Trauma Training Tip
Photo by Pixabay
It’s summertime! The time of the Fire Element, the Heart, and the Ventral Vagus nerve. The soulful sages of ancient China teach us that living in harmony with the seasons is the way (the Tao) of health. In each season of the year, a resonant relationship of organs, emotions, tissues, and resources comes to the fore. In the Summer, it’s the Heart, and all matters of the Heart – and in the Tao of Trauma model, we could also say it’s the time of the Ventral Vagus nerve and the Heart Spirit.
It couldn’t be a more important time in America to cultivate our personal and social Ventral Vagus. The Ventral Vagus is a cranial nerve that extends from our brain stem and innervates our heart and lungs – meaning it supports connection/love and inspiration. It also has tangents that support us to accurately communicate and understand facial expression, tone of voice, and nuances of emotion. It helps us be in relationship. It helps us “walk towards each other so that we can ultimately walk with each other.”
It also nourishes our frontal cortex. It helps us find nuanced solutions to complex problems. We are less impulsive and more thoughtful when our Ventral Vagus is nourished.
The Ventral Vagus is the most important brake on our mobilization response, our sympathetic nervous system. The SNS has no social intelligence by itself. It only knows fight, flight, anger, and arousal. Our Ventral Vagus helps us be curious about someone who looks or acts differently than ourselves. It can temper arousal so that we can disagree and remain in relationship. It regulates our Heart Spirit – and ensures a coherent vibration through our bodies and in our relationships.
I’ve put some attention on cultivating communal Ventral Vagus.
- I was at a big music festival and someone walked by with a “Trans Lives Matter” T-shirt on. It was a big crowd – but they sure did hear me when I shouted “I like your t-shirt.” They came over, shook my hand, looked at me with amazing soft and I have to say somewhat terrified eyes and thanked me.
- When the woman in front of me in line at the food co-op told me to go ahead cuz I had 2 items and she had a whole cartful, I thanked her and told her “This is the America I want to live in – where we find ways to make each other’s lives easier.” She said “You’ve got that right, that’s the America I want to live in too” – and we chatted and appreciated each other while our orders got rung up. I think we both left feeling lighter.
- I was waiting in line for entrance to a museum on a recent vacation – and didn’t realize I needed a ticket. The woman in front of me said “here, I’ve got 3 extras, my sister couldn’t make it.” She wouldn’t even let me buy them from her! I told her “This is the America I want to live in, where people share their bounty.” She was very clear – “Me too!” – we chatted each other up, and both felt enriched and lighter by finding someone who also treasures respectful, generous connection.
The more we make connections and build respect and mutual support – with strangers as well as more intimate connections with friends or family – the easier it will be for us to walk towards each other and build our capacity to walk with each other – creating the world we really want to live in.
Cultivating the Ventral Vagus is fundamental to creating the resilience, resistance, and capacity to work together that we so desperately need.tion – the sense of knowing ourselves from the inside and neuroception – an embodied experience of safety.
Alaine’s Two Cents
The 2025-26 Tao of Trauma series will be my last.
I expect to spend my time after 2026 focusing on ensuring that the vibration of the Tao of Trauma continues to move through individuals and communities into the future. You will see me co-teaching ToT enrichment short-courses with others in the ToT community — and I have some invitations to teach internationally that are pretty juicy!
The 2025-26 series will be very special. I am teaching it with my friend and colleague Tracey Post, LCSW-C, SEP, in-person in Silver Spring, MD and Hamilton Township, NJ. She anticipates carrying the model forward in the coming years. She will bring the model even more deeply to other mental health providers as well as acupuncturists, bodyworkers, and other medical professionals. We will continue to offer a special welcome to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and first-generation immigrants with scholarships – so please ask!
You and the entire Tao of Trauma community are treasures to me. I thank you for your interest, your support and encouragement. Healers are so critically important to creating a world where people walk towards each other – so that we can eventually walk with each other. We are the foundation for the transformation so desperately needed now – and that we all long for.
Please feel welcome to the 2025-26 Tao of Trauma series! Early bird deadline August 15, 2025. Space is limited!
Click HERE for more info and to register for 2025-26!
Check This Out!
This video by Dr. G. Bhanu Prakash describes the anatomy of the mediastinum. It is beautifully clear.
For too many of us, our heart spirits are compromised by our world. Some of that heart-ache may be held in the tissues of the mediastinum. It is so beautiful and so important to work with people’s mediastinum as a way to access and support their heart spirit. It will be very available in the summer-time, the Fire season.
Clinical Curiosity
Where is your clinical curiosity carrying you?
Send me a question or two and I will explore them with readers in this corner next month.
Q.
My patient is in his 50’s. He was adopted at birth, and was never even touched by his birth mother. He’s had significant attachment issues, as you can imagine. He’s also engaged in self-harm and has very very low self-esteem. His social-engagement system is very compromised. His adoption papers and birth records describe him as a “lazy baby.” I believe he is a Fire survivor type. I am a somatically oriented psychotherapist.
A:
So glad he has you! That “lazy” baby was likely in a high tone dorsal vagal state – commonly known as a freeze state. He needed relationship and especially loving touch from a caregiver to turn on his Ventral Vagus and social engagement capacity.
My suggestion is that you work with his mediastinum. It’s a complex connective tissue structure that holds the heart and pericardium – and lines the inner aspect of the pleural cavity/lungs on the sides, the sternum at the front, the vertebral column at the back, the shoulder girdle and clavicle at the top and the diaphragm at the bottom. Interestingly it also tracks up the esophagus and trachea and surrounds the pituitary, thymus, and thyroid, as well as the brain, with a similar “split” between the two brain hemispheres and the separation at the center of the chest. It’s a complex structure and you can access it in any of these places. Especially because you think he is a Fire type – I suggest you bring a quality of universal love to your hands when you touch his mediastinum – whether you use actual touch or intentional touch.
You may also want to refer him to a specialist in somatic approaches to developmental trauma. He definitely needs in-person work if at all possible. All good wishes to him – and to your work.