God implants in the hearts of his pupils a desire to advance his ends, but human agents are compelled to employ natural means. There are people who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. What God says is best, is best, though all the people in the World are against it. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. All of the little signs we instinctively register during a conversation—the muscle shifts and tensions in the other person’s face, eye movements and pupil dilation, pitch and speed of the voice—as well as the fluctuation in our own inner landscape—salivation, swallowing, breathing, and heart rate—are linked by a single regulatory system.  All of the function listed above are product of the synchrony between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS): the sympathetic, which acts as the body’s accelerator, and the parasympathetic, which serves as its brake. These are the reciprocals that the English naturalist and geologist, Charles Robert Darwin, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution spoke of. And working together, they play an important role in managing the body’s energy flow, one preparing for its expenditure, the other for its conservation. 

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is responsible for arousal, including the stand your ground or escape response. Almost two thousand years ago the Roman physician Galen gave it the name “sympathetic” because he observed that it functioned with the emotions (sympathos). The SNS moves blood to the muscles for quick action, partly by triggering the adrenal glands to squirt out adrenaline, which speeds up the heart rate and increases blood pressure. The second branch of the ANS is the parasympatheric (“against emotions”) nervous system (PNS), which promotes self-preservative functions like digestion and wound healing. It triggers the release of acetylcholine to put a brake on arousal, slowing the heart down, relaxing muscles, and returning breathing to normal. Feeding, shelter, and mating activities depend on the PNS. There is a simple way to experience these two systems for yourself. Whenever you take a deep breath, you activate the SNS. The resulting burst of adrenaline speeds up your heart, which explains why many athletes take a few short, deep breaths before starting competition. Exhaling, in turn, activates the PNS, which slows down the heart. One should pay particular attention to the exhalation, since deep, long breaths out help calm you down. As we breathe, we continually speed up and slow down the heart, and because of that the interval between two successive heartbeats is never precisely the same. 

A measurement called heart rate variability (HRV) can be used to test the flexibility of this system, and good HRV—the more fluctuation, the better—is a sign that the brakes and accelerator in your arousal system are both functioning properly and in balance. We had a breakthrough when we acquired an instrument to measure HRV, and later we will talk about how HRV can be used to help treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The Polyvagal Theory (Polyvagal refers to the many branches of the vagus nerve or the pneumogastric nerve—which connects numerous organs, including the brain, lungs, heart, stomach, and intestines), provided a more sophisticated understanding of the biology of safety and danger, one based on the subtle interplay between the visceral experiences of our own bodies and the voices and faces of the people around us. It explained why a kind face or a soothing tone of voice can dramatically alter the way we feel, It clarified why knowing that we are seen and heard by the important people in our lives can make us feel calm and safe, and why being ignored or dismissed can precipitate rage reactions or mental collapse. It helped us understand why focused attunement with another person can shift us out of disorganized and fearful states.  Basically, we have to look beyond the stand your ground or defense methods and put social relationships front and center in our understanding of trauma. It is also suggested new approaches to healing that focus on strengthening the body’s system for regulating arousal are also helpful.  Human beings are astoundingly attuned to subtle emotional shifts in the people (and animals) around them. Slight changes in the tension of the brow, wrinkles around the eyes, curvature of the lips, and angle of the neck quickly signal to us how comfortable, suspicious, relaxed, or frightened someone is.

Our mirror neurons register their inner experience, and our own bodies make internal adjustments to whatever we are ready to pounce on them or run away. When the message we receive from another person is “You are safe with me,” we relax. If we are lucky in our relationships, we also feel nourished, supported, and restored as we look into the face and eyes of the other. Our culture teaches us to focus on personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms. Our brains are built to help us function as members of a tribe. We are part of that tribe even when we are by ourselves, whether listening to music by Paris Hilton, or that other people created, watching a Golden State Warriors basketball game at the Oracle arena or on television (our own muscles tensing as the players run and jump), or preparing a spreadsheet for a sale meeting (anticipating the boss’s reactions). Most of our energy is devoted to connecting with other. If we look beyond the list of specific symptoms that entail formal psychiatric diagnoses, we find almost all mental suffering involves either trouble in creating workable and satisfying relationships or difficulties in regulating arousal (as in the case of habitually becoming enraged, shut down, overexcited, or disorganized). Usually, it is a combination of both. The standard medical focus on trying to discover the right drug to treat a particular “disorder” tends to distract us from grappling with how our problems interfere with our functioning as members of our tribe. Every man, woman, and child will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty (Jehovah is the name some use) has spoken. All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the LORD our God (Jehovah) forever and ever.