Transcript
Speaker: I learned what the limitation of the theory was. And the limitation was not that it didn't explain the physiological reaction, but the theory as I saw it did not explain the persistence.
Speaker: Trauma is really interesting, not because of the acute reaction to a life threat or a traumatic event, but for the persistence of that response.
Speaker: Welcome to Wired for Connection, where we explore what it means to feel safe, to build connection, and to better understand ourselves and others. I am your host. My name is Travis Goodman. Today, I'm welcoming back Dr. Stephen Porges. Dr. Porges is the creator of Polylegal Theory, and his work has influenced how we understand the relationship between the nervous system, trauma, and connection. Our starting point today is his new work called Polyvagal Talks, Clinicians and Scientists in Dialogue with Stephen Porges, which is released on November 10th. So depending on when you're tuning in, it is a pre-order or you can grab a copy today.
Speaker: This book brings the conversations that he's had with many colleagues over the years, including Peter Levine, Pat ogden Bessel, Vander Kolk, Deb Dana and others. And it offers a chance to explore how their ideas have influenced one another throughout the lifespan. And I'm especially interested, and I think you will be too, on how we bring together all these individuals and what becomes possible. And as Dr. Porges shares, the family that is created. so welcome. And here's my conversation with Steve.
Speaker: The book is really about my history in moving my science into the world of trauma. So or I would say the invitation from the world of trauma welcomed me into the world of trauma.
Speaker: And that is ah it's a strange place for laboratory-oriented scientist. It's just not where they normally end up. um And so the book, as I saw it, I wanted to leave, for this is kind of a strange term to use, I wanted to have a set of legacy talks.
Speaker: I wanted to have, and we have, in sense, videos and transcripts. The transcripts have become this book. It's a list of people, of very renowned people, who have been extremely instrumental in enabling the ideas, meaning polyvagal theory, bringing it into the world of trauma and explaining it to that. But actually, yeah we can go through those names. They all were instrumental in, I would say, welcoming people And they became family. In fact, my wife is a co-author, not a co-author. She has a chapter, too. But that's really out of respect for all the evenings that we discuss these things.
Speaker: And puts ah puts a different view because she likes to take credit, which is she's welcome to and probably has a great degree, a good good rationale for of moving me into social.
Speaker: sociality into thinking not merely yeah most psychologists and most experimental, let's say physiologists or psychophysiologists or neuroscientists are looking at a single subject.
Speaker: And her view was really, where a we're a species that is social and that has a big effect on our physiology.
Speaker: And so that, and that's, she studies oxytocin, and she's the renowned scientist who discovered that oxytocin was related to sociality.
Speaker: So it's not like it's a trivial contribution, it's extremely important. And then we have people like Bessel van der Kalk, you know, Bessel is of course quite renowned now.
Speaker: and And Peter Levine, they were basically the, Peter was the first one that brought me in, he brought me in in the late nineteen seventy s So he basically found me. I got a phone call and then later met him in California ah and said, you know, these ideas that I had on physiology were could help him understand what he was seeing in his clients.
Speaker: And so it brought me into a dialogue with, I would say, unusual people. Many of them were into somatic therapies, which was really kind of like marginalized back in the sale. I say marginalized. It was outside the realm of traditional mental mental mental health care. He brought me into that world. And ah I found it just intriguing. And I actually did a publication on rolfing in the 1980s trying to show how that impacted on the autonomic nervous system.
Speaker: um So it's been an interesting journey. Then after Peter, Bessel engaged me and I basically gave a talk in the late 90s at his Boston Trauma Conference.
Speaker: And it basically, from his perspective, it changed the world of trauma that day um because people started to see this immobilization or what we call in polyvagal terminology, a dorsal vagal response as a defense response.
Speaker: And many of the people had experienced this immobilization, dissociation, were basically told that it you know they were really in a state of fight-flight because the ah language that was only available was was that either you're safe or you're in fight flight.
Speaker: There was no, in a sense, sentinel trauma reaction or life threat reaction or mortal threat reaction where the body says, I'm out of here. And so that brought that into ah ah basically trauma therapy, trauma explanation. The consequences of the talk with Bessel and also talks with conferences run in l L.A. that were organized by Marion Solomon, who is no longer with us, but Pat Ogden is, and Pat was my entree into the West Coast attachment therapy, attachment trauma, and that's where Dan Siegel is.
