Who in the public sphere is stoking your fears and pushing these messages that fill your TV sets and social media feeds? Who is telling you to be angry? Which politician is tossing you the red meat that tells you that it’s okay to hate or even harm others whom they are casting as rivals?

Feeling threatened retunes our nervous system to respond to everything as if it is a threat. Just think about the many instances of road rage, in which a stressful situation can cause minor grievances to quickly and tragically escalate.

Just a small fraction of the animal kingdom is capable of tapping into the evolutionarily modern Green state to handle problems via social solutions.

The problem with leaning on substances to regulate our feelings and autonomic state is that they offer only a temporary escape and diminishing returns.

“stress” is often used to apply to both the stimulus and our body’s response to it.

It is through the vagus that our neuroception and autonomic state impact our entire body—and not just a single discrete part of it. If our bodies are an orchestra that consists of a multitude of different organs and systems, then the vagus is the conductor, raising the baton so they all can join together into a shared symphony.

This need to shift states is often not conscious but driven by the body on a foundational survival level.

Deprived of social contact, we suffer. This is why social isolation inspires the unpleasant feeling of “loneliness,” and why long-term social isolation can be truly traumatic and severely compromise our health.

Our body and brain physically heal faster and better when we’re in the Green state. As a result, architectural, acoustic, and aesthetic features that make us feel safe may make a real difference in our body’s ability to heal itself.