How to Rewire Your Body's Response to Stress, Trauma & Anxiety Feat. Dr. Stephen Porges

Summary

THE ED MYLETT SHOW

Episode: How to Rewire Your Body's Response to Stress, Trauma & Anxiety
Guest: Dr. Stephen Porges
Date: April 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ed Mylett sits down with Dr. Stephen Porges, the pioneering neuroscientist behind Polyvagal Theory, for an enlightening discussion about the body’s role in stress, trauma, and anxiety. Together, they delve beyond common self-help platitudes to explore how our physiological state—rather than just thoughts or intentions—shapes everything from health and cognition to relationships and leadership. Dr. Porges unpacks the science of the vagus nerve, heart rate variability, neuroception, and why feeling safe is fundamental for change, growth, and healing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Foundations of Polyvagal Theory and Self-Understanding

• Dr. Porges reframes self-growth:

  “We've all been misled...very little respect for the importance of our physiological state, our autonomic nervous system...our physiology, which is the platform upon which our cognitions, our emotions, and our behavior exist.” — Dr. Porges [03:39]

• Physiological state is the “engine” not just a “driver”:

  “It's the, literally the furnace, the engine.” — Dr. Porges [05:06]
  "There's a point where trying harder is actually destructive." — Dr. Porges [06:19]

• Awareness is the first step:

  “Part of responsibility is to be aware of what our body is doing...not to blame it, but to understand it, not to scream at it, but at times to honor it.” — Dr. Porges [04:38]

Decoding the Nervous System: Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic

• Resisting binary thinking:

  “You create a...binary system. When in reality the system that we inherited is a system that has many faces, many aspects...there is no bad state.” — Dr. Porges [09:54]

• Sympathetic state is not always defensive:

  “When you play, when you enjoy yourself and you're moving, like when kids play...that's play—that's acting in a reciprocal way. It's co-regulation.” — Dr. Porges [10:33]

• Trauma is not just an event, but a persistent nervous system imprint:

  “What most people think is it's an event, get over it, as opposed to...a life threat that gets a hardened imprint in your nervous system and your body just won't give up on it because it was so threatening.” — Dr. Porges [11:32]

Neuroception and Safety

• Neuroception explained through daily experience:

  “You're at dinner with a friend and a table behind you, some male voice very powerfully starts yelling...your nervous system goes into a state of defense or threat.” — Dr. Porges [12:51]

• Hardwired and tuned responses:

  “We are wired to react to certain types of sounds and movements around us.” — Dr. Porges [13:28]
  “Trauma starts off pre-wired, but it gets to a point of being retuned.” — Dr. Porges [13:38]

• Repair through safe engagement:

  “The way you get the body out of that is through safe, loving, engagement, melodic voices, friendly faces, gestures, but above all, respect for the vulnerability of the other.” — Dr. Porges [14:55]

The Role of Relationships and Social Cues

• We transmit and detect safety unconsciously:

  “You have a real accessibility to you. I can feel it, I can see it...intonation of voice, a facial expressivity and openness.” — Dr. Porges [15:15]
  “When people are not safe in another's presence, their bodies tend to pick that up and that is neuroception.” — Dr. Porges [15:44]

• Digital life and loss of social cues:

  "We've got into efficiency of communication that makes communication...lack its social value.” — Dr. Porges [28:04]
  “Sociality is one of our homeostatic processes...our health giving behaviors with others, our trust, our engagement, our ability just to be present with another is extremely important.” — Dr. Porges [29:35]

Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Vagal Tone, and Their Limitations

• Dr. Porges—The pioneer on HRV:

  “I was the first person to quantify HRV in the 60s...but it's been misunderstood.” — Dr. Porges [19:29]

• Consumer HRV metrics are flawed:

  “Your numbers are not really valid numbers of the ventral vagal complex... they’re measuring all variations in heart rate, which can include arrhythmias.” — Dr. Porges [21:15/21:23]

Stress, Recovery, and Homeostasis

• Chronic sympathetic activation is costly:

  “The real secret is good recovery. It’s not the sympathetic tone. It’s the recovery of taking away that tone. Because the sympathetic nervous system is metabolically costly to maintain.” — Dr. Porges [26:50]

• Stress defined simply:

  “Stress is a disruption of those endogenous homeostatic rhythms.” — Dr. Porges [25:19]

• It's not about living in a single state:

  “A person who has the resources to switch into a sympathetic state and then...recover and be in a health restoration state...is going to be more flexible and more healthy.” — Dr. Porges [25:44]

Tools for Change and Healing

• Emerging interventions—sound and vagus nerve stimulation:

  “I'm building a technology to put those rhythms back into the body...music is modulated in rhythms of the body...when we hear that, our bodies go like that.” — Dr. Porges [29:58]
  “The group that got interventions showed remarkable reductions of symptoms...if they got both...it was even more synergistic.” (re: long Covid chronic symptoms studies) — Dr. Porges [34:25]

• Relaxation requires non-conscious signaling:

  “If I try to relax, I can't relax. But if I allow my body to follow the rhythmicity...the body knows what to do.” — Dr. Porges [31:39]

• Repairing ruptures in relationships:

  “If you trip me, I don't want you to say you're sorry and then trip me tomorrow. I want you to look at me...I fell and you were part of that.” — Dr. Porges [49:15]

• Movement as regulation:

  "If I take my son's hand and say, let's go for a walk outside, or let's play...that regulated him." — Dr. Porges [51:29]
  “Dance movement therapists...utilize movement with facial engagement. So if our body is moving, that sympathetic nervous system is on board, but now the face is also on board.” — Dr. Porges [52:13]

Practical Takeaways and Daily Practices

• Start with body awareness:

  “Daily practices would be more about being aware of one's own body. Breath practices are good for that...body scanning where you kind of like feel your body.” — Dr. Porges [54:26]

• For trauma survivors, numbness is adaptation:

