Episode 15: Polyvagal Theory with Karen Miscall-Bannon

Karen Miscall-Bannon is a senior hatha Yoga teacher. She is Yoga Alliance-certified at the 200-and 500-hour levels in Embodyoga® and at the E-RYT 500-hour level by Yoga Alliance since 2003.  She began leading trainings at Newington Yoga Center in CT in 2009. She is also an IAYT-certified Yoga Therapist and has worked on their exam-writing committee. Karen is currently  program director at Mindful Yoga Therapy, a non-profit dedicated to bringing trauma-sensitive yoga to veterans and other populations suffering with Post-Traumatic Stress. MYT offers trainings for teachers as well as resources for students.

Karen is currently located in Northern CA, where she teaches classes, workshops, and leads 100- 200- and 300-hour Yoga Alliance-certified Hatha Yoga teacher training programs in the greater Sacramento area. She leads workshops and trainings around the world, including Thailand, Europe, and India.

Karen has extensive knowledge of anatomy, with a passion for yoga therapeutics, stemming from her bodywork practice of over 20 years.  Karen brings a deep love of yoga and yoga philosophy to her teaching, and she is known for being able to make abstract concepts accessible to her students.  She gratefully brings what she has learned from her teachers and her own practice to her students, to assist them in deepening their awareness of body and mind through the practices of yoga.

Transcript

0:07  
Hello, and welcome to the autism in real life podcast. In each episode, you'll get practical strategies by taking a journey into the joys and challenges of life with autism. I'm your host, Ilia Walsh, and I'm an educator and the parent of two young adults, one of which is on the autism spectrum. Join me as I share my experience and the experiences of others. So that we may see the unique gifts and talents of individuals on the autism spectrum, fully recognized. Hello, everyone, and welcome. This is Ilia. And I'm really happy today to have Karen Miskell. Bannon with us. And for some of you, you might know, but I've been studying yoga for a while. But most recently, I met Karen that most recently, it's probably been about four or five years now. It goes fast. But I did a significant portion of my teacher training with Karen, probably some 400 hours with you so and some of that in India. So it was really awesome. So I'm very happy to have you here today. But other than me being thrilled to be able to spend this time with you, I would love you to introduce yourself. And we'll be talking about polyvagal theory and talk a little bit about how we came to this conversation. But if you could just introduce yourself, that'd be great.

1:27  
Sure. So I, let's see, I'll start kind of, I guess the beginning is a good place to start. I started practicing yoga in 1985, when I was in college, and was lucky enough to have as my first teacher, you know, a pretty well renowned ion guard teacher, Edie motors, dini. And so that's kind of where the journey started. I also am a body worker, massage therapist. I've studied different, you know, studied a little bit of traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and really started to dive into yoga philosophy. And through my massage training was introduced to Tom Meyers, who talks about the fascia in the body. And so all of these different, really new and kind of cutting edge ways of looking at the body mind complex, and one of the things that we talk about in the fossil world is this, what we call the neural cardiac system. So in, we used to dissociate all of these different systems from one another, now we realize that, you know, they really can't operate separately, nothing in the body operates separately, you don't just stretch your hamstrings, or, you know, what I mean, like, everything is connected. So I started getting that kind of perspective on things, you know, probably back in the late 9019 90s. And, and then I tripped over this polyvagal theory in the, I want to say it was right around, maybe 2010 910, something like that. And I was very intrigued by because in our in my yoga teacher trainings, and the trainings that I took, anatomy was a pretty big part of it. And we look at the nervous system, right, because the, you know, the practices of yoga, even. And at that time, really, nobody realized, like how these things work, they just knew that they did. So somebody with trauma would find that certain practices would help them to regulate themselves. And so my friend, Suzanne Manafort, who's also the founder of mindful yoga therapy, which I believe you have discussed a bit on this show. Yes. And we'll give you some some more read. We're, I'm actually now the program director. And I'm going to be taking over as

3:47  
well, this is Miss Suzanne, but yes.

3:49  
So she's gonna be in charge, she just won't be in charge.

3:56  
And so when she first started this program, the mindful yoga therapy, she was focusing on veterans at the VA hospital nearby where she lived in New Haven. And she was able to connect with, you know, in your people may already know this, but she was able to connect with this, a professor at Yale, and they've done a lot of studies on these practices, and when do they work? And so, you know, rolling through time, we found, you know, we talk quite a lot in in our in my yoga trainings, and another in the trainings that I've taken about this nervous system. And so that really became an interest for me in the nervous system. And then myofascial neural neural web, we call it, so really studying the interaction amongst all the different systems of the body and seeing how that affects, you know, the being and the state of being and the emotional state. And also, you know, the neurological state. Um,

4:56  
yeah, and I think, you know, so just to pause here, I think In my first 200 hours with you, I remember having several aha moments going wait, this is similar to the population that I work with. It's very, it reminds me a lot, you know, a trauma. And also I've gone down that interest also here on the podcast with different people with trauma and autism, about how the body sort of takes in information and how it processes it processes it and regardless of whether it's, you know, personally, I hate to say real or perceived, because to the body, it's all real, and it's how we interpret that. But how it creates so much dysregulation, and how it creates so much, you know, pain in the body, and all sorts of different symptoms that we can kind of pull apart. But as I was, and I know, we had, we've had several conversations about how some of these tools and strategies work, but maybe not always knowing the why or the science. And I know, to kind of get closer to that, which I think is super exciting.

