Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-based mental health podcast.  

Today, we’re excited to talk with you about the Polyvagal Theory. It’s probably our favorite thing. It has really changed my perception of other people’s behavior as well as my own.  

It’s the foundation of the trauma work that I do. Bringing awareness, not just emotionally or from our thoughts, but from the nervous system, the body and the brain. Noticing when our system’s dysregulated versus what happens when we’re feeling safe and calm. 

This is a very special episode. We are framing it through the lens of the Karate Kid and Cobra Kai.  

We’re going to give you a brief explanation of Polyvagal Theory. Then, we’re going to fan girl all over Cobra Kai, and explore these relationships and the perspectives and wisdom that this show can offer.  

We’ll probably touch on a bit of childhood trauma as well, because there’s really no way to look at the Karate Kid and Cobra Kai without considering intergenerational trauma and adverse childhood experiences. 

All right, let’s go. 

How would you explain the theory of the Vagus Nerve?  

I usually start with the concept of survival. We are wired for survival and are a complex network of systems. Those systems need to be in balance, homeostasis. The sense of safety is very crucial to that balance.  

We used to just think about the balance between our parasympathetic nervous system and our sympathetic nervous system. If we’re looking at the big umbrella, we’re looking at our brainstem and spinal cord, central nervous system, autonomic nervous system as a part of that. It’s the automatic part of us that keeps us alive, that keeps, that helps us survive. Where we’re going out to get food, running and fighting and all that stuff that, but also needing to chill out, to rest, to be immobile, to sleep, to procreate, to digest her food. Those two systems can click on and off with some fluidity and then we find homeostasis.  

Once in a while we get out of balance, but then we can come back into balance. 

That’s our traditional view of our nervous system, but there’s more. In the eighties and nineties, Stephen Porges, discovered a different framework to look at all of this that has to do with our Vagus Nerve. 

The Vagus Nerve is the 10th cranial nerve. The cranium, the base of the skull, is a big nerve. More than just a nerve, it’s nerve bundles. It’s the network. It’s the highway from the brain to the body. 

These different pathways go to all the different organs in our bodies. They communicate to our muscles to move, to mobilize blood flow, our breath, our heart rate, our digestive system. All of these things that keep us going are connected to this autonomic nervous system. 

There’s one pathway that moves down from the brain to the body. There are four from the body communicating up to the brain. 

That means, listening to the wisdom of the body and bringing the body into our health and healing, allows us to get to our root causes a lot more quickly than if we are just using the brain to solve problems. 

The Vagus Nerve goes all the way down through our torso. The oldest of its pathways is below the diaphragm. The diaphragm is our biggest muscle of breath, where our lungs end, and our stomach begins. The diaphragm is the bridge between those areas. This is where our immobilization response lives. Our freeze response. Below and above the diaphragm we have all these sympathetic fibers. Those parts of the Vagus Nerve innervate our limbs and mobilize us for action. 

There’s even a newer Vagus Nerve pathway, more than fight or flight and rest and digest, that’s actually myelinated. This is where Stephen Porges blew the lid off this whole balance theory. The nerve that is associated with this, he calls the ventral vagal. 

It’s the response of connection. A more sophisticated nerve that enervates and connects our face or throat and our heart. A kind of tend and befriend response. We have shutdown, immobilization, mobilization or the sympathetic fight or flight, and now we’re looking at connection.  

Essentially, we go through these responses every day. What you’re talking about is the autonomic hierarchy. When someone feels safe and connected, they feel like they can move through things with ease. 

If you have a threat that feels dangerous, you mobilize. The first thing a mammal will do is flee. Then it will try to fight. Somewhere in there, it could try to fawn or have an attachment cry response. These are all strategies of mobilization. If those strategies don’t work, which is decided in milliseconds, we travel even further down to the most ancient response, freeze and shut down.   

We move up and down this autonomic hierarchy depending on the threat. The way that our nervous system decides what to do is a concept called neuroception. 

Neuroception is our nervous system and brain continually gathering information from our internal experience (heart rate, breath, digestion, muscle tension) then from external sources, (our environment, things happening around us) and lastly from other nervous systems around us. So, if you walk up to someone and they’re feeling panicky, you may start to feel that panic as well, or if they’re feeling shut down you may notice your body starts to feel shut down as well. We’re constantly reading each other through neuroception.  