  “If you carry a trauma history, there’s a high probability that you're pretty numb to your own body feelings. It's how your nervous system adapted.” — Dr. Porges [54:26]

• Gene expression is modifiable through loving interaction:

  “Let's take an optimistic viewpoint that we can change that imprint...warm loving co regulatory interactions...that's the direction.” — Dr. Porges [55:41]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the essence of change:

  “You don't have permission to feel safe when your body is destabilized, when your homeostatic processes aren't working right.” — Dr. Porges [35:04]

• On business and leadership:

  “A leader’s number one role now is to make people feel safe, I think. And then when they do feel safe, they actually will perform even better.” — Ed Mylett [45:02]

• On addiction to stress:

  “I sometimes fear...that somehow I've become addicted to the stress of achievement.” — Ed Mylett [23:10]
  “I would help you rewrite your narrative...this desire to explore, this curiosity is how my brain grows and what I find of interest.” — Dr. Porges [23:10]

• On the impact of feeling unsafe in society:

  “If you keep people...frightened, scared and angry, their bodies are going to be defensive, no one will be let in...that's what's happening.” — Dr. Porges [42:08]

• On repairing parenting mistakes:

  “I want you to look at me and understand that I fell and that you were part of that...I know the intention wasn't to trip me, but I did fall.” — Dr. Porges [49:15]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:39] – The real foundation: subconscious physiological state shapes experience
• [09:54] – The myth of binary nervous system states
• [14:55] – The key to trauma recovery: Safe, loving co-regulation
• [19:29] – Dr. Porges on inventing HRV measurement and its limits
• [25:19] – Redefining stress and recovery
• [31:21] – Why telling yourself to relax doesn't work & importance of body rhythms
• [34:25] – Novel interventions: sound & vagal nerve stimulation for chronic illness
• [49:15] – Repairing relational ruptures in parenting and leadership
• [54:26] – Daily practices for witnessing yourself & breathwork
• [55:41] – Gene expression, trauma, and hope for change

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Resources Mentioned

• Books by Dr. Porges:

  • Our Polyvagal World (recommended for general readers)
  • Polyvagal Perspectives (for the science-focused)

• Polyvagal Institute: Dr. Porges’s foundation for training and education

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Actionable Takeaways

• Recognize that your physiological state, not just your thoughts or intentions, is foundational for every aspect of your life—from mood to decision-making.
• Start small: Practice daily breathwork, body scanning, and tune into your bodily sensations with openness rather than judgment.
• In relationships and leadership, prioritize creating safety through nonverbal cues: tone of voice, facial expressions, and authentic presence.
• Remember: Recovery from stress is as important as exposure to challenge—the real marker of well-being is flexibility, not constant calmness.
• Adopt humility and compassion toward yourself and others—repair is always possible, and feeling safe is essential for bringing out the best in yourself and those around you.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. This is the Ed Milan show.

[B]

All right. Hey, guys. So today's podcast is going to be unique. It's a dive into the deep end of understanding you. And I'm with Dr. Stephen Porges, who you hear about in a minute, but we don't waste any time. So we're going to use terms that many of you haven't heard of before, like hrv, which stands for heart rate variability. And that's the variation in your heartbeat, not your heart rate, but your heart variability. And that matters because they believe, you know, in modern science that that's an indicator of what physical state your body's in. The neuro state that you're in, you'll hear about parasympathetic and sympathetic state. All you need to know about that is the sympathetic state is sort of considered fight or flight mode in most circles. And the parasympathetic state is known as more of like a peaceful or flow state. The vagal nerve or the vagus nerve, it's just a nerve that runs really. It's the longest nerve in your body. And this nerve, when stimulated, they believe, changes that state that you're in. These are new terms to most of you know, most of you and most people who are listening to this, but it won't be over the next five or ten years. These will be very commonplace terms that you'll know about. So when you hear those terms today, don't be intimidated by them or anything like that. But I wanted you to have this foundation because we're going to go right into it here. When you hear this conversation, and so stick in there, because although it's complicated in the beginning, by the middle and end, there's a big bow put around it that I think will increase your level of understanding, particularly to the very end this week. All right, guys, here we go. All right. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I wanted to talk to this man for a long time. What I didn't know is he lives down the street from me. So we're doing this. If you're watching this on Zoom Today or on YouTube, we probably could walk to each other's house and do this interview together. But no, nonetheless, we've chosen to do it digitally. But I've been fascinated by his work because it. It goes to the root of what I believe is modern day change in human beings. Not just platitudes or memes or motivational sayings. But this man's work matters. And he's been doing it since, you know, since before a lot of you were born. And he's an expert. His name, by the way, is. He told me please call him Steve. But I'm not doing that until we get going. Dr. Stephen Porges is my guest today. He's affiliated with a bunch of different universities. One of them is University of Indiana, so go Hoosiers in the national championship that's coming up. But he's written a bunch of stuff on books that matter to me. The most recent book that I want to talk about is called Polyvagal Perspectives, Interventions, Practices and Strategies. And we're going to talk today about the neuroscience of you is what we're really going to talk about today with Dr. Porges. Finally. Welcome to the show, neighbor. Good to have you here.

[A]

Well, it's a pleasure to finally meet you and sometime it will be face to face.

[B]

Yes, I told you my location will now be disclosed. Now that we're looking forward to it. So can we do something basic? First of all, because I want to, I really believe that what you've been doing for a long time is going to become the modern day conversation in kind of my area of human change. Understanding oneself, you call it. Being a witness to ourselves is actually what I've seen in your work, which I love that term. So everybody lean in today if you want to improve and change your life or maybe just understand yourself better. Can you start just overall basic about what, what's going on inside of us, you call it neuroception, the vagus nerve, all that thrown into one bunch of. Just start us out with some fundamental basic stuff so that we can have a conversation beyond that.

