed up. And when we can tune into that, it gives us a wealth of information that we can then use to make informed choices in a different way. The nervous system is always trying to tell us something. That’s what I discovered early on: a symptom, a pain, a behavior, a feeling is all the nervous system trying to communicate something to us. So when we get to turn toward and say, what is the nervous system needing me to know in this moment? When I can safely turn toward, then there’s a ton of information that helps me decide: What’s the next thing I need to do? What is my nervous system needing in this moment?

And if I can offer it what it needs, then I’m going to experience more physical and psychological wellbeing because the nervous system does both- not just our psychological wellbeing, but our physical wellbeing as well. So it’s a pretty amazing system that, until Steve really brought polyvagal theory into the clinical world in the nineties, had been a missing part of how we were doing our work. We didn’t know, we didn’t understand that the nervous system was so important or that there were these three states. What he brought really was this understanding of the state of collapse, the state of disconnect before his defining of the hierarchy. We didn’t understand that. So it’s been such a profound change in the way we do clinical work, but also, I think in the way we can understand our own experience.

Shay Right, absolutely. And I feel like, as you shared previously in our conversation, because through your years of clinical work with a lot of people who had complex trauma, there can be that feeling of brokenness or hopelessness. And what you recognized is that this is actually very hopeful. This is a skillset and a tool that, as you said, yes, you had prior information that was developed and imprinted in the nervous system, and you’re still alive here today with an opportunity to receive all sorts of new information and to basically rewire the way that you’re feeling on a day-to-day. I feel like that has so much potency and potentiality what we’ve done. So interestingly, in our work through Integrative Touch, I developed a therapeutic approach to be able to work with people who’ve experienced, in particular, complex trauma. And so much of the foundation of what we do is built upon this work.

And in fact, the essential nature of it is a co-regulatory process. So it’s done as a group therapeutic process because then we have multiple nervous systems, and we’ll usually have three or four people working with one kind of client. And those three or four people are doing everything that they know how to do to get their nervous system in a highly regulated state, so that if when we’re working with that client, they move into a place of a deep trauma- or even on the fringes of that, even just in the edges of what it is that they most want to heal in their life right now- we have this coherent whole or system that’s helping, and supporting, and framing them so that there’s not a re-patterning or a re-traumatization, but instead a capacity to integrate that experience very differently and rewire it in the now, which is really so essential. And so it’s fascinating how these principles that you teach and learn, I think they’re percolating out in a lot of directions. That’s just one example of a therapy that we’re doing where we’ve a lot of that conceptually and then practically, but I think that’s happening all over as this work continues to spread.

Deb And I think intuitively, clinicians have been doing this work and understanding what a client needs. And so polyvagal theory allows us to put the science underneath what many people have been intuitively doing anyway, because you are always working with a nervous system, always, no matter what model of therapy you’re using. You’re working with a nervous system- both your own, importantly your own- and the other persons, or multiple persons if you’re working with a group. And so I discovered that clinicians were so grateful to understand why what they’re doing something is working, because if you understand the principle underneath it, you can deepen it. And the same is true for when you get stuck. When you get stuck, the nervous system is simply telling you it’s feeling unsafe in the moment. So we then can look at the cues of safety and danger and begin to rebalance that equation.

And then when there’s enough safety in the system- either inside, outside, between- when there’s enough safety, then therapy starts again. So it’s been a lovely way to integrate into other models of therapy. So it’s not in competition with, it’s sort of a platform for. And again, I love that about this way of working, that you understand the principles as you have done. You bring them into the work in the ways that you want to do, right? It’s sort of a, I don’t even know what I would call it, but it’s more of a- Steve and I both want people to understand these organizing principles and then go create. That was his gift to me when we met. And I said, I’ve been playing around with this ladder and these maps, and he said, oh, it’s wonderful. Go do. And so that’s how I learned that polyvagal theory can be practiced out there in the world- that I then teach people the organizing principles and they say, well, how about this? I say, great, go do. You’re staying true to the principles. Please go create. And you have done that. You have created your approach. There are so many people using a polyvagal guided approach, which I know makes Steve very happy and brings me joy. Yeah.