Speaker: was building his reputation, and the two of them were extremely— and Alan Shore, who's also ah ah in the book, in the conversation, they were extremely welcoming me to me to be part of this world of ah trauma. They were curious, and they wanted to be helpful. And I would go to these meetings, both to the West Coast and the East Coast, and they have different personalities on based on the culture they're in. And I would stay for the meetings. And I would make this this an important point.
Speaker: Because most academics, when they talk to clinical groups, fly in, give their talk, and get out of there as quickly as possible. Their time is valuable. they they They see clinical application as fuzzy, and they basically feel that it's a distractor.
Speaker: So I saw it differently. I saw it as i was curious. I want to learn. And the people were lovely and engaging, and I basically start to learn.
Speaker: And so over time, I no longer felt like I was an outsider in the world of trauma. I felt I was contributing and understanding. And the feedback, not merely from the therapist, but from their clients, which I would get emails, so were saying that the theory helped them survive. It gave them an explanation of an experience or their experiences that they were at lost to understand because there's so much ah believing that their behavior was being driven by intention or they were being told that. So in a sense, if their body failed them, they couldn't move.
Speaker: How could that be intentioned? So the issue was they started to get understanding that they lived or cohabited or were cohabitating in a body that had intentionality, our conscious brain, and also in the lower parts of our brain regulating our ah basically more somatic related functions and ah visceral functions.
Speaker: And they're starting to get an appreciation for that in a sense, a more, let's say, welcoming as opposed to hostility with their body, the anger of basically their own shame and blame of their body. If they could, and when they start to understand that the body was actually functioning on more primitive reflexes to keep them alive.
Speaker: They could shift their own interpretation of their experience. So anyway, the book is all about this legacy of putting these people together. And then we have Gabor Maté, who I interacted with ah so for well over a decade. But Peter Levine goes back to the late 1970s.
Speaker: Bessel was in the 1990s, and so is Pat Ogden and now Alan Shure, and then Dan Siegel the late ninety s And ah Deb, ah Dana, is in the book.
Speaker: And she came in, of course, after the concept of polyvagal theory was already involved in the world. But she was able to take the concepts and develop a language to translate the concepts into, i would say, different.
Speaker: a mental health provider accessibility. and And as you think about these conversations over this kind of lifespan, if you will, I think of what you said earlier about this, um you know, using AI to categorize and see the connection points. And from that lens, I'm curious with all these conversations, the books, you know, the books obviously completed and you're sitting with this, I'm wondering what comes to mind like to the surface as a conversation or two that might have influenced um how you saw something differently?
Speaker: Well, I would say what the conversations gave me was a, ah a ah let's say, a family. You're really describing a family up with people who shared with a shared agenda, with a shared curiosity, with a shared compassion for humanity, with a shared desire.
Speaker: Basically trying to make things better and to understand. And so you get a sense of benevolence and and compassion. And so it's kind of can bring tears to my eyes to realize that these people that I walked into from, i would say, a more constrained academic world, which is extremely evaluative. You may not realize that, but it's extremely structured and evaluative.
Speaker: to a world that was now open and curious and just wanted to be helpful. And for me to make that bridge, to be welcomed into that, ah without in fact triggering in these people their reactions to their own academic training, which is the professor is always going to be evaluating because that's what you're cast in.
Speaker: but to share the curiosity ah of trying to be helpful and to learn from others. So my my role was very special in this group.
Speaker: In a sense, my role was to understand what they were doing, to try to, in a sense, ah take their observations, but now go that next step, and that was innovation.
Speaker: Could I understand what they were doing was now important. effectively shifting nervous system state. And that's what I basically I would view that as my skill set. And I would say, where does that leave us today? It leaves us in this concept of a polyvagal and form therapist.
Speaker: And what do we know by about that? It's basically a therapist who looks at their client's face, who listens to their voice, who sees the blood flow, the muscle tone, who sees their physiological state in the observable of their client and understands that their physiological state is the portal that's going to guide them in delivering the therapy.
Speaker: Thinking about that, just shift from this span of... being in the family and how the curiosity of authors, researchers, scientists, you know, professors, people um making sense of it and trying to understand them and how one that they invited you in because i think that's been part of the story too, they allowed you to, you know, and then you have this curiosity to stay and be part of it, not just leave and, and relationships and they have a perspective and they're trying to make sense of it. And the theory, it's almost like you guys are all trying to make kind of wrestle with this together and in a generative way.
