New Year, New Nervous System!
Day 8: Freeze Response & Conservation Mode

Hey Regulators!

For this one, I've got to back all the way up so you can better understand how I ended up putting all the pieces of this puzzle together. Maybe you're also trying to connect your own dots with the mysteries of your wild body. I was four years old when I was dragged through a hospital corridor and saw a man being rolled by on a gurney who I thought was dead. We were there to see my stepfather who’d been in his umpteenth DUI accident. So, my mom was a little distracted. This was the first time I lost consciousness. It was also the first time I realized people die.

That's a lot of information for a child. And with my caregiver distracted, there was no one to explain what was happening in kid terms, so I could understand. I was completely overwhelmed by what I saw. To me, that man's death meant my own, and everyone else's too. Meanwhile, my mom was dragging me by the wrist across the laminate floors, so I couldn't run away. Nor was she paying attention to me, or to what I saw. This is when I collapsed. A few minutes later, I woke up in the middle of the floor, stuck somewhere between the inside of myself and that long white sanitary hallway. I began shaking, and convulsing uncontrollably for about a minute before I came back around to consciousness. No one could explain what happened. They called it Vaso-Vagal Syncope but didn't explain it to me. They just gave it a label that was terrifying. This is when I became afraid of my own body. 

The next time I came back to the hospital, I was so scared– the doctors had to hold me down to give me my kindergarten vaccines. This is when it happened again. Not too long after that it happened again. This became my default response anytime I got near anything that made me fear for my life– injuries, doctors, white jackets, fluorescent lighting, the list goes on. My system had taken inventory of everything in that environment and put it on my bodily list of “do not touch.” Everything became a trigger. I was so afraid of fainting and convulsing, my life got really controlled in an attempt to stay away from anything that could elicit that response.

Okay, mega fast forward. The fact that I was drawn to yoga is evidence enough that my body was trying to self regulate. I lived on high alert, but somatically longed for something that could put me at ease. Yoga was the beginning of a long journey down the rabbit hole of my body and my nervous system. Where it would lead me– was not just to my body– but to the collective body. Every BODY that's walked through the doors to my classes over the last twenty years, have all been struggling with something or some mysterious response they are seeking answers to. I have found my answers in the self protective and survival responses of the nervous system. I have a feeling you might too.

Okay next piece. Below, I have linked a video of an Impala going into the immobility freeze response. I saw this video first in 2017, and realized the animal was doing exactly what I did. This was the first time I’d ever seen any being collapse the way I did, and then shake to release itself. I was blown away and needed to know more. This was my missing puzzle piece, and when I decided to do the Somatic Experiencing Training. It changed my life and my understanding of my body, and what we can learn if we turn toward the wild.

Like I said before, the job of our nervous system is to protect us. To mobilize us to fight or flight, or to help us settle down so and recover. But sometimes, for a variety of reasons, we can't defend ourselves. This lack of defense could be an inability to physically defend, or perhaps even emotionally, we don't feel like we can because the breach is coming from people we trust. There's also a social conditioning piece that's important to address. We’ve been taught to act appropriately and don't want to ruffle the group's feathers because of rejection. So, our instinct to defend has been systematically thwarted. We’ve lost our wild. Regardless, when we cannot fight or flight, the body will do what it instinctively feels is the next best thing, and freeze us.

Freeze response has a large spectrum of feedback from dissociation, and numbing, all the way to fainting and seizing. This is the body's way of protecting us from what could be our imminent death. I know that seems extreme, but remember that first and foremost, we are animals. Under stress, our brain body system defaults to our animal brains and responds from that place. This is an extreme kickback from our wild animal body, that at some point in our evolutionary history, may have saved us. 

In the video below, the Impala has been caught by a cheetah. The impalas body goes into freeze response, the dorsal vagal part of the parasympathetic system. This is in service of conservation of its bodily resources in case it survives. But also this deep dissociative response will prevent the Impala from feeling the pain it might incur if it gets torn apart by the cheetah. 

Once the Impala is immobilized, it deactivates the predator-prey response in the cheetah. As a result, the cheetah could lose interest in the Impala, or leave it , or come back later for dinner. Afterall, he thinks it's dead. If he leaves, the Impalas body will sense that it's safe, and start to come back around. His breath will get deeper, and he will start to shake off the survival energy and stress hormones stored in his system, his muscles, tissues, organs etc from the immobility. He needs to move that stress energy out. That's why he shakes. After doing so, he jumps up and runs off into the wild. It’s studied that wild animals don't get traumatized because of their ability to shake off the residual stress chemicals in their systems, and then reflexively get up and run. That survival energy has an outlet.

Freeze response is a hybrid of parasympathetic and sympathetic. When the sympathetic energy has nowhere to go, the Vagus nerve comes in super hot and puts the brake on so fast. It slows the system down, sometimes at too rapid of a pace. This causes a drop in blood pressure that can result in fainting, numbing, or dissociative sensations. When I personally feel that dorsal vortex coming on, there's two things to do, either go ventral or go sympathetic. Meaning, find someone safe who reaffirms safety and care for you in that experience which will ventralize you (calm you down). Or jump around and mobilize your system back up into sympathetic. Then, you can consciously calm your system down with breathwork or vagal toning exercises. 

For years, I battled my body as if it was my enemy. But now I realize my body is my first baby– the very thing I’ve needed to love and be compassionate toward for all the ways it has loved me and served me back. I'm proud to say my body doesn't respond the same way it used to. It's been three years since I last fainted and seized. And it's not because that sensitive response disappeared. Rather, because of this work, I’ve become so in tune with the rhythms of my body, and aware of the sensations that arise when I'm going into that response, I can get in front of it before it's too late.

The point of this work is not to act as a silver bullet. But rather to arm you with the tools, to save you from yourself. Shake it off.  We’ve all seen our animals do it. And we’ve all heard the Taylor Swift song. This idiom didn’t arrive out of thin air. There's a reason for it. The more we look toward nature for the answers to what ails us in our bodies, the closer we will get to healing, and a more complete picture of who we are, and why we do the things we do. You can find me where the wild things are. I hope to find you there too.

Impala Immobility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox7Uj2pw-80&t=3s

Day 8 Practice: Shake It Off: Pandiculation & TRE

Love you all!
LDD