Ancient practices and modern wisdom -Polyvagal theory and Pranayama yoga

February 4, 2024 9:08 AM

Moving away from our bodies as machines we can fix, to understanding that healing and help is based on our bodies feeling safe. Marylsa B. Sullivan and Dr. Stephen W. Porges have published a free academic paper that maps Polyvagal theory to the yoga gunas (rajas/tamas/sattva). While there are many resources for background, perhaps the best is to start with Dr. Porges: YouTube link (SKIP Betterhelp ad) to Dr. Porges explaining the Polyvagal Theory. (And in skipping the Betterhelp ad, note that while western therapy has started with the mind, polyvagal theory starts with the body and evolutionary biology to show that there are easily accessed, free ways to help with regulation such as singing, chanting, yoga asanas, listening, working with the breath etc.) TLDR: Quick explanation of Polyvagal theory on Psychology Today .
posted by Word_Salad (15 comments total)

The last link was just a strained metaphor — and not one I found useful. The article was better but includes several self-citations which are meant to define the basic concepts involved with polyvagal theory. I didn’t follow those links but I did my normal “lit review first read” of the paper. Between the two I’m still not sure I’m following, but I think it’s something like: a person’s state of mind is reliably linked to internal states of their nervous system. Certain traditional practices seem well suited for coaxing the nervous system into the “good” states, and therefore may be useful in the measurable, scientific sense.

Seems neat!
posted by dbx at 11:15 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]

Please note that polyvagal theory uses anatomical terminology ("dorsal", "ventral") for alleged phenomena that have nothing to do with anatomy. I find this somewhat deceptive. Also, the concept of "vagal tone" has no basis in physiology.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:39 PM on February 4 [8 favorites]

Hmm. I'm not sure if it's just my reflexive hostility towards anything promising health from ancient wisdom but something made me start looking around and the entire polyvagal theory seems kind of sus. From the wikipedia article: In a 2021 publication, Porges stated that "the theory was not proposed to be either proven or falsified"

If the theory wasn't proposed to be either proven or falsified [1] then why the heck did he propose it, and does he even know what a scientific theory is? That's starting to sound like Austrian Economics level defensive pre-positioning of arguments.

Googling around it says that studies on polyvagal theory are inconclusive. Which doesn't mean it might not be a handy thing for some people when it comes to their own mental health, but it may not actually be all that useful in a broader scientific/therapeutic sense.

Plus, of course, yoga in the sense we mean it today was invented in the 1800's so calling it ancient wisdom is a bit of a stretch.

Dr. Paul Grossman is pretty sharply critical of the entire concept and contends that there is not actual evidence to support the three premises on which it rests. I'm also a bit baffled at another of the claims made by Dr. Porges:

During the past few years Paul Grossman has hosted a dialog on ResearchGate with the intent to falsify Polyvagal Theory. Initially, I thought this was a sophomoric exercise, since theories can only be falsified by proposing an alternative theory that would provide a better explanation of empirical data

My emphasis.

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work that way. I mean, if we can prove that there isn't phlogiston via the Michelson–Morley experiment that doesn't mean we must have an alternative explanation ready to go or else phlogiston still stands. It's possible to just disprove a theory and be all "guess we need to see about finding a better one", isn't it?



[1] And that phrase also pinged on my bogometer, since scientific theories are never proven only known to have survived efforts to disprove them. Theories are testable, but not provable. The best you can ever say of a theory is that it hasn't, yet, been falsified.
posted by sotonohito at 1:52 PM on February 4 [15 favorites]

When things are not going well, people become uncomfortable. If you can trick your body into thinking it is safe and comfortable, regardless of the facts of reality, you may feel slightly better for a time.
posted by The otter lady at 2:07 PM on February 4 [4 favorites]

Yeesh. This is giving big hindutva energy. Half a sideways step away from claiming ancient hindus invented nuclear weapons because that character in Mahabharata used Pashupata Astra, etc.