Speaker: and and I'm curious now, you know, again, reflecting on the book and all these conversations up to this point now in your, your life, like today, I'm curious, um, How has the theory itself, like what what's something you think has maybe changed or evolved since you've seen people apply it?
Speaker: Oh, oh what i am this actually is a very important point. I learned what the limitation of the theory was. And the limitation was not that it didn't explain the physiological reaction.
Speaker: But the theory, as I saw it, did not explain the persistence. Trauma is really interesting, not because of the acute reaction to a life threat or a traumatic event, but for the persistence of that response.
Speaker: And I would say that that triggered my intellectual curiosity for several decades. Now, remember, I'm now if we i'm into the deeply into the trauma world by the late nineteen ninety s And so we're now talking about almost 30 years, and I was exposed to it 15 years before with Peter.
Speaker: But the issue is, I'm in it, and what is the question that I i can't answer? question is why and how. Really, it's the how question. How does the body remain in that state? The acute state is clear. That's polyvagal theory. It's beautiful. It's succinct. It's efficient. It explains it.
Speaker: But why stay there or how does the system stay there? So the how is what I... ah basically started to figure out over the past few years. And that became the talk that I gave last year at Sentinel Trauma, which now requires ah areas above that brainstem area controlling polyvagal systems ah to utilize molecules, basically neuropeptides. And this is my wife Sue's work on vasopressin and oxytocin. Because what those peptides do is they basically literally ah lock the system into a state.
Speaker: They change it, but they're also involved in the recovery of it. And so what you find out is you don't get out of the trauma cycle by being aggressive with a client.
Speaker: You start understanding that the principles of ah signals of safety are what soften the is as circuits or bonds of that ah persist persistent persistent ah traumatic response. I call it now a traumatic autonomic imprint.
Speaker: or some wording like that. It's an imprint. The body gets stuck into that state. And actually, when you listen to ah all my expert therapists, they talk about the imprinted types of behaviors, imprinted types of responses. ah that get triggered and then the system knows where it goes, where it goes into that state. And that's an imprint.
Speaker: If we think about imprinting coming from animal behavior, think about the duck or the that comes out of the shell and sees ah something moving in front of them.
Speaker: That's the mother. It's an imprint. The nervous system is prepared for its survival to follow that. Well, we have a similar thing in us. We have an autonomic imprint. When we get that, it says dorsal vagal in the gut feeling that is a life threat feeling, it doesn't disappear.
Speaker: It gets triggered. And that's where associations of the triggering and higher brain structures, you get consolidation that get linked to those feelings. So the question is, we can now ah hypothetically map out how persistence occurs.
Speaker: And we can also map out strategies of how to, in sense, dissolve those are bonds that create ah that consolidated persistence. And they come it really ends up being quite simple. It ends up saying that the successful therapeutic models work on enabling the body to have windows of opportunities to feel safe.
Speaker: And they like somatic experience and Pat Ogden's psycho sensory psychomotor therapy. They're all about the experience of of feeling safe in windows and expanding them. It's titration.
Speaker: And what I've been working on is saying that's all about signaling the nervous system that it's safe. And now I started to develop acoustic signaling techniques that allow the body or the body to move into a state of safety. And that's what we were using with the long COVID study. And that's why you start seeing the the profile of symptoms starting to disappear.
Speaker: or let's say becoming much more manageable. So let's use the term symptom burden. And what we're dealing with in the world of trauma, like long COVID, is symptom burden.
Speaker: And it's not like I want... ah you know, my voice to be more prosodic or what my heart rate have more heart rate variability of rhythms. We want the symptom burden to be reduced. And once we start looking at the portfolio of what the symptom burden is, we see the architecture of what it is to be a mammal.
Speaker: And now, i so we were talking about what I learned or the history of this. And the history was whenever I start to understand what I learned from being at meetings and being in the world of survivors of trauma, I would make statements like, my interactions with survivors has taught me what it is to be a human.
