Polyvagal Theory, developed by renowned scientist Stephen Porges, gives us a map of the ways the body responds to both the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life. Guided by Polyvagal Theory, we have a deep appreciation of the ways experience shapes the nervous system and of the pathways that lead to healing.  With an updated map of the autonomic circuits that underlie behaviours and beliefs, it provides us with a new and deeper understanding of the patterns of fight, flight, and shut down; demonstrating how we can reliably help clients shift out of these adaptive survival responses.  Seen through the lens of the nervous system, the experience of moving toward or away from people, places, and things becomes understandable and predictable.

Working with the autonomic nervous system brings the science of safety into practical application with skills to help clients identify and interrupt their familiar response patterns and strategies to shape their systems toward connection. As therapists, when we partner with the nervous system, we can reliably guide clients into the autonomically regulated state of safety that is necessary for successful therapy.

At this intellectually challenging, therapeutically relevant and cutting-edge workshop, globally acclaimed trainer Deb Dana, explains how a ventral state is necessary in order to feel safe and engage with the world. It is the essential ingredient for well-being. When the ventral state is active, alive, and overseeing the system, the sympathetic and dorsal states work in the background, helping us stay physically and psychologically healthy. When the ventral state is no longer in charge, we miss its regulating influence and experience health challenges, feel distress in relationships, and have difficulty navigating our daily lives.  Without the regulating influence of the ventral vagal system, clients feel like they are locked in a state of protection unable to either reach out or let anything in.

In this two-part series – participants will develop an embodied understanding of Polyvagal Theory and learn how to bring the theory alive in clinical work.  Through didactic teaching and experiential practices, participants will explore how we can recruit the power of the autonomic nervous system not only in service of survival but also in service of healing.  We will learn how using the same physiological processes that shape the system, it is possible to help clients move out of habitually activated reactions and bring flexibility back to a system that has become rigid in patterns of protection.

Most importantly, we will learn the skill of befriending the nervous system – how to use the body’s regulating circuits to help clients regain a sense of safety and skills to engage the nervous system’s natural pathways to regulation.

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