6:00  
Definitely. And so that's where, you know, I will admit that part of my journey, as a yoga student has been, you know, kind of scientifically proving what yoga has always said, right? So for me, it's not enough to just say it works. I'm like, why? You know, I've got that one line. Yeah. Well, you know, that's great that it works. But how is it repeatable? Because I think at heart, I come from a medical family, and I'm married to a scientist, I, that scientific method is really important to me. You know, for good reason, because we're working, especially when we start talking about trauma. And I would argue, also, I agree with you. And so I'm going to mention a couple of different names in this podcast. And hopefully, I don't know if you have show liners or what, but we can put the books that I'm discussing Absolutely. On your show notes. But Stephen Porges is essentially the guy who came up with the idea of polyvagal theory. And, basically, so I'm going to get into the the history, you know, kind of the history of the nervous system, the old understanding of it, and then I'll talk a little bit about the newer understanding that's, that's presented to us by polyvagal theory. One of the things that's important to notice is that they don't disagree, in terms of recognition of stress, right, so they both acknowledge that stress has an effect on the nervous system, where they split paths is how that happens. And so the older I'll start with the older understanding of the nervous system, and it was pretty simple, actually, it was like a seesaw. So we have parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system, whereas the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for rest, digest anything, that is what we would consider to be positive neural experiences, right. And then we have the sympathetic nervous system. That is what it's really responsible for the spinal sympathetic nervous system, and I'm going to make a differentiation between that in just a second is that that's a they act like a seesaw. So in other words, the the idea was that the fight flight freeze, and they put freeze under fight and flight, which I always found, that was where I really started to try to pick this apart, because, for me, freezing is not a sympathetic nervous system response. It's not as it as it turns out, it's a parasympathetic nervous system response, but that kind of that puts into play like So wait a minute, if the parasympathetic nervous system was seen as putting a break on the sympathetic nervous system, so in other words, if we had a state of sympathetic nervous system excitation fight flight, then the parasympathetic nervous system, if we can bring up the tone of that, that brings down the excitation of the sympathetic nervous system, so it was seen like a seesaw. And polyvagal theory posits a little bit more nuanced understanding of that. So it breaks the the neural circuits that basically instead of there being two, there are three. Now the spiral sympathetic chain or the fight flight response is a mammalian response, but it's also a lower order response. Right? So it's other mammals and lizards and turtles. Right? We'll also have some turtles actually, don't they do the dorsal Vegas response, but we'll get to that. So we're pretty I think, many people, especially if you've done any yoga in the last 1015 years, you have probably heard about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, so kind of bantered about.

9:45  
So polyvagal theory so first of all, let's talk about the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is also recognized in the old model of the nervous system. But notice that they call it the vagus nerve. And if you've ever heard of it, you've probably heard the vagus nerve. It's the Wonder nerve feeds all of the organs. Well, it's actually two separate nerves. So all of the cranial nerves and the vagus is considered the 10th pair. So when we talk about the vagus nerve, we're actually talking about a pair of nerves. And that's true for all of the cranial nerves. They all come in pairs. And what we know about the vagus has that it has to actually separate pathways, completely separate pathways. So it's not even a branch of a single nerve. They have different origins in the brainstem, and they feed different parts of the body. So what Porges understood and discovered is and they did this in concert with different dissection techniques, and actually taking apart the body and looking at it, and seeing Okay, so we've always said, Well, that, you know, the vagus, you know, comes from the brainstem. But, but, but the two different pathways come from separate places in the brainstem. So, what we're finding is that, evolutionarily, we have two separate structures. So the old Vegas is what we call the dorsal Vegas system. And that's the lizard brain, essentially, that's the lizard response. So that takes you into the freeze response. The kind of newer evolutionarily, evolutionary response would be the spinal sympathetic chain response, which would be the fight or flight. So you see, now we've taken that fight flight and we've separated the freeze out because it's different fight or flight mobilizes you, freeze shuts, shuts you down. So and then governing all of it is this new revolutionary pathway called the ventral vagus and the ventral vagus is feeds the organs above the breathing diaphragm, so the heart the lungs, the upper third of the esophagus, and the pharynx, and larynx. So vocalization is governed by the the vagus nerve, and the other cranial nerves all animate the face. So the vagus and the other cranial nerves are important when we start talking about facial expression. And also, one's ability to discern different sounds in it becomes through these these nerves, the cranial nerves and the vagus, ventral vagus in particular, are governing all of that.

12:25  
So when you say governing, are we saying that that's how those, that's the nervous system by which we take in information and process information?

12:34  
Yes, so the ventral in essence, the ventral vagus has, I think it's something like 80% of the fibers. Actually, in both vagus nerves, 80% of the fibers are sensory fibers, and they bring information from those organs back to the brain, only 20% Go from the brain is motor nerves out to the body. So I think that's really important. Because when we start to talk about, for example, that gut instinct, right, that is actually a real thing. You have your nervous system is very highly innervated in the area of the gut, and there is more information going from your gut to your brain than your brain to your gut.

13:14  
And now, if there's some sort of dysregulation in that, then that's going to have like a misfire, and how your brain receives that information, then, yeah, maybe?

