31. How to know which nervous system state you're in

In this episode of the Heal with Grace podcast, Grace explores how to identify the state of your nervous system using the polyvagal theory. Introduced by Dr. Stephen Porges in 1994, the polyvagal theory categorises the nervous system into three states: ventral vagal (green zone), sympathetic (yellow zone), and dorsal vagal (red zone). Grace explains how each state impacts mental, physical, and emotional health and provides practical tips on how to move between these states effectively. Emphasising self-care and understanding individual responses, the episode offers insights into maintaining a balanced and regulated nervous system for overall well-being.

How to work with Grace:

• Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner Cohort
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Hello, hello, welcome back to the heal with grace podcast. I am coming. to you from my closet. I am going through a few changes right now in life, which I'll actually update you on, maybe in the next episode. Stay tuned.some learning lessons that I'll share with you that I think will be helpful as I've been navigating kind of a chaotic time.

So, y'all know that I like to be transparent and open when it feels right for me. And so that's probably what will be happening, in the coming episodes. But today what we're going to be talking about, which I think is going to be very helpful is how to know which nervous system state you're in.

There's so much talk about the nervous system. And I mean, obviously this podcast and what I do is really to help educate and help you understand what the nervous system is, how it impacts your mental, physical, emotional health, and then how to help yourself. Right? So.

We're just going to jump right in. First, we have to understand the nervous system. And I've definitely talked about it. maybe if you've been listening, you have somewhat of an idea, but we're just, we're going to go through it. Just so we can have a really good idea because honestly, I mean, even when I hear my teachers talk about it, still to this day, I'm like, okay, yeah.

Oh, that's right. Oh, I learned a little something new each time. You know, we need, we need reminders. So first and foremost, we're going to be talking about the polyvagal theory of the nervous system. So the polyvagal theory emphasizes the role, the autonomic nervous system, especially the vagus nerve plays in regulating our health and behavior. And it was first introduced in 1994 by Dr.

Stephen Porges, who is a scientist, university lecturer, and developer. And he Recognize the, the biggest thing about what he recognized and the nervous system was what he termed the ventral vagal state. This is the social engagement safety zone. this is what I like to call the green zone, which is actually coined by Isabel Tierney, who, if you have not heard her episode, I highly recommend going back and listening and I'll link that below as well.

but he talks about the nervous system in terms of these 3 main principles. The ventral vagal state, the sympathetic state and the dorsal vagal state. So let's first identify the nervous system is, I've said this multiple times, the information highway from our brain to our body and back from our body to our brain.

nervous system activates all different areas of our bodies, from our organs to our tissues. To our muscles, our emotional health, our mental health, our brain, the vagus nerve, which is at the brainstem is a very big part of this. And when the vagus nerve is activated, the information highway of the nervous system runs a little bit more smoothly, but when the vagus nerve is turned off, which usually happens from different types of mental, emotional, physical stress over time.

The nervous system , is not able to really help our bodies really operate smoothly and is really stuck in this danger response. So what we want to help our nervous systems get into is the ventral vagal state, which is the safety zone, the rest and digest. The ventral vagal state is considered the optimal state for health and well being, and it's linked to social engagement and safety.

It involves social communication, such as, such as facial expressions, vocalization and listening. Think about this rest and digest state as Not necessarily the place to get you to where you're going to be the rest of your life. That's not the goal because our nervous systems are meant to ebb and flow, meaning we're meant to go in and out of all of these different zones.

We just want to get back into that rest and digest in appropriate times or more often than not, especially when we're sleeping, more often day to day. Life is life and we're going to go into fight flight. We're going to go into shutdown. Like we're going to go throughout these phases. We just don't want to get stuck in the sympathetic or the dorsal vagal state, which I'll explain in a minute.

So think about this ventral vagal state, and I'm going to say green zone, green zone, rest and digest this green zone. is a place where our organs can operate effectively. Our brain is not stuck in the primal response and we can actually operate as our brain is supposed to as humans. Our critical thinking is on.

We're able to make sound decisions. Our body's able to take rest when it needs. We're communicating effectively, but it's not always this blissed out Zen state. The green zone is a place where we're going to experience all kinds of things, all kinds of emotions from happy to joy, to ecstatic, to sadness and grief and pain.

