WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hi, folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler and your Long COVID Coach. And welcome to Wellness Wednesday. A little bit of a different setup here today. Coming to you from my hotel room. I am working from a hotel room in between the Polyvagal Institute Conference, which was last week, and another conference that I have later this week. But wow! The Polyvagal Institute Conference was so phenomenal. And I have so much inspiration that I want to share with you that I didn't want to waste a moment in doing so. So hopefully, you can still hear and see me okay. Apologies that the tech is a little more lo-fi than usual. And let's hope we don't have too much background noise from other things that are outside of my control. But I will launch ahead.

So the last couple of weeks, you have had some emails from me about my own experience with the Safe and Sound Protocol. What I wanted to do today was take it back a notch to the Polyvagal theory, which is the theory and science behind the Safe and Sound Protocol. And some of you will have heard me talk about Polyvagal theory before, and some of you will be new to this today. That's all right, we'll take it slowly. So Polyvagal theory is all about safety. "How safe we feel is crucial to our physical and mental health and happiness". That is a quote from Seth Porges, Steven Porges' son, who is a documentary filmmaker, and has made a lovely film - very accessible, all about what Polyvagal theory is. I'm going to put a link to that on the bottom of this video and also on my website. I know many of you asked me lots of questions about Polyvagal theory and the Safe and Sound Protocol, and just watching Dr. Porges' videos can be very heavy in the science, and if you're in immobilization that is not easy to digest.

So we're going to simplify it a little bit today, thinking about the Autonomic Nervous System, which is the automatic nervous system. And historically, many of you have heard it referred to as Parasympathetic versus Sympathetic. And Parasympathetic is your Rest and Digest, and Sympathetic is your Fight or Flight. And supposedly, these are supposed to be in equilibrium with each other. Turns out it's a little bit more complicated than that, it's actually three levels. So you've got your Rest and Digest at the top, Sympathetic Fight or Flight in the middle, and then at the bottom, we've got this thing referred to as Immobilization or Shutdown. And anybody who has Long COVID is very familiar with the state of Immobilization or Shutdown. It's a nervous system state that we live in most of the time. So, what is the relevance of this Polyvagal theory and our Autonomic Nervous System to Long COVID? Two things, anybody whose body has been under chronic stress for an extended period of time, is going to be pushed into Fight or Flight. And then because our bodies are not meant to be in Fight or Flight for a long period of time, they will ultimately wind up in Immobilization or Shut down.

These nervous system states are functional, and have been part of our evolutionary system all the way back to apparently when we were reptiles. It may not feel very functional to you now as you are experiencing all these symptoms, but ultimately, because the body can't be in Fight or Flight for a long period of time, Shut down is its way of protecting its organs, etc. So, chronic periods of stress can definitely come from a novel virus and all of the inflammation and auto immune things are kicked off by the virus. It can also come from previous chronic stress and or trauma. And this is something you've heard me talk about about before that many of us are now realizing that prior to contracting COVID we already were existing a lot of the time in Fight or Flight and or in Shutdown. And so that makes us even more vulnerable to this nervous system state perpetuating, and continuing to cause these Dysautonomic symptoms.

So how do we change that? Well, ultimately, the body is wired for connection, and safety. And we do that in Rest and Digest. And if we have gotten forced into a Fight or Flight or Immobilization for longer periods of time, our Vagus Nerve system has lost its flexibility to move back up to Rest and Digest. So it's not just that we want to get back up to Rest and Digest in order to recover. But our nervous systems have chronically been hanging out in these other states, and have lost the ability to move flexibly between each other due to the chronic overwhelm and stress. And so what we're looking to do is build in vagal flexibility and improved vagal tone, in order that we can feel safe in order that we can feel connected to others. And so the purpose of the Safe and Sound Protocol is not just a Vagus Nerve stimulator to get us into Rest and Digest in that moment. It's so much more than that. It's about creating permanent changes in our Vagus Nerve system, so that we don't be so vulnerable to Immobilization or Fight or Flight or bouncing between the two.

Now, the Safe and Sound Protocol, which you've heard me talk about many, many times, and it is music. And it is music that has been run through an algorithm so that the high frequency and the low frequency has been teased apart. And what we're left with is the middle frequency envelope. And this is really crucial, because those middle frequencies are what communicates safety to our nervous system. And they also happen to be the same frequencies of the human voice. Many of you have heard me talk about that childhood vocal porosity that we get from our mothers, which is meant to communicate safety to our nervous system. So if our nervous system is flexible, when we're hearing a human voice, we gain cues of safety and soothe ourselves. If it is not flexible, then we don't take those cues. And even if we're surrounded by lots of things that should be helping us get into Rest and Digest, we cannot.

