Polyvagal Practices for Trauma & Addiction Recovery

💬 How can we work with the nervous system when trauma, cravings, impulsivity, or shutdown take over? In this experiential Recovery Reimagined conversation, Dr. Arielle Schwartz joins Jan Winhall to explore vagal toning, nervous-system flexibility, co-regulation, and practical body-based approaches to recovery. Arielle explains the role of the vagus nerve and guides a gentle self-touch practice using the face, ears, jaw, and shoulders. The conversation also explores an important dimension of somatic practice: slowing down or receiving self-touch can sometimes bring forward tenderness, grief, memories, or feelings about the care that was missing earlier in life. Arielle and Jan discuss why these experiences do not always need to be held alone, and how community and co-regulation can help reduce isolation. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome & introduction 03:19 Closing the gap between theory and practice 08:01 What is vagal toning? 09:08 The vagus nerve and social engagement 10:55 Vagal tone and nervous-system flexibility 13:21 From vagus-nerve devices to natural stimulation 17:17 Preparing for an experiential practice 24:38 Guided self-touch vagal toning practice 36:11 Impulsivity, dual awareness & regulation 39:21 Touch deprivation, grief, community & co-regulation 🎙️ PRESENTERS Arielle Schwartz, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, author, teacher, yoga instructor, and trauma-recovery educator whose work integrates approaches including somatic psychology, EMDR, mindfulness, and applied polyvagal theory. 🔗 https://drarielleschwartz.com 🔗 https://drarielleschwartz.com/the-pol... Jan Winhall, MSW, PIFOT, is an author, teacher, trauma and addiction psychotherapist, and developer of the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model™, which integrates Focusing and polyvagal theory in work with trauma and addiction. 🔗 https://janwinhall.com 🔗 https://www.fspminstitute.com/books ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 RESOURCES & WAYS TO CONNECT 🌐 About Recovery Reimagined: https://recovery-reimagined.org 📅 Upcoming Events: https://recovery-reimagined.org/events 📬 Join Our Newsletter: https://recovery-reimagined.org/newsl... 🕊️ Support Our Work: https://recovery-reimagined.org/circl... Contributions help us keep open community workshops and public resources accessible, support the people who make this work possible, and allow these conversations to reach people beyond the live event. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💛 ABOUT RECOVERY REIMAGINED Recovery Reimagined is an educational and community space for people exploring recovery from addiction, trauma, and dysfunctional family patterns. We create workshops, conversations, reflections, and community experiences focused on ongoing recovery, emotional growth, relationships, family patterns, self-trust, and a deeper understanding of ourselves. Our work brings lived experience and thoughtful expertise into the same conversation, while making space for different perspectives, experiences, and pathways to recovery and healing. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #RecoveryReimagined #AddictionRecovery #RecoveryConversations #VagalToning #PolyvagalTheory #TraumaRecovery #AddictionRecovery #NervousSystemRegulation ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DISCLAIMER Recovery Reimagined provides educational content and community experiences. Nothing shared in this video is intended as medical, mental health, or other professional advice, or as a substitute for individualized care from a qualified professional. Presenters share their own perspectives, experience, and expertise. Their views do not necessarily represent those of Recovery Reimagined.