A conversational interview (podcast/YouTube) where Jonny Miller and host Joe discuss the nervous system through a practical, therapy-informed lens. Miller frames the nervous system as a lens on reality, explains polyvagal theory (ventral vagal/social, sympathetic, dorsal), and emphasizes capacity vs. resilience, the cycle of activation→release→rest, breathwork-informed practices, and mapping blended nervous states for emotional regulation.
Chapters
For most of my. Certainly my teenage years and most of my 20s, I was fairly numb from the neck down. Like, I was, you know, I had emotions, but I didn't have any kind of definition or attunement as to what, like, where they were or what I was actually feeling. And my journey. Right. And a huge part of it was actually like realizing the, you know, so many different flavors of sensation that are alive in the body and increasing that capacity has made the. The emotional work just like 50 times easier.
Hey, Johnny.
Hey, Joe.
How are you?
I am great. Really good.
I'm glad to hear it. So let's get started. What the fuck is a nervous system in your world, in your terminology?
Yeah. So I'm also really interested to hear your kind of map of this and perspective as well. I think the frame that I like to explore is that our nervous system is like the lens through which we view reality. And that when we're in different nervous system states, our experience of other people, our experience of ourselves, of the world shifts. And being able to kind of map those states and knowing what our nervous system is doing at any point in time is incredibly helpful. And I'm. Yeah. In this conversation, I'm super interested to hear how you think about the nervous system in the work you do and almost like, compare the maps that we have.
Yeah, okay. I'm happy to share, but I want to dig in a little deeper before I do the. How would you make a distinction between, say, the nervous system and the emotional system and the intellectual system or the prefrontal cortex or intellect?
Yeah, so I tend to lump the nervous system in with the emotional system. And a lot of my training is informed by breath work and polyvagal theory, which I imagine you've come across, which we can get into, if that's relevant. So I tend to see that there are certain emotions which are connected with safety, with what's known as ventral vagal. There's certain emotions which are connected with dorsal kind of collapse, freeze states. And then there's other emotions, let's say, like frustration or anger, which are more in the sympathetic realm. So I kind of use that as a way of mapping different states.
Okay. And so for the audience, can you give us a brief overview of the polyvagal theory?
Yeah, sure. So it was developed by a guy called Doc Steven Porsch. He basically says that there are three main branches. There's the sympathetic. Well, the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic. And then the parasympathetic, which is rest and digest, that has Two branches. One is known as ventral and one is known as dorsal. And the ventral is basically like connection. It's like the place where we can play, we feel safe, we feel grounded, we can make eye contact, we kind of in tune with ourselves. Dorsal is in a kind of low tone, healthy state is rest and digest. So like when we're sleeping, when we're relaxing, lying down. But it's also, it's also responsible for like when we go into freeze or shutdown, which is like a kind of adaptive survival response to stress. And some, you know, some people, as I'm sure you know in your work, some people when they get stressed or triggered, they go into either like anger, kind of sympathetic intensity, or they go into collapse, freeze, kind of shame, shut down and disconnect. So that's generally how I think about it. And the sympathetic is. It's also important to mention that these states can be online at the same time. So right now I'm probably in some degree of sympathetic and some degree of ventral because there's this activation, there's alertness, I'm like talking to you and there's a sense of like, oh, I can feel my body, I can make eye contact with you, I can feel connected. So these states can be blended. It's not just like one on and off switch for each one.
And then you mentioned a third, but you didn't name it.
So ventral, sympathetic and dorsal. Ventral.
Okay, so in the theory, ventral and dorsal aren't part of the the same. It's an actual third branch. Because I believe that there's some theory out there about the social nervous system too. Right. That part of the vagus nerve. And so how does that fit into the.
So the social nervous system is another way of saying the ventral vagal, which is part of the. Part of the vagus nerve. The vagus brake. Yeah, that's the kind of attuning part where when we feel safe and grounded, that can be online for connection, for play.
Gotcha.
Creativity, all those things.
Okay, and then what does a healthy nervous system look like?
So this is a really interesting question. I think some people have this view that like we should be totally regulated and you know, calm the entire time. Which, you know, might work for some people, but it's. I think it's certainly setting unrealistic.
It might work for some people, but I've never seen anybody do it.
Yeah, neither. Neither have I. So the two words that I think are helpful to use are capacity and resilience. Capacity is basically I'm able to hold Intensity, and I have a strong ventral vagal tone, meaning that I can be with intense experiences without going into shutdown or going into overwhelm. The other piece is resilience, which is basically how efficiently can you downshift your state of arousal after a stressful experience and find kind of healthy relaxation without relying on substances or crutches or alcohol, whatever it is, which a lot of people do. So a healthy nervous system is basically very dynamic. It responds adaptively to the situation.
Great. And then one more question for you around this is that there's a theory. I'm trying to remember the name of the person, but basically it's like, I think it's in the. I think it's in some of the emotional literature of Lohan, but maybe it's. Maybe it's the core energetics. There's core dynamics, core energetics. I always get it all confused. But basically, like, there's a cycle of activity, and part of that cycle of activity is like, activation. And then part of the cycle of activity. I think it's like four or five, but I always think about the last two, which is. So you're finished with something, then there's a release and then there's a rest. Yeah, they're not like, release and rest aren't the same thing. They're two different things. And so when I hear you talk about how quickly you can get back to, like, a rested nervous system in your, in your world, is there getting back to rested nervous system? Is there a release and a relax in it? Is it just a relax? If so, what's the difference between the two? Like, to get to that resilience of being able to get back to a restful state?
Yeah, so I, I think what you're referring to is the, the, the. The activation or the mobilization response, which typically has the kind of intensity which is the sympathetic. And then, like you say, there's usually the release, and then there is the rest digest, which is where whatever occurred integrates and actually gets rewired in the nervous system. And in terms of how that maps.
