Mindbody Healing with polyvagal theory and Psychotherapy

Ask Doctor Gil with Gil Winkelman ND, MA: A conversation about integration of Heart, Body and Brain.

Mindbody Healing is such an important topic in holistic health. But how does one get there. In today’s podcast episode, we look at polyvagal theory as it relates to therapy.

TRANSCRIPT

Last week, I did a podcast on Polyvigal Theory and I received some questions and comments about it related to therapy, today on Ask Dr
Gil, I want to go through the issues with polyvagal theory as it relates to therapy
So stay tuned
Hello, and welcome to Ask Dr Gil
I’m Dr
Gil Winkleman
And today on the podcast
I wanna go back through some of the Polyvago theory information
And this is just audio this time
There’s less visuals today
So but I wanted to kind of clarify something about what I said to start
And by the way, if you have questions or comments, feel free to send them to info info info at ask doctor Gil dot com, a s k d r g I l dot com
And I try and get back to people in a relatively timely manner
But what I noticed with this comment from people is they were asked seeing whether therapy is useful or not, because of something I had said during the podcast
And what I want to clarify is, yes, therapy is absolutely useful
And very important I think for healing for a lot of people even with trauma or non trauma situations
I think therapy can be useful to just get third party voice in our lives and understanding where there are issues and problems in the situations that are going on
But I think that what we see with I think that what can be confusing is understanding what constitutes healing as it relates to psychotherapy? And I’m actually gonna do another podcast about this in terms of what makes a good doctor, which I’ll probably do next week
This is a question though in terms of therapy that knowing and remembering something may or may not be helpful in terms of healing
And I think that’s the point I was trying to make last week because when there’s trauma, remembering the trauma can actually be more traumatizing to a person
Now, sometimes it is useful in terms of understanding what had happened to us
So for example, if you don’t remember that your father dropped you on your head when you were six
I’m just using a benign and or not some benign example
That remembering that can be useful from the standpoint of understanding that it was an accident
And so then you can have compassion for your father as opposed to thinking he did it on purpose
And I’m using a somewhat tried example just to be obvious about this
Because there’s always shades of subtlety in these situations
In But in terms of the neurology and the nervous system, remembering that may not have the impact that we would think it would have based on what modern culture is saying about psychotherapy
I mean, think about how many programs you’ve watched where people have memories of something, and that memory cures them
And maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not
And I think the the point is in terms from a neurological perspective, it’s allowing the body to reset itself that is what will allow the healing to occur
If that happens through the memory and and a recall of the event, so be it
Right? But in terms of what I’ve seen with Polyvago theory treatments, it’s more about allowing the nervous system to reset
And that is not necessary necessarily related to having a memory of an event
So for example, Peter Levinean is I think it’s in his book waking the tiger he talks about a a man he worked with who had been attacked by dogs when he was like seven years old
And in the real event, the dogs rip his pants, which is which is an important cultural fact in terms of this case because there was she related to that because they were new and it happened to be a piece of the culture
They were part of his right of passage, I believe
And he remembered his father being angry
And when he went through the event with doctor Levin, it he realizes his father was angry because the dogs attacked him
So that’s a situation where a memory can be useful remembering the event
But the healing according to doctor Levin happened when the man felt the rage that he had been holding onto as a result of the dogs attacking him
These were a pack of stray dogs
And fortunately, he had been rescued and not eaten alive in the situation
And and so he had been in a fight, flight mode
And and then when the dogs chase them down, he goes into freeze mode, not unusual, particularly for a child
In the recollection of the event with doctor Levin
And I want to be clear, the event memory was not necessary for the healing
And it’s just this case happened to have both
He felt the rage, he felt the desire to fight, and he felt the desire to flee
And I think those pieces are important as part of the healing process
So it’s it’s the parts of that that were allowing for the this man to heal And he felt the rage
He firm firmly felt the rage
And he firmly felt the flight as well
So we’re gonna take a quick break
And on the other end of the break, I’m gonna go into more detail about how the body releases this trauma or at least how we think it releases this trauma
So stay tuned
Welcome back
I’m Dr
Gil Winkelman, and this is Ask Dr Gil the podcast
And today, we’re talking about polyvagile theory and psychotherapy and different ways to treat the nervous system
And the thing about the case that I was talking about that was interesting is the way this is described
And by the way, I’ve seen this with patients as well
Is that when one is in a state of fight or flight and it goes into freeze, the healing happens when you can release the freeze and feel the fight flight response
And that allows for the system to reset
Because what’s happening otherwise is that you’re in a state of both fight and flight, fight fight and freeze at the same time
And it can look like you can’t respond to events and that you’re in a parasympathetic mode
But really, you’re in a a mode where you’re stuck
And so in this case with this man who had been chased by dogs, he started shaking
And he shook for you know, I don’t actually don’t know, but I’m gonna guess at least thirty to sixty minutes
Doctor Levin described something he he had handed the patient a role of paper towels which he tore in half