Shay And at this point in your career, you’ve written a number of books, which is great. For those that are listening that want to learn more about all of this, there’s plenty that is available to them. And you also recently released a glimmers journal that I got a wonderful copy of that, which it’s so fun, and it provides these different opportunities to reflect- so on moments that bring you joy, safety, and connection. And so there’s a practice associated with it, this glimmers practice, and I thought that might be a fun practice to share with some of our listeners.

Deb Sure, sure. And I do want to say, because glimmers are a perfect example of the way how the nervous system is shaped. It’s shaped in small moments. We do have those before and after big moments when we feel something huge has shifted, those do happen. And I love them when they happen. We also more often have tiny moments that begin to add up, and the tiny moments add up. And a month from now I might think, oh, I’m less apt to be anxious in this situation because the nervous system has taken those tiny moments and is moving in small ways. So we want to be tracking those. I know when I want to make a change, I am here and I know the change is here. And I say, well, I want to get here. Well, in order to get there, I have to do this.

And so patience and persistence are two of the qualities that help us with the nervous system. With doing this kind of work and helping clients, I think understand that they didn’t need great big, long moments of feeling regulated in order for change to happen, which is reassuring to trauma survivors in particular, but to most of us humans in general, that small moments have a powerfully profound effect in our nervous system. So glimmers became sort of my word for those tiny moments of okayness, tiny moments of joy or hope or goodness. And glimmers started long ago with glimmers with my clients because we focused on the triggers. That’s what we do in therapy. We focus on what’s dysregulating you. And yet, the nervous system very clearly shows us that yes, we have to work to reduce or resolve what’s dysregulating, but we also have to actively experience moments of regulation to fully experience wellbeing.

So I decided on the word glimmers because it feels like what it is. It feels like a tiny spark of okayness. So the word fit, and my clients liked the word. They thought, ooh, I like that. So I thought, okay, it’s going to be glimmers. So that has led me all those years ago to this moment in time where I wrote the Glimmers Journal, because glimmers have been important in my life. They have helped me survive many times that felt very dark. And so knowing that I could just see a glimmer and that it would land in my system and it would give me that momentary reminder that ventral, that regulation and safety is possible, it was really important to me. And so I thought, I’m going to see what are the categories, the general categories, how could I invite other people to come into this place of finding glimmers?

So the glimmer journal came into being, and the beginning of it is a very simple see, stop, appreciate practice. So let’s try that. And so what are the cues that show you, you have bumped into a moment of okayness? Sometimes we feel it in our body. So how does your body show you that you’re in a moment of safety, of connection? Our brain can also send us a message. We can have a thought, we can have a movement that happens. So if everybody just stops for a moment and think, how do I recognize that? What happens? I often find myself putting my hand on my heart and stopping for just a moment- something stops me. What happens for you? How do you know?

Shay Yeah, I often feel it in my chest. And I was thinking, I had a good clear example of this last night. I was out for a walk and I looked up at the sky, and somehow the colors were just magnificent. And I had that beautiful realization of: I will never see this exact sky ever again, just as it is right now- perfectly so in this moment. And I felt it in my heart. I felt it in- really, my whole body actually kind of almost embraced the nowness of that, how beautifully profound it is that we get to live in a world where we get to see things like that from time to time. It’s amazing.

Deb So you naturally do the second step, which is stop and just be with it for a few seconds. And sometimes it is just a few seconds. I heard a bird outside my window this morning and I stopped, and it really was- it just sang for a few seconds. That was enough. So you stop to really appreciate that third step: see, stop, appreciate,. Appreciate what was happening in front of you. And it really only takes- you probably could have stayed for a while because you were in the midst of this gorgeous sky. It’s wonderful. And you could have stopped for five, ten seconds and wandered on, and it still would have been- it landed in your nervous system. And that’s the joy of a glimmer, it’s something so simple: my bird singing, your sky looking amazing, somebody’s seeing a smile as they walk down the street.