13:24  
Well, usually, it's pretty clear from the dorsal vagus to the brain, what's happening, where it becomes really interesting, I think, is that the ventral vagal system is this also happens to be the system of social engagement, which makes sense with all the facial muscles, and, you know, controlling the eyeballs. So some of the exercises, which I'll get to a little bit later involve moving just her eyeballs, because those muscles will help to adjust the top two vertebra of the spine that helps there to be a free flow of information. So it's really, really interesting. So basically, if we were to let's start with if we start with a model of health, and not, and by this, I don't mean that anything that presents otherwise is bad or wrong. It like you said, it's offline. So if everything's good, and you grew up in a family, where what we've learned too, is that they're the same things that in mindful yoga therapy, we talk about creating safety, predictability and control. It just so happens that those three things are also the things that helped to create ventral, vagal tone, right? You cannot if you're not feeling safe in your environment, or if you grew up with somebody who was a little had a flat effect, or you didn't have as much social interaction and engagement or you were just a child who didn't really, you know, my daughter was not, you know, she didn't want to go to nursery school, right, the low voice voices and all that kind of really scared her. So, you know, different children are going to be really different in how they present. But um, the the idea is The the social engagement network is the exact same network that feeds the ventral the heart, the lungs, and the vocal network. And so what happens is any person whether they've got a tone nervous system or not, so a dysregulated nervous system, so suffering from anxiety or depression, and we'll talk about exactly where those fall along these three axes, the ventral vagus, if something happens to you, like there's a loud noise or something behind you, if you have a socially engaged ventral vagus, and your your resilience is strong, which means that you've had, you know, the auditory stimulation, and those things don't bother you, I'll just say that. Then if something happens, your ventral vagus is able to process and say, okay, is this something I need to actually run away from? Do I need to mobilize? Or is this something that I just need to, you know, turn around and walk the other way? Now, if the body or the autonomic nervous system, which is so all of this is describing the autonomic nervous system, which back in the old days, we thought just move work automatically, and there was no, no way to change it? Right? I mean, we also used to think that brain cells couldn't be regenerated, which we now know is completely not true. That in the state of positive social engagement, that helps helps you to control the next sequence of events. So somebody who's got a very like, again, a toned, I'll say, online ventral Vegas complex, we call it is going to be able to discern very easily whether something is truly dangerous or not. If the body decides that it's dangerous, it has two options. And usually it goes in a cascade. So usually what will happen is the the first response will be fight flight. And if that solves the problem, then all is well and you go back and you can report the ventral Vegas back online relatively easily. If that doesn't solve the problem, or for some people, they just bypass that state completely. And they go completely into the freeze, which is the dorsal vagal network in what we call the dorsal vagal complex, which is responsible for slowing things down and completely shutting them off, you can actually take your heart offline completely. So it takes all of the the nerves that go to the organs, and it has the ability to completely shut it down. An example of this would be if you've ever seen a cat, grab a mouse, and the mouse just goes limp. And like the cat doesn't want to play with a dead animal. So it drops it and then the mouse

17:54  
that mouse his has put its dorsal Vegas system online to survive, right. So these are all survival tools. And like I said, they it's a hierarchy. So we have the ventral vagus, and then we have the spinal sympathetic chain. And then we have the dorsal vagus system. And resilience is created in the ventral vagus complex. And so there are, like I said, all of these nerves that animate the face and the muscles of the face, and the larynx and pharynx are part of that ventral vagus circuit. So as we know, from our yoga practices, right, you can you can go both ways, the practices are going to affect the nervous system, and the nervous system is going to affect the practices. And the more practices you do and the more consistent you are with them, the more resilient nervous system you create, that's just that's indicated by a lot of different research. So probably yoga practices do work, some of them certain types of new practices, were right, right, really depends on the person too, because different practices are going to be appropriate for different types of people. So it is Do you understand was that pretty clear?

19:08  
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, as I'm, as I'm listening to you, and we talk about autism as far as a diagnostic, you know, thing. It's, it's a social communication. Right, like challenge. And so when, when you're talking to me about like, the whole, you know, the cranial nerves and throughout this whole upper part of social, you know, connection and social engagement, it kind of like connects, I'm like, oh, there there's something there. Like, I don't know, we know what that is. But definitely the if there's a challenge in, in social communication, that's all of that part, right. So I'd say, you know, and then and then I wonder and I know you said you would get to it, but this also connection to anxiety and depression, which is very common in you know, in our population. You know, I would say, so what? What is that connection, as far as taking in information, either from the social world or from, you know, just our body senses. And I also think I know so many things running through my head. But I know we've talked about that interoception piece, which is, you know, how we spent the different organs in our body? And how do we know when we're hungry? How do we know when we're full? How do we know if we have to use the bathroom? You know, those types of things? Those are all very primal things, but sometimes, in our community, those messages are not always accurate, right? And I think you have to do before, right? Like, sometimes if, if you have a well toned, nervous system, then you you kind of know how to accurately discern what is accurate and what is not, and what's real and what's not. But I think many of us, regardless of what diagnosis we put on, people have not had that toned and developed as well as we would have liked so. So I think this is relevant for for like a lot of people if not

21:03  
absolutely, if not everybody right now, because, you know, with the pandemic, we've lost our social engagement, right, we were online, but we've lost that in, you know, interpersonal relationship, which I'll go out on a limb here, I think that you know, the people that we see, you know, on airplanes melting down, and you know, the anger and you know, this the, the violence that's coming, people are stuck in a spinal sympathetic team. So basically what we do, we can look at this, as you know, so And what's fascinating too, and Porges and this guy's, it's the other book I'm gonna recommend to you is by Stanley Rosenberg, and the forward is by Steven Porges. But he, Stanley Rosenberg wrote a book called accessing the healing power of the vagus nerve. And I'll give you all the information for it. But he and Porges both notice that traumatized populations and autistic populations present with the same sets of problems in terms of processing information. So essentially, what's happened is when especially so only, like when we send young people off to war, 22% of them come back with post traumatic stress. And I'm not even to call it a disorder because it's not a disorder. It's the nervous system, doing its level best to protect the body that you know, the body mind, right. And, you know, and I've gotten to the point where I'm like, wow, that is so amazing that your body's doing that for you. And now let's, let's see if we can move it, move it along, right. So basically, that it gets stuck either in the sympathetic response, or in the dorsal response. So the dorsal vagal response will be responsible for depressive states. And I like to use depressive states, because I'm not a diagnostician, I'm a yoga teacher and a massage therapist, I'm not a doctor, but I can recognize a depressive state, I don't have to have a diagnosis of depression to understand that that's a depressive state. And I've experienced it myself, so I know what it feels like, and that you're stuck in the dorsal vagus. And so what we found is that these different practices and just so happens that mindful yoga therapy includes many of them, bring tone back to the ventral vagus system, so help to enable people to bring that vagus, socially engaged engagement system back online, and their weed whacking outside my window. Fine. So, essentially, yeah, essentially, both of you know, people on the spectrum and people who've experienced trauma, and get stuck in one of those two places. There's so much that can be done, which is where I think it's great. You know, it's like, okay, so now we understand a little bit how that works. Now, what can we do to help you? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And so you know, the one thing that I'll say that mindfully over therapy, we have our toolbox that we use all of the tools, there's, you know, creating a safe space, providing a predictable experience and ultimately allowing the person to decide whether they do it or not, right, so giving control back to whoever the the student is. And, you know, we have stories of people who So Michael, yoga therapy has been done in many different formats, but the original format was in a 12, week, residential PTSD program. And so they would come into the yoga studio two times a week and do this practice with Suzanne. And she said that many times there would be a guy who'd stand there for the first three weeks with his arms crossed and just not she said, all you have to do is show up. You don't have to do anything. But pretty much everybody would eventually start to play along and start to practice because they'd see their friends benefiting and they they realize that like okay, this is isn't that scary or weird? You know, I think the Vietnam that area had era had a difficult time, sometimes with yoga, because, you know, they were traumatized by that part of the world. And, you know, fairly or unfairly attributed yoga to that, that kind of space. So, but eventually, if you know, if we could get them to participate, the practices worked. We use yoga nidra, gratitude is a big part of it, as you know, meditation, mindful movement. So what's interesting about the mindful movement portion of it is that that works really well for people who are stuck in the dorsal vagal. So very depressed.