One excellent book on the subject of hindus laying claim to anachronistic scientific technological advances in vedic times is Meera Nanda's SCIENCE IN SAFFRON. Very well written and rigorously researched collection of essays that examines several cases of such claims gaining popularity in hindu fundamentalist and/or upper caste chauvinist circles.
posted by MiraK at 6:39 PM on February 4 [7 favorites]

...theories can only be falsified by proposing an alternative theory that would provide a better explanation of empirical data

Yeah, that is just wrong.
posted by Pouteria at 6:39 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]

PS: at the same time as this makes me think "hindutva nonsense", it ALSO feels like orientalism. I recently went on a date with a guy whose parents are former hippies and he spent the evening asking me things like "what's your dosha?" as if doshas are like sun signs. Like, some of the terms these folks are using don't mean quite what they seem to think it means you know? Reading this as a desi yogi is a bit like being a physics professor listening to Deepak Chopra talk about quantum energy states, I imagine.
posted by MiraK at 6:55 PM on February 4 [8 favorites]

So yoga philosophy is being co-opted yet again. I find that first link really ironic because when I was taking a yoga teacher training class and learning the entire roots of yoga philosophy (which is more than the asanas), my then therapist was trying to get me to do some polyvagal theory "safe and sound protocol." It basically promises the same things that I get by doing mindfulness or meditation or different yoga practices. It irked me because here I was actually regulating my body using these actually researched ancient methods that work and she wanted me to shell out money to listen to an hours long tape of random sounds or music this guy created. No thank you. It was then that I lost a lot of trust in my therapist because she was so into this and I could see it was just some repackaged stuff with no basis in anything I could relate to. There is no relation to yoga and polyvagal theory and the fact that people are trying to make that connection is really harmful. And I understand that this article is "mapping' the connection but they might as well admit they are repackaging an ancient cultural practice and wisdom and reducing it to something completely different and out of context.
posted by mxjudyliza at 11:01 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]

I get that why there's so much skepticism. The article strikes me as pretty loose.

However, I think it's trying to do something interesting and important.

There are real, personally-experience-able, evidence-based linkages between bodily movement practices and emotional mental health. (See: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, and Waking the Tiger, by Peter Levine, etc.) These are not philosophies! There are actual practices you can personally experience and do yourself. (See: Somatic Experiencing)

There are real, learnable bodily practices for retraining your nervous system so that your baseline of activation is lower, and so that you are calmer, more equanimous, more joyous. For example: you can take a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat and come out the end with a much different level of equanimity and calmness. It can be an intense process: at some point in the retreat, they talk about it as a form of self-therapy -- putting yourself under the scalpel.

These and other practices seem to have existed for millennia in various different shapes and forms, and in various societies. Somehow, these practices alter / retrain the nervous system.

The language or the internal worldview of these practices may not be biologically accurate. For example, a 'chakra', as far as we know, doesn't exist as an anatomical reality. But they might exist in some kind of mind-body "abstraction layer", the same way that the "mouse pointer" doesn't exist as a hardware reality in your computer -- you can't crack open a macbook's aluminum case and look for a 'mouse pointer' on the circuit board. However, a mouse pointer is certainly a salient concept within a particular software abstraction layer that's built 'atop' software layers atop hardware layers. And while you're using your computer, it is absolutely helpful to think in terms of a 'mouse pointer' as a discrete 'thing' that exists 'in your computer', the same way that it seems to be helpful for some people to think in terms of 'chakras' that exist 'in your body'.

So -- there's probably some kind of mind-body abstraction layer eventually corresponding to a biological reality that explains a mind-body connection between emotions and how our body works. One explanation for ancient practices that have worked with the mind-body, like meditation, yoga, me, qigong, is that they've all found different (yet noticeably similar) ways to work with a 'mind-body abstraction layer'.

So - in the paper asking: What is the connection between these practices and a biological reality, I think it's really asking, "Is it possible to make a connection between ancient methods that altered this mind-body abstraction layer, and the biological reality?"