It’s simple little things that truly are all around us, but we don’t mark them because we’re not looking for them. So we see, we stop, appreciate. And appreciation includes, I think, tracking our glimmers. You just shared- you did the next step. You shared, you shared with all of us your glimmer, and I could feel my system responding to your glimmer. It landed for me as a glimmer experience as well. Now, there may be people who listen, and my bird singing and your sky are not a glimmer for them, because not everybody’s glimmer is everybody else’s glimmer. And that’s perfectly okay. We want to say that. And when we’re working with a nervous system, we want to really say, there’s no right or wrong here. There’s just the way your nervous system is taking in and responding. So for you to share- it landed in me as a glimmer as well.

I loved that. So that was share. And the Glimmer Journal invites people to find a glimmer buddy or create a glimmer group because it’s that co-regulating organizing principle that we’re trying to- how can we bring it in and find a way to make it not so difficult? Just sharing a glimmer once a day, once a week, whatever. So that’s that share piece. The Glimmer journal is a way to really remember, because it has categories and places to write. And what I discovered in the remember was my clients would jot down their glimmers and bring ’em to me the next week. And it was important for them to have a list because they could go back and say, “Oh yeah, I find glimmers walking in this place often. I think I’ll go see.” So we’re prompted to figure out: where do I see glimmers? What are the categories that are easiest for me, and where do I find them?

Because once you find a glimmer, your brain and body want to find more, right? That’s the joy of it. It is not hard to reach for the next glimmer because both your nervous system and your brain are allied with you now to say, “Ooh, let’s look for a glimmer.” Which then takes us to the last step of the full glimmer practice, which is intent and writing an intention. I think a lot of us write intentions often, but it’s our brain that writes the intention. And if you don’t include your nervous system in that intention-writing process, it’s going to be hard to follow through. So in the beginning, my clients would say, “I’m going to find five glimmers every day because they’re so fun to look for.” And I’d say, “Let me just say that back to you. See how your nervous system responds.” I’d say, you are going to look for five glimmers every day.

And they’d look at me and they’d say, “Oh, I don’t think I can do that.” I’d say, “No, you probably can’t. I think your brain wrote that intention. Your nervous system has a different thought. So let’s invite your brain and your nervous system to work together and write an intention.” And often they would come up with one that, I’m going to see if there’s a glimmer every day. It’s more of an open invitation. And again, language is so important with a nervous system. The nervous system wants to feel invited into a moment, not that it’s demanded, like find five, look and see if one appears. There has to be a spaciousness to it, because if it feels like it’s an expectation, it will move you out of regulation into a bit of survival response. The nervous system wants choice. So we want to write an intention that brings choice into the equation. So you can spend time playing with words. Are words something you love? Do you love playing with words?

Shay Absolutely.

Deb Yeah. So you’ll have fun playing with writing an intention, right? Yeah.

Shay And I was also just noticing how it’s so interesting how different bodies of work kind of line up with one another. So there were two that I was thinking of in particular in relationship to your work. One is I recently had interviewed Dr. Richard Boyatzis, who wrote a book- his most recent book is on the “The Science of Change”- and he essentially looked at the science across an 80 year period of how we actually change. What does the research show us? And what’s fascinating is so much of it is getting your brain and your body into a certain state, and he literally talks about getting into a parasympathetic state, because when we’re in that parasympathetic state, we’re more open to change. We feel safe, we feel like much more able to engage and connect and interact and explore. And so suddenly our system has more capacity to explore the possibilities of change.