Which is an incredible feat of strength, but also it just shows the level of rage this person was holding on to as a result of this situation
And before this session, he was unable to really move forward with his life, which is no wonder he was stuck
So this is where I think the therapy require some kind of somatic work to be able to engage with that sense and then release it
Now, this is an issue and you may be wondering this
How does one get in contact with that feeling when they’re disconnected? And this is the magic of psychotherapy
This is where a good psychotherapist can definitely help
And there are techniques to do this, by the way, some of which work for some people and others work for other people
And if you were to ask me, hey, do you think this will work for me? The answer is going to be, I don’t know
Because clearly, there is a lack of understanding in terms of what therapies work for who win
And sometimes therapies work for someone at a particular time in their life and not at another time
So what are some of these therapies? Well, neurofeedback is one of them
I’ve talked about neurofeedback in previous podcasts
Basically, in the therapy, the practitioner hooks the person up to electrodes
It’s usually it’s touching parts of their head, sometimes it’s the ears
And and there are different types of neurofeedback
But basically, there is either signals going to the brain or there is a reward system to the brain to be in a particular state
And The thing about neurofeedback is that certain types of neurofeedback, I won’t say all of them, but certain types of neurofeedback are helping the body release the stuckness, if you will, in the nervous system
But it’s doing it at the neuronal level
And so it’s going from almost like a top down perspective, if you will
Now there’s also heart rate variability training, heart, mouth
I believe I’ve done a podcast on that
That’s kind of going from a bottom up perspective in a sense because you’re calming the heart space down
Now, What’s interesting about that is as we slow down, a lot of times the sensations start to come to us
And that’s where a somatic therapy would work from is that it’s gonna work on helping you be in your body and experiencing what it is that you are feeling in this moment
So for example, if you have, say, I’ll use a personal example
I had tightness in my shoulder, and it came on from actually, it came on after a long airplane flight
But I surf a lot so I could have had shoulder tightness
Well, as I allowed that to let go, I felt this sense of that I was raising my shoulder to protect my neck
And and so I I felt into that
And it’s you know, this is not an intellectual process, just so so we’re clear
So I just felt the feeling of protection in my body
And so eventually that let go
And and sometimes it will move to another part of the body, you know
It could have moved down my arm
And so then I would feel that
So it’s an experience of what am I feeling right now in my body? And I don’t push it away and I don’t try and make it go away
I don’t try and I don’t judge it
I don’t do anything except observe it and allow it to be there
And as you observe, something shifts and that shift is what you’re looking for
Now, I’ve had patients who’ve done this and they break in tears as a result of that
And one of the somatic therapies, by the way, is trauma and informed yoga
A lot of times there’s a yin yoga aspect to this where you’re holding poses for a long time
And particularly when when you get into the hips, because people store a lot of emotion in their hips and their pelvis, people will break down crying in the middle of a class
And I say this not because it’s a bad thing
I say this because oftentimes people are afraid of feeling the experience or breaking down in front of other people
And so be aware that that is a possibility that that can happen
And there are other forms of therapy real quick that I will talk about brain spotting in EMDR, which are kind of related, but they’re using the eye movements and the position of the eyes to access the experience and the feeling
So if you look up and to the right, for example, that will give you insight and memory into a particular place, whereas looking down into the left may give you a different experience
It’s not so much that you’re trying to figure out where a particular memory is as much as what’s going on in that moment when you look in that particular direction
And EMDR is a little different in that
It’s a little more guided, there’s definitely more structure to the EMDR situation
So anyway, I hope this is helpful to help you understand and I guess if I would say if there’s one thing about polyvagal theory and somatic therapies that you get, it’s understanding that the body can go into a freeze mode and that freeze mode usually is preceded by a sympathetic dominance of fight flight event
And after that, you are still in the fight flight experience, even though you aren’t experiencing yourself as in fight or flight, you’re experiencing yourself as seemingly relaxed, but it’s really freeze
And one of the things about freeze mode, I didn’t mention earlier or in the other podcast is that a lot of times when we go into freeze mode, we’re releasing a lot of indoor phones and natural opiates because that’s how our body the mode is designed to make us not realize what is happening
It’s a dissociative event
And so you can have the really good feelings related to that, but you are actually dissociated from yourself
And so the question then is how do you come back into it? And that’s where the somatic therapies
That’s where a good somatic therapist will have you sit, be in your body, experience what it is that you need to experience in that moment
So I I hope this is helpful
And if you have questions or comments again, please feel free to reach out
It’s at info at us doctor gail dot com
And remember that I have the course on my website at askdrgil.com which doesn’t so much go into this other than to talk about the physiology because this issue with the fight flight freeze is affecting inflammation, nephylation, mitochondria, and is a big part of the issues with disease in modern society
So thanks again for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you on the next podcast.

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