[A]

I'll start off by really saying we've all been misled. Okay, We've been misled from almost the moment we were born, certainly from the moment we walked into a classroom. And the whole notion was that our behavior was determined by our intentions and so that if we were sad, if we were kind of withdrawn, it was we were doing that to ourselves. And very little respect for the importance of our physiological state, our autonomic nervous system, how our gut is working, how our heart is beating, how our physiology, which is the platform upon which our cognitions, our emotions and our behavior exist. That when our physiology is challenged, like if we have a high fever, if we are out of breath, if we're exhausted, our ability to socialize, let alone cognitively function, is greatly compromised. So the main message here is our physiological state determines much of our experience as being humans. And what that means is that part of responsibility is to be aware of what our body is doing. And then to learn how to navigate with our body, not to blame it, but to understand it, not to scream at it, but at times to honor it.

[B]

So if our physiological state is the driver, what drives that?

[A]

It's not the driver. Right. It's the, literally the furnace, the engine.

[B]

It's the, it is the, it's the whole mechanism that moves everything is what you're saying.

[A]

It's, it is the motor system. It's the. In a sense, it goes down even to metabolic. And you might have had some guests who talk about the mitochondria or they talk about the biome. It actually goes down to even those levels. But our body doesn't metabolize its energy. We don't move. And if we are, have certain physiological signatures, our brain, this is where that word neuroception comes in. Our brain interprets the world as being a very, very unpleasant place. So the part that I really want to emphasize is that we tend to take responsibility for whatever we've happens to us as opposed to kind of like honor what our body, our nervous system is doing with the signals in the world and to be aware of that. So the first stage that we're really going to get to is how do I develop an awareness of what my body is doing?

[B]

Okay, so to say that it's the driver, you're saying it's even more powerful. It's the entire engine.

[A]

So it's.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And let's step back for a moment because when you use the word driver and it's a, you know, if you remember forms of speech, that's an active or transient verb. You're driving something, so you're empowering something to do something. And that's where we have to step back. And that is the engine itself. Its capacity is really what we need to be aware of. So in your world, you're going to be talking about trying harder. There's at a point where trying harder is actually destructive.

[B]

Well, by the way, I completely believe that, particularly when I work with athletes, they end up increasing pressure. They end up increasing this, the, the sympathetic state that they may be at a time. And actually they become less functional under stress.

[A]

That's, that's a good segue because that's the physiological state that does not have flexibility. Because its roots, when you become, in a sense, sympathetically dominant, you're more in a panic or fight flight or you're angry at yourself or angry at other people, you lose your ability to have flexibility and you lose your awareness of others as well. So you're not a good social partner either.

[B]

Do you believe that this is conditioned? In other words, the state we find ourselves in? Is this because of some. You know, I was raised by an alcoholic Till I was 15, and I sometimes wonder is the fact that I seem to be almost. You're saying it's not even a true. My body appears to be addicted to this sympathetic state. Most of the time that it's in is. Could that be conditioning from childhood or.

[A]

There's a couple of things here. We're not going to dismiss experience and we're not going to dismiss learning or adaptive or conditioning, but we're really going to put something else into it. The ability to be aware of what your body is doing. So in a sense, we're not saying that if your body gets retuned because you lived in a threatening environment as a child, that you're going to be reactive. We're going to acknowledge that you may be more reactive, but we're going to give you kind of a instruction set of how to navigate with that body. So you follow where I'm going. It's not like saying, oh, because you have that body, of course you're going to behave that way. We're saying, of course your reactions may be that way, but that's not destiny. That can be.

[B]

It can be reversed or undone, so to speak.

[A]

Undone in part through what is really kind of a popular construct now, and that is body awareness becoming more embodied. So this whole movement in psychotherapy towards somatic therapies is really about being more embodied or in a sense, feeling your own body.

[B]

Okay, let's. Let's go back a little bit for everybody here, because everybody, what we're doing now is, I think, for the majority of you, I'm introducing you to a new understanding of yourself. And it has been for me for the last five or eight years in the work I do privately with people. So that you don't just try harder or, you know, I'm just gonna be happier. Focus on being happy. Focus on what you're grateful for. Right. Like, I think the vast majority would say, well, it's move the needle a little bit, but I'm still kind of the way I've always been. And so let's just. Let's go back for a second. And. And first off, are there two states? Is it fair to say that there's a. Your body is either in a sympathetic.

[A]

I would not. I would not go there.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I mean, because you start stepping into the messy stuff. Okay. Because you create a. Either Or a binary system. When in reality the system that we live with, that we inherited is a system that has many faces, many aspects to it, and what it does, all the aspects are, quote, adaptive. There is no bad state. And when we start getting into things, we start saying, I got to get out of that, as opposed to saying, why is my body in a defensive state now?

[B]

Okay, is it fair to say that the sympathetic state is considered the defensive state or, or.

[A]

No, let's reframe it. It's fair to say that I recruit my sympathetic nervous system when I am in states of defense. But when I play, when I enjoy myself and I'm moving, like when kids play, their faces are smiling. That's not a defensive state. That's play that's acting in a reciprocal way. It's co regulation. So it's the difference, you know, like when you, when athletes lose the ability to, quote, play because they're no longer enjoying the interaction that that is, they're missing the co regulation. So the concept of playing with someone is like dancing with someone. You move, they move and it's that reciprocity that our nervous system loves.

[B]

What's the biggest misconception, I guess then about trauma that the polyvagal theory sort of adjusts or corrects?

[A]

Well, what most people think is it's an event, get over it, as opposed to it's an event that is so powerful to your nervous system. That is a life threat that gets, in a sense, a hardened imprint that gets in your nervous system and your body just won't give up on it because it was so threatening. It says, you can make the mistake and think everyone is threatening, but you won't get hurt. So in a sense, think about a fail safe system that says, you hit my threshold and now I'm really porous and I'm not going to allow my body to be in close proximity with anyone. And the adaptive response for many people with trauma histories is they either totally withdraw so they are not in any contact with others, or they become numb to their own bodily feelings. And that's probably the more prevalent one where people lose their own bodily feelings.