25:42  
There's another way to approach it, though, that that activates the sympathetic spinal chain in a positive way. So one of the things that I want to point out too, is that this we have these three neural circuits, but they're also to hybrid circuits. And this is one thing that the old model of the nervous system did not address at all, which is basically we have places and times where the sympathetic nervous system is activated, but it's not in a in a bad way. So for example, competitive sports, right, and what keeps a competitive sport, a sport and not a violent brawl, is fact that people make eye contact with each other. And so you know, like, then there's a famous Porges, I think, pointed out, or maybe it was Rosenberg who talks about this famous clip between Larry Bird and Dr. J, and a game and, you know, they got into this huge brawl, because Dr. J, like, gave an elbow and walked away. And then Byrd went after him. So if he turned around and made eye contact with him, it wouldn't have happened. Right? It's so so competitive sports is an example of the a hybrid between the spinal sympathetic chain and the ventral vagus. And then the other one, that's a hybrid circuit is the dorsal vagus, and the ventral vagus in a, in a setting of what we'll call it, so we'll call that sports model. The one of let's see, hang on, I wrote it down here was my hybrid, um, it mobilized without fear, right. So mobilization with fear, would be the spinal sympathetic fight flight mobilization without fear is that the ventral vagus is online. So we've got the ventral vagus online, and the sympathetic chain is activated. And we have that place where we can be active mode, and mobilize without fear. And then the dorsal vagus hybrid with the ventral Vegas is the state of meditation or intimacy. So it's in immobilization without fear. And the old model of the nervous system didn't address either, which I think is a big deal.

27:54  
Yeah, no. And, you know, it's funny, because sometimes, you know, again, and we've had our conversations about social media, but there's so much social media out there about, you know, having that flame behind you and having that, you know, that motivation and, and it's one thing to say it in terms like that, but I think, you know, when they say things like that, I think it's exactly what you're talking about here, which is this state or the state of flow, that's another one, right? But I think it's when we have both of those things engaged properly, then it then it works really well. And I think it creates and people probably have had that moment of feeling like yeah, I'm like, energized and I've got that, you know, thing under me and I feel focused and it's but it also brings me to a place of like, joy like I'm in Yes, place of joy. Whereas if it's all under this, you have that same like fire under your under your ass right there. And you're feeling like, oh, no, I I'm really in a place of fear. It can feel so subtle, and we can use the same terminology, but it can be so different. And it you know, one is a place of encouragement and support and moving and positive movement, where the other one can just bring you back down to that shutdown, I would imagine to

29:14  
Yes, and like I said before, it is hierarchical, but you can also skip steps right? So you can go directly from ventral vagus to dorsal you can also go directly from dorsal back to ventral you don't have to go through that sympathetic response activation, right. So it is possible to take both of them offline quickly. And like I said, the good news is and what I find just so encouraging, is it that we have some pretty simple tools to help to bring back this tone of the ventral vagus. And

29:46  
I'm all about tools and strategies

29:50  
is very interesting. But if it doesn't lead to some sort of, you know, positive usefulness, then it's just an exercise in you know, thought so So just we'll get back to some of the tools. Do you have any other questions about that? Was I clear in explaining all that?

30:08  
Yeah, no, I think it's super clear. And I think definitely putting in some resources, I know many of our listeners will probably want to do some more research and find out more about, you know, this, all this concept and just, you know, I too was new to this. I know, we were just, you're great. You like sending me books? How about this book, you should check this one out, you should check this out. And so I do have, you know, Stanley Rosenberg's book is right here with me now. But yeah, I just started going into YouTube, honestly. And finally, there's really good videos, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, on just the same concept broken down as well. And I just think people would love to just kind of go down and find more information, but for those who are like, Okay, this is a lot already. You know, what, like, you said, What do I What do I do now? So how can I make this useful for me today? You know, or tomorrow kind of thing.

31:01  
Yeah. So, um, you know, one of the one of the tools that Porges uses now Portus is a, like a psycho therapist, like, he's a mind guy, Stanley Rosenberg's, a cranial sacral body guy, right? So, um, Porges, his main, or one of his main treatment kind of protocols is called the listening project protocol. And essentially, what they do in a third in a psychotherapeutic setting is they make, they'll put like earphones on the the patient the client, and get rid of any low vibration sound. So the lower the vibrate, the vibratory sound, the more mimicking it is of the predator. So in the automatic autonomic nervous system, we're going back to, you know, when we were lizard form, right, if it gets a signal in, um, it's going to react immediately and automatically. And so, in the in, in the presence of what that ventral vagal tone, it's able to different the middle ear, the muscles of the middle ear actually have to be toned in order for you to hear the human voice. Which is fascinating when you start to and also to be you know, and it's this part of the face right here, where when people are depressed, they lose. The facial muscles are not as expressive,

32:32  
right, so you're showing that Yes, like that, like, like, if you took your eye like a circle with your hands and your fingers around, like your eyebrow to your like, under

