You are a fellow Polyvagal nerd. You already understand the basic idea of the autonomic nervous system. You know, the ans directly regulates our abilities to connect with each other, to mobilize, to immobilize and more. Our state provides the foundations for our thoughts, our emotions, our impulses, and our sensations. But you might not know about vagal efficiency, which has been around for a few years. I believe.
It's not something that we discuss within the typical Polyvagal theory topics, but I think it's an important concept. So, if you're going to listen to this, you are a serious polyvagal theory nerd. Most people at this point may have turned this off by now. So it might just be you and me here. Get ready for probably the deepest dive into the polyvagal theory nerdery that you have gone outside of Dr. Porges' work. My name's Justin Sunseri.
I am a therapist, a coach, and the creator of the polyvagal trauma relief system. Welcome to Stuck Not Broken, where I typically teach you how to live with more calm, confidence, and connection without the psychobabble. This episode's all about vegal efficiency. I want to teach you what it is and how to get more of it even. So the first thing to actually understand is the vagal brake. A really quick recap.
Basically the vagal brake is the influence of the safety state on your heart using the myelinated ventral pathways. From her book, polyvagal theory in therapy, Deb Dana says "the vagal brake is designed to release and re-engage as a way of responding to challenges while still maintaining ventral vagal regulation. Once the autonomic challenge is met the vagal brake recovers, reengages and returns the system to balance."
She goes on to say, "this is a commonly experienced pattern throughout the course of a day as we energize to meet the demands of the multiple and often conflicting needs dictated by work and family schedules." And finally she says, "when the ventral vagal system cannot meet the needs of safety- or for safety- the vagal brake releases, allowing the sympathetic nervous system to come into full activation."
long quote, but basically what that means is that when the brake is active, The heart beats at a calmer pace. The vagal brake is important for being calm, relaxed, for soothing other people through co-regulation. And when re when it's released, it allows for mobilization or more of a sympathetic influence -flight of fight influence. And the way that we measure that is through respiratory sinus arrhythmia or RSA. So the vagal brake is not like a thing.
I don't want you to imagine that it's a, like a flap or something like that. It's the influence of the safety state. Vagal efficiency is a metric for the efficiency of the vagal brake. The vagal efficiency measures how well the vagal brake is working. So let's understand more about vagal efficiency. This is a measure of how well our body's ventral vagal system, which is responsible for regulating the heart rate is working.
So how well our safety state is working at keeping our heart at a calmer pace. It tells us how efficiently our body can adjust our heart rate in response. But more specifically, it tells us how efficiently our body can adjust our heart rate in response to different situations. As a metaphor to understand this better, imagine that our heart is like a car engine.
When we need to slow down or relax, the ventral vagus presses on the brake pedal or a metaphorical brake pedal, which slows down our heart rate. This helps us to feel calm and relaxed when the heart is at a calmer pace. On the other hand, when we need to speed up or be more alert, the ventral vagus releases the brake pedal allowing our heart rate to increase, and this helps us feel more energized and ready to take action.
So vagal efficiency is like the responsiveness of the brake pedal in the car. If the brake pedal is very sensitive and quickly adjust the speed of the car, we can say that the car is highly efficient in braking. Similarly, if our ventral vagal system is efficient, it means that it can quickly and accurately adjust our heart rate to match the needs of our body.
In other words, if the strength of the safety states is strong enough, it is efficient in adjusting heart rate to meet the needs of the environment. In contrast to that, if the brake pedal in our car is slow to respond or doesn't work properly then that car would have low efficiency. Similarly for us in our bodies, if our ventral vagal safety system is not efficient, it may have trouble regulating our heart rate effectively.
This makes it difficult to both calm down when needed, but also to become more alert when needed. So basically vagal efficiency as best I understand it is like the efficiency metaphorically of the brake pedal in a car determining how well our body's ventral vagal system can adjust our heart rate in different situations. Okay, so you got it so far. The next question might be, well, how has this stuff measured?
Vaguely efficiency is evaluated through the slope of the regression line between heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. If you're like me, you don't know what that means. So we just don't get that. But that's some sort of polyvagal research kind of stuff, and I can't get deeper into it than that as of right now, unfortunately, but that's the answer.
But I do know that basically, vagal efficiency, the way it's calculated, it tells us how effectively the vagal brake can handle our heart rate based on what our body needs at any given moment. Porges and his polyvagal researchers have some means of measuring these things that I honestly, I don't know how they do it, but it has something to do with the respiratory sinus arrhythmia. And that's about as far as I can take it.
The practical applications of vagal efficiency are actually pretty diverse and there's some pretty darn interesting possibilities for the future if we can use this as a measurement of vagal brake strength in some sort of practical terms, it could be pretty darn useful. I don't think we're not quite there yet. I know that. But at some point, maybe this is something that can be measured through our smartwatches. I have no idea.
We can already measure like heart rate, heart rate variability, our blood oxygenation, our watches can measure that as well, so like I have no doubt that at some point this will be pretty easy to measure. I don't know what that looks like. But regardless. It's already been used to evaluate sleep states in newborns and to track the development of preterm infants. It might serve as an indicator of dysautonomia, which is a condition characterized by impaired autonomic nervous system functioning.
Lower vagal efficiency has been studied in individuals with a history of adversity. And it's been studied in those with certain medical conditions, such as the hyper motility subtype of Ehlers Danlos syndrome. All of this is from primary polyvagal theory research papers, by the way.