[B]

How do you.

[A]

This is so good.

[B]

How do you, you said being able to become aware. Neuroception, being aware of what your body is doing or telling. How does one know? How does one sense that? What are some of the tools?

[A]

Okay, let's just start off with life's experiences. Let's get an example of neuroception. A. You're, you're at dinner with a friend and a Table behind you, some male voice very powerfully starts yelling at someone. Okay, how are you enjoying your meal with that? Or do you get a visceral feeling so your nervous system goes into a state of defense or threat? Because you'll have associations. It's not merely that you had associations. We are wired to react to certain types of sounds and movements around us.

[B]

That's, that's important. I don't interrupt you, but that is important. Meaning that you're. It's not just that maybe you've had a traumatic conditioning, something. You could be pre wired.

[A]

The interesting part of trauma is that it starts off pre wired, but it gets to a point of being retuned. So let's talk about trauma. Like let's say someone is raped or they're in a hospital and they get a, you know, medical trauma. The important thing is what happens next? Are they in the arms of safe loving people? Are they comforted or are they interrogated? So in a sense, we are a society that thinks of trauma as, or let's say rape as. We need to find out the perpetrator and we need retribution. And I think there's been a wonderful example of, with the. I call the Epstein's women Epstein's women because they didn't want retribution, they wanted their own voice back. And so what happens is that the body basically goes into what I call the deep abyss through withdrawal. And the way you get the body out of that is through safe loving, engagement, melodic voices, friendly faces, gestures, but above all, respect for the vulnerability of the other.

[B]

Can I, in a interpersonal relationship, friend, loved one, husband, wife, significant other, Am I doing things unconsciously that makes someone feel unsafe, that triggers that in them? And if so, what are those things? How do you know?

[A]

Oh, okay, I'm only smiling because it's how we, how you phrase the question. And the point is, you have a real accessibility to you. I can feel it, I can see it. So I'm feeling something that I see even on a two dimensional screen, and that is the intonation of voice, a facial expressivity and openness. Even in terms of your physical presence, it's an open. So you're doing many of the right things, which makes you probably an outstanding coach for those reasons. And you probably get the feedback from others where people say, you know, I feel so comfortable with you, I can share these things with you. So what they're saying is, I'm safe in your presence. And when people are not safe in another's presence, their bodies tend to pick that up and that is neuroception. The nervous system is detecting those features. And we can talk about some of the wired in features. One is facial expressivity, head turning away. You engage me and I do this or I do this. Look at my watch or where's my phone? I got to get. No, the issue is I, I disengage you while you are trying to engage me and you have a feeling and you've had hope, you've been, you've had guests that when you were on with them, you're trying to figure out why are they even there? Because they're in some other space. But you know that you are intuitive, you like people, you do that for a living. But the issue is your body picks it up. And for some people, just the turning away is enough to get them to jump out of their skin and scream,

[B]

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[A]

Okay, you. You have to understand my history there. And you probably don't understand. I was the first person to quantify HRV in the 60s.

[B]

Oh, I know. It's right here in my notes. I just want the audience.

[A]

Okay. I. I often don't want to take any credit for it because. Because it's been misunderstood. I wrote a paper recently. It's called Polyvagal Theory. A Journey from observation to. To innervation to application. And HRV was observation.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So I saw heart rate patterns. I saw when people paid attention, they stabilized. I saw that when people had more B2B variability, they were more resilient or more flexible. But I asked the next question, and that's where the HRV people went off. I said, what is the neural innervation that is causing that hrv? And it's complicated, but there's a component of it that is related to part of the vagus, not the entire part of the vagus. And this is the part of the ventral vagal complex, which is also related to intonation of voice. So intonation of voice is just a valid indicator of vagal state than heart rate variability building.

[B]

Wow. So if. If someone finds themselves, like myself with. I want everyone to lean in. I know this Is a little bit complicated, everybody, but it's not as complicated as you think. So stay with us. If someone like myself has what is considered to be very low heart rate variability. Mine is often in the single digits. When you measure it, does that mean. Is that indicative of somebody who's living primarily in a sympathetic state? Most of the time, no.

[A]

But you see, your numbers are not really valid numbers of the ventral vagal complex.

[B]

Good.

[A]

The numbers. Because the way you're quantifying, which is probably off of a Fitbit or Apple watch or something like that, they're measuring or clumping together all variations in heart rate, which can include arrhythmias. So you can get really impressive HRV measures with an arrhythmia. Okay, so that's your first warning.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The second one is that the type of analysis that they're using is not a accurate one for extraction of neural influences. So this is. Heart rate variability is not. There's something in there that is of value, but the value of what you can get out is a function of the sophistication of your signal processing or extraction tools. It's like mining and we just get a bunch of rock as I have a gold mine. Or would you kind of be a little bit more careful?

[B]

I understand. So earlier you said there's not a good or a bad state. So sympathetic isn't necessarily bad, parasympathetic isn't necessarily good. But are most. Is there a risk if you're an achiever? Like, I just. I just use myself. So let's assume that I, at least, I think this is debatable, but I'm sort of one of those people that's like always competing, always wanting to grow, always the next thing. Right? And I see people like me. So I'm a witness to myself. But I'm probably better at seeing this in other people. Many of my achiever type, quote, unquote friends. I sometimes fear, including myself, that somehow I've become addicted to the stress. I guess the way to say it is the stress of achievement is, is. Is that. Could you.

