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

For a limited time, check out Rho’s Liposomal NAD+ at https://www.rhonutrition.com/discount/mylett and use code MYLETT for 20% off sitewide. Get your choice of a healthy free protein staple like chicken breast for a year or ground beef in every box for LIFE PLUS $20 off when you go to https://ButcherBox.com/mylett What if your thoughts aren’t the problem… but the state your body is in is controlling everything? In this conversation, I sat down with Dr. Stephen Porges, and I’m telling you right now, this one stretched me. Not just intellectually, but personally. Because what Dr. Porges reveals is something most of us have never been taught. Your life is not just driven by mindset or motivation. It is driven by your physiological state. And if you don’t understand that, you could spend your entire life trying to “think” your way out of something your body is actually controlling. We get into his groundbreaking work on the nervous system, the vagus nerve, and what he calls neuroception. That is your body’s ability to detect safety or danger without you even being aware of it. And here is the truth that hit me hard. If your body does not feel safe, it will not give you permission to feel joy, connection, or even perform at your best. That explains why so many high achievers still feel anxious, disconnected, or stuck even when everything on the outside looks successful. Dr. Porges breaks down trauma in a way I have never heard before. It is not just something that happened to you. It is something your nervous system holds onto because it is trying to protect you. And here is the key. The path forward is not just mindset work. It is learning how to work with your body. Becoming aware of it. Honoring it. And learning how to regulate it so you can actually change your experience of life. We also talked about leadership, parenting, and relationships. And this was a big realization for me. People perform better when they feel safe. Not when they feel pressure or fear. If you are leading a team, raising a family, or even working on yourself, your ability to create safety might be the most important skill you can develop. Because when people feel safe, they open up, they grow, and they become the best version of themselves. This episode is not surface level. It is a deep dive into understanding you. But if you stay with it, I promise you this. You will never look at your emotions, your stress, or your behavior the same way again. Key Takeaways: Your physiological state is the foundation of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior If your body does not feel safe, it will block connection, joy, and peak performance Trauma is not just an event, it is a pattern your nervous system holds onto You cannot think your way out of a state your body is creating True growth comes from learning to regulate and understand your body, not fight it The best leaders and parents create safety, not pressure This episode is not surface level. It is a deep dive into understanding you. But if you stay with it, I promise you this. You will never look at your emotions, your stress, or your behavior the same way again. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:42Ed Mylett?

  favorite small business lender and for good reason. Over 20 years in business, over 12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:03Speaker 01

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• 1:34Speaker 02

  This is the Ed Miliband Show.

• 1:39Ed Mylett?

  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 Porjes, who you'll 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

• 2:22Ed Mylett?

  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 10 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.

• 3:07Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I've 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 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

• 3:51Ed Mylett?

  them's University of Indiana. So go Hoosiers in the national championship that's coming up. But written a bunch of book, 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.

• 4:08Ed Mylett?

  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.

• 4:17Speaker 03

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

• 4:23Ed Mylett?

  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.

• 5:05Ed Mylett?

  Just start us out with some fundamental, basic stuff so that we can have a conversation beyond that.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  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.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  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 experiences being humans. And what that means is that part of our 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.

• 6:32Ed Mylett?

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

• 6:38Speaker 03

  No, it's not the driver.

• 6:40Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  It's the, literally the furnace, the engine.

• 6:44Ed Mylett?

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

• 6:48Speaker 03

  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 where they talk about the biome. It actually goes down to even those levels, but if 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 happens to us,

• 7:32Speaker 03

  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?

• 7:46Ed Mylett?

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

• 7:51Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, and let's, 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. Really what we need to be aware of. So i- in your world, you're going to be talking about trying harder. There's at a point where trying harder is actually destructive.

• 8:26Ed Mylett?

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

• 8:40Speaker 03

  But 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 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.

• 9:06Ed Mylett?

  Do you believe that this is conditioned? In other words, the state that we find ourselves in, is this because of some? You know, I was raised by an alcoholic till I was fifteen. And I sometimes wonder, is the fact that I seem to be almost a 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?

• 9:29Speaker 03

  There's a couple of things here, right? 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, uh, 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, 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.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  But that's not destiny. That can be.

• 10:18Ed Mylett?

  This can be reversed or undone, so to speak.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  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.

• 10:40Ed Mylett?