And we're going to experience all of those emotions and all of these experiences in life in this green zone. The thing that's different in this green zone state and this rest and digest is that we're not so attached to our experiences and our emotions. We're able to feel them to experience life without our nervous system saying, Ooh, danger, danger, danger.

Let's go into those other zones and protect ourselves. This green zone state, we're allowing our bodies, our minds, and our emotions to feel and to be, and it's okay to experience difficult things in this place. We're just allowing it to flow through. Think of like a stream. I think of emotions just flowing and yes, I recognize it's a little easier said than done sometimes, but if you can imagine this green zone is this kind of flowy state where yeah, sometimes we're going to feel difficult things and have hard experiences and.

We're learning how to take care of ourselves. We're learning to allow these emotions, these experiences to be there and to take care of ourselves in those experiences. That's what I want.

Phil, take that part out. This is the green zone. This is where our nervous system is most optimal for rest and digest and health of our bodies, our minds, and our emotions. Thank you

The next state is the sympathetic state, which is the mobilization or activation place. This is what the feel good life, Isabel Tierney, and the way that I talk about it is called the yellow zone. It's kind of just easier, right? Yellow zone. This is fight or flight or that That's sympathetic. This is where we end up feeling anxious, scared, frustrated, angry, worried.

This is where our cortisol levels probably spike. This place, your body, your nervous system, your brain wants to protect you. So you either go into fight mode, you push against, you protect yourself by fighting. Right? That's a primal response. Want to protect you, want to protect your, your family, your, your people, your life, or we flee.

We flight, we run because that's a protective mechanism as well. We leave the situation. it's natural to want to protect ourselves, our nervous system. That's all it wants to do is protect us. It's not bad. It's not some fight or flight is not a place that we want to be afraid of. Right. It's kind of gotten a bad rep.

but really. It's a protective mechanism, so I actually want you to see it as I want you to almost thank yourself if you're in it, say like, you know what, thank you for protecting me. I don't need to be here all the time because that's the thing when we're stuck here, yeah, it's not great. Our bodies don't operate well.

Our organs start to fail. We start to get disease, emotional dysregulation, depression, anxiety, disorders. So we don't want to be in this all the time. But it's so natural to be in this every now and then. When we're operating off of a threat, real or perceived threat, like we need to swerve out of the way so we don't get in a car accident, that's going to be a flight response, right?

That's exact, very much so needed. Or maybe we're in a difficult situation with a partner and we're really afraid of getting hurt. So we flee or flight. I'm sorry. We fight or flight in a situation which Sometimes we don't actually need to be doing unless it is a toxic, abusive situation, but in a communicative style and a relationship, we don't often need to do that, but this is our nervous system's response to protect ourselves.

Honestly, that could be a whole other podcast. and we will talk about attachment and nervous system in an upcoming episode. But for right now, The sympathetic, the yellow zone, the fight or flight is where you experience this anxious, scared, frustrated, worried, just feeling off and antsy or you can't sleep, place in your nervous system.

The dorsal vagal state, which is the immobilization or the collapse state, and we're going to call this the red zone. This is where we shut down. This is where you experience depression, hopelessness, chronic fatigue. numb, feeling exhausted, dissociated,a true shutdown physical place is what's called, if you've heard of it before, the vasovagal syncope.

This is where people will, pass out. They'll go unconscious for a minute. I don't know about you. I'm sure some of you listened, have had this experience as well. But for me, anytime that I've gotten blood taken or really, Anytime I'd be in a hospital or a medical situation, I think, because I've had a lot of trauma around it, I will pass out pretty easily.

And I've learned that it's really just my nervous system protecting me. It's like, Ooh, I can't handle this. Let's just, it's the ultimate form of shutdown, right? Let's just shut down literally your whole body, and protect yourself. Right? Another response that happens where it's kind of a combination of the both of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic is the freeze response. This is where we might be more worried, but tired, fatigued, burnout, sometimes a, a sign of being in the freeze response is. having very tight, sore muscles, or noticing that you're bracing in your body as if preparing for impact.

Panic attacks can also occur in this state. They can really occur in any state, but a little bit more in maybe the freeze or the sympathetic, which really is more elevated anxiety. And what I also want you to recognize about this too, in which Dr. Stephen Porges talks about is that if you can see this as kind of like a ladder with people moving up or down the ladder by activating the sympathetic or the relaxation branches of automatic non autonomic nervous system.