[A]

Well, yeah, you could. You can just. Well, we get used to. I would help you rewrite your narrative. Okay, Please. You just made your narrative pathological. Now, you could say, you know, that this desire to explore, this curiosity is how my. How my. How I grow, how my brain grows and what I find of interest. And that's a more, let's say, positive view of who you are as opposed to, you know, the word is really curiosity. And you may be Driven to learn about people or learn about something. And that may be what you think is working hard. Now, if I go back to my early research, it was on heart rate variability, but it was on heart rate variability during mental effort. And so when people would pay attention, the heart rate variability would flatten out, it would stabilize. And in 1969, when I observed that in the early 70s, I thought this was really remarkable, that we could link this literally into education and transference or transmitting of information, that if you could suppress your heart rate variability, you could process more information. What I didn't understand at that point in time, it took me over a decade, was that that was a disruptor of our homeostatic functions. And this is an important concept. The heart rate rhythms that are naturally occurring, not the variability per se, but the rhythmicity that creates the variability, are really reflecting the feedback loops of our body. It's taking care of itself. When we talk about healthy bodies, the healthy body has these feedback loops that support digestion, oxygenization, or metabolic activity. It's a rhythmicity. And when we use words like stress, which are really loaded words, difficult words to understand, we can give a very simple operational definition. Stress is a disruption of those endogenous homeostatic rhythms.

[B]

Oh, my goodness, it's so good. Do you think, Here's a basic question. Do you think in general, I already know you're. I know you're going to jump on this. Do you think in general, somebody who lives in a sympathetic state, and let's just assume their heart rate variability is low, that they are going to. They are less physically healthy long term than somebody who lives in a parasympathetic state?

[A]

Well, don't get binary. Okay, let's say that a person who has the resources to switch into a sympathetic state and then to recover and be in a health restoration state with the parasympathetic system is going to be more flexible and more healthy? So it's not like I'm living in calmness. No, I have great enthusiasm, great, you know, excitement. I have passion. So I have a lot of physiology and a lot of suppression of vagal activity. But my body signals me and said, enough is enough. I now need to relax. And the interesting part about our species is that it does fine with those challenges as long as you give the body sufficient recovery time. So the real secret is good recovery. It's not the sympathetic tone. It's the recovery of taking away that tone. Because the sympathetic nervous system is metabolically costly to maintain.

[B]

Okay, so it's metabolically costly yeah, yeah. Okay. That's that. Which in my layman's view of things, I go, well, that can't be really good long term if it's metabolically costly, right?

[A]

But you might lose some weight. You see, the other people will say, I'll lose weight.

[B]

Is there a way. So help us out here. Give us. I'm wondering with you, you're the expert, by the way. You guys listen to this man and I don't think he minds me telling you this. He's 81 years old. You imagine, you imagine. I know that as those of you that are on the audio, I mean his cognitive abilities, his articulation is better than anybody I know that's in their 30s. And I, I have to think that somehow this work, this stimulation of this life's work helps in that regard. Let me ask you a question. Can you at your stage now or could we. You could teach us. Can I. Can I observe stage, by the way, what I mean by that is the duration of that you've spent in this world and studying it as the expert on it. Can you observe in your. We learn to. In our partner or in a negotiation, a business environment, what state? Perhaps we have triggered the person.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

But we do it intuitively. You may not say we do it, but we do it. We react to people when they're eyes move to the side or the faces get flat when, if they're not, if their voice loses its intonation, we will say, what are you mad at me? Or something like that. What did I do? We live in too much of a virtual world. I always like to use the use of email in the very beginning as a perfect example. When email first started to become popular, people got very upset because people would just respond with terse points. And then the culture shifted and we just talk and engage in that terse way. But our bodies had grown up with the notion of saying, how are you? Nice to see, in a sense, these few innocuous, pleasant words. But we've got into this efficiency of communication that makes communication lack it makes it lack its social value. So I like to use the word sociality and think of sociality as one of our homeostatic processes that so in a sense, our health giving behaviors with others, our trust, our engagement, our ability just to be present with another is extremely important. And for many people, they can't be with another human, but they can be with their pets.

[B]

That is interesting, by the way. That's become more and more at least obvious to me in this digital era that we live in is so based on that, you use the word homeostasis a couple different times. If you could have one rule for the world for, like, healing or leadership, you know, based on work you've done, what is there? Is there one?

[A]

Oh, yeah. So actually, it's the work I'm even doing now. It's one, one might say, to allow the homeostatic rhythms to reemerge. And I'm actually building a technology to put those rhythms back into the body. And I'm using acoustic rhythms. And we've just completed a study. It's really quite remarkable. It's a type of putting into music. It's called sonic augmentation technology. And I built it with a musician, composer by name of Anthony Gorey. And what we do is literally, music is modulated in rhythms of the body. So it's not like the simplest way of thinking of it is that we were used to having tempo. But this music doesn't have a fixed tempo. It has a modulation tempo that fits our indoctrinous biological rhythms. And when we hear that, our bodies go like that. And so we're building tools for basically medical procedures.

[B]

That's incredible.

[A]

So the. The point. This is really where I think part of our conversation has kind of. Kind of, I would say, skated across the surface. And that is, how do I signal my body to relax?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And the answer is it's not an intentionality. It's almost paradoxical. If I try to relax, I can't relax. But if I allow my body to follow the rhythmicity of what we've created, the body knows what to do.

[B]

So absent that. Yeah, absent that. You're saying the more you tell someone to relax, the harder it is for them to do. The more you tell yourself, calm down. It is to calm down.

[A]

I mean, I can say that, but you will still say it to someone or. And I will still say, just. Just relax. What are you anxious about? Or what are you depressed about? I mean, that to me, is the fame. The fame. The most favorite one for me is coming out of this world of mental health issues that people would say to another, why are you depressed? You have so much to live for, really. A misunderstanding of what depression is, or that physiological state that enables depressive feelings to through. Just emerge and grow. So when we start thinking of that physiology, that physiological state, and that's what we start the whole conversation on, that's the platform upon which anxiety and depression and trauma features come out. So the project that we were doing, and this is kind of nifty because I just have looked at the data. It was to work with Long Covid.

[B]

Really? Okay.

