Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP)

Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is a listening system comprised of filtered and modulated music that send messages of safety directly to our nervous system (more precisely - the Vagus Nerve) through sound. It was created based on the Polyvagal Theory. The music pendulates our Central Nervous System (CNS) back and forth between ‘safety’ and ‘threat’ to exercise the nervous system and strengthen its ability to move easily between our Ventral Vagal System (safety) and our Sympathetic & Dorsal Vagal Pathways (threat systems).

Many people are under the mistaken impression that to be ‘regulated,’ it means that we don’t shift into these threat response systems. In reality, ‘regulation’ comes from being able to move between our safety and threat systems as we need to. There is great value in being able to access our threat response systems, but it becomes problematic to us when those systems are our default states.

A quote often referenced from Polyvagal Theory research is, “Our state drives our story.” Simply put, our CNS scans for safety at all hours, minutes, & seconds of the day and when we are primed to expect threat (due to trauma or other difficult life experiences), we can become stuck in a chronic state of defense. Many of us experience this as persistent anxiety, worrying, overthinking, depression, shut-down, freeze, etc. and to avoid cognitive dissonance (to make it make sense) our brain tells us a story to match the state. This can look many ways, but a simple example that I see often is, “I’m always worried that people don’t like me, even when I have no reason to believe they don’t.” This shows how logic oftentimes cannot influence (at least greatly enough to see the impact) our body to shift to safety. Sometimes we need a little help to get there and SSP is a powerful and effective tool to do so.

Fun fact: 80% of the nerve fibers in the Vagus Nerve travel from the body to the brain and only 20% of those nerve fibers move from the brain to the body! Thus, it is safe to say that simply trying to think our way out of feeling a certain way or even trying to think our way into feeling another way does not often work.

What is Polyvagal Theory?

I’m interested! What now?