2025-03-17
57 分钟How safe we feel is crucial to our health and happiness.
When we feel threatened or traumatized, our bodies undergo a massive.
Our guest today, pioneering neuroscientist Stephen Porges and his son Seth Porges,
a journalist and science communicator,
explore how our nervous system shapes stress, safety,
and connection through their work on the polyvagal theory.
Sharing ideas from their book Our Polyvagal World,
they reveal how tuning into our body signals can help us manage anxiety,
build resilience, and create deeper human connection.
When we use the word safe, what are we actually talking about there?
The real point is our nervous system's definition of safety doesn't coincide with society's definition of safety.
We live in a world that isn't just stressful, it's almost optimized for stress.
So this reactivity to be under a state of defense is not our default.
Our default is to be a loving, compassionate, trusting species.
When we feel out of control, when we feel unsafe,
our bodies will do almost anything they can to get us out of that state.
When we're talking about polyvagal theory, what are we actually talking about?
It's really simple.
It is basically the idea that how safe we feel, not how safe we actually are,
but how safe our body feels, is crucial to our health and happiness.