[A]

Yeah. So Long Covid is a. What makes Long covet of interest is the body is not suffering from a disease. It killed the virus, but somehow the body did not get the message, the signal that it won the war. Chronic pain is the same thing. Yes, we, we have the signals even though the structure has healed. So the issue, it's a neural signaling problem. And so that's what this acoustic intervention was about, signaling the nervous system that it was safe enough to move back into homeostatic functions. So we did a four week study in which a vagal nerve stimulator was given to one group, the acoustic to another, and both to another group. And the fourth group got nothing. And the group that got nothing got worse or nothing. But the group that got either of the interventions showed remarkable reductions of symptoms. And if they got both of them together, it was even more synergistic. It was done because the customer, and I can't mention the customer. This is what you get into when you're a researcher. Oh, well, I need to know about the next pandemic. Is there a way of treating symptoms of let's say, chronic illness that's scalable, that doesn't require a physician or a nurse or someone to do it? So this is all done online.

[B]

That's incredible. So everybody, let's go way above really quick. Then I'm going to ask a question that you just answered actually. But I want to hear you speak to it. If you get nothing out of today, everybody, here's one baseline thing that would be a new revelation for men. You most of your existence is a physical state you're in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just accept that. Like, wow, it's a full state I'm in. And so just that in and of itself is a breakthrough for so many different people because they're thinking, I could just think myself into changing this or if I just intend to want to be happier, I'm going to change this. But it's actually a physical. I, I earlier called it a driver and that wasn't enough for him. It's got engine.

[A]

So think one step further. And that is the ability. I like to use the concept of feeling safe. You don't have permission to feel safe when your body is destabilized, when your homeostatic processes aren't working right. If you have like you have gut pain or you have heart palpitations. You're not given the permission by the nervous system to experience positive feelings. So but if you think of that way, you start realizing that, yeah, my physical presence, my physical state gives me permission to experience something else, whether it's sociality, whether it's love, or whether it's just plain curiosity.

[B]

So a well built wardrobe is about pieces that work together and hold up over time. And a lot of you been complimenting me lately, getting some DMs. Hey my lad. I like that sweater. A couple weeks ago, had that tan sweater on. Where'd you get it? I could tell you where I got it. Quint's. That's what Quints does best. Premium materials, thoughtful design, and everyday staples that feel easy to wear and easy to rely on even as the weather shifts. So I've been wearing quints a lot on the show. Like I said, kind of joking, but not really. A lot of you said, hey man, looks like you've upgraded your wardrobe. Really? I'm spending less to do it too because Quints works with directly with top factories, cuts out the middleman. So you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing. So in your case, refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quints.comed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com ed free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com ed so imh sponsored the show for a while. You guys, I'm gonna be honest with you. They sent me a bunch of their product and I didn't take it because I was on some other stuff. Then I went on vacation. I brought it with me. Oh my gosh. What was I thinking? Waiting. So if you've been looking for something easy to stick with that makes it easy to feel better, this might be it for me. It's something I've come to rely on daily and I wouldn't miss it again. I know when I miss a day. Give your body what it deserves with iM8. Go to im8health.com ED and use code ED for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. Seriously? This is one of those offers you wish you jumped on sooner. That's im8health.com ed and use code ED for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. Im8health.com ed codeed these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, prevent any disease that Sentence right there. One of the most, I'd say profound or interesting sentences ever been said on the show. Of all the work. Well, it's just true of all the high performance self help, you know, meditate. All this stuff in this space that's in one place, that right there is really, really profound. It doesn't give you permission to. Can I ask you. I already know the answer to this. She just described it. I've always been curious about these vagus nerve nerve stimulators. Yeah, I won't name them because there's a bunch of them. I've tried many of them and I was going to say to you, do you believe that any of them actually work? But it sounds as if based on this study, you just did. You do know. You believe that or no?

[A]

Yeah, because actually when we get together, there is another person who lives in Atlantic beach who basically invented a vehicle nerve stimulator and was part of a major company. And actually it was with. He is my collaborator on this long Covid study.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

So, so, but so the issue is, yeah, they do work. And there are clinical trials on this. And the. What I found remarkable about them is that they are only being used for a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes in the evening. And so we created our acoustic to parallel that. So his was using four minutes in the morning and four minutes in the evening. We use 15 minutes of sound in the morning and in the evening. So it's the same protocol. And the effects are very parallel, but they're a little bit different. And if the selectivity of the dimensions of the nerve stimulator is more on the physiological one, the acoustic is much more integrated. So it has more. On a higher level, I have purpose in life or feeling better. But also these other physiological symptoms were greatly reduced as well.

[B]

So. Interesting. You guys, I. Is there a telltale sign that you're living in survival?

[A]

To me there is. Yeah. Well, so the issue is this is the terms. I created a foundation called the Polyvagal Institute and we run meetings. And I would start off by saying what the goal of it was, was to create a network of people who felt safe enough to be who they. So I just want you to kind of like meditate on that statement because the brilliance of humanity is dependent upon being safe enough to explore and to create. So the. The part was the telltale step. I. I slipped so that we're talking telltale science. So they always, the clinicians really bought into this notion of being, quote, polyvagal, informed and what that gave them was the ability to inform, infer that physiological state of their client from face, voice and gesture. Okay, so rather, and I would say you don't need that polygraph. You don't need the electrodes. You just need to be a better observer.

[B]

You. It's interesting. I want to. The basis of, you know, all of this for me, everybody listening. And again, you know, you can tell pretty early in this conversation there's an IQ just differential and aged age does

[A]

things, so please be generous.

[B]

But I. I feel that so many of you live in a state where, if you were a witness to yourself, to use Steven's term, you. You live, many of you, in a chronic state of not feeling safe. And that's the human condition in the world today. And although I know it's a physiological state, Stephen, I just feel like the breakdown of human relationships that you described earlier, what you on our phones, what we see on our TVs every day is screaming at us, you're not safe. You're not safe, you're not safe. My overall belief and you. I know it's okay that we even disagreed about this, but humans who don't feel safe may not be the best version of themselves in treating other humans well, which then sort of perpetuates this lack of everyone feeling safe.

