This is a pathway to help you transition out of shutdown, or dorsal vagal states. Sometimes dorsal vagal states manifest as depression, or spaciness, or a feeling of surreality. If you know that you are dealing with a serious trauma history, please engage this pathway with the support of a licensed somatically-oriented trauma therapist. Part of the challenge of developing this pathway, and of healing trauma generally, is that the re-tuning of the nervous system happens not necessarily because of the event itself, but how we relate to it. For this reason, an event can be debilitating to one person, while barely impacting another. This also means that the dorsal vagal response can surface in response to a wide variety of experiences, so while we can speak in generalities about it, there are a limitless number of potential triggers for this response. It could be the result of a profound adverse childhood experience, or the result of having been humiliated in grade school. What is important is not what happened, so much as how our nervous system responds. For this reason, we'll encourage you to think about this pathway more as scaffolding, with the awareness that if a video doesn't respond to your situation, skip it, or look on your dashboard for a practice that more accurately addresses what is happening with you. What is likely to remain relevant is the general progression: from addressing the state, to its emotional structure, to turning social engagement physiology back on.

Shut down is the primal, body-based expression of the dorsal vagal response. Its primal signature is immobilization and going away. Dr. Porges describes it as a state of social invisibility. At a bodily level, the experience is so life threatening, or perceived by us to be so life threatening, that we want out. It operates therefore on a continuum of dissociation. It is often accompanied by a profound sense of collapse, or being stuck. When this system is dominant, cognition is not online, and stimulation is overwhelming. When we work with it, we think about creating the conditions where ice can melt in the warm sun. There is very littledoing involved. It is more of an allowing.