How to Regulate Your Nervous System for Stress & Anxiety | Peter Levine | Ten Percent Happier

Learn how to Regulate Your Nervous System for Stress & Anxiety with meditation & Somatic bodywork. Peter Levine, The creator of somatic experiencing shows Dan Harris how to heal trauma through the body.

Content warning: This episode includes discussions of rape and violence.

In this episode we talk about:

How to do somatic experiencing. You’ll see Dan play the role of guinea pig + make weird sounds
The difference between somatic experiencing and talk therapy
Somatic experiencing practices we can implement into our lives
Why some people feel horror/terror at the thought of re-occupying the body and how to overcome those fears
What the research says – and how these practices around body awareness have gone from the fringes to entering the scientific mainstream
And how to move through ancient wounds – and enrich our lives (whether we have trauma or not)
Practices to fortify us in times of difficulty
Facing mortality

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00:00:00 Introduction to Peter Levine, Somatic Experience Expert
00:10:00 Learn how to regulate your nervous system for stress & anxiety
00:30:00 Somatic Exercises & Bodywork
00:46:00 Autobiography of Trauma
00:56:00 Somatic experiences and trauma

[lmansur]

Such a great and wonderful and helpful show!! Both the interviewer and interviewee. Your questions, being real and vulnerable in clarifying and also restating... and Steven Levine, just a lovely and beautiful human who is and has been helping the planet for years. It is a continual unfolding process of healing & transforming trauma, understanding and hopefully breaking the cycle of hurting each other.... and replacing with helping each other instead. So simple. and the planet is so much smaller these days. 🙏💕🌏

[letlovewin]

I would like to share some of the somatic exercises I do that help me feel more in my body and more connected and that have so miraculously enhanced my trauma therapy.

1. Stroke my arms up and down for a few moments.
2. Put one hand on my forehead and the other on my neck for a few seconds.
3. Softly massaging the point below my nose for a few seconds.
4. Rubbing my hands together until I feel some warmth and putting them onto my eyes or cheeks or jaw.
5. Tapping my whole body from feet to head.

As I am suffering from trauma based anxiety I also do some exercises to find security in the present moment. For example:

1. Looking around in the room I am in and curiously noticing everything that's there.
2. Concentrating on the sensation of whatever surface my body is sitting or laying on.

3. Moving my spine like it was a water plant and thereby really feeling my spine

Besides this and talk therapy I took in all information I could get about the polyvagal theory and about protection strategies that out brain develops unconsciously to protect us from further pain or even from reality. I also do guided TRE (trauma release exercise) on a weekly basis to further understand and regulate my nervous system. Furthermore I journal a lot and I thought back to what I loved when I was young and started doing that again.

This is what really helps me - I hope this can be of any help or inspiration.

Lots of love ❤

[mauricefleming]

He is giving listeners a SAMPLE of Somatic Therapy rather than just answering a list of questions by the interviewer. Love his work! 😌

[brigitgeelen]

I didn't want to be born.
I now where I come from.
Trauma, 0 to 12 year.
I am now 66 years.
I working on it.
And my englisch is not very good . I'am from the netherlands. So now I learning every day. Thank you for this.😊❤

[MagdalenaSala-uj]

Dr Levine: You’ve done so much for making this world a better place and no doubt you will be remembered. I hope we still have many years of your wisdom.

[Rdk]

The voo breath before eating food. Before breakfast, lunch and dinner to stimulate your digestion ❤

[kellschapman]

Wow i just done the voo breathing exercise for the first time it has made me feel so calm, almost brought me to tears, thank you 💓

[liliana]

What an incredible, humble, generous, authentic, inspiration Peter is. We’re blessed to have him on this earth.

[ordinaryvalley]

Thank you for inviting Peter on the show. Hes truly a beacon of light and hope ❤

[MarthaWoodworth-fs]

I am working on forgiveness: for others who caused me trauma, and myself for taking on shame and guilt for the trauma. Loving oneself unconditionally is key for me.

[MysticRainDrops]

Can there be more like this man? God do we need more ! Specially Good Men ❤

[MEhealthcoach]

Loosen up Dan! You have the Father of Somatic Experiencing on your podcast, and your first response to his first exercise was "Won't people think that's weird?" Eh?! Anyone who is experiencing the fallout from trauma will try ANYTHING if it might make them feel better (in my opinion/experience) - so breathing out saying is NOT "weird". The only thing that seemed weird to me was that this was your first response, LOL!

[bgo]

Now I can’t stop Really relaxing feeling. This is from a health anxiety customer ❤️. Good message dr Levine

[sunnyla]

Years of talk therapy with little benefit, left that therapist for a psychologist who used hypnotherapy, EMDR, and IFS (Internal family systems) and, wow, rapid progress, soò grateful ❤. Talk therapy was the primer, the soil in which EMDR, IFS, and hypno, and breathing to stimulate the vagus nerve were seeded, and I blossomed. Now i'll add the Vu to the breathing. Thank you, dr Levine, for your work and dedication ❤

[arcaenvm]

I am being treated by a wonderful somatic therapist that has created a safe and trusting environment to work through and unearth deep seated trauma as I am also trying to heal from chronic illness. Dr Peter Levine’s and Dr Gabor Mate’s work has been life transforming for me and I owe them a deep level of gratitude for honing a newfound compassion for my painful history of experiences. I wish everyone that could use it an effective and deeply fulfilling healing journey on your personal yet meaningful path 🙏♥️

[kellio]

The humming really works! I used to think it was weird when my son did it until i finally tried it. I do it when im feeling stressed. It only takes a few times until i feel better!

[antonvannelli]

100% agreed. Regulation of the nervous system is paramount and the crux of the entire issue. If you can find methods to restore regulation, and get the brain to accept parasympathetic activation/ability to relax/release etc... amazing things are possible. The difficulty is convincing the brain that it is indeed safe to reactivate this parasympathetic response... because in order to do that..the brain has to register that it is safe enough to change states. This is why some people have negative responses to certain types of trauma interventions..because the nervous system is rejecting that change. This also explains why certain people do breathwork and feel zero change...or may even feel more anxiety..etc. All individuals that I have worked with that either have physical issues or trauma related issues have a phenomenal disconnect between brain and body.. even at a muscular level. This can most certainly be reprogrammed...but the disconnect is the reflection of the nervous system. The more disconnected.. the more intense the dysregulation and symptoms. Hope this helps anyone who is watched this and has not found the answers they are looking for.

[mixedlag]

I love the 'voo' chant. When I do it, I feel a vibration inside the middle of my belly.

[sharon-pyos]

Peter Levin, such a pure loving healing soul, you are doing your tikun olam for sure❤

[mariemonn]

only trauma brain would think that’s weird..No one who is watching Dr. Levine would thinks it’s weirds because to be following him you’ve been seeking help and seeking learning about trauma and how to heal it on purpose…not just randomly coming across him…