The Polyvagal Solution

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on The Polyvagal Solution — my brand new book that’s been years in the making.

You’ll hear the real story behind why I wrote it, what makes this book different from other trauma and self-help resources, and how understanding your nervous system can change everything — from how you heal to how you live, lead, love, and create.

This isn’t just a book launch — it’s an invitation to rethink the way you relate to stress, success, and your sense of safety. Whether you’re a therapist, a high-functioning human trying to keep it together, or someone on a healing path… this episode is for you.

Let’s explore how your biology holds the key to your freedom — and why this book might just be the companion your nervous system’s been waiting for.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

are you ready to thrive as a trauma therapist author yoga instructor and healed human i personally and professionally know what it means to live stuck in survival mode i've learned a few things in my healing journey and my career that can help you transform into your best self Join me, Rebecca Case, as I use neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, and personal experience to help you find the tools and techniques to thrive. Welcome back to another episode of Thrive the Podcast with Rebecca Case. Super excited to be here with you all. I am... So thrilled to share some exciting news with you. And that is I have a new book out, y'all. Oh my goodness. And it's not an academic book just for therapists. It is a self-help book. I am so excited for the launch of this book. I am so grateful to have partnered with New Harbinger in writing and publishing this. New Harbinger has been a dream to work with as a publishing company. Super grateful for them. And my editor, Ryan. Thanks, Ryan. So the book is The Polyvagal Solution. And it is out now. You can get it at Barnes& Noble, Amazon, Thrift Books, Target, lots of places. you by your books. And so today, we're going to talk all about the Polyvagal Solution and some of the tips and techniques in this book that will help you thrive and live a neuro-informed life. So here we go. Are you ready to unlock your body's hidden potential for healing and connection? Discover the power of your nervous system and the incredible role of the vagus nerve in my new book, The Polyvagal Solution, coming May 1st, 2025 from New Harbinger. In The Polyvagal Solution, you'll explore how the vagus nerve, the key player in polyvagal theory, guides your emotional regulation and transforms stress into strength. This isn't just another self-help guide. It's a practical roadmap grounded in cutting-edge science and real-world strategies. Whether you're recovering from trauma or simply seeking balance, this book offers actionable exercises and insights that help you harness the power of your vagus nerve to reclaim your inner calm. Get your copy now wherever you like to buy your books. The Polyvagal Solution, because your body and especially your vagus nerve hold the key to transformation. Okay, y'all. So this book has been years in the making, I will say. I started to get the idea for this book several years ago. And then kind of serendipitously, New Harbinger approached me and said, hey, we're really interested in partnering with you on a book about polyvagal theory for the self-help world. So it felt very fortuitous, kind of what I was feeling called to create. And then having this amazingly respected publishing company show up and say, hey, let's partner on this. So I am so thrilled to have had the opportunity. And this book really speaks to... the power of polyvagal theory and specifically the power of your vagus nerve to promote health and wellness, to help you regulate and in doing so thrive and live a really good life. Now, I know if you've listened to the podcast before, you've heard me talk a little bit about the vagus nerve and you've heard me mention polyvagal theory. Unless you've been, you know, completely absent from social media, I am sure the vagus nerve has crossed your path at some point in time here. And, you know, there's lots of information out there about the vagus nerve, lots of hacks and things like that for working with your vagus nerve. And there's a lot of flim flam bogus information. So, you know, this book is really grounded in neuroscience I'm using cited references and research studies and respected sources. I dedicated the book to Stephen Porges, who is the OG of polyvagal theory. And I am so grateful for his relationship and just to have had the opportunity for him to not only review my book, but to have some conversations with him about the book and just for the influence that he has made on the world with his work. decades of work and the development of his theoretical model, which really describes the power of the vagus nerve to help us feel safe and respond to times that our nervous system perceives danger. This book is written for not academics, not therapists. It is written for just the average human being who is looking to really engage in some self-help strategies that are backed by neuroscience and research and data. So