  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

• 11:23Speaker 03

  I would not I would not go there okay 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 gotta get out of that as opposed to saying why is my body in a defensive state now

• 11:59Ed Mylett?

  okay is it fair to say that the sympathetic state is considered the defensive state or or

• 12:04Speaker 03

  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 is co-regulation so it's the difference you know like we when athletes lose the ability to quote play because they're no longer enjoying the interaction that that is they're they're missing the co-regulation so the concept of

• 12:43Speaker 03

  playing with someone is like dancing with someone you move they move and it's that reciprocity that our nervous system loves

• 12:53Ed Mylett?

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

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Well, what most people think is it's an event, get over it.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  As opposed to it's an event that is so powerful to your nervous system that is a life threat that gets as a hardened imprint 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.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  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.

• 14:05Ed Mylett?

  How do you, this is so good. 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?

• 14:23Speaker 03

  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.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  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.

• 15:00Ed Mylett?

  Hey, 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.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  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

• 15:55Speaker 03

  of with the, I call it 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.

• 16:27Ed Mylett?

  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?

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. I'm only smiling because it's how we, how you phrased the question. And the point is you have a real accessibility to you. I can feel it and 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, an openness, and 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.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  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 gotta 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 what are they, why are they even there? Because they're in some other space.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  And, 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.

• 18:28Ed Mylett?

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• 19:11Ed Mylett?

  Go to ro.co/milet to see if you qualify. That's R O dot C O slash my let to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP-1 medications, including boxed warning, go to ro.co/safety, ro.co/safety. So when I went in to buy in the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating. And I spent a fortune in the first half of the place. And I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed. Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand vetted by product specialists. They use a 10-point quality inspection system. Here's all I can tell you. The stuff has lasted over time.

• 19:55Ed Mylett?

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• 20:29Speaker 04

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• 20:31Ed Mylett?

  So we are, we do do that. So if I'm, I'm just fascinated by this. I guess part B, I just want to have the foundational piece. Do you believe HRV is an accurate measurement of which state your body is in currently?

• 20:46Speaker 03

  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.

• 20:55Ed Mylett?

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

• 20:58Speaker 03

  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 Innovation to Application. And HRV was observation. Okay, 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 innovation that is causing that HRV?

• 21:40Speaker 03

  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.

• 22:03Ed Mylett?

  Wow. So if if someone finds themselves like myself with, um, 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. What measure it? Does that mean, is that indicative of somebody who's living primarily in a sympathetic state most of the time?

• 22:32Speaker 03

  No, but you see, your numbers are not really valid numbers of the ventral vagal complex. The numbers are because the way you're quantifying, which is probably off of a Fitbit or Apple Watch or something like that. Uh, 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. Uh, okay, so that's your first warning. The second one is that the type of analysis that they're using is not a accurate one for extraction of neural influences.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  So this is heart rate variability is not, uh, 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 would you just get a bunch of rocks and say, I have a gold mine? Or would you kind of be a little bit more careful?

• 23:36Ed Mylett?

  I understand. So earlier you said, there's not a good or a bad state. So sympathetic isn't necessarily bad. Parasymphetic is 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.

• 24:22Ed Mylett?

  I guess the way to say it is the stress of achievement is, is, is that?

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Well, you can, you can do, well, we get used to, um, I would help you rewrite your narrative, okay? You just made your narrative pathological. Now, you could say, you know, that this desire to explore is 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, I, the word is really curiosity and you may be driven to learn about people or learn about it's something that may be what you think is working hard.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  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 nineteen sixty-nine, when I observed that and in the early seventies, 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.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  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 is taking care of itself.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  And so when we talk about healthy bodies, the healthy body has these feedback loops that support digestion, oxygenization, our metabolic activity, it's arrhythmicity. 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.

• 26:36Ed Mylett?

  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 gonna 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 gonna, they are less physically healthy long term than somebody who lives in a parasympathetic state?

• 27:01Speaker 03

  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.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  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.

• 28:06Ed Mylett?

  Hmm, okay. So it's metabolically costly?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:10Ed Mylett?

  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.

• 28:19Speaker 03

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

• 28:25Ed Mylett?

  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 eighty one years old. You imagine, you imagine, um, 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 thirties. 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.

• 29:07Ed Mylett?