The last concept, co-regulation. Co-regulation is when we move into that ventral vagal nerve, that social engagement system, that sense of safety, through each other and through connection. If we’re feeling overwhelmed, we can find someone who is regulated and naturally our nervous system begins to feel safe. Co-regulation starts when we’re in our mother’s wombs, reading their nervous system.  

Your clients are co-regulating in therapy. This is some really dense stuff we’re covering. A lot of scientific neurobiology. The bottom line is that if you are a loving, safe presence for people, you’re creating a healing space. If somebody comes to you and you meet them, in their anxiety or in their sense of shutdown, you’re not going to be able to go anywhere. You have to be completely grounded. That means being able to regulate yourself and conveying to them with really subtle signals that you are a safe person to attach to. 

When I frame polyvagal theory with clients, I often frame it as it’s not that we’re supposed to avoid feeling that sympathetic energy. That’s not the point. It really is to spend more time in ventral vagal.  

Also, this idea of practicing the skill of autonomic resiliency so when we do feel a threat, we’re more easily able to get ourselves back to ventral vagal. It takes awareness. We don’t always know how the system retunes itself. Sometimes it happens over time and with care and attention. There’s no magic prescription for this either. 

That takes us into Cobra Kai.  

The Karate Kid, starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita, hit theaters in June of 1984. I was four years old. This is the one movie I remember seeing in a theater where I couldn’t sit with my family because it was so crowded. It was one of the most immersive experiences.  

It was very much good versus evil in a really simplistic way. This person’s good. This person’s evil. That’s what really stuck with me until recently. 

Daniel LaRusso and his mom moved to a new town across the country. He’s from Jersey. He moves to California and he’s having trouble fitting into the culture at his new school. He’s picked on, he’s bullied, basically for just being new and different.  

Mr. Miyagi is the apartment maintenance manager of Daniel’s apartment building. 

Unbeknownst to Daniel, he flirts with Johnny Lawrence’s ex-girlfriend, Ali. Johnny’s the leader of this unforgiving brutal Cobra Kai karate dojo led by John Kreese.  

Daniel gets into some fights and doesn’t do very well. At one point, Mr. Miyagi shows up on the scene and he steps in and basically whoops everybody’s butt to protect Daniel.  

Daniel becomes super interested in Mr. Miyagi. They bond and become very close. There’s lots of montages of them training. They get pressured to join the All-Valley tournament and Daniel gets to show off his new skills.  

It’s very intense. Daniel wins.  

Then, in subsequent movies around the same plot line, there’s lots of Mr. Miyagi wisdom, lots of martial arts.  

Moving forward, Cobra Kai.  

It’s been 34 years since the All-Valley tournament. Daniel beat Johnny in the final and it was humiliating. Mr. Miyagi’s mindful self-defense overcame Sensei Kreese’s strike first, strike hard, no mercy philosophy.  

Mr. Miyagi and Daniel defeated this force of evil, these irredeemable characters of Johnny and Sensei Kreese. Johnny actually comes up to Daniel afterwards and tells them you’re all right, LaRusso. Something changes where he gets it. He has a sense of connection with Daniel. He feels safe enough to congratulate him. Then he goes outside and Kreese yells at him and I’m sure that sense of safety completely dissipates and shifts and back into a protection mode of fight.  

34 years later, Cobra Kai picks up the story from Johnny’s perspective. 

Now we fast forward and Johnny is fired from his job, estranged from his son and crushing Coors banquets constantly. Dude has some wicked addiction issues happening. 

Juxtapose that with Daniel LaRusso.  He is a successful car salesman, owns a bunch of car dealerships. He’s married with kids. Financially well off. He’s got billboards around town that say, kick the competition.  

It tells the story of what that feels like for Johnny. He’s very angry. He’s very much stuck in that fight response and some immobilization mobilization. He has a lot of pain that he’s turning away from him. He’s turning towards alcohol. He’s turning away from connection.  

Through three seasons, we see where that pain comes from for Johnny. We see his childhood where as much as he wanted and tried by making bids for love and connection to a stepfather, he was repeatedly turned away, mocked, made fun of. His only source of regulation and safety is his mom and his mother passes away right before his son is born.  

