When clients are stuck in the cognitive experience of their story, an explanation of polyvagal theory helps to bring their attention to the autonomic experience-to bring the importance of the biology of their experience back into awareness. Yet polyvagal theory can be challenging and intimidating to explain. This flip chart offers therapists an easy, standardised way to support clients in understanding the role of the autonomic nervous system in their lives. Using a flip chart makes psycho-education an interactive experience. Therapists can feel confident in teaching their clients polyvagal theory by following the chart. With a flip chart visible during sessions, the therapist can: remind clients of the ways the autonomic nervous system has been shaped and is active in their daily living experience, display a page corresponding to the present moment, thus anchoring that experience in the theory and keep a page of the hierarchy visible when working with a client's habitual response pattern.

Written for all therapists who want to understand this groundbreaking theory as it might actually show up in their day-to-day practice, this book offers a comprehensive approach to polyvagal-informed intervention. Worksheets and experiential exercises designed to map and shape autonomic response provide therapists with a road map for bringing polyvagal theory into their clinical practice.

Deb Dana is the leading clinical translator of Stephen Porges’s influential polyvagal theory. Here she further extends the reach of this groundbreaking perspective on mental wellness in the form of a card deck. These cards have been thoughtfully created to provide polyvagal concepts and prompts grouped into four areas representing three sections of the autonomic hierarchy: ventral; sympathetic; dorsal (a section about regulating the system); and a bonus section exploring play, stillness and change. The cards will enable clients to enhance a broad understanding of their nervous system as well as guide them through a process of tuning in. Clinicians can use the cards at the beginning of a session to frame the work or at the end to create a plan for ongoing work. Clients can reach for the cards any time they want some nervous system support.

Deb Dana is the foremost translator of polyvagal theory into clinical practice. Here, in her third book on this groundbreaking theory, she provides therapists with a grab-bag of polyvagal-informed exercises for their clients, to use both within and between sessions. These exercises offer readily understandable explanations of the ways the autonomic nervous system directs daily living. They use the principles of polyvagal theory to guide clients to safely connect to their autonomic responses and navigate daily experiences in new ways. The exercises are designed to be introduced over time in a variety of clinical sessions with accompanying exercises appropriate for use by clients between sessions to enhance the therapeutic change process. Essential reading for any therapist who wants to take their polyvagal knowledge to the next level and is looking for easy ways to deliver polyvagal solutions with their clients.

Here, for the first time, is a layperson's explanation of polyvagal theory, an approach to mental health and well-being that has taken the clinical world by storm. A polyvagal approach to life is based on the knowledge that the autonomic nervous system is shaped by early experience and reshaped with ongoing experience. This short book will offer an overview for non-specialist readers and provide a series of exercises and meditations (practices) that will allow readers to tune into their nervous systems, providing calming prompts to build and strengthen ventral vagal connections. This book includes a never-before-published comprehensive chapter on polyvagal theory, preceded by exercises that focus on mapping, reflecting, listening, deepening, creating and connecting. Readers who want to change a pattern and find new rhythm for their nervous systems can use this material to work toward those goals.

Discover the remarkable ways your nervous system works in service of your safety and well-being.

Polyvagal Theory, developed by researcher and scientist Dr. Stephen Porges and popularized by therapist Deb Dana, has impacted countless lives. It has changed the way therapists work with their clients and provided a pathway toward healing for those who have experienced hardship or trauma.

In Polyvagal Prompts, Deb Dana and Courtney Rolfe invite readers to explore their nervous systems through Polyvagal Theory with engaging questions and exercises, which readers can respond to directly in the pages of the book. Readers are guided in noticing their systems, listening with curiosity, and reflecting on what they learn. The prompts can be used as a daily practice or to explore specific topics at the reader’s own pace, and are also ideal for helping clients track and reflect upon their polyvagal-informed therapies.

No matter how readers decide to explore, Polyvagal Prompts offers an invaluable opportunity to begin the life-changing journey of befriending one’s nervous system.

This comprehensive edited collection brings together accomplished therapists, including those who work with children, EMDR, medical trauma, energy psychology, grief and more. All offer clinical examples that show how the polyvagal theory provides a neurophysiological model to better understand clinical features and improve communication with clients.

This product includes Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory, edited by Stephen W. Porges and Deb Dana, and The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy by Deb Dana. In Clinical Application of the Polyvagal Theory, innovative clinicians share their experiences integrating Polyvagal Theory into their treatment models. Chapters on a range of topics from compassionate medical care to optimized therapeutic relationships to clinician's experiences as parents extract from the theory the powerful influence and importance of cases and feelings of safety in the clinical setting. Through the insights of innovative and benevolent clinicians, whose treatment models are Polyvagal informed, this book provides an accessible way for clinicians to embrace this groundbreaking theory in their own work. Polyvagal Theory in Therapy offers therapists an integrated approach to adding a polyvagal foundation to their work with clients. With clear explanations of the organizing principles of Polyvagal Theory, this complex theory is translated into clinician and client-friendly language. Using a unique autonomic mapping process along with worksheets designed to effectively track autonomic response patterns, this book presents practical ways to work with clients' experiences of connection. Through exercises that have been specifically created to engage the regulating capacities of the ventral vagal system, therapists are given tools to help clients reshape their autonomic nervous systems. The book is essential reading for therapists who work with trauma and those who seek an easy and accessible way of understanding the significance that Polyvagal Theory has to clinical work. The books are packaged as a shrink-wrapped set.