And this is why the Safe and Sound Protocol is so enormously relevant to us with Long COVID. There are many, many, many, many, many ways of stimulating the Vagus Nerve and getting to Rest and Digest. And many of you have spoken to me about your experiences with them. I have tried many, many of them too. Yoga, deep breathing, Vagal Nerve stimulators like the Alpha stem or the TENS machine or the Sensate, and I'm going to talk a bit more about those in a moment. All sorts of exercises you can see on YouTube, some that you have done with me and various workshops. But ultimately, if our nervous system is not flexible, we won't ever stay in Rest and Digest we will always shove back down to the bottom again. And so that's why many of us when we try these interventions, have some difficulties and have a crash, because we can't maintain the gains because we don't have that flexibility.

So it's not that we are looking to get to rest and digest. And this is something that I noticed in myself, especially when I'm in a conference surrounded by lots of people who work in Polyvagal informed ways and are mostly in Rest and Digest themselves. When I noticed like I did at the conference that I had a little bit of Sympathetic be triggered or a little bit of Shutdown be triggered. I was noticing an internal critical monologue of "What's wrong with you? Why can't you do this? Everybody else can do this", and that's not what it's about. The goal is not getting to Rest and Digest. The goal is being kind to ourselves. The goal is building that flexibility, having that adaptability in our nervous system, expanding our nervous systems capacity for adaptability, and flexibility.

And that is something that the SSP does over the course of those five hours, you listen to the music for those five hours, and by the end, your nervous system has changed. And I have actually been thinking now is a good time for me to maybe repeat the CORE section of the Safe and Sound Protocol again, because I'm ready to build more adaptability and flexibility into my nervous system. Again, what happens with some of those other interventions, which are all very effective, is that it doesn't create permanent change. So for example, the Vagus Nerve stimulators that you clip on your air, you can stimulate the Vagus Nerve, just by doing this with your fingers, you could just put the clip on from the machine and not even turn the machine on, and you would stimulate your Vagus Nerve, or you could get a gentle hair clip or a gentle paperclip and do the same for much, much less money. But ultimately, when you take the machine off, you haven't built permanent change into your nervous system. You can use it to regulate your nervous system, but you won't build permanent change into your nervous system.

And one of the themes that we come back to again and again and again with Long COVID, in my workshops and in our discussions is, the difficulty that we have deciding where to go next, what treatment to use, which doctor to follow up with who to trust. And if our bodies are constantly in Fight or Flight, or Immobilization, we can't make those decisions. We can't connect with others, we don't feel safe with anything. And so oftentimes, the best first choice is the Safe and Sound Protocol. I did the Safe and Sound Protocol a year ago, it didn't cure me, this is not a cure. This is not me saying there's a magic bullet, you're going to be fixed if you do this. It put my body in a place where it could begin to receive the other treatments in a more effective way. So this was the beginning of my recovery journey. This was the beginning of me getting out of Chronic Fatigue, this was me beginning to be able to work again. And then once I was spending more time in Rest and Digest. I had that sense of safety, I had that sense of connectedness to others, I was being able to pay more attention to my body. Then I could begin to think about where next and know where next.

I hope this is beginning to come together for you in some sort of sensical way. This is of course not the last time that I'm going to talk about Polyvagal theory. In fact, you will probably find me talk about it every single week in some capacity or other. But I hope this was a nice inspiring start. That if we think about safety, if we think about connecting with others, ultimately, first we need to have more capacity to do that - adaptability, flexibility.

And one final thought to leave you with many, many, many people asked me, I know I need to get to acceptance. I know I need to accept my Long COVID. And you have probably heard me say many times, but acceptance is in Rest and Digest. So until you get there you won't be able to accept. Here's another really important thing for us to hold on to: we are not accepting that we will be chronically ill forever. Acceptance is about noticing - "This is where I am right now. I know I can have a different future. I do not accept that this will be my forever every single day. But if I can accept today, then I can start to do one thing. Even teenie tiny little one thing like watching a bit of this video that gets me towards tomorrow."

Lots there to digest. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions and if you'd like to jump on a call and talk to me more about the Safe and Sound Protocol and the ways in which we offer it in my practice. Or if you want to just talk more about Polyvagal theory and how it resonates with your nervous system, please don't hesitate to reach out. See you on another Wellness Wednesday, take care.