32:43  
a bun that that, that includes the eyes, the nose and the cheeks, right, the facial muscles so so if when that's not online, and we don't have when the those nerves and you can exhaust those nerves pretty easily, right, especially if they're not toned. So not just the nerves, but the little muscles in the inner ear can get fatigued really quickly. So he reported that people who were doing this project, you know, involved in this listening project, you know, after listening to an hour would find themselves just exhausted. I don't know if that's ever happened to you in a yoga training, where it's like, you just had so much information come in, and you're just, that's your middle ear, just saying the muscles of your middle ear just like nah. And so what happens is you lose the ability to discern the human voice and all you can hear are the lower vibrational sounds that indicate predator. And so that's going to affect the autonomic nervous system. And, and, you know, bring online either the sympathetic response or the dorsal vagal response also. So it really is a matter of, of creating and maintaining this, you know, and I love to call it fascial fitness in a way, right? Because, you know, because you've been in a yoga room with me for forever, that the fascia is such an important. Again, we talked about the neuro myofascial web, and, you know, it's it, everything is connected, the fascia in the body is one continuous sheet of connective tissue, and it it is pervasive, it wraps every structure, it creates the form of the body, it creates the form of all the organs of all the vessels, right? And so if there's a place that's kind of offline, that means that there's a disconnect in that body mind fabric. And again, the good news is, is that with simple exercises, we can bring that back online and create it if it's if it's missing. So I think, you know, and again, I'm not a diagnostician, but it seems to be that people who come in on the spectrum come in with these sort of learning dis, I mean, not learning but hearing listening disability, in terms of their middle ear muscles aren't functioning as a result of those nerve pathways not being activated.

34:59  
Yeah. And as you're saying that I'm also thinking, in addition to sort of a trauma response, where people dissociate from their current place, and I know I'm just gonna speak from my own experience, something that happens to me when I'm in a room with a lot of people. And sometimes, like you're saying like this a lot of talking, or maybe there's just a lot of buzz in the room, I do feel that shut down, I do feel like I kind of separate myself from the rest of the room. And it almost feels like the Charlie Brown adults talking where there's just, I don't hear I don't really understand the words, but I know there's words there. And I almost like the physical removal. But then what my body does is it's looking for perceived threat, right? So it becomes hyper, hyper vigilant. And, you know, those are things I personally am working on, but part of my doing, like the mindful yoga therapy, and training with you, and just going to regular therapy, all that stuff, is to help, you know, first recognize that that's actually happening, which I can do that better now, and not feel like I can totally have to remove myself and enlist tools to help stay engaged. And as I say that, now I'm starting to connect to, you know, the conversation we're having here, which is, um, kind of I don't know the terms really well. So what area would I be engaging as I start to use tools, whether it's like tapping or whether it's, you know, maybe I keep a bracelet on me, that reminds me to kind of stay engaged and stay present? What am I what am I kind of turn, you know, what am I bringing back online by doing that, by doing

36:33  
all of those things you're bringing back online, the ventral vagal network, and complex call it yep, yep. And again, when we are present, so I also find it just fascinating. So that the low, you know, the lower tones, or what we'll call a lack of prosody in someone's voice. So for somebody who has very flat like, we like to pick on professors, because you know, that y'all had a university who just stood up there and lectured and you fall asleep in five minutes? Well, that's because they have no prosody. And they're not, they're actually they're literally sending you into a dorsal vagal. And you just go offline and fall asleep, right. Whereas if somebody who's talking to you is really interested in their material, and they're just so excited, and their voice changes, and it's not necessarily volume, but it's like inflection, and you know, when you talk to a small animal or a baby, you know, and all of those things are designed to bring that ventral vagal complex online. And every time we reinforce a neural pathway, it becomes stronger. That works both ways, right? We know that if we reinforced the the stress response, we're going to take that pathway, because that's the pathway that the brain knows. So and in the yoga textbooks, it's so cool, you know, both the sutures and the project bigger. And some of the other Hatha Yoga texts, they do talk about replacing what they call bad habits. But you know, I would argue, maybe unhelpful patterns with helpful patterns, right, you replace the not helpful with the helpful, and the more you practice the helpful, eventually, it'll override that other pathway. And that is true, as you know, in talk therapy works, right, we use EMDR, we use these sort of body somatic based explorations to bring the body back online. And, and that actually brings me to a really, really, really important component of all of it is the, as you know, especially if any of you are teachers, or therapists. And if your therapist, I assume you already know this, but as teachers, and nowadays, you know, I think everybody needs to be experienced with trauma, because so many people have had pretty serious trauma. And the nervous systems, like I said, all those people on those airplanes, they're all stuck in that spinal sympathetic chain response, their nervous system can't do anything else. So we can look at them and think they're, you know, what the heck, you know, why is this happening? You know, it's they they're literally stuck in, you know, running away from the Jaguar. If they're the type of, you know, nervous system that fights instead of runs away, this is what's happening, right? Yeah.

39:18  
Yeah. No, totally makes sense. And I think what we might, you know, whether you're an educator or parents probably see this too, with their kids and students. It's, you know, you have your kids who either shut down, you know, when that when they're with all of the change, especially in the last couple years, and also, you know, at home, you know, they either shut down, or you have outbursts, and we say, you know, we could call it a meltdown, we could say their sudden outbursts, or there's violent behavior. And we we just call, you know, I know we're shifting this language, thank goodness, but we call them behaviors, right? We say, oh, that kid has behaviors. But But yeah, they are behaviors. That's a very good answer. Rational term but the why behind it is super important. It's not that they're just misbehaving, which I don't let you know, there's reasons behind it. And a lot of now as I'm, as we're talking, that connection is super clear. And I think we kind of always knew we would use terms like overstimulated, or, you know, they can't process all the information or sensory overload. And I think those are just really big generic terms for what we might see is actually happening, you know, in this in this theory that we're talking about right now, and, to me, it totally makes sense.