[A]

Well, you're describing what our politics, what's happening in our country. And it's very predictable from the polyvagal theory. It says if you keep people, it says frightened, scared and angry, their bodies are going to be defensive, no one will be let in. They're going to be like this. Yeah. And that's what's happening as long. And it's really simple. From even the financial situation of most families. To me, it's remarkable that the median net worth of a family is close to zero. Yeah, I mean, just think about that. There's no. There's no security net. So it means that most people in this country, those families are living paycheck to paycheck. So their vulnerability to how they're not safe by operational definition. And then the politics say, if we make people safe, they won't work. So you start getting this kind of strange job where the ends kind of justify the means. And they say, well, we can get them for less money per hour, which is what you end up getting because that's the market marketplace. So you create these types of situations that are not generous and not protective. And then if you start becoming generous and protective, you're treated as a socialist or communist. So it's really kind of a paradoxical thing as opposed to saying, you know, human beings in general want to be helpful in general. They want to solve problems, they want to generate, they want to do creative things. It's only when they are locked into states of threat and fear that the range and flexibility of their behaviors become extremely predictable and not very compassionate or benevolent.

[B]

It's interesting you say that because I was thinking about myself as a young businessman and what my style of leadership was when I was younger. And in retrospect, I think I made people around me feel unsafe through almost like intimidation be almost the way that I led. And I used to think that's why I'm successful. And when I learned, as I got older, those of you that are business people or parents, I was having some success, I think, in spite of the fact that I did that. And as I got a little bit older and I started to realize that the more I could begin to treat people in a loving and kind way and that they, more than that they thought I believed in them like, that they sensed a level of belief in them that that created. I actually believe a leader's number one role now is to make people feel safe, I think. And then when they do feel safe, they actually will perform even better.

[A]

And.

[B]

And. Go ahead.

[A]

You.

[B]

I think you were going to agree with me.

[A]

Yeah, I was, because I took on some roles as like being department chairman and running organizations. And I realized the role of leadership was not to dictate, but was really to give voice. Now you have to make the decisions. But I also realized that most people didn't really expect you to do what they want you to do, but they want to be heard. And so you can never get the consensus, but you could respect the communication. So I think you're getting on to a very important point, and that is we being in the physiological state of fear and anger or defense, we're just not very open to others.

[B]

That's right. And I, by the way, I know everyone. You go, oh, Ed's getting. I. I really want you all to look at that. The way that you lead your family.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or the way that you lead your company, your department, wherever you are. Like, you know, I think a lot of you were raised thinking, well, if people feel safe and believed in and loved around me, that they're going to get a little too comfy. And you got to keep people at arm's length. You got to keep them at a distance, you got to keep them hungry. As to your earlier and. Or by the way, you Know what I think a lot of you think about you, Those of you that are achievers. I'm gonna tell you something. I hear people say this. Well, I got to spend all the money that I make, so I'm still hungry. I, I've got to constantly put myself under some pressure and some stress so that I can perform. So you falsely believe that if you would keep your yourself feeling unsafe, that somehow that that's a recipe to your long term success.

[A]

Well, let's buy into this for a moment because what you're describing is it's giving them the, the mobilization to stay alive because they have not created, let's say a series of deeper goals or higher level goals so acquisition or stuff became how they graded themselves on success. It's a strange world when we don't have a marker of saying when do I have enough? It's true.

[B]

By the way, you're 100% right. As someone who has acquired a lot of stuff, I think that's why so many people that acquire a lot of stuff arrive there and say, I'm still afraid. I feel safe now. They phrase it differently. I'm not happy, I'm not at peace.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What they're really saying is I'm still it. My body is still physiologically to your point, conditioned to and in a state of not feeling safe. It's under threat. And every one of you listening to this today, you need to be evaluating how much of that game and for how long you want to play it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's worthy of your witnessing yourself, to use that term for the third time in the interview today. I want to ask you a question about, you know, we're running out of. By the way, I really enjoy this and I know that it's a little bit of the deep end, everybody, but I think if you've stayed to here, it starts to put a little bit of a bow around everything. I'm wondering that as a leader, let's just say as a parent, is there a way to repair a moment perhaps in your life or as a leader in business where maybe you did create a really unsafe environment? I'll give you an example. I remember one time, only done this once in my life and it literally bothers me to this day. My little boy, my son who's now 24, he's not a little boy anymore, but I remember one time and he was very young, it reminded me of my dad with me and I didn't like that I had done this. I really yelled at him and got, I Grabbed him, actually, when he was 6, 7 years old. And I'm not even gonna talk. I just bothers me.

[A]

I did.

[B]

I just raped. Didn't raise my voice. I yelled at him and kind of got in his little face, you know what I mean? And I scared him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I remember seeing this look on his face. And I know that look because I lived with it as a child. I was about 15. And so there's a lot of parents here that go, I'm not. I made this misstep or as a leader, I did this. Or is there a way to repair an event like that?

[A]

There's always. So the issue is people always say the word sorry and really trying to get the guilt of. From themselves when they really want to listen to the other person. So I use the term that if you trip me, I don't want you to say you're sorry and then trip me tomorrow. I want you to look at me and understand that I fell and that you were part of that. And I know that the intention wasn't to trip me, but I did fall. I think we want to know, in a sense. First of all, Ed, I want to basically let you know that you, a product of the world you grew up in and the world that we're part of and part of the parenting manual is for fathers to be basically what they call rule makers and try to get kids to adhere to that without any acknowledgement of the great range of difficulties that many kids have in regulating their own biobehavioral state. And that, to me, took decades. So I had two boys, they're now in their 40s, but they were not easy to raise. And the theory evolved with them. And I would say that I became a better father and I also became a better son when I started to understand that behavioral regulation is not a. Let's say it's not an operant, meaning it's not under total control. If I say regulate your behavior and you're out of control, it's not going to happen. I've say, regulate your behavior or I'll give you a spanking, it's not going to happen. Or if I give you an ice cream cone, but if I take my son's hand and say, let's go for a walk outside, or let's play, or with one son, it was more like, have you eaten? So we used to have a rule, and that was when he would come home from school. We wouldn't interrogate or tell him what happened in school. We'd say, sit down and eat something and then we'll talk.