here's a little excerpt from the book. Stress doesn't have to get the best of you. Numerous self-help books offer clever strategies for dealing with stress. There's a wealth of useful information out there on highly effective techniques such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and therapeutic self-help skills. However, much of the self-help literature is missing a crucial factor, understanding your nervous system. Learning how your nervous system works clues you into its secrets so you can harness its natural adaptive powers to live a more balanced and happy life. A life full of meaningful relationships, rest, play, and health. Your nervous system holds the keys to all of this. Learning how your nervous system works allows you to work with it. And when you can work with your nervous system, stress no longer feels like an out-of-control experience, which is exactly the focus of this book. So this book isn't specific to trauma recovery. It's not specific to a therapeutic approach. It's really a guide to living in tune with your neurobiology, specifically by gaining some insights and understanding into how your autonomic nervous system functions, how the functioning of your autonomic nervous system kind of dictates your life, and what your vagus nerve is and how your vagus nerve plays a role in all of that. So Polyvagal theory is... Let's dive into some of this, shall we? So I'll give you some cliff notes of the book. So polyvagal theory was developed, is originated from Dr. Stephen Porges, who's a neuroscientist. And Dr. Stephen Porges started researching something called heart rate variability back in 1969. So he's been... around for a while, right? This isn't just some new hip fad. It's now polyvagal theory is certainly a hip fad in the self-help world, but this model has been in the works for decades. So Stephen Porges began his work studying heart rate variability. And heart rate variability is essentially to make it very simple, kind of the variances between your heartbeats that happen in your heartbeats throughout the day. Now, high heart rate variability means that there's a lot of variance in your heartbeat, and you want that. You want your heart to beat faster sometimes. You want it to be slower sometimes. You need that to happen when you wake up in the morning, when you go to sleep, when you get on the treadmill, when you need to muster some energy to give a big speech, when you're feeling kind of tired, when you're trying to regulate your nervous system when you need to have a hard conversation or do something that feels really out of your comfort zone. We need a heart rate that varies throughout the day, throughout moment to moment, throughout minutes, throughout seconds even. And so Stephen Porges started his research with a curiosity of how heart rate variability is associated with health and wellness, essentially. And he discovered that the vagus nerve plays an essential role in regulating our heart rate and in doing so also influences pretty much every other system of the body. So how your heart is functioning, how your heart is beating has a direct correlation to your emotional state, to your physiological state, to your respiration, to your blood pressure, to your immune system, to your endocrine system, to your reproductive system, to your cardiovascular system, to... Did I say immune system? I don't, oh, digestive system as well. So pretty much every system of the body is influenced by how your heart is beating. how blood and oxygen and resources are flowing throughout your body. And the vagus nerve plays a really important role in all that. So your vagus nerve is one of the nerves that control your heart rate, kind of works as an internal pacemaker. So it's not the only mechanism in your body that controls your heart rate, but it's one of them. And so when your vagus nerve is stimulates a rise in heart rate, we get a flood of sympathetic energy. So your sympathetic nervous system is your mobilizing nervous system. It's part of your autonomic nervous system. You can think autonomic, automatic. That's one way I think about your autonomic nervous system. It's automatic. So your autonomic, automatic nervous system is automatically responding to cues to stimuli that your brain is perceiving and interpreting within you and outside of you in your external environment. So when the vagus nerve cues your heart rate to kick up, it activates, it stimulates your sympathetic pathway. sympathetic pathway, again, is a mobilizing pathway. So it's kind of like the gas. It's like your internal Red Bull, your internal dose of caffeine. So when your sympathetic nervous system gets activated, your heart rate speeds up and your breathing might speed up and your respiration speeds up and your mind can even speed up and you have like a flow of energy. So your sympathetic nervous system is good and wonderful. Like we need it to be like, I'm going to go run on the treadmill or I'm going to muster, you know, I'm going to find that energy to like get through this big project that I don't necessarily want to do maybe, right? Or to get on stage and to give a speech. But that sympathetic nervous system can also take over and mobilize