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Reset Your Nervous System Fast: 3 Polyvagal Exercises
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Struggling to settle after stress? In this episode, licensed therapist and Mind+Body coach Travis Goodman teaches three polyvagal-informed practices to reset your nervous system quickly and safely. You’ll learn how to orient to safety cues, ground through the senses, and use lengthened exhale breathing to activate the vagal brake. These simple, science-backed techniques help you move from fight/flight or shutdown back to calm connection. Perfect for busy men, dads, and leaders who need a fast, reliable way to self-regulate without white-knuckling it.
What you’ll learn:
• Polyvagal exercises to regulate your nervous system fast
• How to orient and scan your environment for safety
• 3-sense grounding to exit rumination and return to the present
• Lengthened-exhale breathing to stimulate the vagus nerve and settle your heart rate
• Why “reset first, solve second” prevents reactivity and burnout
If you want deeper coaching or therapy, visit travisgoodmanlmft.com. For more men’s mental health tools and community, check out The Men’s Collective Podcast.
[Life in Silico] by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au
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Transcript
The Need for a Nervous System Reset
00:00:00
Speaker
When stress hits your body, it doesn't need another lecture. It needs a reset.
Introducing Polyvagal-Informed Practices
00:00:05
Speaker
So here are three polyvagal-informed practices to bring you back
Meet Travis Goodman
00:00:10
Speaker
online.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody, to this week's episode of the Men's Collective Podcast. I'm your host. My name is Travis Goodman. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and a mind-body coach.
Purpose of Nervous System Reset
00:00:20
Speaker
And today, going to share with you three exercises that are polyvagal-informed,
00:00:26
Speaker
to help bring your nervous system back online, to help give it a reset, not a judgment, not a criticism, not another lecture, but to be witnessed and to reorient our
Practice 1: Observing Surroundings
00:00:40
Speaker
heading. So the first is orienting yourself to safety cues or to grounding or calm cues. What this looks like simply is looking around your environment, identifying three to five things, objects, things you see, and describing them in simple terms.
00:01:00
Speaker
So when your eyes move, when you kind of scan around, your brain... can tell your body I'm not trapped. It begins to send this subconscious signal with movement, with scanning. Simply identify three things you see. So for example, in my environment, there's a, which you cannot see, but there's a lamp to my left.
00:01:23
Speaker
I have this a little tree thing that my wife got me from my office. it's I think it's really rad looking, um but it's just kind of, I don't even know what it is. It's a tree.
00:01:36
Speaker
Really cool. You can't see it. And then something else I could see is I have this really cool picture above behind my desk. It's like wood carving with wood grain.
00:01:47
Speaker
And so just take a moment and just identify three things in your environment and just name them in simple terms. You can even use descriptors like color, like shape, size, texture, but simply do
Practice 2: Sensory Grounding
00:02:00
Speaker
that. The second is to ground yourself through your senses.
00:02:04
Speaker
So I want you to name three things you can see, hear, and feel right now in your environment. The point of this exercise is it pulls you out of mental, logical rumination, and it brings you into the present moment. It grounds you right here, right now.
00:02:26
Speaker
And this practice, again, is about reorienting. It's about resetting into things that you can see, hear, and feel. Again, pulling out the mind and physically grounding, mentally, visually grounding you with your senses, which is a great way to also distract from whatever it is that was occupying your mind.
Practice 3: Lengthening Exhales
00:02:47
Speaker
And the third, and one of my favorites, is lengthening your exhale in a breath. So for example, if you inhale for four seconds, I want you to work on exhaling for eight.
00:02:58
Speaker
So this activates the vagal break, which is your body's natural calling mechanism. So the vagal break is essentially as you exhale for that eight seconds, that long exhale, it's having, it's a vagal toning. So it's going up against the vagus nerve, right around your throat area, kind of below the jaw, which sends a subconscious breath.
00:03:21
Speaker
signal to the nervous system, to the heart, into the vagus nerve to communicate grounded, safe cue, which begins to shift you out of a sympathetic state.
00:03:33
Speaker
Now, you might have to do that for a few rounds, kind of really slowing with intention, focusing on
Benefits of Reset Practices
00:03:41
Speaker
the breath. And the more you do that, the more you practice this kind of vagal break, vagal toning exercise, and specifically with a longer exhale, that's very important, it begins to communicate safe connection, grounded, calming connection.
00:03:56
Speaker
Now, caveat to that is you may still feel something post this exercise or any of these exercises, and that's okay if you do. It may not all go away. Whatever it is that was bothering you, whatever was activating your sympathetic nervous system or the kind of anxiety or the frustration or the aggression or the anger,
00:04:15
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily fix the problem or resolve the actual issue. This is about resetting your nervous system and slowing things down to gain perspective, to then begin to say, what do I need to do in this moment? How do i have some resiliency and practice that nervous system state to not get wrapped up in the emotions, in the sympathetic over-activation, kind of hyper-vigilant state, but to say, let me just pull that brake, slow things down.
Enhancing Practice Effects
00:04:44
Speaker
And these small practices, these small practices repeated over time can signal safety faster than really any mantra.
00:04:53
Speaker
Now, mantras are great. In fact, I would pair a mantra with a breath. I would pair a mantra... with kind of grounding with your senses. But this is not about breathing to relax, so to speak. This is more about literally changing changing your physiology through breath by tapping in to the vagus nerve.
00:05:14
Speaker
And so I encourage it to you. What I'd like for you to do today, this week, is to try one of these, or all, Every day this week. And notice not just what changes in your mind, but what can shift in your
Invitation for Feedback and Inquiries
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body.
00:05:28
Speaker
And I'd love to hear. If you're watching this, comment below your experience. um And if you're wanting to learn more. If you're wanting to be in touch with me, go to travisgoodmanlmft.com. Link will be in the description if you want to do some therapy or mind-body coaching with me. And if you also want to know a little bit more about kind of the hierarchy of the nervous system or what polyvagal theory is in a nutshell, you're going to want to watch and listen to the previous episodes ah regarding that.
Next Episode Preview
00:05:57
Speaker
um And I want you to stay tuned for next episode, next video, where we talk about the three ends practiced by Dr. Les Aria.
00:06:08
Speaker
It's a great practice. um It's another great reset. But until then, have a great week.