While we will attempt, on this website, to limit the use of specialist language, there are a number of words and concepts associated with Polyvagal Theory and Autonomic Physiology more broadly that it makes sense to simply learn, as they are referred to with frequency.

Appease - A defensive autonomic state that utilizes the neural circuitry of connection to defuse a threat. In individualistic cultures, when appeasing becomes a default defensive response it is pathogenic, and individuals are at increased likelihood of developing auto-immune and other issues.

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) - The neural architecture of the mindbody connection. Comprised of the new (ventral) and old (dorsal) Vagal systems and central pattern generators of the spine. The new Vagus = Ventral vagus. The old Vagus = dorsal vagus. Central pattern generators in the spine govern what has historically been called the Sympathetic Nervous System.

Autonomic State - A coordinated pattern of autonomic presets that tunes the body with differential capabilities depending on whether we feel safe, in danger, or under lifethreat. Autonomic states update moment-to-moment, and adjust the physiological and homeostatic mechanisms of the body to help us respond to internal and external environmental shifts and conserve energy. When we feel safe, Autonomic states undergirded by the pulsation of safety organize the body to relate. We are able to attune to self and other, rest and restore, play, and socially engage. When we feel in danger, defensive states undergirded by the neuroception of danger prioritize mobilization and polarization to respond to threat. When we feel under lifethreat, defensive states undergirded by immobilization drop our metabolic rates and release endogenous opiates with analgesic properties to help us avoid pain. It is important to realize that as our autonomic states shift, the ANS up- and down-regulates many of our internal systems, including social systems (attuning to human face, voice, social cues) and defensive systesm (e.g., heartrate, breathing, digestion, mobilization, muscle tone, activation and shutdown chemistry). Our bodies are designed to survive. Surrounded by threats, many modern people’s systems shift into defensive autonomic states without their awareness. Often modern people do not have the awareness, or the practices required to shift out of defensive states and back into connection states. One of the purposes of this website is to help people learn to do that.

Connection - If human wellbeing is social in nature (it is), then our ability to connect to ourselves, one another, and the Living World is the foundational nutrition required to move is in the direction of wellbeing.

Defensive responses - aka threat responses, these are the neurophysiological states that arise when we neurocept (see definition below) danger and lifethreat. They include the continuua of appeasement, fight, flight, tonic immobility, and shutdown.

Fight- A defensive autonomic state characterized by aggression, boundary-setting, mobilization primarily of the hands and arms, and polarization (who is with me, who is against me). It undergirds the emotional continuum of anger. This state is undergirded by activation chemistry driven by cortisol and adrenaline.

Flight- A defensive autonomic state characterized by avoidance, mobilization primarily of the legs and feet, and polarization (who is with me, who is against me). It undergirds the emotional continuum of fear. This state is undergirded by activation chemistry driven by cortisol and adrenaline.

Interoception- The sixth sense. Our ability to feel our bodies from inside. Unlike the five extero-senses (taste, touch, smell, vision, hearing), interoception is an intero-sense, e.g., it is inwardly-oriented.

Neuroception – The moment-to-moment embodied awareness of safety or threat. This is not a cognition. It is not a perception. It is an embodied neural detection of safety, danger, or lifethreat made by the ANS.

Non-cognitive Ways of Knowing - Ways of knowing that are not grounded in thinking, e.g., cognition. Since Descartes, who formulated the Cartesian dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” modern Eurocentric civilization has privileged ways of knowing derived from cognition. It has concommitantly devalued other embodied and ancestral ways of knowing. Autonomic Physiology and Polyvagal Theory validate non-cognitive ways of knowing.

Proprioception - The awareness of our bodies in space, their position, the location of our limbs in space, in relationship to our surroundings, and in relationship to gravity.

Safety - the medicine. An embodied felt sense of safety is pre-requisite to activating the neurophysiological systems of connection and relating that undergird our lived experience of wellbeing.

Shutdown - A defensive autonomic state characterized by withdrawal, immobilization and a sudden drop in metabolic rate. In extremis, leads to fainting. This state is undergirded by shutdown chemistry underpinned by the release of endogenous opiates. This release opens the continuum of dissociation.

Tonic Immobility - colloquially known as ‘freeze’ this defensive state is immobilized and rigid. Imagine a deer frozen in headlights. Undergirded by activation chemistry of cortisol and adrenaline plus shutdown chemistry undergirded by the release of endogenous opiates.

Tracking - a non-cognitive way of knowing characterized by the ability to follow trails. Ancestrally, hard-ground tracking was the way hunters found animals to feed the village. Tracking, as a modality, can be applied to energies, fields, group fields, etc. Meditation is a form of interior tracking. Healing (as we conceptualize it) and likewise facilitation are, applied skillfully, forms of tracking.

Wellbeing - The self-transforming flow of vitality that emerges spontaneously when your connection system is online more than your defensive systems.