Dr. Stephen Porges

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353 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 14 Apr

Dr. Stephen Porges’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.

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THE ED MYLETT SHOW · How to Rewire Your Body's Response to Stress, Trauma & Anxiety Feat. Dr. Stephen Porges · 14 Apr 2026 podcast

And that may be what you think is working hard.

Now, if I go back to my early research, it was on heart rate variability, but it was on heart rate variability during mental effort.

And so when people would pay attention, the heart rate variability would flatten out, it would stabilize.

And in 1969, when I observed that in the early 70s, I thought this was really remarkable that we could link this literally into education and transference or transmitting of information.

that if you suppress your heart rate variability, you could process more information.

What I didn't understand at that point in time, it took me over a decade, was that that was a disruptor of our homeostatic functions.

And this is an important concept.

The heart rate rhythms that are naturally occurring, not the variability per se, but the rhythmicity that creates the variability, are really reflecting the feedback loops of our body.

It's taking care of itself.

And so when we talk about healthy bodies, the healthy body has these feedback loops that support digestion, oxygenization, our metabolic activity, it's a rhythmicity.

And when we use words like stress, which are really loaded words, difficult words to understand, we can give a very simple operational definition.

Stress is a disruption of those endogenous homeostatic rhythms.

Well, don't get binary, okay?

Let's say that a person who has the resources to switch into a sympathetic state and then to recover and be in a health restoration state with the parasympathetic system is going to be more flexible and more healthy.

So it's not like I'm living in calmness.

No, I have great enthusiasm, great excitement.

I have passion.

So I have a lot of physiology and a lot of suppression of vagal activity.

But my body signals me and says enough is enough.

I now need to relax and the interesting part about our species is that it does fine with those challenges as long as you give the body sufficient recovery time.

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