So that’s one whole piece that I think is so interesting in relationship to your work-how these things tie together. The other is I recently also had an opportunity to interview Mark Brackett on the show. He’s at the Yale Center, where they look at emotional intelligence, and they help and have a whole curriculum in school systems. I think they’ve gotten that out to more than 5 million children. And I feel like there is such a deep parallel between the work that you’re doing and the work of emotional intelligence, because when you think of that ventral vagal state- social engagement, capacity to feel safe enough to communicate, interact, exchange, co-regulate, all of that- and even to accurately read the cues, because when you’re in fight or flight, you can miss perceive certain things. Or just because you’re more triggered, could feel scarier than maybe it actually is. And so the capacity to help to teach young people, for example, kids, how you get your body into that ventral vagal state- and then that can actually, I would to say, enhance your capacity to be an emotionally intelligent human. And so it seems like they’re so compatible and so instinctively, I want to introduce you to Mark, and hopefully we can set that up in a separate dialogue because I truly see how the curriculum could come together, and there could be a unifying principle there

Deb That would be great, because I do think we’re speaking the same language, but we’re doing it a bit differently. We’re all going in the same direction. And when you talked about the first person and change, and then how being in ventral enhances our capacity for change, I would even go a step further and say, when we move into survival, the system’s close to change. We can no longer change. We are now stuck in a survival strategy that does not allow change to happen. So it’s a fascinating experience to feel myself moving out of that place of anger or anxiety back into a little regulation, and all of a sudden, possibilities emerge. Right?

Shay And that also- so Dr. Boyatzis work, the doctor who’s looking at the science of change- the other piece that he said that so correlates with your work is that they looked at goal setting: “Okay, I want to change. I’m going to set these goals.” Actually, doesn’t work well at all. And it’s very much for the reason that you were just describing previously- that when there’s that pressure or that sense of, “I have to”, the nervous system starts to shift into more, “Wait, I’m not totally safe. This might not be… there’s pressure. I’m being forced.” Whereas what he found- it so correlates with what you are describing- is that instead of kind of a concrete, hard-and-fast goal, if you open to a visioning process, which is much more broad, much more open-ended, much kind of in a larger, freer framework, that gets you into a different part of your brain where you are actually much more able to shift. And it makes so much sense- in that state of ventral vagal, where there’s more possibility, there’s more hope, there’s more capacity.

Deb And when I’m in ventral, my prefrontal cortex is working beautifully. And when I leave ventral and move into survival strategy, my prefrontal goes into hypoactive mode. So even my cortex has said, “Oh, I’m not going there. I can’t do that.” So yeah, all of it makes so much sense as to why- to go back to an earlier question- why is it important for people to understand their nervous system? Because then they can understand their life differently. And if I know that I have to find a moment of ventral, a drop or two of ventral, in order to be able to do this next thing, then I can find the resources that help me. And my nervous system- my nervous system loves music. So I often will turn on music. It loves nature. Many nervous systems love music, love nature, love love. Other people love looking at art.

These are some of the categories in the Glimmers Journal because we know nervous systems find a moment of regulation in these places. And then that becomes part of my menu- my personal resource menu- which probably yours and mine would have some similarities. I think we enjoy some of the same experiences. And then we’re going to have things that are totally different. And again, that’s the joy of the nervous system- is really knowing what works for me and being curious about what works for someone else, rather than thinking, because it works for me, it has to work for you. When we go down that pathway, we stop being in a conversation with a nervous system. So our job is to- how do I stay in conversation? I think curiosity is the lovely way to do it. I am just curious- how did that land in your system?

That’s a question I ask a lot: How did that land for you? I know what it did for me- it brought me an anxiety. That’s what happened for me. But where did it land in your system? And that’s a beautiful conversation to have. I call that getting to know each other through this autonomic intimacy, because when I know people this way, sometimes I still don’t know where they live, or how many kids they have, or whether they have a dog or a cat. But boy, do I know their nervous system. And it’s a beautifully deep experience.

Shay And it is like a fingerprint. It is a very personal, very unique- that autonomic intimacy. It is intimate because it is very specific to that individual. And so it’s a privilege, actually, to get to know someone in that way.