  Can you observe in your, we learn to in our partner or in a negotiation of business environment, what state perhaps we have triggered the person?

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:18Ed Mylett?

  Oh.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  But we do it intuitively. You may not say we do it, but we do it. We react to people when their uh, eyes move to the side or their faces get flat. Um, 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? Uh, we live in too much of a virtual world. Uh, 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, in that terse way.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  But our bodies had grown up with the notion of saying, how are you? Nice to see, you know, in a sense, these few innocuous pleasant words. Uh, but we've gone 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 as in a sense, our health giving behaviors with others, our trust, our engagement, our ability just to be present with another

• 30:43Speaker 03

  is extremely important. And for many people, they can't be with another human, but they can be with their pets.

• 30:52Ed Mylett?

  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.

• 31:01Ed Mylett?

  Is it so spaced on that you've used the word homeostasis a couple of 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?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  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. Uh, 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 the 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.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  But this music doesn't have a fixed tempo. It has a modulation tempo that fits our endogenous biological rhythms. And when we hear that our bodies go like that. Hmm. And so we're building tools for basically medical procedures.

• 32:22Ed Mylett?

  That's incredible.

• 32:24Speaker 03

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

• 32:38Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  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.

• 32:56Ed Mylett?

  So absent that.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:59Ed Mylett?

  Abs- 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.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 33:07Ed Mylett?

  The more it is to calm down.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  I mean, I can say that, yeah, but still, 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 to have so much to live for? And with is really a misunderstanding of what depression is, or that physiological state that enables depressive feelings to truly 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.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  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.

• 34:05Ed Mylett?

  Really?

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah, so long COVID is a, what makes long COVID 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.

• 34:23Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Okay, chronic pain is the same thing.

• 34:26Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  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, we did a four week study in which a vagal nerve simulator was given to one group.

• 34:52Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  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.

• 35:12Ed Mylett?

  That's incredible.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  And it's, it was done because the, the customer, and I can't mention the customer. Uh, 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? When that's scalable, that doesn't require a physician or a nurse or someone to do it? So this is all done online?

• 35:42Ed Mylett?

  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 from you. Most of your existence is a physical state you're in. And 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 an engine.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  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.

• 37:04Ed Mylett?

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• 37:46Ed Mylett?

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• 38:28Ed Mylett?

  I've changed my mornings. The whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings. I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to im8health.com/ed10 right now or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at im8health.com/ed10. Code ED10 at im8health.com/ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. That sentence right there, one of the most, um, I'd say profound or interesting sentences ever been said on the show.

• 39:13Ed Mylett?

  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. You just described it. I've always been curious about these vagus nerve, nerve stimulators.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:36Ed Mylett?

  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 the study you just did, you do know, you believe that or no?

• 39:46Speaker 03

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

• 40:04Ed Mylett?

  Got it.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  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 fifteen minutes of sound in the morning and in the evening. So it's the same protocol. And the, the effects are very parallel, but they're a little bit different. And if this, if the reaction, the selectivity of the dimensions of the nerve stimulator is more on the physiological one.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  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.

• 40:57Ed Mylett?

  So interesting, you guys. I, I, is there a telltale sign that you're living in survival?

• 41:05Speaker 03

  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 are. 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 the, we're going telltale signs. So they always, the clinicians really bought into this notion of being quote polyvagal informed.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  And what that gave them was the ability to infer that physiological state of their client from face, voice and gesture.

• 42:00Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  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.

• 42:10Ed Mylett?

  You.

• 42:13Ed Mylett?

  It's interesting. 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.

• 42:24Ed Mylett?

  And.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Age, age, age does things. So please be generous.

• 42:32Ed Mylett?

  But I, I feel that so many of you.

• 42:37Ed Mylett?

  Live in a state where if you were a witness to yourself, to use Stephen'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 I know it's okay that we even disagreed about this. But humans who don't feel safe.

• 43:19Ed Mylett?

  May not be the best version of themselves and treating other humans well, which then sort of perpetuates this lack of everyone feeling safe.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  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 in a sense frightened, scared and angry. Their bodies are going to be defensive. No one will be let in. They're going to be like this.