Johnny’s uses the coping strategies that he knows, which are addiction and withdrawal protection. His son is being born and he can’t even get himself to go across the street and see his son because he’s in such a place of shutdown due to his mother’s death. From that moment, his story of shame around not being there for his son, influences the whole trajectory with Robby and how he relates to Robby and how Robby feels. That intergenerational pattern.  

Robby’s story of protection, from not feeling safe to feeling safe and regulated with Daniel and then again, later in the series, Robby, again, feels that he cannot connect, he’s not safe, he doesn’t belong, and he goes back to protecting himself.  

This is a story of constantly shifting allegiances. Everybody changes teams constantly. When you think about it that makes a lot of sense. I go where I find safety. It might not be a good connection, but when we have childhood trauma, any attachment feels safe, even if it’s not a healthy attachment.  

Let’s think about Johnny’s childhood. He had an overbearing stepdad. It looked like he was the privileged one because he lived in the Hills. He was abused. He wasn’t seen. He found connection with other kids who also had the same experience. Then they find an attachment figure, Sensei Kreese, who was ruthless. He was just normal.  

I think a great way to summarize him is he really believed protection and anger meant strength. These kids are already wired for this because of the adversity, because of the trauma. On the other hand, Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, are more about connecting, being aware of their own experience and then responding rather than reacting. 

As we were talking about before, with neuroception, our nervous system and sense of safety can be shifted by our senses.  

Here’s an exercise. Take a moment to create a blank slate, maybe close your eyes, or soften your gaze and check in with how your system feels right now. 

I’m going to play a clip as to what it feels like to train with Johnny. Pay close attention to how your nervous system feels, how your muscles respond, how your breath and heart rate respond. Imagine yourself a part of the Cobra Kai dojo. 

Here we go.  

What’s your response to that?  

I jumped and felt full body alert. I’m mobilized. It didn’t feel very safe. 

Total fear response. Even when he does it during the show, I freeze and feel muscle tension. My heart feels like it jumps. I stop breathing and move into freeze mode. I was ready to defend.  

We’re not thinking, it happens automatically. You mobilize. I freeze. 

His brain is not developed yet, so he’s all respond, all reaction.  

Then, let’s get a little bit of what it’s like to train with Daniel. 

What’s your response to that?  

I’m so soothed. He’s using the prosody of voice that really appeals to our Ventral Vagus. He is connecting. He’s creating a sense of safety. I don’t feel like fighting. I’m more connected to my body. I’m more aware of my thoughts. I’m able to hear what he’s saying and integrate it. 

Those are two very different styles and two very different responses.  

Remember, this is a show about attempting to train teenagers in self-defense, which is a wonderful thing. Martial arts is a discipline. It is very much about tolerating distress. It’s about mobilizing when necessary and being able to discern right from wrong, good from evil. 

When we look at all of the nervous systems that are going into this, that’s what makes it such a great show. It is nostalgic, but what does that mean? That nostalgia that means with pain, right? 

We’re almost painfully reliving those experiences because I think we can all relate. We can all relate to being an impressionable teen. Who are those influences for us? Was it more of a Sensei Kreese or was it a Mr. Miyagi? 

Cobra Kai frequently echoes the words of Mr. Miyagi.  

The key thing. Whole life has balance. Everything will be better.  

Daniel translates that to be the bonsai tree. You are the tree Robby. You’ve got strong roots. You know who you are, so now all you have to do is visualize what you want your future to look like and make that happen.  

The idea of balance and homeostasis is a key theme throughout this show. How we find that through connection or when we don’t often because the characters are protecting themselves because of what they’ve been through. 

When we see Sensei Kreese’s backstory, it all starts to make sense. We look at the generations that came before and what injuries were inflicted to create the people that we see today. Yet when we experience Kreese we wonder, how can this person be so cruel? How can there be such little empathy? Through flashbacks, you see how kind and caring he was when he was younger. We see how the loss he experienced and trauma from war shaped his nervous system and created a sense of fight, a sense of attack. That’s the way that he figures out how to navigate the world so that he can stay safe, so he can survive. He learned to strike first, to strike hard, and to show no mercy. It was all about survival. 

Cobra Kai shows us there really is no good or bad. We’re all human. 

