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A
A
An adaptogen is a natural substance (usually an herb or mushroom) that helps the body adapt to stress by supporting balance in the nervous, hormonal, and immune systems.
The ability to experience negative or overwhelming emotions without acting out, hurting oneself or others, splitting off aspects of experience, or dissociation.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the part of the nervous system that automatically controls basic body functions like heart rate, breathing, digestion, and stress responses—without you having to think about it.
It has three main states:
• Sympathetic- fight or flight:
Activates the body to respond to danger or challenge. Heart rate increases, breathing speeds up, muscles tense, and energy is mobilized for action.
• Parasympathetic – governed by the Vagus Nerve or Cranial Nerve X
• Rest, curiosity, connection (Ventral Vagal in Polyvagal Theory):
Supports calm alertness, social connection, learning, and healing. Breathing is steady, digestion works well, and you feel safe, engaged, and present.
• Freeze, shutdown, & collapse (Dorsal Vagal in Polyvagal Theory):
A protective response to extreme or overwhelming stress. The body conserves energy by slowing things down, which can feel like numbness, exhaustion, disconnection, stuckness, or collapse.
These states help the body survive by responding appropriately to safety, challenge, or threat.
B
B
A moment-to-moment expression of physiology — tone, temperature, and internal chemistry reflecting safety or threat.
The ability to set limits with others and to recognize the limits set by others. Boundaries are also the ability to sense the difference between oneself and the environment, including other people, and to differentiate between internal and external stimuli.
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C
Capacity is the ability to hold activation, emotion, and connection without fragmentation. Cultivated through titration, rest, and safety. To cultivate capacity, strengthen interoception. work at the edge of tolerable sensation, alternate activation with rest. build co-regulation before self-regulation, support mitochondria, fascia, and microbiome, restore rhythm — sleep, breath, nourishment, connection.
The Cell Danger Response (CDR) is an evolutionarily conserved cellular defense mechanism that protects against chemical, physical, or biological threats by triggering metabolic changes including altered mitochondrial function, inflammation, and tissue repair—but when this response persists abnormally instead of resolving, it blocks healing and drives chronic disease. After the threat is neutralized, anti-inflammatory and regenerative pathways should reverse the CDR to complete healing. However, when environmental triggers persist—such as ongoing chemical exposures, microbial imbalances, or unresolved tissue damage—the CDR becomes stuck in an activated state, disturbing whole-body metabolism and impairing multiple organ systems. This framework connects environmental health to mitochondrial function and can help to explain why chronic illnesses have increased dramatically. The CDR model applies to over 100 chronic conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disorders, neurodevelopmental conditions, and metabolic diseases, reframing them as disorders of blocked healing rather than simply the result of initial triggers. Mitochondria serve as the central regulators of the CDR by continuously monitoring cellular conditions and coordinating the metabolic response to restore homeostasis.
Circadian rhythms are the body’s internal 24-hour clock that regulates sleep, energy, hormones, digestion, mood, and immune function in response to light and darkness.
The natural synchronization and alignment within and between various body systems in a healthy or relaxed state, such as the coherence between breath and heartbeat.
The ability to be in relationship to others, to nature, and to oneself
The ability to tolerate negative sensations, energy states and emotions without acting out, dissociating, or self-medicating. Also, the sense of being held by the body and its boundaries.
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D
Dissociation is a protective nervous system response in which awareness, sensation, emotion, or identity becomes partially or fully disconnected from the present-moment experience in order to reduce overwhelm or threat.
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E
A structured form of water that forms next to hydrophilic (water-loving) surfaces—such as proteins, cell membranes, and connective tissue. In this zone, water molecules organize into a more ordered, gel-like structure that excludes solutes and particles, hence the name “exclusion zone.” Note: EZ water is an active area of biophysics research (notably by Gerald Pollack). While promising, many health applications remain theoretical and emerging, not yet standard medical doctrine.
Proposed implications for health:
Cellular energy: EZ water may act like a biological battery, storing and transmitting energy that supports cellular function.
Hydration quality: It may help explain why hydration depends on cellular structure and electrolytes, not just water intake.
Inflammation & healing: Healthy EZ water around cells and fascia may support efficient transport, tissue resilience, and recovery.
Mitochondrial & nervous system support (theoretical): Proper water structuring
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F
Fascia is a sheath of stringy connective tissue that surrounds every part of your body. It provides support to your muscles, tendons, ligaments, tissues, organs, nerves, joints and bones. This connective tissue network transmits mechanical and energetic information that could influence energy metabolism and signaling.
Felt sense is the body’s immediate, pre-verbal knowledge of an experience. It is an internally perceived quality that arises from sensations, emotions, images, impulses, and meaning all held together as one body experience.
Unimpeded movement of energy and emotion through the system — the opposite of fixation or freeze.
