This book 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.

Adding a polyvagal perspective to clinical practice draws the autonomic nervous system directly into the work of therapy, helping clients re-pattern their nervous systems, build capacities for regulation, and create autonomic pathways of safety and connection. With chapters that build confidence in understanding Polyvagal Theory, chapters that introduce worksheets for mapping, tracking, and practices for re-patterning, as well as a series of autonomic meditations, this book offers therapists a guide to practicing polyvagal-informed therapy.

The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy 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.

Bridging the gap between research, science, and the therapy room.

When The Polyvagal Theory was published in 2011, it took the therapeutic world by storm, bringing Stephen Porges’s insights about the autonomic nervous system to a clinical audience interested in understanding trauma, anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. The book made accessible to clinicians and other professionals a polyvagal perspective that provided new concepts and insights for understanding human behavior. The perspective placed an emphasis on the important link between psychological experiences and physical manifestations in the body. That book was brilliant but also quite challenging to read for some.

Since publication of that book, Stephen Porges has been urged to make these ideas more accessible and The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory is the result. Constructs and concepts embedded in polyvagal theory are explained conversationally in The Pocket Guide and there is an introductory chapter which discusses the science and the scientific culture in which polyvagal theory was originally developed. Publication of this work enables Stephen Porges to expand the meaning and clinical relevance of this groundbreaking theory.

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, standardized 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

• keep a page of the hierarchy visible when working with a client's habitual response pattern

Filled with tips, ideas, calls to action, and brief exercises, these cards will be a daily go-to as you learn skills needed to enjoy the ups -- and navigate the downs -- of real-world life. And best yet, because skills take repeated practice, you cannot outgrow this deck, you can only grow with it!

• Coping strategies

• Tools to accept change

• Self-Soothing practices

• Increase self-respect

• Conflict resolution tips