The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

Within Polyvagal Theory, the neural process that evaluates risk in the environment without awareness is called neuroception

Polyvagal Theory emphasizes that the neural circuits that support social behavior and emotional regulation are available

The Polyvagal Theory restructures clinical disorders as difficulties in neural regulation of specific circuits associated with turning off defensive strategies and enabling social engagement to spontaneously occur.

We use psychological constructs, and those psychological constructs do not map well into biological adaptive responses.

Pete Seeger, who recently died, was at the vanguard of this movement of singing songs of social change—these were important and serious songs.

the person, due to physiological state change, might be expressing autistic-like behaviors. Rather, they assume motivation for the insensitive behavior of the person walking away.

Porch swings were common before we became an air-conditioned society. In the first half of the 20th century, houses frequently had porches and couples used to swing together as part of a social engagement strategy. They are not very popular anymore, but they had a function. Swinging, in a sense, used behavior to modify physiological state and funct

medical environments often remove access to the moderating social support features that we have in our normal everyday life. Our clothing is taken away from us. We are put into a public place and predictability is gone. Many of the features that our nervous system uses to self-regulate and to feel safe are not available.

I’m really interested in the fact that the world we live in focuses so much on cognitive functioning without an integration