So sometimes when we're In the immobilization, when we're in the shutdown, when we're in like deep fatigue, exhaustion, pain, we actually kind of have to move through the sympathetic, through that fight or flight, through the yellow zone, which can look like a little bit more anxious, frustrated, scared, worried, right?

So sometimes we have to move through that to get to the green zone. So think of it as kind of like that ladder, where you go from one to another. Now, One state that isn't talked about as much is the FON response, and this is kind of a combination of the fight, flight, and freeze as well, and the FON response is characterized by abandoning oneself, suppressing emotions and needs, and merging with the needs of others.

The goal of these responses is to decrease, End or evade the danger in order to return to a state of calm. All right, so I'm going to give you a little example of what it might look like in these different states. And again, this totally depends on the person and situation. but I'm just going to share an example.

So, part of what I've been experiencing is kind of a combination of both. Both of the parasympathetic, the yellow zone and the shutdown, the red zone. So,as you may know, I just moved last December, about seven months ago and to a place that I am very, very happy in. And I absolutely love, love, love where I am and really love the life that I'm building here.

What came with this excitement is a lot of activity. I have been going and going and going, meeting new people, doing new activities, new business ventures. Like I, it's open a lot, which is not the case. Really my nature, if I'm being honest with myself and my body, my body is a much more slower pace type of person, or I am much more of a slower pace type of person.

But I think that, you know, society praises us for doing a lot. And that's always been my lesson in life is to learn how to slow down. So this is something I'll go into on another episode, but just to give you an example. You know, I thought I was feeling pretty good in my body and so I've been pushing it more.

Now I teach this, right? I teach how to pay attention and to listen and you know, I have, but I think there's definitely a part of me that's been ignoring a lot of signs. And so. After a while, I think my nervous system was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is too much. It's all good stuff, but it's too much new, too much new and good, and you're just going a million miles a minute.

So over the past month or two, I went into a shutdown. I really did and this looked like true, true chronic fatigue that actually kind of scared me. I didn't think I could get back here. And I mean, if I'm really looking at it, because today I feel pretty good, I'm not where I was years ago, but yeah, my nervous system, the biggest sign that it could give me was, Hey, let's stop, we're going to completely shut you down.

And I mean, like true body fatigue, aches, pains, headaches, like couldn't get off the couch kind of fatigue for days and in and out of it for weeks. And. What I've been having to reassure my body is one that actually, okay, I'm listening. I hear you. I'm okay. I am, and I will listen. I will slow down, but I also need you to recognize that I am okay.

I can handle new things, difficult things in life. So I've been teaching my body this. And the reason I give you this example is because I want you to understand what this shutdown can look like and what this parasympathetic sympathetic can look like. So, a lot of times people experience, like, a lot of, like, cortisol issues, hormonal issues and high anxiety and that yellow zone sympathetic, a lot of pain getting to burnout, getting to exhaustion.

And then when the shutdown immobilization happens, it can be that deep burnout, fatigue, free state where you're just like mindlessly scrolling because you have no brain power, you get out of the shower and you sit in your towel for however long because you just can't manage to do anything else and everything feels like a struggle, or maybe you're just kind of going throughout your days and you're really not present.

That can be that sympathetic, or it could be Truly get into the immobilization as well. And I recognized I was kind of there for a little bit. And I will say this is that we're not always super conscious of it, but when we become more aware of these signs, this is then when we can help ourselves. And the reason why I want to say that this is my response is because everybody's different.

I have friends who, when they're in their true authentic energy, they are someone who's social a lot of the times. They're doing a lot of activity. They are, comparative to me, they are going, going, going. And that really actually fulfills them. They can be present and fulfilled when they are, around of a lot of people all the time, and they're really excelling in what they do by, lots of different projects and things.

For me, I'm different. That's not. That's not where my nervous system, that's not where myself, my personality, who I am is really going to be sustainable and feel good and feel like me. I am much more of a slower paced person and I need lots of time alone and self care and really be choosy and, and, and.

specific about the people that I surround myself with. So I'm sharing this to remind you that every time you learn about your nervous system, you have to make it specific to you. What are your signs that you're in the yellow zone, the red zone, the green zone? It's not going to look like someone else.