Vaguely efficiency could potentially be a way of measuring or seeing what's happening ventral vagally underneath these different groups that I've listed, but also maybe for us someday through maybe like a more practical wearable that we could wear to measure our vagal efficiency. So this could be a way of measuring success. It's a way of objectively seeing like, yes, your vagal efficiency is going up. I think these are the things we can already measure subjectively.
We can feel when we have more safety state activation. When we feel more connected to the present moment or to people in our lives. So we can feel those things. We can feel those changes, but this is more of an objective measure that could be used to show someone like, Hey, you are making progress.
I know for me as a therapist, but also with my trauma recovery courses, the Polyvagal trauma relief system, I would love to be able to measure vagal efficiency, to have that objective number, to give to somebody. Or they could, you know, get through a wearable, to objectively see the progress that they're making. The people who joined my courses, they already have a weaker vagal brake. And therefore I assume would have a lower, lower of vagal efficiency.
And through the courses and whatnot, they can feel and notice change. But again, I think that objective measure would be at least just really cool. And make it a lot more real. You know, just like losing weight. If your goal is to lose weight, you can objectively measure that on a scale to validate your progress. But yeah, you could also do. You don't need to do so you might look in the mirror and notice that you look different. You might notice you feel different day-to-day.
So there's play there's ways to validate it without the measurement, but I think the measurement takes it to the next level if that's something you want. The vagal efficiency, I think, and I asked Dr. Porges this, when I interviewed him in episode 201. This could be used as a predictor for future health and even emotional regulation or behavioral concerns. Like what if we could use vagal efficiency measurements at birth, or even throughout life during regular doctor visits.
And we can see that someone's vagal efficiency is way low. I don't know how else to put it, but let's say it's way low. If we see that in a baby, that's an opportunity to tell parents about how important it is to have healthy attachment. And to meet the needs of their child. That's an opportunity to educate and encourage them and give them resources in order to do that.
As parents bond with their kids in a more healthy way, my assumption would be that their vagal brake strength would increase because their safety straight state is increases. If a parent were to somehow get that message early on, hopefully they have it already, but realistically that's not that's not everybody. So maybe there's a parent that's open to like, oh, maybe I need to do something about myself in order to help the future of my child.
And again, hopefully we all have that already, but we don't. So if that parent gets that message early on and the doctor can say, Hey look, the vagal efficiency is really concerning this going to lead to some future potential behavior problems, potential health problems, potential emotional regulation problems. Maybe they could give that parent those resources early on to help them form healthy attachments with their child, their baby.
So having that objective measurement to give to a parent, you know, really early on, I don't know, maybe I think that that could be a potential use of it. And then hopefully we would see better health outcomes, not just for that child, but on a larger level as well, especially if this is like something that could be easily used in the future. I don't know where they're, as far as being able to measure a vagal efficiency efficiently for general population. I don't know.
Something that I've found in my reading of vagal efficiency is that there seems to be a correlation between positive engagement and more vegal efficiency. And there's a correlation with quicker respiratory sinus arrhythmia recovery. RSA is a measurement of ventral vagal of safety state activation. So basically this is suggesting that things that feel good correlate with more RSA. Things that feel good correlate with more safety state activation.
So attachments, a safe environment, co-regulation all those things help to increase vagal brake strength and likely would increase vagal efficiency as well. So to wrap us up, I know super polyvagal nerdy kind of stuff. What can you do about this in your daily life? You probably can't track your vagal efficiency or your vagal brake strength directly, but you can notice when you're in your safety state.
You can practice moments of mindfulness and connection every day, even with yourself or even with the external environment. You can do that. You can practice being in your safety state. You can do things that bring you an overall experience of positivity and connection. As you practice these, they will eventually increase your vagal brake strength and assumably your vagal efficiency as well. So for you for today, I would really encourage you to at least have micro moments of mindfulness.
Micro moments of connection. Practice those as often as you can. Work on building the strength of your safety state, therefore leading to a greater strength in your vagal brake, and assumedly vagal efficiency as well. If you have no idea how to build your vagal brake strength, or how to increase the strength of your safety state., Or just how to feel calm and present and connected to the present moment, and with yourself, I have a course called building safety anchors.
It teaches you all those things that you need to know about safety, how to access safety, and it gives you six potential safety anchoring paths that you can utilize and practice daily. Building safety anchors is a part of my total access membership. You could definitely buy it by itself. I recommend the total access membership.
It's a subscription that gives you total access to building safety anchors plus my two other trauma recovery courses, plus my private community, which is pretty damn awesome. And in that private community, you can chit chat with me in the forum, you could also show up to my twice monthly meetups where I can answer all of your questions about Polyvagal theory or how to get unstuck. So if you're ready to take that next step. Head to the link in the description. It is JustinLMFT.com/totalaccess.
JustinLMFT.com/totalaccess. That is your personal invitation. I cannot wait to see you there. And of course I have a nifty gifty for you. It is my polyvagal theory and trauma ebook. It's called trauma and the Polyvagal paradigm. It is a full on book. It's not just like a little brochure or pamphlet about the Polyvagal theory. It connects PVT to trauma in a very deep dive. You can download that for free when you sign up for my email list, follow the link in the description.
Otherwise, thank you so much for listening, fellow Stucknaut. I do hope. That this episode has been a thought provoking, challenging, interesting resource for you and your polyvagal nerdery developments. Bye.