Deb And in order to do that, two nervous systems have to feel safe with each other. That’s the only way we can get to know each other. It’s the only way we can come into this deep connection- is if my nervous system feels safe with yours, and yours feels safe with me. So we keep coming back to: what are the cues of safety that we can create, and how do we recognize what’s a cue of danger for that nervous system in this moment, and what can we do with that? And I think in the world we’re living in, there are lots of cues of danger that come at us all the time. And so we’re constantly trying to navigate the danger and find some safety. That’s the nervous system’s role every day. And sometimes at the end of the day, I sit down on the couch and I think, I am exhausted. I think, well, it makes perfect sense, because I’ve been trying to navigate cues of safety, cues of danger all day long.

Shay All day long.

Deb Just need to just sit in solitude and fill back up again. Right?

Shay Right, right. I get that- rest and digest, the time to, okay, restore. Restore. And I actually, I really love a part of what I’ve heard you share is in these times of change. And you could look at any number of things- you could look politically, you could look environmentally, you could look even just with changes in technology and how that’s impacting all of us. There’s a whole variety of things that you could take a look at and feel some concern. And that, for many folks, we hear this very often. It’s like people can go into a place of overwhelm. I don’t know what to do. It’s all so big and it’s so catastrophic, and it’s overwhelming, and I dunno what to do. And what’s very cool is that there is this very practical side of your work, which is to say, yeah, well, actually, there is something somewhat fundamental, foundational, and simple that you can do right now in this moment, which is this idea of finding regulation, and then through your capacity to regulate, also being then able to help someone else to potentially be more regulated. And so I’m curious how you see this playing out given the global scale of all the challenges. It’s not in any way to minimize that. We don’t do the work in those areas. There is this very personal piece, just like people have said for many years- some great teachers- that if you want to create peace in the world, first created inside of oneself. And in many ways, this is so related to that way of thinking.

Deb And as you were speaking, I’m one of those people. When I think about the systems that need to change, I get overwhelmed. It’s like I don’t know what to do. And some people get overwhelmed and they go to the anger and anxious place. I go to the despair, hopeless can’t-do place. And yet if I come back to, again, this other belief and knowing about the nervous system- this system- I can work with this system. I think I am responsible for the autonomic information that’s happening inside, then that I’m putting out into the world. And as I regulate my own individual system, I am then putting into the world a sense of safety. I am broadcasting a sense of safety, of welcome- that I am safe to connect with- and I can send that out. And other nervous systems, through neuroception, feel that. And I think it is a powerful intervention, in and of itself, to simply be anchored in regulation and then send that out to every other nervous system around you.

I talk about ventral being contagious in the best form of contagious, either direct contact or indirect spreading. Just as I’m regulated walking through the world. And I joke sometimes it’s not really a joke, but it feels simplistic sometimes. But I do believe we change the world one nervous system at a time. My regulation offers a welcome to another nervous system, and they begin to find the way to feeling safer. And then their system sends that to the next. I have this image in my head, again, I think every nervous system- we are inextricably connected nervous system to nervous system. So sometimes I have that dream of every nervous system is having that beautiful connection around the globe. And so we can send that ventral safety and connection, nervous system to nervous system. And in the world that we’re living in right now, I think many of us don’t know what to do.

And yet this we can do, and this I think we are responsible for doing. So again, we come back around to why befriend your nervous system? Again, another reason: because as you get to know your system and find the way to regulation, you are then offering that to the world around you. And I guess I would just want to say one caveat around that- nobody is regulated all the time. No human can be regulated all the time. So that we’re not saying you need to be regulated. We’re saying to be healthy, to experience wellbeing, I need to know where I am. I need to know when I’m regulated and really savor that. But I also need to know when I’ve left regulation so that I know I’m in a survival strategy and then have some resources that help me come back. Not when we go to survival, that we suffer. It’s when we get stuck there. So that I just want to say that we’re all- I can reflect on my day, I am nearing the end of my day, and I think I’ve had those moments. I have dipped into a little anxiety. I’ve even dipped into a little sort of, oh, give up- and found my way back to ventral. Every time you do that, every time you dysregulate and come back, you build resilience. You build resilience.