Now, I personally think the article is getting at it the wrong way. It seems that Polyvagal theory has some insights around the vagus nerve and emotion regulation, but is making the 'unified field theory' mistake of stubbornly trying to explain too much. The linkage between polyvagal theory and gunas seems to be trying to align 'abstraction level's, but at the wrong level -- as if trying to find out where the "mouse pointer region of the computer chip" is.

But who knows? There are probably further scientific studies that can be done to understand if there's any connection between the two.
posted by many more sunsets at 6:39 AM on February 5 [6 favorites]

If there is one analogy that should be avoided in trying to explain the mind-body problem it is the hardware-software one. It is not only not fruitful, it is also highly misleading. IMHO.

I am not even sure that the mind-body problem is even a meaningful question, a real issue, let alone a 'problem'. Or if it is, that it can ever be explained in any satisfactory useful way.

I strongly suspect we will be having exactly the same angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate several millennia from now. That there is no there there.
posted by Pouteria at 4:24 PM on February 5 [2 favorites]

Pranayama has been studied
posted by mxjudyliza at 4:57 PM on February 5

Pouteria - I'm not sure what you mean by the mind-body 'problem' or 'issue'? I don't think anyone is problematizing a mind-body existence; I for one, am celebrating it!

Also, If you have thoughts or references on why a hardware-software analogy is not fruitful or highly misleading, I'd be all ears.
posted by many more sunsets at 8:04 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]

I'm a generally skeptical person. I tend to eschew mysticism by habit. I am allergic to cranks. I'm a university professor in the so-called 'hard' sciences. But I repeat myself :)

Recently a family member was considering enrolling in a technical program at Maharishi International University, and I had a lot of fun learning about yogic flying (it's actually hopping on your butt and taking a well-timed photo, turns out) and concentrating meditation energies through a giant dome and so on. After doing my research, I very politely told my family member that even if the faculty there were all very good in their fields, the fact that they worked at that place tainted their reputation in my opinion, and they should find a different program.

The content described in this post resembles a lot of the writing that turned up when I was reading about MIU too. My impression of the TLDR link didn't help that one bit -- and I noted as much in my first post in this thread (frist!). It uses well-known and accepted scientific concepts (phase-change in matter) to lend some legitimacy to its argument but crucially it never explains why the comparison is justified. This is a huge red flag, reminiscent of mystics who drop references to quantum phenomena in their writing without justification.

My impression of the article is different -- it's a bit fringe, or at least new, as evidenced by the self-citations. But as far as I can tell it's in a legitimate psychology journal and so it probably follows the established conventions of the field. It does use a fair amount of jargon which makes it hard to evaluate for a non-sociologist like myself. I think about a former colleague of mine who had a very convincing argument linking most cancers with inflammation; it's a bit fringe in the sense that it's not conventional wisdom, but it was solid work and I know she was basing everything she did on sound science. But I was much better equipped to evaluate her work, and might have been inclined to dismiss it out of hand if I weren't.

There is certainly a lot of crank-ism in and around this milieu, and PVT might be some. But I think my take is closer to many more sunsets' -- there's no question that meditation, breathing, etc. affects us in measurable ways. The question is why and/or how, and sort of by definition there's a non-crank answer to that question out there somewhere. I guess my main point of skepticism here is that I don't expect that answer to come dressed up in An Acronymic Theory (AAT) that obliquely refers to human biology. The idea that there are essentially three 'stable states of activation' of the nervous system is a new one to me, for example. For what it's worth, stable states of complex systems is more or less my area of expertise. And one leading theory of memory is that it's all about stable states of large sets of neurons -- so this seems to match some 'hard' neuroscience that I've encountered in at least a superficial sense.
posted by dbx at 10:59 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]

Is there no there there anywhere?
posted by y2karl at 9:14 PM on February 6

dbx: re: stable states & control theory: You might be interested in this essay by Scott Alexander (a psychiatrist by training) as well as this video by Saj Razvi of the Psychedelic Somatic Institute, who talks about there being four different stable semi-states of activation of the nervous system.
posted by many more sunsets at 11:12 AM on February 7