A few quick notes to help you orient within our pages:

• If you’re new, or need a review, here’s the link to the START page.

• You can find last month’s post (our 19th) Part 2 of the FREEZE state & thawing here.

• Monthly & Supplementary Posts + Recordings can be accessed by topic from the navigation bar atop the Wandering Around Vagus Homepage.

• All past posts live on the archive page.​

THIS MONTH’S WORK

This month we take a broader look at the vagus nerve in the course of examining three new interwoven topics: Coregulation, Reciprocity, and Limbic Revision.

Discussing these three topics also offers a chance to review and weave together many of the topics we’ve already covered. My hope is that this month’s work serves as a refresher and deepens our understanding along with teaching us something new.

As we know, the vagus nerve extends from the brainstem to various organs and serves as a communication highway between the brain and body, influencing heart rate, digestion, and respiratory patterns. Perhaps more importantly, the vagus also plays a crucial role in our social engagement system, helping us connect with others in many meaningful ways. More specifically, it plays a central role in coregulation and reciprocity—two essential elements of human connection and emotional well-being.

By the end of this 15 minute audio you’ll have a better sense of:

• the importance of coregulation in our everyday lives.

• how our two nervous systems support our coregulation and reciprocity.

• how coregulation and reciprocity support our two nervous systems.

• what limbic revision is and the role it plays in helping us shift our feelings, perceptions and stories.

• how our stories about who we are and what our life means are shaped by the physiological states we’re in.

• how to become more aware of coregulation, reciprocity and limbic revision + how this awareness can help us feel better and be more of who we really are.

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Two Nervous Systems: Sympathetic & Parasympathetic

When we’re active and mobilized, our sympathetic nervous system increases alertness, energy, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. Regulated sympathetic states keep us motivated and focused in daily life. In survival sympathetic (fight or flight), it prepares us to respond to danger and extraordinary circumstances.

When it's time to slow down, the parasympathetic nervous system decreases alertness, lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and promotes calmness, relaxation, and digestion—states associated with the ventral vagal and dorsal states.

Both nervous systems—sympathetic and parasympathetic—are involved in the creation of the blended effect of the three hybrid states. Play is a combination of ventral and sympathetic, Intimacy combines ventral and dorsal, and Freeze combines sympathetic and dorsal.

The vagus nerve, a key part of both nervous systems, especially the parasympathetic system, is essential to the broad range of functionality associated in all our states of being, regulated and otherwise.

Coregulation and Reciprocity: The Dance of Connection

Coregulation is the process by which two beings regulate each other's emotional states through nonverbal cues such as tone of voice and body language, in the case of humans and animals. It’s fair to say humans coregulate not only with one another, but also with anything in the natural world, including places and things. For example, when we walk through our favorite woods, we coregulate with the “nervous system” of the forest, it’s soft, quiet “voice” spoken through silence, breezes and birdsong. Nature “holds” and soothes us like a caregiver, renewing our connection to our true origins.

Coregulation begins first and foremost in the interactions between caregivers and infants, where the caregiver's soothing presence helps the youngster manage emotions and feel secure. However, coregulation continues throughout life, forming the foundation of healthy relationships.

Reciprocity, closely linked to coregulation, involves the mutual exchange of emotional and physiological signals between individuals. It is a two-way street where both parties contribute to the regulation of each other's nervous systems. This dynamic interplay is essential for building trust, empathy and a sense of safety in relationships. The vagus nerve is at the heart of this process, as it helps modulate our physiological responses during social interactions, allowing us to remain calm and engaged.