The Vocabulary of What You're Doing
Connecting your instincts to the science behind them
You've been independently discovering practices that have formal names in neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and somatic therapy. This isn't coincidence — your nervous system is teaching you what it needs, and the researchers below spent decades arriving at the same conclusions you're living your way into. Here's the map.
Dan Siegel's Window of Tolerance
Hyperarousal
Anxiety, racing thoughts, reactivity, impulsivity, can't sleep
Sharing ideas for quick dopamine, checking notifications compulsively, overcaffeination, excess sympathetic drive
↓ your work is expanding this zone ↓
Window of Tolerance
Present, regulated, flexible, creative, connected
Carnivore clarity, lying with your wife, working without distraction, containing your energy, movement that integrates
↑ your work is expanding this zone ↑
Hypoarousal
Numbness, shutdown, dissociation, flatness, collapse
Dopamine deficit after over-sharing, post-stimulant crash, sedation dependency, social withdrawal
The formal vocabulary for what you're already doing
Your autonomic nervous system doesn't just regulate itself — it borrows regulation from other nervous systems. Through proximity, touch, breathing rhythm, and vocal tone, two people's physiologies literally synchronize. Research documents cardiac physiological synchrony (CPS): couples' heart rates, breathing patterns, and cortisol levels measurably converge during close contact. This isn't metaphor — it's measurable via ECG and HRV monitoring.
You, this morning: Lying with your wife, letting your nervous system track to hers. You weren't just "relaxing" — you were borrowing her vagal tone. Her calm, regulated system was pulling your heart rate and breathing into sync through physiological entrainment. This is the most ancient form of regulation mammals have. You feel physically different after because your autonomic state actually changed.
Your nervous system constantly scans for safety or threat through three channels: inside (gut, heart, muscle tension), outside (environment, noise, light), and between (connection to another nervous system). This scanning happens below conscious awareness. Porges coined "neuroception" to distinguish it from perception — you don't think you're safe, your body detects it.
You, with the marbles/home system: You engineered your digital environment so your neuroception reads "safe" instead of "alert." Every notification is a micro-signal your nervous system has to evaluate. By eliminating them, you stopped the constant below-conscious threat-scanning cycle. You didn't just reduce distraction — you changed what your autonomic nervous system was doing underneath.
Bion described how a mother contains an infant's overwhelming emotions by receiving them, processing them internally, and returning them in a tolerable form. Through this, the infant develops the capacity to contain its own emotions — to hold intensity without acting on it. In adults, containment is the ability to sit with arousal, excitement, frustration, or desire without immediately discharging it. Bion distinguished between thinking (processing internally) and evacuating (discharging outward to relieve pressure).
You, not sharing early ideas with buddies: Textbook containment. The urge to share a fresh joke or idea is arousal seeking discharge. When you hold it, you're building your container — literally growing your capacity to tolerate excitement without needing external release. Each time you contain instead of leak, the container gets stronger. Bion would say you're developing the capacity to think rather than evacuate.
Research shows that sharing your intentions triggers the same dopamine reward as achieving them. Self-disclosure activates the mesolimbic dopamine system — the same reward circuitry as food or sex. When others acknowledge your goals, you get a "premature sense of completeness" that signals your brain to move on. The energy for execution gets spent on the social hit.
You, containing excitement: Every time you don't text a buddy about a new idea, you're refusing to spend the dopamine prematurely. You're keeping the energetic charge available for execution instead of burning it on social validation. This is dopamine containment — the neurochemical version of Bion's psychological containment. Same instinct, different resolution level.
The zone of arousal in which you can function optimally — emotionally regulated, cognitively flexible, socially engaged. Above it: hyperarousal (anxiety, reactivity, impulsivity). Below it: hypoarousal (numbness, shutdown, flatness). The goal isn't to feel calm all the time — it's to widen the window so more intensity can be experienced without dysregulation. Within the window, you have access to prefrontal cortex executive function: planning, prioritizing, emotional regulation, self-control.
Your entire arc: Carnivore diet stabilized your metabolic baseline. Not sharing ideas, disabling notifications, co-regulating with your wife — these all widen the window from the inside by building genuine capacity to hold intensity. What you're cultivating isn't calm — it's range.
Titration: Processing intensity in small, tolerable doses rather than all at once. Because overwhelm is "too much, too fast, too soon," you touch the edge of activation, then return to safety. Repeated cycles gradually integrate what was once overwhelming.