It's not gonna look like the person next to you. Yes. I'm giving you examples of generalizations of what it looks like, because obviously that's helpful, right? But you have to understand your specific signals for yourself and then you can help yourself. Okay? So what I also want you to know, a couple things to know about when you are about the nervous system, and also when you're stuck in either the relo, rello, , yellow or red zone.

Is that when you're in the stress response, which can be the, the yellow or red zones, your nervous system wants to stay exactly where it is. It does not like change. Even if that change is ultimately good for you in life, it doesn't want it. It's like, Nope, I am safe here. Well, it thinks it's safe. It thinks that the known place, the stuck place you are is known.

It is a known equals good. So change equals bad. So. Every time you're working on your nervous system, and you're working on understanding yourself a little bit better and changing. It's pushing against you. That's why this is hard work. That's why it takes practice. Cause we have to literally change the known state.

We want the known state to be the rest and digest the green zone, but that takes time and it's an ebb and flow and it changes from phases and years in your life. I mean, I've talked about how for, you know, a few years, I actually felt pretty good. It didn't have any symptoms at all this past year. No, I'm definitely experiencing symptoms.

There's context around that. I'm going through a lot of change, a lot, a lot of change. So it makes sense. So my point being, just remember. You're changing something that doesn't want to be changed, so it does take work, and it's difficult, and it's not going to be a straight shot. It's not going to look like, oh, I'm doing all these practices, and I'm learning more about myself, and I'm just going to keep getting better.

It doesn't work like that. It's not linear. It goes up and down, and sometimes you feel like you're moving backwards. Sometimes you feel like you move five steps forward. That's just part of it. The second thing I want you to know is that all stress, good or bad, is still stress to your nervous system. So what I mean by this is that your nervous system only, well, not only, your nervous system recognizes mental, emotional, and physical stress as all the same, all the same kind of stress.

So maybe you have not exercised at all. But you've been through a lot of mental stress. Maybe there's a lot going on at work or you're having a difficult time in your relationship or with your kids. Maybe there's a lot of emotions coming up. That stress is the exact same or I shouldn't say exact actually, but it is categorized as stress.

The same as if you were to go out and run a marathon, it's still stress on your nervous system. So, recognize.when you're working on taking it slow, paying attention, pacing yourself with your energy levels and, and what you're introducing to your body and to your nervous system is that we have to take into account that all those different mechanisms, all those different areas is still stress.

The same with good and bad. You know how I just mentioned that I've had a lot of good things happen over the past seven months, a lot of good things in my life, but it's all new. It's all, it's, it's new. New can be stressful, right? even though it's good, it's a lot, and it is bringing up old patterns and triggering some old traumas, even though again, it's good.

It's not bad stress, but it's a lot. That's just a lot. And so that can be somewhat similar to quote unquote bad stress. So I want you to recognize this because just because you might be doing something new that's helpful for you, it doesn't mean it's not taxing your nervous system. All right. So now that we have a little bit of understanding of each zone and what the nervous system is, what do we do when we recognize we're in each state?

So let's work from dorsal vagal. The red zone, the parasympathetic when we're in the shutdown place, what do you do when you're shut down? What do you need actually is a better question. When you're shut down, we need to mobilize that immobilization. We need to move. We need to wiggle out if you will, bring in some more energy and movement.

But in a safe and slow way. So first, that might look like visualizing movement. If you're in a true shutdown response, we don't just want to, like, get you up and shake you out and move you around or go for a big hug. Run, right? We want you to maybe start with visualization. We know that visualization has such strong effects on our mind and our bodies.

It's shown that visualizing a movement can sometimes be just as effective as doing that. Helps us get in the mindset of it. Helps our brain recognize. Oh, we can do this if I can visualize it. We want to start moving slowly. In small ways, going for very short walks, maybe that's a few minutes, maybe when you're in a shutdown response, you want to start with just being very intentional with moving your arms, watching how your fingers move, how your toes move, doing gentle stretches, being very present with your breath as you move your body.

Which brings me to gentle breath work, just becoming aware of the breath as you inhale, expand into the body, really imagine and feel your breath as you inhale all the way down to the root of your spine, feel how your breath brings energy to the body. Maybe listen to a short meditation on waking up the body.

There's so many out there. You can search on YouTube or use a calm or insight timer meditation app.

