Hierarchy of Autonomic Nervous System States
Our Autonomic Nervous System has a Hierarchy of states:
· Dorsal Vagal – “Freeze and Fawn” responses, closely associated with depression, appeasing, and dissociation
· Sympathetic Nervous System – “Fight or Flight” responses, closely associated with anger, anxiety, avoidance, and violence
· Ventral Vagal – “Rest and Digest,” meaning this is a state when your body and mind feel safe and able to perform bodily functions without threat. Closely associated with calm, health, growth, restoration, and social engagement.
Since these autonomic states work in a hierarchy, we must move through one state to reach the next – if you are often stuck in a Blue state, you cannot reach the Green state without going into a Red state, and vice versa.
The SSP is designed to help us with this, it cannot keep us in a Ventral Vagal green state, but it has the ability to aid us in shifting and better understanding states. A regulated Nervous System can move through states without getting “stuck”, making us more resilient and able to engage in our own lives.
The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP)
Mammals developed middle ears to aid in social engagement, it extracts social meanings from vocalization through tone. High and low frequencies are often signs of danger – high frequencies such as smoke alarms, screams, and babies crying; and low frequencies such as thunder and gunfire all activate our Sympathetic Nervous System telling us danger is near. When our Sympathetic response is triggered our bodies make appropriate psychological and physiological changes: adrenaline, increased heartrate, heightened senses, among many others – to help us fight or flee the danger. Over time, and sometimes even from birth, our Autonomic Nervous System can become dysregulated and these cues can happen when no danger is present. The more we perceive invisible dangers, we begin to see life through the lens of caution and distrust.
The Safe and Sound Protocol is designed to re-train our middle ears to detect cues of safety again. There are 5 levels of music, all filtered differently to gradually re-pattern our Autonomic Nervous System to be able to move into a Ventral Vagal State when we are safe, making us able to shift in and out of states without becoming stuck.
As the hours of SSP increase, the music filtration changes to make our ears and brain try harder to find cues of safety, closer mimicking the sounds we experience in the outside world. This dynamic filtration activates the middle ear, and the Vagus Nerve.
We hear in two ways, bone conduction - sound waves vibrating the bones of the auditory canal, and air conduction - sound waves vibrating our ear drums. Manipulating bone and air conduction through sound can be effective ways to stimulate brain activity and cultivate new neural patterns. This is why when delivering The SSP, we use over-ear headphones – to create an ideal environment for change.