40:32  
And the most important thing that we can do, as both, you know, as practitioners and parents and teachers, is to create and provide a safe space, because all the work that you do, you know, you can move your eyeballs all you want, and do all the yoga you want, if you're not feeling safe, then the nervous system is not going to come back online, right, you're going to still be stuck there. Um, it just, it won't work you have, we have to provide them with a feeling of safety and some of the ways of doing that for, you know, for autistic children, or I would I do this for myself. So I have had PTSD. And I find it very difficult for myself to go into big groups of people that are loud, right, I put earplugs in, you know, that's what I've learned to create a safe space for myself. That way my nervous system can handle whatever's happening. And it's so we need so and so we can do that as parents like by putting earphones on children and deaden, you know, getting rid of some of that extraneous noise, because that can be terribly distracting to somebody who's already struggling to to make sense of the world. You know, create an as as, for example, as yoga teachers, we talk about this in the mindful yoga therapy trainings, I'm creating a safe environment. So setting up the room in a special way so that the door is being you know, they can see the door so they know they're safe, that nobody's going to do anything they don't understand, you're not going to get off your mat, you're not going to touch them, you're going to tell them, Oh, I'm going to walk over here, I'm going to just turn the heat down. It's a little warm here. You know what I mean? Everything is predictable, and controlled. So we offer us not the exact same practice every single day, but a very similar one variations on a theme so that they know what to expect. And that way that ventral Vegas can start to come back online.

42:24  
Right, so I'm going to pause you right here, because I think you're hitting a really critical point here for educators and for parents, and for adults who are, you know, learning to do this for themselves. We talked about routine being really helpful for those on spectrum, we talked about creating a predictable routines, right, predictable spaces. And here, I'm now making the connection as to why right again, not not just that we don't want too many colorful things on the wall, or we don't, you know, but but actually giving people I know, we probably use the private your next thing and I'm just gonna automatically say it is giving people the sense of control back right, so that they, they know, okay, every time I walk into this classroom, or into my bedroom or into my home, that I know that everything should be in the this general space. You know, usually my class day goes like this, you know, like there's a schedule, and maybe it changes Monday and Wednesdays and Tuesdays and Thursdays, but at least someone's walked me through it. And, and your your example about turning down the heat is what, you know, in education, we would call previewing, right, where we kind of preview what could happen during the day or what changes might be happening. So that it gives the individual a sense of understanding and control and and if it's not something that we predicted, then it's still some more information to know what is actually happening right now. And I think that's so important.

43:53  
Oh, it is it really is because again, you know, you can do all the exercises you want. If it's not done with a sense of safety, then that ventral vagus circuit is going to stay offline, because the two lower hierarchical states, which are evolutionarily older, are going to just come online automatically. So that is that I think that's you know, one of the biggest things is and also that safety is not simply the absence of threat, right? Poor just points this out in his book. And by the way, his book, The one I'm gonna recommend is the Pocket Guide to the polyvagal theory. And even that, I heard it's a bit dense, right? I mean, I mean, I took a look at the original polyvagal theory book when it first came out, a friend of mine had it and I was just like, I'm not a neuroscientist, I can't read this. Then he came out with a pocket guide was awesome. And I read it, I'm just like, Okay, I still have to go back and like, what does he just look up all the words whereas Rosenberg's book is a bit more user friendly. It's it's he's a body worker. It's much more somatic based He breaks it down and explains it in in in very plain English words without a lot of kind of what I will call psychological, you know, the vocabulary, right? You don't have to be a psychiatrist to be able to read Rosenberg's book, it would help if you were. That said, it's actually the polyvagal pocket. The Pocket Guide is an interview with him in a very famous. Well, it's a series there's there's the book, and then there's a series of interviews with him. And I don't know how to pronounce your name, but I think it's Budzinski. Her name? She's, she's a famous trauma therapist who's worked with Porges. So, yeah, creating that sense of safety. And again, safety is not as being a pro social thing, not just okay, there's no threat. There's no IED here. So everything's good.

45:59  
Right, right. And by

46:01  
the way, that whole idea of what happens at the level of the nervous system, when one when one has been in that situation where there's an IED, right, the trashcan blew up, and you come home, and now all the trash cans are gonna blow up. Right? That's, again, you're stuck in, in that place of depending on where you are the spinal sympathetic reaction or the dorsal vagal reaction? For most people will see that dorsal vagal reaction will they'll shut down. But some people will go on the aggressive, right. So you know, we have a unfortunately high number of, of military with, you know, who have who commit suicide. You know, who who join these groups like the three percenters and you know, I mean, for me, that feels like, We have sent these young people over to these unimaginable suppose circumstances before their prefrontal cortex is completely developed. So we are creating these brains that do not know how to go offline. So then they come back, and they're still seeking that same rate, you know, that same feed back into their nervous system, to get them juiced up to go and do the thing, whatever the thing is. So I think this work is vitally important. Really, honestly, I'm not going to get a little heavy here, for the sake of our democracy, right, we need to get people to be able to deal with their stress, and deal with their discomfort in a way that's not you know, completely antisocial,

47:29  
or destructive, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's, that's partly the work with mindful yoga therapy that made me just connect so much, because a lot of the, you know, when you say about going, going out when you have young people who are in school situations, or they're in home situations, or the world just seems very unsafe, and maybe things that you and I would feel should be fine. And like you said, there's no perceived threat, we don't see something immediately, can be interpreted that way as a real threat. And then if that's reinforced over time, over time, as they become adults, right, you know, maybe they were a lot of support in school, if they were lucky enough to have that they were that day, right? And then, you know, then the supports move to the side, as they become adults, then it becomes Oh, wait, I don't even know how to manage that I have this underdeveloped sense of how to perceive the world. And, you know, I think this kind of work is super important, because I think it can help bring that back. And again, we also have, you know, high anxiety, high depression, high suicide rate in our community as well. So, again, it is and young people in general are dealing with a lot of stress. And, and there's so much more,

48:47  
that movement, just I mean, and you know, this, the suicide component is just so tragic, right? I mean, obviously, for obvious reasons, but also because there's something we could do about it, you know, for for these people, it's like they are they are stuck in that sympathetic response, which is one of action and mobilization with fear, which I think that, you know, that that, that call for help, essentially, that's being made. You know, it's, it's just tragic. And it's but you know, it's our military and like you said, in the autism spectrum community, there's, you know, we're very high risk.