It highlights some of Daniel’s survival strategies. Growing up without a father figure, without financial resources, we see in Cobra Kai how he figures out how to be in the world without one of his attachment figures. Daniel’s responses, as an adult, are in a mobilization state. A lot of the time he is trying to provide. He’s very focused on results. He easily shifts to fight. Mr. Miyagi said just breathe, yet Daniel is not breathing. He’s jumping to conclusions very quickly. Name-calling or shaming Johnny. He’s so focused on his work that he doesn’t really have the relationships he assumes he has with his children. There is a form of disconnection there. I see him strategizing to make sure he is safe.  

The transformation we watch is him return to karate. Return to the martial arts, return to his breath and to his body. He finds his own form of ventral vagal that he was not in before. He needs Johnny for that. That’s a hard thing for him to come to grips with, but he wouldn’t have grown so much if it weren’t for the influence of Johnny Lawrence who he thinks is just a thorn in his side. They help each other grow. It is almost post-traumatic growth. Very restorative to their systems.  

In their kiddos, right? Robby has his own story protection, connection protection, shifting up and down that autonomic hierarchy from safety to flight to fight, to shut down, to fight again. Daniel’s daughter, Sam, even the altercation she has with the other dojo creates some post-traumatic stress responses and she is in a freeze state often. I think they did a great job showing what can happen in real time for someone, especially when their brain is not fully formed. It’s very honest in a lot of ways that she didn’t even know how to articulate it or share it with people because you really don’t sometimes when your system is offline.  

Miguel, one of the leads of the show, is in some ways in ventral vagal. When we meet him, he’s in a place where he feels connected to his mom. He is suffering, he’s getting beat up, he’s getting bullied, but he has a friend group. He has a safe home with his mom and grandma. Then he initiated the relationship with Johnny, and they co-regulate together. Through that journey with Johnny, they heal. 

Miguel has a transformation but the neuroception goes the other way for him. He shifts from ventral vagal to a place of fight because Johnny is so important to him. Sometimes we find that sense of safety in a place that isn’t the best for us. It’s an attachment and Miguel doesn’t have a father figure in his life, so he looks to Johnny for it. Johnny is inconsistent. I think that Miguel sought out Johnny because he needed connection. He needed somebody who could teach him about how to keep himself safe because he was getting beat up. It’s a weird place for Johnny because he has low self-esteem and doesn’t want to deal with this kid because he can’t even parent his own son.  

It is a wonderful relationship to watch develop. They have a bond that transcends a lot of Johnny’s trauma. It really helps him heal as well.  

We see a lot of bully victim dynamics that are also fascinating. From a neurophysiological lens, these kids who’ve been marginalized now find a voice. They don’t always act on it in a way that is restorative, but they’re kids. They find co-regulation through belonging. Belonging is survival. We are wired to be part of a group. If our ancestors were shunned from the group, it was certain death and we still have nervous systems that want us to be a part of a group. 

Lots of good conversations that can happen through plot lines. They did a great job. It’s almost a guilty pleasure. When I watch it, I’m thinking about polyvagal theory and trauma and childhood experiences and how we’re shaped and attachment theory. 

If I had all the time in the world, I would create a Genogram. It’s a marriage and family therapy technique where we chart intergenerational patterns through families. Cobra Kai really needs a Genogram because you can chart family systems, connection, protection, fight responses, trauma responses, intergenerational patterns. 

Art imitates life. We need artists. This also underscores the importance of really deep thinkers. People who can convey these really complicated messages in an entertaining way. What a gift. Thank you to the writers of Cobra Kai. And these are classic archetypes, right? We’re just using this one show as an example. 

This has so much to do with the work that we do as mental health professionals. It helps us to really look at somebody’s story, what influences they’ve experienced, and how their nervous system is tuned. What kind of connections have they had? Do they have any awareness of what’s happening in their body? It’s a nice lens to help explain some of these bigger concepts of polyvagal theory and body-centered psychotherapy. 

All right. Polyvagal theory through the lens of Cobra Kai. We did it. My favorite episode yet. 

Thank you everyone for listening. If you have any questions about polyvagal theory and Cobra Kai, shoot us an email, or if we missed anything we’d love to hear from you. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week.  

Take care. There we go. That was fun.