#autonomic-nervous-system

#autonomic-nervous-system

Your autonomic nervous system has been running a background process all day (or all week), quietly allocating resources toward an upcoming social event. Planning the outfit. Rehearsing potential conversations. Calculating travel time. Managing the micro-anxiety of 'Will I be interesting enough? Will I say something weird? Will I be too tired to be fun?' This is what psychologist and neuroscience researcher Stephen Porges calls neuroception: the way your nervous system scans for safety and threat below the level of conscious awareness.

Polyvagal theory, introduced in 1994 by psychologist Stephen Porges, highlights the role of the autonomic nervous system in regulating our health and behavior. Our lived experience of engaging with the world is impacted by external environmental cues, internal physical sensations, and relational experiences (e.g., an impression of connection, safety, and trust between individuals). Neuroception is our body's unconscious surveillance system that shifts us into one of three autonomic states needed to respond to a situation: rest-and-digest (social and safe), fight-or-flight (mobilization), or shutdown/collapse (immobilization).

He has, as one advertising lackey puts it, gotten rich selling people air that's fresher' than the stinky stuff outside. If a recent proliferation of real-life courses, books and online search interest is anything to go by, the act of getting that air into one's lungs is also now commodified. Online and in-person breathwork sessions now abound, some charging hundreds of dollars to teach participants a skill most have already acquired as a prerequisite for life: how to breathe.

Early trauma can have a multitude of detrimental effects and consequences-one of which is dysregulated arousal. Traumatic experiences can disrupt the normal functioning of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and cause arousal extremes through overactivation of the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system (SNS and PNS, respectively). Indeed, individuals with trauma histories can experience hyperarousal (fight or flight mode; SNS activation) or hypoarousal (freeze or numbing; PNS activation) in response to perceived threats (Corrigan et al., 2011; Ogden et al., 2006).