49:23  
Yeah. And in addition to that, it could be I was just thinking, we're talking about, you know, I'm thinking impulsivity and, you know, addiction and whether, you know, whatever form of addiction, we could insert it there. Also is another way for sort of either creating us, you know, heightened sensations or for dumbing down right, some of the sensations that are uncomfortable. Being able to deal with it would be in a more constructive way would be a really great, you know,

49:56  
absolutely. You can look at addiction in the same way. That's the that's the being in the mind, the body, the mind, trying to do something to stop the pain. It's just not the right thing to do. But it's an attack, you know, it's not. So I really love to get away from this idea of, you know, addiction and alcoholics is, you know, um, let me back. I think that falling off the wagon is part of the process. And that, you know, it's not an indication that you're a moral failure. It's just this is this is hard to do. You know, it's hard to rewire the brain. It's hard and it's not. Right. I think it's hard when it's a habit like that. And one of the interesting things about them in the nervous system about that, one is that, you know, they've done studies on people who've been sober for X amount of time, and then they fall off the wagon. And they all report that it's the decision to do something different. That gives them a high, it's not even a substance. So there's a there's a book called The heart of addiction, where he talks about his he treats patients really differently than the a model. This is totally different. I know I'm on a big Yeah, no, that's relevant, because they, you know, it crosses over. Yeah, fiction is definitely something that people use to, you know, to try and calm down the nervous system. And what I'm saying is that, you know, that's, that's great. But that's not the exact tool you want to use, it's try a different tool, let's do something, just not that. It's fascinating that at the level of the nervous system, that the reward center is, is activated at the time when makes the decision to act. And not when you actually take whatever substance it is, or do whatever behavior it is, because for some people, it's like exercise or workaholic or, you know, whatever it is your thing. It's when you make that choice to do that, that that you get the hit.

51:53  
Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's, yeah, exactly. So so as we you know, as we're moving here, can, can you give us a couple of ways that people can, you know, we talked about creating a safe space, but other exercises that we can do to kind of help start bringing that back online for us?

52:14  
Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll give you a couple of the tools that I use pretty regularly myself to bring my bring me back. Because, you know, and this is not, I mean, we're talking about the autism community, but you know, everybody's gonna have a moment where you know, you feel unsafe, or maybe you're in a new environment, and you just feel a little bit dysregulated. And these tools will help with that. So one of the things I do you know, me I, I am a big student right now of mantra yoga and not a yoga. And so this is for those of you don't know, the yoga of sound, and vibration. And Sanskrit has its whole system of basically every single letter in the Sanskrit, Elbe alphabet stimulates a very specific neural pathway in the body. So the repetition of the sacred sounds, actually has a very profound effect on the being. And they've done studies that compare mantra to just jibberish, and the matcha is more effective. So for what that's worth, humming is something that can be really helpful. Even you know, closing your ears and just, um, you know, for us in yoga, we would probably say, Oh, I think it's interesting to point out that you might want to try to hit a little higher note, like a C or up as opposed to going low because those lower tones are again, the sound of predator. So when we look at a lot of the and you're you came to India with me and did the know your rhythm 100 hour training that we did there, which is super fun, but we got to work with my friend and colleague on a toady who created this program called Know your rhythm and he works primarily with disabled children at a local hospital in Pondicherry, India. And he uses raagas he uses traditional classical Indian music and he creates his he creates lots of different music but it's always with a therapeutic intent. And he's found that you know, that he's actually done studies and hadn't published and, you know, that show that kids with autism and other disabilities in these children's hospitals that they have in India are very responsive to this healing music. And so, but for you know, if you're not into yoga, that's not your thing. You don't want to hum home, you know, just honey, just any kind of humming is going to really it's going to bring you right back because again, we get the throat vibrating, right, the pharynx and larynx vibrating and that's going to help to reset that ventral vagal complex So that's one thing you can do. The other is deep breathing. So the and you're gonna say, Oh, well, but these are all things we do at a yoga class. Yes. Correct. Right. So

55:14  
Well, honestly, only some yoga classes, there are some where you show up. And these are not practices that are, it's very focused on the postures and the movement and not and not. And that's not, I'm not saying that's wrong. But it's only a piece of the puzzle. It's a

55:29  
piece of the puzzle. And actually, I would make the argument for that type of yoga is going to work. And the reason that works for some people. So we have a fair amount of guys, I say, guys, because they were just men at the time, who went through the mindful yoga therapy program. And then like two years in, we're like, I want more, you know, and they really gravitated to the song The vinyasa practice. Well, that's a mobilization of the sympathetic nervous system with vagal. Control, right? So and we refer to the vagal brake. And what the vagal brake is, is the ability of that ventral vagus nerve to control the heart rate variability. And what we do know about heart rate variability is the difference between the beats of the heart on the inhale and the exhale. And these practices also and breathing in particular, can help us to apply that vagal brake, which is what regulates the the entire nervous system. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And heart low heart rate variability has been linked with several different cardiac and other diseases. And that heart rate variability could be seen as the nervous systems ability to switch gears. So if we have high heart rate variability, that's a good thing, low heart rate variability, not so great. And again, these practices are going to create that tone and create that, you know, more variable heart rate, which is a sign of health. And I find it also interesting is that the the vagus, the ventral vagus complex, right? The is the, the nerve that feeds the heart, lungs, upper third of the esophagus, etc, is also the exact same pathway for that social engagement system, the same exact pathways. So that I think that's, that's just pretty cool. So the slow breathing, right, that you know, and I'm not a fan of trying to lengthen the exhale, prematurely. But I think that first we need to just get a nice, even slow breath in and out through your nose with no control, no pausing, just a smooth inhale and exhale. And that can that can reset the nervous system. So we've got vocalization, we've got breathing, mindful movement. So again, we were talking about how well Ashtanga might not be the place you want to jump into eventually, it might be that place that you get to. So running is also the same thing, you know, it's sympathetic nervous system with vagal brake. And so but but at the beginning, we want to do slow mindful movement. Right, and, and internally focused, so not looking around the room at everybody else, but experiencing your own self. And that's where we get into that interoceptive ability. Because the other thing that happens when we are under stress like that, when we're having a stress response, or stress response has been triggered, is that we lose that ability. Mm hmm.

