Quotessence
Home / Topics / Polyvagal Quotes

Polyvagal Quotes

Browse 8 quotes about Polyvagal.

Polyvagal Quotes

“In these pages, we keep returning to one foundational principle: providing the possibility of emotional/relational safety for our people, be they patients, children, partners, friends or strangers. We are able to make this offer when they are experiencing their own neuroception of safety, not continuously, but as the baseline to which we return after our system has adaptively moved into sympathetic arousal or dorsal withdrawal in response to inner and outer conditions. When we neuroceive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability, and the movement of our "inherent treatment plan" (Sills, 2010) has a greater probability of coming forward. When we have a neuroception of threat, we adaptively tighten down at many levels, from physical tension to activation of the protective skills we have learned over a lifetime (Levine, 2010). In that state, our innate healing path will often wisely stay hidden until more favorable conditions arrive.”

HopeTrustProtectionTrauma HealingPerson CenteredPsychological SafetyBody WisdomPolyvagalInnate Healing Plan
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“Our infant muscles let go and mold to the shape of our mother's bodies when we are securely held. Our bodies learn the meaning of the sensations of hunger and thirst from the interpersonal sweetness of our need being seen, met and satisfied by our mother as food is offered. We take in her attentiveness along with the nourishment, and this shapes our openness to all kinds of nurturance throughout our lives. Our hearts beat more slowly and our amygdalae calm when she is in a ventral state, her presence reassuring us of the possibility of safety in connection.”

FoodAttachmentSoothingCoregulationCo RegulationPolyvagalNourishing
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image