us into fight or flight responses when your brain perceives that there's potential danger. And so your vagus nerve has a role in how your brain and your body are perceiving cues of safety or cues of danger. and how your nervous system is responding to that. So the vagus nerve, again, can stimulate an increase in heart rate, which brings in more sympathetic energy. And if that is all happening within the context of something that your brain perceives to be a potential threat, whether that's real or perceived, right? Like a trigger that reminds you of your trauma, but it's not actually real. a threat right here and right now, or a snarky email, somebody writes you in all caps and it's not, you know, exciting all caps, like you are awesome in all caps. It's like, did you finish your project on time? Where is it? I mean, that can certainly trigger some of us to rush our traffic, right? So fight or flight responses are a product of sympathetic energy within the context of something that your brain perceives to be dangerous. Now, there's two other pathways that live within your vagus nerve. So your vagus nerve is not just like one nerve. You might almost think about your vagus nerve as like the... I use so many metaphors on this podcast and I hope that they're helpful and take what's useful and leave what's not. But you might think about like the cord that goes from... I don't know, your soundbar or your DVD player, if you still have a DVD player, that goes into the back of your TV, right? So you tend to have like an audio plug and a video plug and there might be another one in there. There's like often like a yellow and a red and a white one, right? But they're all part of like the same wire, right? right? But there are three different functions. There are three different pathways that have different outputs and inputs. Okay. So take that if it works and apply that to your vagus nerve. So your vagus nerve is a bundle of nerves that has different pathways that can generate different outputs and inputs. So one of them is the sympathetic pathway, right? So your vagus nerve can activate that mobilizing energy of your sympathetic pathway. Your vagus nerve can also activate the dorsal vagal pathway. And so the dorsal pathway is the opposite of the sympathetic pathway. It is your immobilizing pathway. It is not a bad thing. We need the capacity to connect with immobilizing energy. If we didn't have that, it would be really hard to sleep, right? In fact, if you're somebody who you struggle with sleep because you're restless and your mind is racing, your dorsal pathway is, you don't have enough energy of that pathway at night probably to move you into a state of stillness so that you can drift off into la-la land. Now, when that dorsal pathway gets activated out of danger, it takes us to the opposite of the survival spectrum where we can freeze and totally collapse and shut down. So when that dorsal pathway takes over and it's about something that our brain perceives to be a threat, we can feel depressed and really shut down. We might feel hopeless. We might feel collapsed inside. Like we just want to like go hide out in our room for days and not talk to anyone. So you can think about it feels very different from that sympathetic pathway, that very mobilizing fight or flight must be in motion kind of vibe to that must shut down, protect and disappear. So that's the dorsal pathway when it takes over out of perceived danger. Now, in the middle of all that is what's called the ventral pathway. And the ventral pathway is the pathway where we feel safe and we feel connected and we feel curious and playful and we can kind of be our optimal best selves. So the ventral pathway, sometimes we might also refer to it as the window of tolerance in the therapy field. And the window of tolerance is kind of like your Goldilocks zone. It's where everything is functioning optimally and you're kind of at your best. So all of your biological systems are functioning optimally. Your emotions are well regulated. Your mind feels clear and focused. You can concentrate. You can learn. So Polyvagal theory describes these pathways within the context of how they get activated in response to cues of danger or cues of safety. So let's talk about what that means. Now, for some folks, especially if you're a veteran or you're a first responder, you know, danger and safety mean very extreme things typically. And I know this from my time clinically working with vets and with first responders. So I'm going to talk about these concepts within kind of the framework of how they're described in polyvagal theory, but I encourage you to think about, you know, how your brain with the context you've created based on your history, maybe here's danger and safety and just invite you to modify those terms in a way that maybe fits with the intentionality of them. So cues of danger and safety don't mean like danger is like there's a burning building. There is an active shooter. There is an earthquake. There is imminent, imminent physical danger. It can, but cues of danger can also be more subtle things that activate our nervous system in kind of an unpleasant, protective, defensive way. So for example, if