• 43:48Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  And that's what's happening is long and it's really simple from even the financial situation of most families. To me, that's remarkable that the median net worth of a family is close to zero. I mean, just think about that. There's no, there's no uh 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.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  And they say, well, we can get them for less money per hour, which is what you end up getting because that's the marketplace. So you create these types of situations that are not generous enough protective. And then if you start becoming generous and protective, you treat 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 greater 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.

• 45:19Ed Mylett?

  It's interesting you say that because I was thinking about myself uh 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 uh 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

• 45:59Ed Mylett?

  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. But that created, I actually believe a leader's number one role now is to make people feel safe. And then when they do feel safe, they actually will perform even better. And and go ahead. You I think you were going to agree with.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  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 uh, we being in the physiological state of fear and anger or defense, we're just not very open to others.

• 47:08Ed Mylett?

  That's right. And I, by the way, I know everybody go, oh, Ed's getting, I really want you all to look at that, the way that you lead your family. Yeah, 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 them at arms length, you got to keep them at a distance, you got to keep them hungry as to 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 gotta 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.

• 47:48Ed Mylett?

  And so you falsely believe that if you would keep yourself feeling unsafe, that somehow that that's a recipe to your long term success.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  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 uh, it graded themselves on success. It's a strange world when we don't have a marker of saying, when do I have enough?

• 48:27Ed Mylett?

  It's true. By the way, you're a hundred percent 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. But what they're really saying is I'm still at, my body is still physiologically, to your point, conditioned to and in a state of not feeling safe. It's under. 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.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:05Ed Mylett?

  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,

• 49:29Ed Mylett?

  is there a way to repair a moment perhaps in 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 when he was very young, it reminded me of my dad with me, and I didn't like that I had done this.

• 49:57Ed Mylett?

  I really yelled at him and got, I grabbed him actually, when he was six, seven years old. And I'm not even talking, I just bothers me. I didn't, I just rate, 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.

• 50:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:19Ed Mylett?

  And I remember seeing this look on his face, and I know that look because I lived with it as a child until 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?

• 50:35Speaker 03

  There's always. So the issue is, people always say the word sorry, and they're really trying to get the guilt from themselves when they really want to listen to the other person. So I use the term.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  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. And I think we want to know in a sense. First of all, Ed, I want to basically let you know that you are 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 rule makers and try to get kids to adhere to that. Even without any acknowledgement of the great range of difficulties that many kids have

• 51:35Speaker 03

  in regulating their own bio behavioral 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 start 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. If I say, regulate your behavior or I'll give you a spanking. It's not going to happen.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  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 him or tell him what happened in school. We would say, sit down and eat something and then we'll talk.

• 52:43Ed Mylett?

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

• 52:49Speaker 03

  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 a week.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  We not, we tend as adults not to understand 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.

• 53:16Ed Mylett?

  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.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:30Ed Mylett?

  And change behavior and feelings.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  So, 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.

• 54:07Ed Mylett?

  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.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:21Ed Mylett?

  Biology.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  I would, um, I would be, okay, I think those are interesting. I've worked 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 at 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. Uh, but the answer is, our bodies evolved to move, not, not to sit. And we tend, again, this is the world in which we elevate cognition, as if cognition can live independent of the rest of our physiology.

• 55:05Ed Mylett?

  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 It's your end. By the way, just so good. So good today. Um, 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, angle 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.

• 55:46Speaker 03

  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 your, 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.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  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.

• 56:48Ed Mylett?

  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 gonna ask it. Do you think it can affect gene expression at some point?

• 57:00Speaker 03

  Um, 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

• 57:40Speaker 03

  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.

• 57:59Ed Mylett?

  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 eighty-one, he'll be back on ninety-one. But this is really the frontier of understanding you, understanding you and being a witness of you. And the more you begin to dig deep, and here's how you dig deep, go get Polly Bagel Perspectives, go buy his book and start there. How about anything else you're gonna tell me some?

• 58:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was, I was looking for the readable book. There was 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 this, has 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.

• 59:08Ed Mylett?

  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 gave.

• 59:22Speaker 03

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

• 59:28Ed Mylett?

  Well, that's how it resonates with me.

• 59:30Speaker 03

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

• 59:37Ed Mylett?

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

• 59:45Speaker 03

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

• 59:47Ed Mylett?

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

• 59:52Speaker 02

  This is The Ed and Myron Show.

• 59:59Speaker 05

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• 1:00:57Speaker 05

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