Speaker: Now, I have said that for over a decade, but now I can tell you what that really means. To me. yeah It means that the features of this mammalian architecture, we don't have access to it. When we are responding to the, when we are suffering from PTSD or suffering from chronic illness, we don't have access to our own capacities. Our system has literally set up ah gatekeepers. It doesn't allow us to be in the states where we can heal physically and where we can be socially
Speaker: and when we can even be smart. So the physiology basically becomes a gatekeeper of entering into these other states. And now the question would be, why would you have a gatekeeper? Because when you go into those states, you have vulnerability. And every trauma survivor of trauma will tell you, if I am told to relax, open up, I'm going to freak out because I feel vulnerable.
Speaker: Yeah. So the issue is it's not that you can't trigger the body. You can trigger the body to be ah open, but the interpretation of that bodily feeling is different when someone has a traumatic experience. That autonomic imprint says, when I become accessible, I'm aggressively going to get out of here.
Speaker: What it makes me think of, You know, the imprinting, um I say the word like blueprints, and I'm even thinking a book I've been reading through lately, um Unlocking the Emotional Brain, about like memory consolidation. yeah um Same thing where they talk about that emotional learning, the implicit learning of like it's a schema, it's like a mapping. You said it creates a feedback loop. so that Yeah.
Speaker: my body feels this, like the interception, the danger, the threat, therefore it says, okay, it's not safe. And so it creates this feedback loop. I always think of like predictive texts, like the brain is working ahead or the body to like, well, it's predicting. The problem is it gets stuck in that loop, the trauma loop or this, you know, burden loop. Um,
Speaker: and we don't know how to necessarily get out, think our way out of it. because You can't can't think your way out of it. That is the paradox. Right. And that is the burden that people think that they are failures because they can't think their way out of it. Well, then you got shame.
Speaker: Then you got the shame piece too of like, I'm a failure. I'm bad. Something's wrong with me. I'm broken. that see See, you've heard the script. Yes, I know. yeah And going back to what you said earlier, is like I've seen scripts doing this, you know, enough times now, meaning with enough clients that you start to see these template scripts. And again, person's unique though too. okay you know i say to a person, if you do this with arms out, you're allowing your ventral side.
Speaker: How does your client feel in that state? Oh, I'm sure not so. Okay. So the issue is because I see clients do this a lot. they'll leave the those Well, what they'll tell you is they they have to do this. Right. Because what they're saying is what appears to be accessible to to me or to you is vulnerability to them.
Speaker: And that means it's not the physiological state, it's what their body now has labeled that state, and that becomes that imprint. And that is the complicated part because we think we can just put people into those states.
Speaker: They don't want to be in those states, that's what we don't understand. Yet, they want to hack it, they want to get a vagal nerve stimulator to put them into that state when their body will say,
Speaker: Don't want to be there. Or yeah that yeah, that's, I think one thing I'm seeing as of late is some of the the hacking. um And I say that with quotes because I'm not knocking.
Speaker: I think things can be helpful and useful. I've seen them be helpful and useful, but I think it's person context dependent and being curious about what is really going on. And does this really help you? Cause you can't hack your way out of And think of a client of mine,
Speaker: they have this pressure to like, okay, this week I want to get all these things processed and all the trauma of this. I'm like, I hear you. wow You know, like they, they, by the end of the week, it must be all done. i'm like, what is this about? Like, what is, i think it's a person. I think it's a survival part of them, protective part that's trying to, to like control how they heal have to slow them down off and say, what, tell me what's going on. Like, help me understand this pressure and shame and everything.
Speaker: we go back a few minutes back in the in the dialogue, you talk about predictability. And the issue is predictability is a metaphor of safety.
Speaker: ah yeah Now, for a lot of people, but for other people, violation of predictability in a safe environment is an amusement park.
Speaker: and So, and some people, that's another predictive you know projective test. Do you like roller coasters? I used to as a kid. Now I get sick on roller coasters. I can't go anywhere near them. Well, I went on every ride with the kids. That's what I did. So that was the parent bonding. But my wife didn't go on all the rides. She went on some.
Speaker: ah But the issue on the ice, I like the metaphor of the guardrails. yeah ah Let's say a Disney amusement park versus a county carnival. You know, you know that the the guardrails are there. So now you can say, I'm going be, I know I'm physically safe. Now can I experience that visceral feeling of literally falling out of a 10th story window? Right. Right.
Speaker: But that's hard because they've got to trust it that the guardrails are there. And that might take time to relearn. oh But the relearning is the processing of the visceral experience. yeah And that's where titration or, let's say, transitory bits, I visit it and then I can come back to it. I can't stay there very long.
