What is Polyvagal Theory (in Simple Terms)?
That’s a fantastic question! Polyvagal theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, explores how the stresses we encounter and how we've been conditioned to handle them impact our health and well-being.
Polyvagal theory is built on three main principles: co-regulation, neuroception, and the autonomic hierarchy. Let’s break them down:
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Co-Regulation: From birth and throughout our early years, we rely on caregivers to meet our needs and help us manage life’s stresses—whether physical, chemical, or emotional. These caregivers act as our co-regulators, guiding us through the world. Co-regulation is who we turn to for comfort when things feel overwhelming. Importantly, this need for co-regulation doesn’t end in childhood; we continue to rely on family, friends, and even pets for emotional support throughout our lives.
The challenge with co-regulation is that our ability to help others regulate their emotions is tied to how well we can regulate our own. This means we can inherit both helpful and unhelpful coping mechanisms from those around us. Sometimes, we adopt stress management strategies that were once effective but may no longer serve us well.
This leads to the second principle of polyvagal theory: neuroception.
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Neuroception: Neuroception refers to how your brain perceives the world around you, often without your conscious awareness. Think of everything you’ve learned from your co-regulators—opinions, beliefs, and coping strategies—as lenses through which you view the world. These lenses also shape how you form your own opinions, beliefs, biases, and coping mechanisms.
Your brain is constantly scanning your environment through these lenses, assessing whether you are "safe" or "in danger." While "danger" can mean literal physical threats, it also includes more subtle or perceived dangers, like an unwanted phone call, conflicting opinions, or anything else that challenges your sense of well-being. When no threats are detected, your nervous system remains in a state of ease. However, if a threat is perceived, your body is signaled to adapt, leading us to the third principle of polyvagal theory: the autonomic hierarchy.
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Autonomic Hierarchy: To understand this principle, let's start with a quick anatomy review. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates vital bodily functions, like heart rate, breathing, and digestion—things that happen automatically without conscious thought. The ANS is divided into two branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
In basic anatomy courses, you might learn that the sympathetic nervous system is "bad" and the parasympathetic nervous system is "good," but the reality is more nuanced. Neither extreme is ideal for health and well-being. The vagus nerve acts as the gatekeeper between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, maintaining a balanced state where your nervous system can regulate all bodily functions harmoniously. The autonomic hierarchy comes into play when your brain detects a threat, requiring your nervous system to adapt.
When the brain perceives a threat, the nervous system shifts into one of two states. The first is the sympathetic state, known as "fight or flight." Here, the brain determines that the threat is something you can either overcome or escape. As a result, it directs more energy to the systems that will help you do just that: heart rate increases, breathing becomes deeper and faster, and muscles tense up, ready for action. This response is designed to help you survive the threat.
Ideally, after facing the threat, we would release the built-up energy, "shake it off," and return to a state of balance. However, this often isn’t the case. We encounter far more perceived threats than actual dangers to our survival. When our body reacts this way to a threat that doesn’t require physical action, the unused energy can lead to muscle stiffness and soreness. If this reaction becomes chronic due to ongoing stress, the body may get stuck in a defensive mode. This can result in persistently elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and a constant state of anxiety and tension may become the norm rather than the exception.
The other response to a threat, whether real or perceived, is a parasympathetic response.
Although the parasympathetic nervous system is commonly associated with "rest and digest," in the context of threat response, it’s more accurately described as a "freeze or fawn" response. From a polyvagal perspective, this is known as a dorsal vagal response.
When the brain perceives a stressor as inescapable, the nervous system shifts into a mode where everything slows down, almost like playing possum or hiding in the shadows. Just like the sympathetic response, the nervous system prioritizes the functions necessary for survival, conserving energy to wait out the threat. In this state, the body directs circulation primarily to vital organs, which can lead to vague, generalized muscle pain and issues like blood pressure drops with movement.
Prolonged exposure to this state can result in feelings of depression and withdrawal, and has been linked to conditions known as medically unexplained symptoms, such as migraines, fibromyalgia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), chronic fatigue, and irritable bowel syndrome.
As mentioned earlier, our nervous system functions best when it maintains a balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic states. In this balanced state, the nervous system is at ease, which is crucial for health and healing. The body and nervous system can only be in one of two states: defense/protection or ease/healing/regeneration, but not both simultaneously.
This balance is regulated by the vagus nerve, the key player in what’s known as polyvagal theory. The vagus nerve, also called cranial nerve X (10), is the longest cranial nerve in the body and plays a significant role. It not only gathers information from within and around the body to send to the brain but also carries signals from the brain to almost every organ.
The health or "tone" of the vagus nerve is measured by heart rate variability (HRV), which assesses the variation in time between heartbeats. A healthy, adaptable nervous system can easily manage life’s stresses. When your body is in a state of ease, it adapts well. However, if it becomes stuck in a constant state of fight/flight or freeze/fawn, adaptability is lost, eventually leading to a decline in health.
There are several ways to improve vagal tone and enhance your body’s ability to adapt to stress, one of which is regular chiropractic care.
Adjusting the upper spine, where the vagus nerve exits the skull and travels down the body, can positively influence the nerve, helping to buffer stress responses and guide the nervous system back to a state of ease.
Stay tuned for more insights on how to improve your health naturally!
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