Shay Yeah, I think that’s so important- that it’s really about that a healthy nervous system is a resilient one that can go up and down into all of those various states. That you can go into ventral, you can go into dorsal, you can go into a sympathetic response. And that’s okay because we’re actually designed to do that. That is how we keep ourselves safe: is that sometimes we need to activate a sympathetic response, and sometimes we need a dorsal shutdown. And actually, in that moment, that might be the wisest and best thing that our system can do. But as you’ve defined in your work, what we want to try to learn to do differently is hopefully not to get stuck where we literally can’t get out of that. And that’s a different thing. And I also feel there’s another piece in the teaching of your work that’s quite profound, that has to do with a compassion.

Because once you really understand what’s happening, you can see a body kind of stuck in a state. And then for myself, what I’ve learned is some patience and some capacity to sort of internally say, okay, so maybe step one here- before we have a conversation, before we do anything- is let’s just pause and see if I get myself really regulated, maybe through co-regulation. That’ll be a little contagious, like we’re discussing. And perhaps we kind of start there before we go into any heavy dialogue, because that could then come out of the anxiety or the anger or the responses that are not going to be as effective.

Deb And you actually can’t have a meaningful conversation. You can’t have a difficult conversation unless there is enough ventral regulating your system. Because in sympathetic, my worldview is: the world is dangerous. I’m surrounded by dangerous people. You and I are not on the same team any longer. And that’s a biological experience- it’s not a brain experience- but my biology says it’s me against you. So I can’t have a connecting conversation. And from dorsal, the worldview is: I’m lost, alone, abandoned. Nobody’s ever going to find me, no energy. I can’t have a conversation there either. So it’s only when I’m in ventral, where the belief is something about the world is okay or I’m safe enough, then I can engage, I can connect, and we can have a conversation. So if both of us find that place, we can have a beautifully deep, rich conversation and really explore what happened.

If I’m there, you are not, I need to recognize you are not in a place to be able yet to have that conversation. And I’m simply going to say, “I’m here. I would love to be able to return to the conversation when you’re ready.” There’s a naming of my intention and a recognition that in this moment your system won’t allow that. And sometimes I might say what might help, depending on the relationship I have. So again, it’s knowing the nervous system states that support connection and finding a way to come into those states so that we can then have the repairing conversations. The ruptures happen- how can we make a repair? And we can’t make a repair until the nervous system is ready for that repair.

Shay And can you imagine if all of our mediation was designed with this as a fundamental, kind of foundational understanding- that in order to have those conversations and to mediate something, especially something of global importance or something really significant- that first, we have to get both of those nervous systems ready and in a place where they even have the capacity to have that kind of dialogue and be a very different way of doing things.

Deb It would, I think when the rupture happens and we wanting to fix it- which is a sympathetically driven thing, fix it-
that we forget. And then we make stories about the moment, about the incident, about the other person. Because again, this is what the brain does. It is a normal human experience to do that. And if we can find a way to simply take a pause and look and go, oh, right, dysregulated, then we go down a different pathway. And part of the work that we try to do is figure out what helps you take a pause. Because interrupting the survival strategy is very hard to do. So I often will have people write something on a card that they can pull the card, because in the moment, the prefrontal is not going to be able to help ’em figure it out. But we pre-plan, right? So is there a statement that reminds you- I often on a card when I was first playing with all this big letters, colorful letters, I love color. So colorful letters, I would simply write dysregulated, because my brain wanted to say they’re dangerous or they’re needy, or they’re difficult or they’re a problem and disregulated. That’s it. So we find our strategies to help us take that momentary pause so that we can then find our way out of the survival strategy.

Shay And because this show is called Conversations on Healing, I always like to ask each guest, in the context of your work, because it’s a very individual answer, how you have come to understand what healing is through the lens of your work?

