A Supple Centre: Why Polyvagal Theory Supports what Clinical Somatics Always Knew

One of the key insights of Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory is crucially important for anyone stuck in pain, anxiety, or discomfort:

The messages your body sends to your brain (especially from your gut) matter more to your emotional state, and your levels of stress and tension, than the thoughts sent from your brain to your body.

Why? Only 15–20% of messages about your environment, and how safe it is, are controlled by your brain, while 80–85% come from your gut and all the sensors in your body that inform your gut about your environment.

Why does this matter so very much, from the perspective of Clinical Somatics?

Well, it explains a lot!

It's why you can know you're safe (and tell yourself you're safe, repeatedly), but your nervous system keeps you stuck in survival mode – anxious and on edge, even long after any real threat has passed.

This supports a fundamental insight of Clincial Somatics – that

muscular patterns of contraction don't just cause pain; they actively signal danger to your brain.

This is why a tense somatic centre creates problems throughout your entire system, both physically and emotionally. When the muscles in your centre (your gut, lower back and that whole area) are tight and braced, your brain interprets this as threat.

Your nervous system does not know the difference between your muscles being clenched tight into a stress pattern out of habit, and them clenching tight into a stress pattern because a sabre-toothed tiger just walked out in front of you!

All it knows is that those clenched muscles mean you’re under threat.

This is why humans can't simply ‘let go’ of anxiety, trauma, fear, or chronic pain through willpower alone, nor through talk therapy or somatic sensing alone. (This is even though all of these approaches can help… and can contribute to nervous system healing.)

That's why my work focuses on creating a soft, flexible, supple somatic centre.

Only when your centre isn't tight and over-contracted – when you're truly able to let your muscles rest, to be soft and supple ­– can your nervous system accept that you’re safe.

To put it another way, it’s only when the muscles in your somatic centre are relaxed and soft, and not holding on to stress, that you can feel truly safe.

It’s only then that you can get out of ‘survival mode’.

It’s only then that you can engage fully not just in ‘rest and digest’ activities, but in true, meaningful and nurturing social connections.

If you've tried ‘brain training’ approaches for chronic pain, panic attacks or anxiety, but had only limited success, this explains why.

In brain training, you’re quite literally working with just 20% of your nervous system – because you’re training your brain but not engaging your body and all its sensory receptors.

Clinical Somatics is different.

It actively engages your whole system by using gentle, specific movements to release tension from your centre outward. And by engaging all the sense receptors you have, across your whole soma.

When there’s less muscle tension in your centre:

• those 80% of messages to your brain from your gut? They can finally say you're safe – not tight, not wary, not under threat.

• it’s no longer just your brain trying to convince your body everything’s okay. Your whole being is united in sending signals of safety.

But what about having a ‘strong core’?

A tight, inflexible centre (or ‘core’) can do more harm than good - especially for anyone dealing with chronic stiffness and pain.

If your core muscles are flexible and enable you to move with fluidity and ease, then great. If they have a low level of resting tension, strengthening them is perfectly fine. (But you should be careful that your strength work doesn’t end up making them too rigid for efficient full-body movement such as walking, bending, twisting and turning.)

But most people with chronic discomfort and pain? Over-tight muscles in the centre of their body are a big problem. If those muscles are too tight, it’s not only hard to send messages of safety to the nervous system, but it’s pretty much impossible to move with real fludity, efficiency and ease.

Movements such as walking, getting up, and turning require a supple centre to be efficient and pain-free. Good balance and stability require flexibility in your centre. ‘Holding on’ too tight undermines all of this, and can make discomfort, pain, and falls more prevelant, not less.

If this sounds odd to you, remember one really important learning from Clinical Somatics: most often, muscles described as ‘weak’ are quite the opposite. They are too strong - they are ‘on’ way too much, and way too much of the time. Burning energy by staying contracted when there’s no benefit to you, and being unable to release even when you want to rest.

They’re doing too much work, in a system that works optimally when each muscle is only contracted when it’s needed, and resting when it’s not.

This combined with the very real impact of an over-tight ‘core’ on the nervous system, is why a supple centre is so important to reducing stress, addressing trauma, moving with comfort and ease, and preventing full-body stiffness, poor balance, and falls.

This is why the movement-based, neuromuscular-focused Somatics I teach works to resolve stuck stress, ease stored trauma, and release chronic pain.

It’s also why I teach SEPs and other psychotherapists to use specific movement practices with their clients (and their own somas!).

Because without engaging the body and brain to release stuck neuromuscular patterns, lasting change isn’t possible, and the capacity to rest, digest, and connect, is frustrated and limited in ways that cause all sorts of pain – emotional as well as physical.