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G
Grounding both as sensation and as a verb
• Sensation of Grounding: the sensation of the connection with the ground. Usually sensed in the feet and the legs; awareness of support from the lower body.
• Grounding or earthing with nature for electrical and energetic benefit. This is the practice of making direct physical contact with the Earth's surface to absorb its natural electrical charge. This allows for a transfer of free electrons from the ground into the body.
Gut Microbiome is the community of trillions of bacteria and other microbes living in the digestive tract that help digest food, support the immune system, regulate inflammation, and influence mood and brain function. A healthy gut microbiome supports overall health.
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I
Consolidation of changes accomplished, allowing new capacities achieved to permeate the entire system.
Interoception is the sensing and perception of signals from inside the body- the ability to detect and to interpret internal bodily sensations like heartbeat, breathing, hunger, thirst, temperature, pain and the physiological states associated with emotions.
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L
Leaky gut is a condition in which the lining of the intestines becomes overly permeable, allowing bacteria, toxins, and food particles to pass into the bloodstream and trigger inflammation and immune activation. This can contribute to digestive, immune, and systemic health problems.
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M
Mitochondria are membrane-bound cell organelles (mitochondrion, singular) that generate most of the chemical energy needed to power the cell's biochemical reactions. Chemical energy produced by the mitochondria is stored in a small molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondria contain their own small chromosomes. Generally, mitochondria, and therefore mitochondrial DNA, are inherited only from the mother.
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O
The awareness of oneself in place, a primary defensive response to threat.
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R
The nervous system’s ability to flexibly shift between arousal and calm states. Not about always being calm, but about adaptability.
The ability to manage difficult situations or stressful experiences without long-term negative effects; the ability to rebound to resourced states after an overwhelming experience.
This is the ability to sense in one’s body the physical energy and sensations of another; this is an unconscious way we feel one another which can have influence on our own emotions, sensations, and reactions. Felt synchronization between systems or people that supports regulation.
This is the ability to identify and to use positive coping skills for self-regulation. Resources may include positive memories, felt-sense, images of supportive people, calming thoughts, connections to nature, areas in the body that feel good, strong, and supportive. The body has inherent resources that assist in deactivating defensive reactions for example grounding, centering, balance, boundaries, and orientation.
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S
This is the body’s ability to hold the physical sensations and disruptive energy patterns of past trauma, even in the absence of a clear narrative or a conscious association between the initial cause and the current symptom.
Sympathetic Drive / Vital Energy Mobilization energy of the sympathetic system. Healthy activation enables vitality; chronic drive leads to exhaustion.
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T
The ability to identify, to follow, and to report changes in the physical sensations throughout the body. This skill can be supportive to connect these changes to thoughts, emotions to facilitate the discharge of the threat response.
Trauma physiology refers to the persistent neurobiological and physiological dysregulation that occurs when the body remains in a state of heightened threat response following overwhelming experiences, unable to restore homeostasis or discharge the associated stress energy.
Following traumatic experiences, the body's stress response systems—particularly the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and autonomic nervous system—become dysregulated.
This creates a state of chronic physiological hyperarousal where the amygdala becomes overactive, the hippocampus underactive, and the prefrontal cortex less accessible. The body continues to interpret innocuous stimuli as threats, maintaining elevated stress hormone secretion and autonomic arousal even in the absence of danger. This represents a failure to complete self-protective responses and discharge excess autonomic activation.
The resulting allostatic load—the cumulative wear and tear from chronic physiological reactivity—leads to multiple pathological changes.
The prevention of healing occurs because the body remains locked in a defensive state, continuously misinterpreting sensory input as threatening.
This ongoing physiological reactivity prevents the restoration of normal regulatory function and perpetuates the cycle of inflammation, hormonal and immune dysregulation, and tissue damage that underlies chronic disease.
An overwhelming event not defined by what happens, but by whether the nervous system is able to respond and recover. Trauma occurs when a person experiences a threat that overwhelms their capacity to cope, leaving survival energy (fight, flight, or freeze) incomplete and the body still responding to the event without completion.
The Trauma Vortex is a term of Dr. Peter Levines’ who developed Somatic Experiencing. He describes the Trauma Vortex and the Healing Vortex or Counter Vortex. The trauma vortex is a self-sustaining loop of perceived threat and defensive response. Somatic Experiencing involves titration and pendulation between the trauma vortex and the healing vortex.
The Threat Vortex is a broader term that Dr. Summers uses to include a broader definition of what kindles the threat response and traumatic expression beyond just traumatic experiences. The Threat Vortex includes environmental triggers, inflammatory reactions, pathogens, both current and latent.
W
W
The optimal range of arousal within which one can function effectively without moving into overwhelm or collapse.
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