We also want to connect with a friend or a partner or a pet that's safe. So. We know from the polyvagal theory that one way to help regulate our nervous system is by engaging in a safe and connected way. So social engagement is actually a way to help our nervous systems feel seen and heard and safe.

And when we can be in the presence of someone else that has that comfort factor, that has that safety factor, it can help actually bring us out of a dorsal vagal response. Another one can be humming, or saying the word voo, breathing for vagus nerve toning. We really want to tone and activate the vagus nerve because it's definitely shut down in this parasympathetic response and the shutdown response.

So things like massaging the neck, using your eye movements, you can search vagus nerve toning and you can use your eyes to activate the vagus nerve. Really working on gargling, humming, singing, things like this can activate it, which is going to be really helpful for the parasympathetic response for this red zone place.

So remember, mobilizing energy in the shutdown, but in safe and slow ways. We don't want to go from all or nothing, meaning we don't want to go from totally shut down to fast paced moving. Okay, so in the fight flight or the sympathetic nervous system, which we term over here in this world, the yellow zone, in this place, remember we're in more of this anxious fight flight and oftentimes there's a lot of pent up or repressed energy or emotion.

So what we really want is to release stress. We want to do things like somatic practices, like shaking to release energy, emotional freedom technique, which you can search. It's like, it's tapping, releasing energy, releasing emotion, talking to a therapist and venting to someone safe. You can also do journal speak, which I've described in a past episode about journaling.

So if you haven't listened, I highly recommend going to listen to the episode on how to journal because it's much more than just writing out feelings. We really want the repressed stress and emotions that are stuck that may not be conscious to you. We want those to get out. We need to release stress, release emotion, and help our bodies feel safe.

So think about releasing energy. and the fight or flight response. In the freeze response, we want to signal safety. So in the freeze, remember you're, you're, you're stuck and to get out of the stuck and into maybe more releasing stress, we first have to signal safety, which means something like applying warmth to the body, taking warm baths, a sitting or lying with a weighted blanket, something that feels safe to your body, feels warmth and comforting and nurturing.

Listen to music or songs that are relaxing, do a sound bath meditation. You can do things like gently massaging your body, very gentle brushing of the skin. Things like this can be helpful to soothe safety. And honestly, I would probably do this in any other state you're in as well to really signal safety to the body.

But especially when you're in this freeze state, when you just feel numb. And stuck and you're edging towards that shutdown or you are in the shutdown as you're mobilizing or as you're releasing stress. We always want to signal safety. A way to do this as well as grounding techniques like grounding into the earth with your feet, walking on grass, really imagining the earth's energy coming up into your body, into your spine.

There's a lot of wonderful grounding techniques out there as well.

So another thing that I want you to understand is that yes, it can be helpful to understand how you got here and there's probably lots of reasons, right? We are complex human beings. There's not usually just one reason why our nervous system is stuck. It's a combination of mental, physical, emotional, spiritual reasons, and ultimately.

You're here, so this is going to be your journey, learn about yourself, try to understand, but at the end of the day, you don't have to know everything because you're here. You're in the present moment. So, well, actually, I'll say this, your nervous system is not in the present. Your brain's probably not in the present, but we want to try and get you in the present.

And what I mean by that is that when you're stuck and you're triggered all the time. You're Your perception, your nervous system and your brain are triggered by old past traumas, old past experiences that it thinks you're trying, that it thinks it's trying to protect you from. So a big part of understanding how to get ourselves back into the present moment and to regulate ourselves and get into the green and rest and digest is to remind ourselves over and over and over and over again that we are here.

In the present moment, we are safe. We are not our past. We are not our past experiences. We want to release. All of those release the traumas, release the old emotional difficult experiences because we're not there anymore. But that's what our brain thinks. We are. Our brain is still operating off of those past difficult times.

So, again, yes, sure. It can be helpful to understand. What's being triggered and what those pasts are, it really can. But again, we don't want to get hung up on this because we don't always need to know. We just need to work with the present and remind our bodies we're here. This will not last forever and that there is hope.

And so a lot of the emotional freedom techniques, emotional release, physical release, mental release is to help basically, release those experiences and remind our bodies we're here. We're allowing the present moment to be here, to be safe, to be okay.

All right. I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions, you know where to find me, drop me a DM, or you can find the podcast webpage and submit a question and I'll answer on here. Happy healing, give some compassion and grace to yourself. And I'll talk to you soon.