Have you felt lately that it can be difficult to feel steady in today’s modern world: political tension, social division, economic uncertainty, and personal stress all place pressure on the nervous system. While we cannot always control what unfolds externally, we can learn to influence how our internal system responds. Nervous system education offers more than stress relief; it offers agency and the ability to create your own sense of home internally.

Nervous System Education as Agency

This is where nervous system education and regulation can create a huge impact. When we can understand what’s going on in our inner world, our internal management begins to affect how we show up and relate to our outer landscape. External conditions will constantly shift and change in ways we can’t control.

While we can’t control these external factors, we can learn to develop the agency skills to manage our internal world through our somatic experience. When we begin to notice the sensations, impulses, and physiological cues in our bodies, we step into a different kind of power; the power to respond rather than react.

Polyvagal Theory and the Pathway of Safety

Stephen Porges (2011), developer of Polyvagal Theory, transformed how we understand trauma and the nervous system through his work on the vagus nerve. For years, we believed the nervous system had two states: fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest. Porges identified a third pathway, the ventral vagal system, which is responsible for safety, connection, and social engagement.

The Autonomic Ladder: Home and Home Away From Home

Deb Dana, LCSW (2022), developed a visual and analogical representation of polyvagal theory called the autonomic ladder. According to Polyvagal Theory, we have three main nervous system states: ventral, sympathetic, and dorsal. We move through these states like you would a ladder; there is a hierarchy, ventral at the top, sympathetic in the middle, and dorsal at the bottom.

Dana describes the ventral as our home, our safe place. This is the nervous system state we enter when we are feeling and physiologically sensing safety. In ventral, we are connected, present, regulated, and open to relationships. When we get to know our unique nervous system, we can learn how to move up and down our metaphorical ladder, bringing us home whenever we need.

Sympathetic and dorsal are the nervous system states we move into when we feel stressed, overwhelmed, threatened, or unsafe. Dana refers to these as “home away from home.” They are places we go that we know well, because these states often become our way of adapting and responding to our environment. Sympathetic may look like anxiety, urgency, irritability, or over-functioning. Dorsal may feel like shutdown, numbness, exhaustion, or disconnection.

When Dysregulation Becomes the Baseline

While all nervous system states serve a purpose and are necessary for survival, the stress of our modern society often leaves us stuck in these states of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and survival. When this happens, dysregulation can become our baseline, and this feels nothing like being at home within ourselves.

Environment, Interoception, and Felt Safety

Many of us grew up in, or currently navigate, stressful or unsafe homes. We may deal with painful familial dynamics or experience toxic work environments. The environment plays a huge role in our sense of safety, belonging, and well-being.

In her book, How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) states that “interoception is also one of the most important ingredients in what you experience as reality.” Interoception is the ability to sense and feel what is happening in your body. Outside forces will always influence the kind of home we grow up in, or even the one we establish as adults.

Yet, alongside these external realities, interoception is the internal force within us that can help us feel at home with ourselves, no matter how chaotic the world around us feels. Through nervous system regulation and somatic awareness, we can cultivate a felt sense of safety, and we can begin to create an inner home that remains steady even when the outer world feels uncertain.

“Safety is the Treatment”

Porges (2011) is well known for his argument that “safety is the treatment.” In other words, to heal, feel safe, or process trauma, we need an embodied sense of safety. Not just the idea of safety but the felt sense of it in our bodies. From this perspective, we can create a sense of home internally.

We may not be able to control the world around us, but we can learn to tend to the world within. And from that place of embodied safety, we begin to move through life with greater clarity, connection, and hope.

Getting to Know Your States: Returning to Your Internal Home

Rooted within is not about eliminating stress. It is about recognizing your nervous system states and learning how to return to regulation more intentionally.

Accessing Your Internal Home State (Ventral)

The ventral vagal state is our state of regulation.

It is characterized by:

  • Connection
  • Presence
  • Ease
  • Curiosity
  • Flow
  • Joy
  • Emotional flexibility

When we are in ventral, we feel “at home” within our bodies. We can think clearly. We can connect. We can rest without fear or anxiety taking over us.

Reflection: Recognizing Your Ventral State

Take a moment to reflect:

When was the last time you felt ease, openness, and connected?
What did your body feel like?
What was your breathing like?
How did you relate to yourself and others?

This state becomes your internal guidepost, your reference point for safety, your inner home. Even if it feels distant at times, it is not gone. This is the nervous system state you can rely on to come home to. It is a physiological capacity you can strengthen, just like the feeling of going home.

You can access ventral states intentionally through:

  • Meditation
  • Visualization
  • Gentle embodiment practices
  • Safe relational connection
  • Slow breathing with extended exhales

The Goal Isn’t to Stay—It’s to Return

The goal is not to stay in ventral all the time, as that is unrealistic and biologically impossible. The goal is to know how to return. That same feeling you may get when you travel or leave home for a while, the quiet reassurance that you have somewhere safe to return to.

Building Awareness of Sympathetic and Dorsal States

Rooted within begins with awareness.

Sympathetic activation may feel like:

  • Anxiety
  • Irritability
  • Racing thoughts
  • Urgency
  • Tightness in the chest

Dorsal shutdown may feel like:

  • Numbness
  • Fatigue
  • Disconnection
  • Brain fog
  • Withdrawal

Instead of judging these states, begin noticing when you are pulled into them.

Ask:
What does activation feel like in my body?
What does shutdown feel like?

When you can name your state, you reduce its power.

Creating Your “Return Home” List

Once you recognize your patterns, create a personalized list of practices that help you return to regulation.

Your list might include:

  • Orienting to the room, becoming present to your surroundings with your five senses
  • Taking a warm bath
  • Gentle stretching
  • Breathwork
  • Stepping outside and feeling the sunlight
  • Listening to calming music
  • Placing a hand on your heart
  • Calling a trusted friend

The key to any home is personalization. Regulation is individual. It’s your unique way of building and maintaining your home within. Over time, you will notice that returning home becomes faster. More automatic. More embodied. Take some time to reflect on what you noticed about your nervous system responses and patterns, or which practices you include in your daily routine to regulate your nervous system and “return home”?

A Home That Cannot Be Taken From You

We cannot change what goes on outside of us and around us. But we can change how we relate to it, and that’s the goal of creating an internal home. This is something we build within the body that carries us through every environment we enter, and we each have the luxury of creating this for ourselves. This is the kind of home that cannot be taken from you.

 

References

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Dana, D. (2022). Anchored: How to befriend your nervous system using polyvagal theory. Sounds True.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.