58:30  
Yeah, so now it also makes me think of when people talk about, you know, well, just walking the act of walking can be such a powerful experience, right? We talk about oh, I'm gonna have want to get into an exercise practice. And we automatically jump to these very, you know, like significant I would say big things, you know, whether it's running or whether it's, maybe it is a you know, I'm gonna go to yoga every day or I'm gonna be while we can just start with walking. Yeah. Yeah.

59:00  
Yes, mindful walking. And I think, you know, honestly, that we are such a culture of like, go to the most difficult way. Because somehow that I don't know what that does for us, but it makes us feel better about ourselves. You know, as a beginning, as a beginner, I can, you know, jump into the third series or Tsonga Look at me, it's like, you know, alright, I guess we'd be much more effective if we would build it step by step. And, you know, start at the beginning, right. So that Tai Chi is also something that's been very useful in bringing that ventral vagus tone and bringing that back online. And, yeah, like I said, especially in a yoga class, creating safety, predictability and control and the practice of gratitude, you know, pausing every day, maybe several times a day and just you know, even in the middle of whatever, you know, horrible thing is happening if something is happening, and just is there something you can be grateful for Just Just something right now in this moment, maybe it's the next breath. Maybe it's the fact that the sun is shining. Like so just fine. Taking that time is very powerful because it puts you in a positive state. And so that's that's also a quite a powerful tool that we can use.

1:00:20  
Yeah, no, I think I think these are great. And I think this gives people you know, a good start to think about. And so if people wanted to get more information, because I know we're kind of coming up on our time here, we could probably, you know, figure out something else that we could probably talk about to kind of expand on this.

1:00:43  
Yeah, I'm

1:00:44  
going to be I, as I said, I've been I'm involved now much more with mindful yoga therapy. So I am merging my KMB yoga with my yoga therapy, I'm gonna be offering a workshop on this polyvagal work in the next month. So if you want, we have quite a few new resources on our YouTube channel at mindful yoga therapy. So what let's see Suzanne was telling me click subscribe and share.

1:01:15  
So totally.

1:01:17  
Um, and you know, we have everything from Asana practices to some breath work to, you know, and some of them are five minutes long, some of them are 45 minutes long. So there's just a huge and we're going to be releasing more and more, we got a grant two to fill out our flesh out our YouTube channel. So we're going to be producing more and more little videos with practices. And like I said, I'm going to be doing a workshop through monthly yoga therapy, on the polyvagal work and postures that we can do. So there's, there's all sorts of fun, I just, I would share them with you, but you really need to be able to see me. So I don't want to hand out a tool that's not as useful as it could be. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah. So if you're interested in this, you can, you know, get a hold of me, contact me. I'm at Karen at KMB yoga.com. Or through mindful yoga therapy.org. And yeah, go over to our YouTube channel and check it out. And you've been there, you know, yes. Yeah. No,

1:02:13  
I've been in your your classes as well. I think you use teachable, right? And so then, yeah, so that's been the very easy to navigate. So yeah, no, definitely. So cool, I will probably be checking some of that stuff out myself.

1:02:29  
And I'm going to be teaching in 100 hour training that we're offering starting, and I think it's in May, um, I should really know that. But we've switched the date so many times, I can't keep up. But it's all on the mindful yoga therapy website. And so I'm going to be much more of a teaching presence in the monthly yoga therapy classes these days, I'm so excited. And we're going to have a yoga nidra training. Also, yoga nidra is also one of the really, really effective tools that Suzanne, and the mindful yoga therapy team have implemented for people. And if you're not familiar with that, I'll just quickly it's a it's a guided type of meditation that people have found to be profoundly helpful in in treating symptoms of PTS. And I have to think that you know, for Have you done any, um,

1:03:11  
I've done a little bit with kids. Well, with my with, with actually this audience, I actually have done something that was seriously like two years ago. So you know, they can probably find some of that on my Instagram and YouTube, but definitely Karen's not Karen's, as would be you. You have other ones but but Suzanne also has, I've given people the link to Suzanne's.

1:03:39  
And she's got it on YouTube. And I think they even just thought it offered as an audio download at the mindful yoga therapy site. I'm not sure that used to I don't, I'm not sure if they took that offline or not. But it's definitely on YouTube.

1:03:51  
Yeah. So now I will put all of that in contact information, all of those links to resources in the description of this podcast so people can find out more and definitely check you out. And

1:04:04  
I'm on Instagram at KMB yoga. So if you want to check me out, I was off for like a year and a half and, and now with the mindful yoga therapy, I have to come back and it was a nice break. And I'll be honest, I I just got so frustrated during the pandemic with all of the kind of politics of it but also with the fact that I lived up in a part of the country in California that had no internet. And so I would have to go stand out in somebody's garage and hold my phone up and try to upload a not even like a video but just like upload a picture. So now I'm living in a place where I've internet so it's all good.

1:04:38  
less frustrating, which is exactly

1:04:40  
much for having me. Yeah, it's so lovely to see you again.

1:04:44  
Absolutely. And I'm excited to have spent this time with you and I look forward to doing future work with you. So that'll be fun. Excellent.

1:04:52  
Thank you so much.

1:04:53  
Thank you Take care Thanks for listening to autism in real life. This is Ilia Walsh and if you like the show, please hit subscribe so you can get notified each time a new episode is released. I also offer training, consultations and parent coaching and would love to help you in any way that I can. You can check out my offerings at the spectrum strategy.com And when you join my email list, you can get a code to receive a discount off of an online class or a coaching session. Looking forward to hearing from you take care and see you next time.

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