Relax, Fight-Flight and Freeze: Difference between revisions

The lower brain basically runs in three modes: relaxed, fight-flight, and freeze. Again to keep it very simple, using a stoplight as a model. (from Stephen Porges, Poly-vagal Theory).

When we are in green, we are relaxed our heart and respiration are slow, we can digest our food, we can nap, we enjoy being with loved ones and can relate to them. The moment the lower brain feels there is danger; it moves the biology into yellow. The vagus nerve shuts down all the organs below the diaphragm, and speeds up the ones above the diaphragm. We get an immediate increase of available energy, or superhuman strength, enough to lift a small car off of a child. This is an amazing thing the body can do in a split second. Our bodies were designed to do this for very brief period. We don’t want to get stuck in yellow, where we cannot digest our food, we cannot sleep, and we cannot enjoy or relate to our loved ones. There are usually two reasons we get stuck in fight-flight. We are living in an unsafe situation and the accurate assessment is that we are in danger. Or we have an unresolved [[Trauma]] from the past, which the lower brain feels is happening now, in the present moment.