Speaker: Yeah. So so let's let's roll back to to the book and the journey for a few moments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because the issue of that is most people read, let's say, the book,
Speaker: breath Many of the people that are ah in the book in terms of our conversations are quite prolific in terms of writing books on trauma and and adversity. And the issue that a lot of people are always curious is, who are these people?
Speaker: you know How they interact? What are their feelings? What is their journey been? part of what I wanted to do, I wanted to share my journey because my journey is not that of being alone on a journey. It is a journey with many other, I would say, family members.
Speaker: And it's um kind of a beautiful journey when you have friends and colleagues that you've met along the way who share what you want to do. I think that is an incredibly important thing.
Speaker: Yeah, what i learned, though, i learned I learned about, I would say, brilliant therapists, how they deal with people who are compromised. And I also learned that my skill set may not, I'm not a therapist, but my skill set may have been, let's say, serendipitously directed in the right place, because how I think...
Speaker: And I like what what they started to talk about me when I would be introduced as a scientist with the heart of a clinician, which I appreciated.
Speaker: But what i really want to say about that was I may have the heart of a clinician. I may not have the patience of a clinician. So in a sense, the ability to ah to be supportive under adverse situations. So we have our own skill set and we kind of like make it work in this complicated issue. And those of us who have, I'd say, tiptoed or fell into the world of trauma realize that it's a big world. And there are a lot of people that are in pain and a lot of people's pain
Speaker: still is not acknowledged and not acknowledged in, I would say, compassionate, appropriate way. They still feel embarrassment and blame or shame. And so I feel that it's, you know, like a society that could cure cancer.
Speaker: you know, that gets people excited. But a society that could structure itself to basically mitigate and ameliorate trauma is not discussed.
Speaker: um And whether we talk about hospital settings or educational settings or family structure or even religious institutions, and we start understanding ah what all these vectors, or let's say ah social media, these vectors, and now we're discussing AI, these are vectors that impact on our nervous systems. And they have, like going to use the term, a predictable impact.
Speaker: And we need to really understand that to make the world better. And making the world better is not taking away challenges. It's not taking away threats.
Speaker: It's taking away the probability of injury. And so in a sense, there's nothing wrong with being challenged, with having demands. But our bodies need to recover.
Speaker: And that's where recovery requires signals of safety. So it's not, in a sense, laziness. We don't want to take away all the challenges. Challenge, which is not life-threatening, is healthy in a nervous system that is resilient.
Speaker: And we have to understand that everything is about flexibility and resilience. That's what we need to be building. Totally agree. I'm thinking of a, it's not just, it we need we need the healthy stress because it's that pushing ourselves and not just ourselves in isolation, but within relationships, pushing together to to overcome ah and a difficulty and obstacle. Actually, there's a relief there. There's a connection point there of like, I can do hard things and that feels good. It's a very,
Speaker: So, you know, you just described team sports. Yeah, totally. Totally. um You know, well, I think of even doing hard things. My buddies will do like hard hikes and tough runs together. It's like you're encouraging each other to keep pushing and you feel good. I did this thing that I maybe a moment ago struggled the thing I could do or complete and I did it And I'm not alone. I'm with, with a team and we get this shared experience of connection, of feeling safe. know, all those things happen.
Speaker: And I love that. Even when I see my kids, it's like helping them push, knowing that I'm with, I'm there. Like I'm the guard, go back. I'm the guardrail. Like, I'm not going to let you you, know, get traumatized, you know, get injured and stuck. It's like, I'm there to keep you safe and and encourage you while also letting you struggle to grow and do the hard thing. Cause it, I know it's going build your sense of safety, confidence and self in the relationship.
Speaker: So I'm going to ask you the question after you do your things with your friends, what is, what happens next after the long hike or long thing? Well, usually it tends to then we slow down and have we talk and get food.
Speaker: So more of like a ventral... You get food and beer or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And talk and laugh and hug. Okay, so what are you using? What system are you using now? Social engagement system.
Speaker: And that's extremely powerful in shifting the state from being in a mobilized state. And now you're creating visceral feelings of what we call social bonding. Yeah.
Speaker: safety. So you can actually see there's a time course. It's not like I've done this bit. I'm running off. See you in two weeks. you You have a closing ritual. And the closing ritual is extremely polygable.