you have ever been in rush hour traffic and you start feeling like you are going to lose your mind because you can't sit on this interstate any longer and oh my gosh, you're going to miss that appointment. And if I just cut in front of this person and get one car ahead, I'm going to get there sooner. Happened to no one ever, right? Like that is an example of your nervous system perceiving a queue of danger, not the same kind of danger as a burning building, yes, but still something that feels unpleasant, like a challenge, like a threat. Maybe it's a minor threat, but your nervous system is still having a mobilizing response to it, perhaps in that moment. Or I don't know, maybe you sit in rush hour traffic and your nervous system goes the other way and you just like go into shutdown and freeze mode, okay? But I'm talking about cues of danger as things that your brain perceives to be a real or potential threat, okay? Real or potential. And it can be a physical threat. That's often where our brains go or, you know, where our cognitive rational thought is going. Like, oh, imminent physical threats. Like a rabid animal racing at me in a park. No. I mean, yes, but it can also be an emotional threat. Like someone sending you an email in all caps and it's not a celebratory email. Right? Like... You know, on the last podcast, I talked about some of the things I went through last year. So like somebody that you thought was someone you could trust and you had a lot of safety and vulnerability with, all of a sudden saying they don't want to talk to you, right? While that person isn't doing anything to threaten your physical integrity in your life, it's a significant emotional threat. It's a spiritual threat in a way, right? Of like, oh my gosh, I don't understand this. This is so confusing. I must have all these things wrong. How have I, how's my perception so inaccurate, right? Now, cues of danger can also be related to even more seemingly nuanced things like access to the door, to be able to escape or get out of a building, even if there's nothing happening. But I'm sure A lot of you listening to this podcast, think about that when you go into public places. Like if there was an active shooter, how would I get out? And whether or not you are consciously or unconsciously aware of that, if your brain doesn't know how to get out, you might feel uncomfortable. Things like how high the ceiling is, Doesn't seem like that's related to anything dangerous, but your nervous system can really perceive a cue of danger depending on how high the ceiling is to the lighting in the room. Is it fluorescent? Is it overhead? Is it soft lighting? Is it natural light? To how cluttered a space is, to the smell in a space, to how that person is looking at you, how they're not looking at you. All these things are... Examples of stimuli in our environment that our nervous system is constantly scanning without our conscious awareness. And based on that, it's activating these pathways to protect you. So this is a concept that I'm describing known as neuroception, which is a term developed by Stephen Porges that really describes this process through which your nervous system is unconsciously, constantly appraising for safety and threat. Now, that system has worked as evidenced by the fact that you're still here, you're still alive. And it's sometimes linked to our intuition when our intuition says, I just have a bad vibe about this situation. Or something just doesn't feel right with this person. That is neuroception that has picked up on some data point that your conscious logical brain isn't privy to, right? Like, I'm just feeling... at unrest with this individual. I don't know why. And so sometimes we gaslight ourselves into being like, well, if I don't, if I can't actually put my finger on it, then I just must be making stuff up and I'm wrong. As opposed to learning to get curious about my neuroception has perceived something to be dangerous. I don't know yet what that is. It hasn't given me the message, but I should trust it because my nervous system has my best interest at heart. It really does. Now, Neuroception is also appraising for cues of safety. So things that feel comfortable and appealing and safe. So for example, you know, when you feel dysregulated, maybe you have a favorite show that you go to and that show is associated with some cues of safety for you. You don't have to get into the why necessarily, but for me, sometimes it's friends. I go to friends and I just feel like, oh, I feel a little bit more at ease. This is a cue of safety or talking to a loved one or spending time in my backyard. And this doesn't have to be, I'm going to these things when I'm dysregulated and when I'm not feeling good. These are things that we're constantly exposing ourselves to throughout the day. So we can start to get really intentional about what cues is my nervous system perceiving And even though neuroception is an unconscious passive process, how can we make it more passive by being really intentional about the cues that I expose myself to? Now, some of us have jobs and things that we have to do where you're just going to be exposed to cues of danger, right? If you're a