Find Calm: A Polyvagal Primer describes the structure of our nervous system according to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory. This article follows up with practical tools to help the nervous system regulate itself and find rest as it heals from developmental trauma.
Our early experiences help our bodies learn about safety, rest, and regulation. When a baby receives good-enough responsive, attuned care, her nervous system practices moving smoothly from agitation to calm. The more time she spends in calm, balanced states, the easier they are to find in the future.
When a baby or young child does not receive enough responsive care, they experience developmental trauma, where the nervous system develops to handle ongoing distress rather than ongoing calm. If care is simply missing, the baby reaches out with increasing desperation, and eventually withdraws into quiet despair. The quiet shutdown is caused by strong signals (high tone) on the dorsal vagal nerves. The nervous system becomes accustomed to that state and becomes more likely to shut down in the future.
If the baby experiences active harm, especially from the same people who should be providing attuned care, her nervous system is overwhelmed with terror. She needs to reach toward people for help managing the terror, but they are the same people harming her. The urgent impulse to find safety is in direct conflict with the urgent impulse to avoid danger. The sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) remains chronically active, rather than settling back to calm.
Find rest and regulation
Even if we missed out on learning how to be calm as babies, it is not too late for our nervous systems to learn about rest and regulation as adults. Kathy Kain develops and teaches simple techniques to help nervous systems reorganize and heal from developmental trauma.
Developmental trauma is inherently relational, which makes it exquisitely difficult to ask for and accept help from other people. At the same time, the need for contact and attunement is still there. When we have an attachment bond with a person or pet, physical contact with them helps our system regulate and feel safe. When we lack those bonds, we naturally struggle more with regulation and rest.
You can practice these techniques on your own or with a gentle friend. Either way, they might bring up unexpected emotions about giving and receiving support. Practice a little at a time, and remember that your responses make sense.
Settle the adrenals
The adrenals, located on the kidneys, are a major part of the sympathetic nervous system. It is hard to find calm if your adrenals keep putting out stress hormones. You can help them settle and regulate your system by offering gentle touch to the kidney area, one side at a time.
The receiver sits or lies comfortably on their back. The kidneys are mostly inside the bottom of the rib cage near the spine on each side, tipped at an angle (see diagram). They can curl tight up against the spine, or be more open and relaxed. One kidney tends to be dominant, so one side may respond more strongly than the other.
The giver slides a slightly cupped hand under the back, starting at the waist and moving in toward the spine at an angle, touching the lowest ribs on one side. If you are working on yourself, you can use the back of your hand, lie across a rolled up towel, or imagine the contact. Find the general area, and ask the receiver if they are comfortable.
Friendly, attentive contact
The giver simply offers friendly, attentive contact, without demanding or expecting any specific result. Stay in contact for five to fifteen minutes, or until the receiver (or giver) wants to stop or switch sides.
You might feel confused or uncertain as you search for a state that is new to you. You might feel a sense of warmth and relaxation. You might feel a stronger pulse in the area as the kidney allows more blood to flow through it. You might feel several waves of activation and settling, tensing and relaxing. You might sense relief in spacious support to find calm.
Healing from trauma can be framed as a quest for safety. At first, people in recovery often focus on detecting and eliminating threats. Traumatized people also need to learn or remember how to feel safe inside themselves.
Someone who experienced developmental trauma may alternate between agitation and shutdown, without true rest. The sympathetic nervous system stays active until it is overridden by a strong signal on the dorsal vagal nerves, creating shutdown.
Kathy Kain points out that a milder signal (low tone) on the dorsal vagal system promotes digestion, immune function, cell repair, and reduction of inflammation. This rest state is crucially important in avoiding and healing from chronic health conditions that often affect trauma survivors, as shown by the ACE study.
When you practice low tone dorsal vagal rest, you practice the visceral experience of feeling safe. The body can turn inward and repair, because nothing in the external environment requires your attention. You might have memories of safety to draw on, or you might be seeking an experience that is new to you.
Sit or lie down in a place where it feels okay to experiment with safety. Do everything you can to get physically comfortable, including turning down the lights if that helps. You might want someone to sit with you, perhaps gently supporting a kidney as described above, or you might want to be alone.
If you have a time limit, give yourself enough time at the end to transition back to full wakefulness. You can keep the experiment short to start, perhaps fifteen minutes of resting and ten minutes of transition.
You want to find a state that is in between the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the dissociation or freeze of strong dorsal vagal activity. You do not have to do anything here. All expectations and pressure are removed. You do not have to manage yourself or your relationship with anyone else. You do not have to respond. You are off duty. You can simply be.
You might feel like you are drifting, or starting to fall asleep, or falling into yourself. You might feel your mind chattering along, refusing to relax. You might notice specific physical tensions more strongly. You might notice how hard you work all the time. You could let your mind and your body know that you hear them. Whatever happens is part of the process of finding your way into rest somewhere in the middle between activation and freeze.
Permission not to rest
If you tend to work hard at everything, including resting, you might let yourself off the hook by giving yourself permission not to rest. Part of feeling safe is being okay exactly the way you are in this moment. Move in the direction of relief, whatever that means for you. Perhaps you want to change position, or ask your companion to move farther away or not look at you. Perhaps you want to talk about what you are noticing. Invite your system to move toward rest, and let it tell you what it needs along the way.
Your body makes sense
Your body and nervous system are doing their best to survive and thrive. If they were shaped by traumatic conditions, it may take time to adapt to safer circumstances. People often feel intense shame about difficulties with attachment, regulation, and rest. It is easier to find calm when you can allow your body to react just as it does, and understand that your reactions make sense.
- Kathy Kain teaches classes on touch skills for early trauma.
- Bonnie Badenoch video on co-regulation and polyvagal theory How to Feel Safe in Your Relationship.
- Kidney image via Wikimedia Commons, from “Anatomy of the Human Body” by Henry Gray, illustrated by Henry Vandyke Carter, public domain.