The Nervous System Circuitry of Safety, Sound and Gratitude – Stephen Porges : 573
The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey
Dave Asprey
4.6 • 7.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2019
⏱️ 61 minutes
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Summary
Bulletproof Radio welcomes scientist Dr. Stephen Porges back to the show. He's known for his deep and profound understanding of the human nervous system and its application to real-life clinical settings.
Dr. Porges created the Polyvagal Theory, which explains the workings of the vagal nerve and links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior. He has authored and co-authored several books on the subject. For 25 years, his Polyvagal Theory has been leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders.
One of my favorite episodes of Bulletproof Radio was #264 when he and I talked about this theory. I encourage you to listen to that episode and check out the two Bulletproof Blog articles. I was so impressed with his research that I included it in my new book Game Changers, specifically Law #44, which is “Gratitude is Stronger than Fear.”
Dr. Porges also is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol™, which currently is used by more than 1200 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, and to improve language processing, state regulation, and spontaneous social engagement.
In this new episode, we explore how sound, safety, environment and gratitude are all intimately connected to our nervous system circuitry.
“Your body, in safe environments, will start to spontaneously optimize those circuits,” explains Dr. Porges. “We need to structure narratives that have a degree of positivity, so that our nervous system doesn't feel too scared to evaluate it.”
We’ll be making links between Dr. Stephen’s work and fascinating brain-body interactions, often deeply rooted in our ancient biology. We introduce “neuroception,” find out how to structure environments for those who struggle with sensory processing issues, better understand how hearing frequencies affect adults and kids differently, and learn how to control our own heart rate variability.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. |
| 0:16.0 | Today's cool fact of the day is that gratitude changes patterns of activity in your brain. |
| 0:21.1 | In the last 15 years, researchers have really just exploded in the amount of effort that |
| 0:26.4 | they're putting into the science of gratitude. |
| 0:30.4 | We now know that when you focus on gratitude, it activates your brainstem region that produces |
| 0:34.5 | dopamine and it can also boast your serotonin levels. |
| 0:38.5 | But they've also found that gratitude can have a profound and long-term neural effect, |
| 0:43.4 | like a study at Indiana University Bloomington that focused on people with anxiety or depression. |
| 0:48.6 | Participants had a gratitude exercise of writing letters of thanks to people in their |
| 0:51.8 | lives and three months later underwent brain scans. |
| 0:55.6 | Writing those scans, all the subjects participated in another gratitude task, where they could |
| 0:59.8 | choose between keeping money for themselves or giving it away. |
| 1:03.4 | Those who choose to give money away exhibited a specific pattern of activity in their |
| 1:07.3 | brains. |
| 1:08.3 | Even months later, they still showed more gratitude-related brain activity under a scanner. |
| 1:13.6 | The team of researchers described this as a profound and long-term neural effect simply |
| 1:17.6 | from focusing on feelings of being grateful. |
| 1:20.2 | That is awesome. |
| 1:22.3 | And as you may have predicted, we will be talking about gratitude with a world-leading expert |
| 1:27.9 | as you've come to expect. |
| 1:30.0 | And first, I'm going to propose something for you. |
| 1:33.5 | If you'd like your own personal gratitude exercise like the one just described, find three |
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