first responder, if you are active duty, if you work in intensive, high conflict work environments, you are going to be exposed to cues of danger. That's just part of the job description, right? So it's not necessarily about that we need to keep ourselves in this soft, cozy little bubble where all we are exposed to are cues of safety, but it's about starting to develop more awareness about what our nervous system perceives to be dangerous, what our nervous system perceives to be safe, and how that influences our autonomic pathways. How those things influence our sympathetic mobilizing pathway, our access to that ventral window of tolerance pathway, or that immobilizing dorsal shutdown pathway. So this is also really at the heart of trauma, of pesky symptoms that you just can't get over, like anxiety and panic attacks and depression. Those are mostly governed by some level of dysfunction in your autonomic nervous system that is going to be driven by how your vagus nerve is functioning. So for example, with trauma, one of the hallmarks of trauma is that we perceive specific triggers to be reminders of the trauma that maybe happened in the past. Maybe it's still happening because you're living through it, or it's trauma in our society that is ongoing like oppression and lack of equity and injustice. So your nervous system is perceiving these cues of danger and it's having a response. And when our autonomic nervous system has that automatic response, And we have no self-efficacy over it. We experience a lot of emotional reactivity. It feels like our nervous system is doing things to us and we have no control over it. And that feels like shit, doesn't it? It feels awful. It feels terrible when you can't go to sleep because your mind won't stop. It feels terrible. when you feel hijacked and swept away by a panic attack that you're like, I don't even know what triggered this, right? But a panic attack is a perfect example. In most cases, not every situation, because nothing is like always this or always that. But in a lot of situations, panic attacks are governed, are driven by your neuroception perceiving some cue of danger. It could be a physical cue of danger, like my heart is racing, right? So now I think I might have a panic attack. And now I think I'm gonna have a panic attack. So now my panic symptoms are getting worse. And so the thinking even becomes a cue of danger to your nervous system, right? Like we spin ourselves up with panic attacks. I know, been there. When we're feeling just like burdened and shut down by depression, Again, not always, but sometimes that can be driven by your nervous system is perceiving some cue of danger that says, I need to shut down and collapse and disappear to protect and survive this. Even though in your conscious mind, you might be like, there is no threats, right? But your autonomic nervous system didn't get the message because your brain and your body are all connected to this vast nervous system you have. But your body doesn't necessarily respond so quickly to your brain's conscious appraisal of a situation. So you might say, I know in my head that that thing, that smell is not a trigger. Like there's nothing dangerous right now. It's just the smell. But your nervous system says, That smell was present when this terrible thing happened. And so that means that terrible thing is happening again. So you need this rush of mobilizing or immobilizing energy to protect yourself so that we can survive this trauma that isn't actually happening now, but we remember happening in the past. If we could just think our way out of that, therapists would not have jobs. But we can't. Because your nervous system is really quick to respond to danger and it's slower to respond to safety. Now, if we think about perhaps the brilliance in that, thank goodness your nervous system is so quick to respond to danger. This is part of our negativity bias. We tend to overly focus on the threat on the danger and that keeps us alive because when something dangerous is happening, we want to be able to respond really quick to it. Like in a moment's, flash blink of an eye without conscious rational thought because thinking time is surviving time. But it takes time to get that control back, to train those pathways of your vagus nerve and your autonomic nervous system to respond to coping strategies, to downshift out of mobilized sympathetic energy, to kind of upshift out of immobilizing energy of that dorsal pathway. And this book is full of techniques that teach you how to do exactly that. So a little preview to what all is in this book. First off, I wrote this for like my friends, for my sister, for my mom, for my sister-in-law, for people who are just looking for how do I live a good life? And how can I use some corner of neurobiology to help me do that. Now, this book is not fully expansive and it's not going to talk about every neuro-informed facet of living, but it does talk about how do you understand your autonomic nervous system, those automatic responses that are really at the heart of your day-to-day happiness, health, and wellness? How do you understand how your vagus nerve plays a role in that? And when you understand how