FRONTIERS IN WELLBEING
FOR PRACTITIONERS
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THE NEXT FRONTIER IN WELLNESS IS PHYSIOLOGICAL
If you are working to support human development and healing at this time in history, you are likely aware of the explosion in somatically-oriented trauma therapies over the past couple of decades. Since the publication of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (Felitti and Anda) in 1998, awareness of the prevalence of early adversity, and its enduring impacts on physical and mental health has become part of the mainstream wellness discourse. This awareness has been coupled with the dawning recognition that transformational interventions in healing trauma do not take place at the level of cognition, but in the biology. Trauma is an autonomic injury, in the wake of which the psychobiology is unable to return to previous allostatic baselines. Its deformations are enduring; they are not blunted by time. In tandem with the awareness of the injuries of trauma, there have developed an extensive body of somatically-oriented therapies to address them. Yet until now, none of these therapeutic modalities have rested on top of an accurate living cartography of autonomic physiology.
In 1994, psychophysiologist Stephen Porges, PhD proposed The Polyvagal Theory. At the time, he was studying heart-rate variability (HRV) in infants. The theory proposes two vagal systems (poly=many) with distinct neurology that undergird differential actions on body and behavior. Polyvagal Theory (PVT) transformed our understanding of how the Autonomic Nervous System organizes our bodies, emotions, cognitions, and perception based on whether we feel safe or in danger. After fifteen years of studying PVT, working closely with Porges and his inner circle of faculty, and working with over one hundred advisors in twenty-five disciplines of wellbeing from twenty-four cultures (see our complete list of collaborators) Hearth Science announced, in June 2024, a new Foundation Model in General Autonomics that addresses 27 conceptual, neuro-anatomical, and functional errors in PVT in a novel model of Autonomics.
Stephen Porges is a genius: a remarkable trans-disciplinary scientist and a person of extremely high integrity whose focus for decades has been on human flourishing and the alleviation of suffering, and Polyvagal Theory is the most significant advancement of autonomic understanding in the 20th century. Polyvagal Theory has made numerous crucial contributions to the discourse of healing, possibly none more important than giving people a descriptive felt language that maps more closely to their innate experience, and opening up pathways for healing from shutdown states, which impact a far greater percentage of humans than is commonly understood. The discipline of autonomic physiology can be cleanly divided into the pre-Porges, and the post-Porges eras. If it were up to us, he would win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The myriad insights of Polyvagal Theory include
A push away from the Cartesian model (I think, therefore I am) in the direction of an embodied model (I feel myself, therefore I am)
resolution of the 'vagal paradox' (how can the same nerve be both responsible for wellbeing and the cause of sudden infant mortality?)
A crucial focus on the primacy of safety as the core driver of differentiation between various autonomic states
refinement of algorithmic approaches to extracting autonomic state from heart-rate variability
recognition that we 'wear our hearts on our faces and in our voices'
The differentiation of multiple evolutionarily distinct vagal systems with distinct neurology, myelination, and function, transforming our understanding of autonomic neurology from a balance between two systems (e.g., sympathetic/ parasympathetic) to a relationship between three (what Porges calls the ventral and dorsal Vagus, and the sympathetic)
identification of the social engagement complex uniting the face, voice, tuning of the middle ear, turning of the head and neck with the heart and breath
the recognition that this system acts as an integrated functional neurological system and that activating it through any of its portals activates the complex entire (this opens up novel pathways to intervention via any of the portals, e.g., neuro-acoustic interventions that retune muscles of the middle ear)
identification of the subdiaphragmatic unmyelinated vagal neurology implicated in lifethreat states
recognition of the role of endogenous opioids, and their psychophysiological effects in shutdown states
elevation of interoception, and other intero-senses as valid and valuable domains of awareness
Gabriel, our Founder, and the Principal Architect of Autonomics, worked closely with Porges for several years to author and art direct the first official Polyvagal posters, and the two created an open ended Intellectual Property development agreement between their respective firms. Official Polyvagal Posters, the fruit of this collaboration, live in over 1,500 treatment rooms around the world.
The genius of Porges, and Polyvagal Theory duly noted, the theory is incomplete.
It is incomplete both because there are errors in Polyvagal conceptualizations, and because the foundation anatomical mappings upon which Porges was building, which date back to the origin of neurology as a field, are replete with errors, deriving in large part from the fact that their anatomy is necrotic (if I am wanting to teach you about trees, I don't take you to the lumber yard because when trees die their leaves fall off, etc.–yet nearly all neuro-anatomical maps were elucidated from cadaver dissection), and the origin of the field was under a brain-centric bias of which it was unaware.
Cartography is sometimes based on source documents– e.g., a journey of direct mapping and discovery (we sailed our boats there) and is sometimes derivative (we improved upon maps drawn by people who sailed their boats there). And cartography is only as good as the data that informs the maps. Distortions in the origins of neurology, which go all the way to the fundamental naming of neurological systems that fail to distinguish neurology from neurochemistry (there is in reality no such thing as a sympathetic nervous system) and are anatomically incorrectly partitioned by anatomy not physiology (e.g., by visible structure, not in vivo function) have led to fundamental and foundational inaccuracies in how the autonomic nervous system is understood.
With Autonomics, practitioners can learn to apply, for the first time in the history of this civilization, a living autonomic lens to their work with patients and clients. When autonomic physiology is centered in the diagnosis and treatment of stress-related disorders, it completely reorganizes the taxonomy of disease and the catalog of intervention. Hearth Science has developed the most complete and extant accurate map of these systems, reduced them to practice, and is developing trainings and tools that will differentiate your practice and help lead you to superior clinical outcomes.
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