M5 : Lesson 6: Riding The Polyvagal Wave With Somatics
Transcript
Module 5 less than 6. Somatic movement between polyvaggle activation states. What do the 3 polyvaggle states look like somatically? Well, we’ve went over this a little bit, but I thought this would be a nice diagram to get an overview. First, on the left, we have our red light, our stock.
Which is dorsal vagal dominant. Things are just slowed. Our processes are just, you know, we have minimal energy moving from our body. And we’re just in survival. On the other hand, we have our green light or go, which is sympathetic activation.
You know? You’re just going and running yourself ragged all day. And then we can get a blended state of freeze, which is in between go and stop. And that often feels like overwhelm. And Thomas Hannah, who created the Hannah semantics method, might term that as that dark, vice.
You’re stiff, but you’re able to move, you’re rigid, and you’re in fright a lot of the time. And then on the far right, we have our ventral vagal dominant state. The state we’re trying to get back into that connected and slow pre moving fluid aliveness where we can pendulate and go from contraction to relaxation, stress back to safety, and ride the wave of life. Many of us are in functional frees without realizing it. I see this a lot in the chronic illness community.
And this is someone who feels like they are in overwhelm, but you can still move. Maybe you’re even working. But inside, there’s this sense of immobilization. Everything is too much. And functional freeze happens when we have a tremendous amount of stressful emotions trapped inside of us, but we can’t find the relief that we need in order to release it.
I want to speak to this a little bit. Again, it can feel like we’re overwhelmed by everything when we are in functional frees. Including trying to implement this material I am teaching you now. It’s a feeling of I can’t, but I have to or else I won’t get better. There’s a pressure to go, but a pressure that says, you can’t at the same time.
And we can get flooded or even emotionally exhausted by trying anything new. Underneath the freeze experience is often a lot of feelings of beer, rage, maybe a need to fight and flee, feeling about can’t be myself. There’s often an inner voice that’s quite demanding and critical. They can sound like shut up. Don’t do that.
Just stop being you. So to come out of freeze or this kind of shutdown, there’s a need to shake and release the tension. And it’s well documented that animals in the wild do this. They do a shaking movement, and it’s a crucial part of nervous system health. So when you’re in shutdown or freeze, we’re gonna be moving from this immobilization freeze.
Usually, through some shaking, into mobilization. And so I’m a big fan of doing shaking exercises to help move yourself out of freeze. I find though that starting with some type of slow movements with careful environmental orienting like we learned earlier, It’s best to start with that when you’re stuck in this freeze or a mobilization. You don’t wanna do too much too quick. You might find that when you start doing some of these somatic exercises, you might experience some shaking responses or even twitching as you start moving and getting in touch with your body in a new way and that’s totally normal and it’s a good sign.
And sometimes we actually need to purposely shake our body and then try doing some slow movement. So eventually, we can get our body back into mobilization but there might be some intense emotions, some weird movements, some sometimes even yelling or desire to fight or flee, and I’m just wanting you to be aware of this. This is called the thawing effect. Think of like a a chunk of ice that’s starting to thaw there might be some weird stuff that comes out as you start moving up that polyvaggle ladder towards your ventral vagal safety. And even though it might feel terrible to kinda move through that activation state where you just, you know, you just wanna crawl out of your skin, it will feel better if you let yourself just move through it and let your body do what it needs to do.
Do your best to try to elevate your mood with a brain retraining practice or whatever as you’re going through this process, but don’t resist it. So for me personally, I love to turn on music and just shake. Let it loose especially when I feel overwhelmed or grief or I’ve been just working too hard or if I feel irritation it’s the best medicine. And I think it’s helpful to create some playlist that really help you to Feel in the mood to express yourself. For me, I often make a playlist that starts really slowly like cello music.
To just start to, like, move and open and pendiculate my body. And then I’ll move into some more upbeat music to kinda shake and move some of that sympathetic energy through. And then I’ll finish it off with music that’s, like, light and playful. Like, I’m back into the ventral vagal. So do you kinda see what I describe some slow music that might feel like dorsal, then some shaking music, that sympathetic, and then lighthearted and happy music to complete.
And I find the music helps to teach my body how to move the stress through my body. So if you have the time to create a playlist, it can be really, really helpful. I wanna go through some steps that can help you move out of freeze and just get a summary of what I just said. Orienting to the environment, am I in a safe place now? Is it safe to move and express myself again?
Inner orienting. Am I present? Am I able to explore a little bit of body movement? Can I be with some of the feelings that might surface right now? Or do I need to find somebody to co regulate with so that I feel safe to feel what’s inside of me.
In general movement, like I said, start with slow somatic movements, and then you might feel like shaking or maybe it’s a combination. Just put on some music that helps to inspire this movement. I think it’s really helpful to use music alongside movement at this stage. And be willing to feel the feels and move through it. Let your body unwind Let it make some weird sounds.
7:30Allow it to thaw in its own way. In general, keep your breathing going. Elevate your mood and rest and repair, and come back to this current moment with your breath or with a brain retraining practice to help you return to calm after you’ve done some type of somatic release.