these systems work, you can start working with them. Because if you don't understand how they work, they're just going to work you. They're going to automatically do their thing because that's how your nervous system is wired. It's just trying to keep you safe. But here we can use our brilliant, incredible brain to study itself, to better know itself, and to use skills and strategies to help it function in an optimal way so that we can thrive. So some things that are in this book, a little preview. So we start out with a deep dive into what polyvagal theory is. We talk a bit about the pillars of health, which I've talked about on this podcast before, and it gives you a self-assessment to rate how you are doing with your pillars of health because the foundation of neurobiological, neuro-informed living, I should say, is making sure that your body is well-resourced so that your nervous system can function optimally. You'll get to meet your autonomic pathways, and I have some awesome some exercises in here for you to really map out and create what I call an autonomic blueprint. So you can really get a specific picture into how your autonomic nervous system functions and what are some of the emotional and physical signs that you're in that sympathetic pathway, the ventral pathway, or the dorsal pathway. So we'll also dive into the concept of blended pathways because you typically don't live day to day in just one pathway. That's right. Your pathways blend and make new pathways for a rich and diverse dynamic life. We're going to dive deep into neuroception as I talked about it a little bit here, but you're going to really learn the ins and outs of neuroception. You're going to learn how to scan for cues of danger and cues of safety and get really curious about what your nervous system, what your neuroceptive processes determined to be cues of danger and safety. A really interesting thing that I learned from studying my own neuroceptive processes, my nervous system hates high ceilings. It just doesn't like it. I don't know why. I don't think that there's any history to that. I don't know. Maybe that's some generational trauma or something. But if I'm in a store or an airport with super high ceilings where things just echo around, I just get a little bit mobilized. And... That's just been a really interesting thing that I've learned about myself through this self-study process. So we'll also talk a lot about how to track your heart rate, what vagal tone is and why vagal flexibility matter, how to exercise your vagus nerve and how to tone your vagus nerve, which is all about helping to work out that nerve so that you can intentionally shift your automatic pathways, autonomic pathways when that sympathetic or dorsal pathway is activated and you're like, I don't need you right now. Actually, we're safe. So there's a whole chapter on vagal exercises, an entire chapter about how to exercise your vagus nerve from somatic techniques. I have a couple of actual recordings that are linked to this book as well. So you can actually, if you buy the book, you'll get access to my actual recordings. I have a yoga nidra exercise and also one that is a guided meditation practice. There's breathwork exercises in here. There's meditation practices as well. We talk about interoception, how to build interoception, how to work with your social engagement system, why relationships are so, so, so beneficial for you, and how to really map out your support system. And then we end with a chapter that I call homecoming, which was one of my favorites to write. And it's focused on parts work. And so it really integrate some IFS, internal family systems work alongside polyvagal theory. So you can get to know your inner parts, parts of your personality and your psyche through the lens of polyvagal theory by understanding these three pathways and how these parts show up depending on which pathway is most activated. So that's a little sneak peek into the book, The Polyvagal Solution, Vagus Nerve Calming Practices to Soothe Stress, Ease Emotional Overwhelm, and Build Resilience. Y'all, I worked on this book for probably about two years. So it is so exciting to see it come to fruition. I can't wait for you to check it out. Please DM me, share notes, give us some feedback as to how it's going. Please leave reviews on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, wherever you buy your book. Unless you don't like it, then you just don't need to. No, I am all for critical feedback because critical feedback can help us grow. But I truly hope that this book helps you to thrive. That is my very much heart-centered desire in writing this book and creating this book for you so that we can all have a little bit more understanding about how our nervous system functions, how our brain functions, so that we can work with it instead of feeling like our neurobiology is working us. So get your copy of The Polyvagal Solution wherever you like to buy your books and... Stay tuned for so much more to come on NeuroInforms Living on Thrive the Podcast. Thanks for joining today. Be well. Live a good life. Bye. And I'll see you next time. Until next time, this is Rebecca Case signing off. Thrive on!