Deb And I love that question because we all define things in our own way, and healing for me, because I truly am always looking through the lens of the nervous system. So healing for me is ability to find my way back to ventral, to not get stuck for long periods of time. And sympathetic. Sympathetic was never the place I got stuck. Dorsals, the place I got stuck. So stuck in despair, stuck in hopeless, stuck in no energy. And so for my personal healing, my personal healing has been a journey to really have ways both to reach out to others. I have a certain small group of people that I can reach out to and they know, when I’ve fallen into despair and they know, know what helps because we’ve worked that out. So there’s that. And also found my own ways to come back to ventral.

So my personal healing journey has been really sort of appreciating my dorsal disappearing. I’ve done this for most of my life. That’s the survival strategy of choice for some reason, for my nervous system. But to really turn toward, learn from, and appreciate, and then find ways to get unstuck. And so I feel, again, it helps you feel safer in the world because you know will go there and you will find your way back out. And again, these nervous system beliefs really have helped me in that healing journey, that belief that I trust my nervous system, my nervous system knows the way, and yes, I need to help it along, but I don’t need to create something brand new. The pathway is there inside me, and my nervous system, when it gets on the path, is going to find the way back. And for me, that has been a beautiful healing journey because I probably tend to live in my thinking brain a lot, and to discover that I could trust this was quite an amazing moment- to really trust, oh, my biology is pretty wise and is going to help me move through the world differently.

Navigate the world differently.

Shay Yeah, that’s great. Well, are there any other kind of resources or anything else that you want to share just for people that are listening, they’ve been hearing a lot of ideas. I mentioned that you have some books we will add in the show notes, like your website and all those key things. But if there’s anything else you want to just let people know about that might be useful if they’d like to learn more?

Deb Boy, that’s a tough question. And I suppose, I think what I’ve tried to do is my very first book was a clinical book for therapists, and since then I’ve been writing more clinical books, but also trying to write books for the group of people I call curious humans.

I’m sort of dedicated to curious humans now because I do think that once you get the basic concepts, you’re going to see your life differently and move through your days differently. So come to the website, we have a lot of free resources and you can sort of dip a toe in getting to know the nervous system. And I guess I would say, because nowadays we get emails that give us a lot of like, do this, do this. And for a positive outcome. And a lot of people are talking about the vagus nerve and how to make it work better. And what I want to say, I guess as we end, is this sense that your nervous system will tell you whether something is going to work for you. You might get a thing that says, do this, or you might have a group of people who are all doing this, and your nervous system might say, no, thank you.

Honor what your nervous system says. If it says no, find a different way. If it says yes, great, go explore. If it says maybe, because it can often say maybe as well, play around with it. But when the nervous system says no, it’s letting you know that that is too big a challenge for it, at least in this moment. And move on to something else. And I think that if we could all sort of honor the wisdom of our nervous system, we would make different choices. I think choose with your nervous system, it will guide you well.

Shay That’s great. Yeah. And I’ll just mention your website is rhythmofregulation.com for anyone that wants to take a peek there at some of the wonderful resources, and you have PDFs and all sorts of things that people can access. And I think just the last question as we conclude, because you’ve had a career that’s had a legacy and you’ve had an opportunity, like you said, to do clinical work. Now you’re doing more teaching and writing and sharing. When you really synthesize the work that you’ve had the privilege to do over all these years, what do you feel has withstood the test of time? What are you like: yeah, that’s a thing that I really understand now that withstands the test of time, there’s something that’s essential and true there.

Deb A couple of things came to mind as you were saying that. One is the power of being with another human from a place of kindness, from a place where I don’t have the answers, I don’t have an agenda. I don’t say we have to do this, but to simply be with and discovering Steve’s work, I then have understood that’s my ventral system offering a welcome. But before I understood any of that, it was sitting with another human and feeling that human connection and just being with. I think in the therapy world, we talk about therapeutic relationship, we talk about all that, which again is based on your biology. But if we could take that all away- kindness. I am just stuck with kindness. Can we just offer kindness to another human, right? Whether it’s professionally or personally.

Shay It’s beautiful. Well, I really want to appreciate you for taking the time to have this conversation with all of our listeners today and certainly with me. I’m grateful. So thank you so much, Deb.

Deb It’s been such a joy. Thank you.

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