Speaker: it's It's like a good it's like the it's the social engagement imprint or the ventral imprint versus the traumatic imprint. oh Yeah, but let's say it's coming back home imprint. Oh, I like that even better. It's coming back home to, yes, it's coming back home. And and I love those moments. um personally i Love them, love them, love them. um And as we kind of come wrap up, I'm thinking of with all everything that you reflecting on all these conversations and over the years and the kind of the span in where we are now. I'm um curious, like, what is the like a pursuit or the next unanswered question given everything up to this point that you're like, i want to keep pursuing this? Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's not pursuing the unanswered question. i'm really saying I'm actually coming up with a literally a portfolio of how to deal with unanswered questions. So it's kind of like the toolkit.
Speaker: yeah And so it's a toolkit that is not is clearly defines what it can be used for. So the issue is everything looks like you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The issue is that the toolkit is saying all the features that get disrupted when our physiology shifts into a state of threat are manageable if we have the right tool.
Speaker: And that means that if we have the right tool, we support health growth, restoration, and our ability to be social. Because being social is also part of the feedback. We can be social only when we are in that state, but being social helps us maintain opportunities to be in that state. So the issue is, can I conceptualize the portfolio of situations or conditions And can i identify the toolkit that can be used, that can be scalable so that it becomes part of how we function as a society? So I'm trying to think about how do I get this in.
Speaker: First, I'm trying to now ah define the ah range because we get into really trouble when everything, when people see that what you're trying to do, they think it's everything.
Speaker: Well, it's not everything. You ask a person who suffers from PTSD if it's everything. It may be is something as simple in their mind as I would love to be held safely in the arms of another, but, you know, I can't.
Speaker: My body doesn't allow it. ah so But when we start understanding that response, it's not really not being held in the arms of another. It's a whole array of physiological state shifts that result in supporting a different response a configuration of behavior and that portfolio that uh that toolkit um yeah but the portfolio is the paper i'm working on now yeah so it it's in revision uh and when i get off this i go back to it Yes, yes, yes. And the point is that that tells you the the ah the realm or the arena.
Speaker: And then the treatment models have to deal with how do you, it's like prosody, it's like somatics, it's like oxytocin, it's like vagal nerve stimulates, like singing, it's like being with friends. You start understanding the vectors that go into that architecture, the nourishment to it.
Speaker: And we have certain basic principles that we've known through, i would say, the humanity history of humanity and even beyond humanity. When you want to make a pet feel at home, you talk in a softer voice, you make sure there's food, you do this um engagement behavior, and you use ingestion.
Speaker: to get the nervous system primed. And so we have to go go back. So we had this little conversation about like the history of humanity. And part of breaking bread, and someone's in a sense having meals with others was extremely important. And the concept of of inviting strangers in, the nomadic worldview of basically when you're in someone else's tent,
Speaker: yeah Everyone is safe. There's no aggression. ah This whole notion of ingestion and no aggression as having boundaries for it. And we don't even think about We look at restaurants. Restaurants are so noisy. People can't relax. And so people think that the noise is part of having Right.
Speaker: It's really part of not experiencing these other attributes of interaction. My wife would totally agree with that. The noisy restaurants. I would too, as I've gotten older. if I can't hear. I want to quiet her. Actually, I want to be by a fire is where I want to be at night. And like, that's my favorite talks with my family is sitting by a fire and just like talking. And we we do little backyard fire pit will sit and ah my boys and my daughter will just watch the fire and talk. And it's like, I love that. It's much easier to pay attention to them and have them wander. Yeah.
Speaker: Noisy restaurants. Lovely. Sounds lovely. Well, Steve, thank you so much. And i am so excited for the upcoming articles and what you're doing and the toolkit and,
Speaker: Yes, to have this book. And again, if you're watching now, this the book may be out and you can order it. um If you watch before the release date, then you can pre-order it. um But Steve, thank you and blessings to your work and all that you're doing for us. Thank you. Thank you very much. Enjoyed the conversation with you. Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to Wired for Connection, a Polyvagal podcast produced by Polyvagal Institute. New episodes of this podcast are published monthly. Follow Polyvagal Institute on social media to learn more about upcoming guests and episode release dates. To learn more about Polyvagal Theory and support PVI on their mission to create a safer and more connected world, visit their website at polyvagal.org.