[B]

Is that because you believe if you change someone's physical state, you're changing their behavior?

[A]

Yeah. What happened with my son was that, you know, once he ate, he was certainly a lot calmer and engaging. It was remarkable. So the issue was we. We, not we, tend as adults not to understand the. The fragility of the physiological states of young kids who may get hungry, really hungry, and it may represent not merely a desire to eat, but their body's need for food.

[B]

And even if something is simple, so that's really powerful. But even if something. You're saying that even with your children, or even ourselves, actually physically getting up and moving our body on a walk, changing physiology can change behavior and feelings.

[A]

So I've gotten, over the decades, great respect and insights from the dance movement therapists who work with people with tremendous challenges, like trauma histories, adversity histories, and they utilize movement with facial engagement. So if our body's moving, that sympathetic nervous system is on board, but now the face is also on board. So you have play and regulation, but if you have them sit down, you're asking them to put that sympathetic nervous system away, and they can't.

[B]

Wow. Sounds super interesting to me. Interesting. Is that why some people just say, man, my whole day, I gotta have my workout in the morning, because after my workout, I'm just a completely different person. You're saying there's actually truth to that in the sense that, yeah, theology.

[A]

I would. I would be okay. I think those are interesting. I work out in the morning for a reason which is different than theirs. I figured that if I don't work out in the morning, I don't have permission to sit at my desk. So it's like if you sit in a desk for six or eight hours, it's just not healthy. But if you take an hour and a half and you exercise, you have permission. That's my own way of dealing with it. But the answer is our bodies evolve to move, not to sit, and we tend. Again, this is the world in which we elevate cognition, as if cognition can live independently the rest of our physiology.

[B]

Here we go. That's the lesson of the entire podcast, is that, you know, you're not going to just say or think your way through this, that there's a physical, by the way, just so good, so good today. I wish we had, like, nine hours. And you and I are probably nine hours now that I know that we're neighbors. Is there just. It is a basic thing. Someone's listening to this today and they say I'd like to start to create some sort of change in myself. And all of this is new to me. Hrv sympathetic, sympathetic, vagal nerve, blah blah blah. Is there a daily practice? You'd say hey start with this, start with this. This will help you in your witnessing yourself or creating change or whatever it might be.

[A]

It's, that's a real good question. And the part is the daily practices would be more about being aware of one's own body. Breath practices are good for that if they're done well body scanning where you kind of like feel your body now what many people don't realize, if you carry a trauma history, there's a high probability that you're pretty numb to your own body feelings. And that's not something that is bad. It's how you, your nervous system adapted to be a successful, at least successful in the world person you was basically to pack off all those feelings of your body. The issue to that is that that creates other consequences including feedback loops of health. So a lot of people who have trauma histories become vulnerable to illness. And actually our own research during the pandemic found that if you had a trauma history, you were more likely to get infected during the first wave of the pandemic.

[B]

That's crazy. Do you think that, do you think that someone who lives in with stress or chronic trauma, this is out there question. You weren't ready for this one. I didn't even know I was going to ask it. Do you think it can affect gene expression at some point?

[A]

That's a good question. Because the world of epigenetics is very important now and the issue is even the reversibility of gene expression. So the idea is let's take an optimistic viewpoint and say yeah, you could kind of adapt and your body becomes locked now into a more defensive organism. But let's take an optimistic viewpoint that we can change that imprint. That's really what we're saying. And the directions of modifying that imprint are always the same. Warm loving co regulatory interactions. Basically investing or involving vagal activity and triggering endogenous oxytocin. Not exogenous, don't take pills. And I'm not the biggest fan for electrical stimulation. I'm not. I can see how it can be used. But I really want the body to be the generator of its own molecular environment and its own physiological state.

[B]

This is tremendous. Everybody, you're welcome. I know we, we took you in a direction that you're not used to today and you're going to get very used to this direction because I believe that the foundation of this man's work is going to be built upon over the next decade. He'll be still central to it. You can tell at 81 he'll be back on 91. But this is really the. The frontier of understanding you, understanding you and being a better witness of you. And the more you begin to dig deep. And here's how you dig deep. Go get Polyvagal Perspectives. Go buy his book and start there. How about any of the. Anything else? You're going to show me something?

[A]

Yeah, I was. I was looking for the readable book. There is a very readable book called Our Polyvagal World that I wrote with my younger son. And it's extraordinarily readable. Polyvagal Perspectives is an archival book. It's something that if you're really interested and you're dedicated to learning about it says more of the science. But Polyvag, Our Polyvagal World is a paperback. It's very readable. And my son is a movie maker and journalist. And so it is. You'll understand it.

[B]

Let's go there then, everybody. By the way, you have the. We both are gifted with the voice for broadcasting like your voice is. So it's authoritative, but very pleasing and welcoming, too. It's a. You had a great voice, too. God, that's.

[A]

That's neuroception. That's your neuroception of me.

[B]

Well, that's how it resonates with me, I can tell you that.

[A]

So that's the issue. That's when the talk is effectively conveying the person.

[B]

Very good. So, Everybody, that was Dr. Stephen Porges. My friend Steve was with us today. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it.

[A]

Thank you. My friend, Ed, It's a pleasure to meet you.

[B]

See you soon. God bless you, everybody. Max out your life.

[A]

This is the Ed Milan Show.