Pendulation: The natural rhythm of the nervous system — contraction and expansion, activation and settling. A resilient system can swing between alertness and rest without getting stuck at either pole. Levine observed that getting stuck freezes this rhythm; healing restores it.
Your marbles/home toggle: You literally built pendulation into your digital life. marbles = expansion, engagement, social activation. home = contraction, return to self, settling. The system isn't about avoiding connection — it's about choosing when to swing instead of being pulled by external triggers. Volitional pendulation.
The activity level of your vagus nerve, measurable through heart rate variability (HRV). High vagal tone = flexible, adaptive nervous system that can upregulate and downregulate quickly. Low vagal tone = stuck in fight/flight or shutdown, poor recovery from stress. Vagal tone is trainable — through co-regulation, breathing, cold exposure, specific types of exercise, and diet. It's the physiological substrate underneath all the other concepts — the hardware that makes the software possible.
The substrate underneath everything: Carnivore diet reduces inflammatory load on the vagus via the gut-brain axis. Co-regulation with your wife directly entrains vagal tone. Removing notifications preserves vagal flexibility. Containment exercises your system's ability to hold activation without discharging. Every practice you've described is, at the physiological level, training your vagal tone.
The Kitten Thing — Is It True?
Essentially yes, and it's more extreme than you described. Newborn kittens cannot thermoregulate at all for the first 2–3 weeks. They can't even shiver for the first 7–10 days. Separated from their mother, body temperature drops at 0.02°C per minute — hypothermia in under 2 hours. Orphaned kittens have the lowest survival rate of any domestic animal specifically because they lose the mother's regulatory proximity.
It's not exactly heartbeat synchronization in the ECG sense — but the mother's rhythmic heartbeat and breathing do provide calming sensory input that helps organize the kitten's immature nervous system. The primary mechanism is thermal co-regulation, but the broader principle is identical: the kitten's entire physiology depends on the mother's proximity.
Your instinct was right: mammals are built to regulate through connection. The kitten doesn't "learn" to regulate — it borrows its mother's regulation until its own system matures. What you were doing this morning is the adult human version of exactly this. We never fully outgrow the need for co-regulation — we just develop more of the capacity to do it internally.
Coffee — an honest evaluation
Caffeine and Your Nervous System
Caffeine is a sympathomimetic stimulant. It blocks adenosine receptors (which promote sleep/rest), elevates cortisol via ACTH stimulation of the pituitary, increases catecholamine output (adrenaline/noradrenaline), and raises blood pressure. Even in habitual drinkers, tolerance to cortisol elevation is incomplete — your morning coffee still spikes your stress hormones, just less than it would a non-drinker's.
In the context of what you're building — autonomic sovereignty, containment, widening the window — coffee is directly antagonistic at high doses. It pushes you toward the hyperarousal end of the window of tolerance, narrows the zone you can operate in, and impairs parasympathetic recovery. It delays vagal reactivation after any kind of stress or exertion.
However: low-dose caffeine has some paradoxical benefits. One espresso was shown to increase parasympathetic activity in young healthy subjects. The issue isn't coffee itself — it's the dose curve.
1 cup AM
Mild cortisol bump, enhanced focus. Clears by noon. Minimal impact on vagal tone. Compatible with what you're doing.
2 cups AM
Noticeable sympathetic drive. Some narrowing of the window. Afternoon restlessness possible. Tolerable if before noon and you're active.
3+ cups
Cortisol stays elevated for hours. HRV measurably reduced. Parasympathetic recovery impaired. You're chemically pushing yourself into the hyperarousal zone and then trying to co-regulate back down. Working against yourself.
Any after 12pm
Adenosine half-life is 5–6 hours. Afternoon coffee is still active at bedtime. Directly impairs sleep architecture even if you "fall asleep fine." Incompatible with nervous system recovery.
The honest take: One morning cup is fine. Two is the ceiling for someone actively training their nervous system toward greater parasympathetic capacity. Three is undoing your own work. The carnivore diet already gives you stable sustained energy without the cortisol roller-coaster — you need less caffeine than you think.
Supplements — what they actually do to your nervous system
The most directly relevant supplement to your project. Within 30–40 minutes of ingestion, L-theanine stimulates alpha brain wave production — the same frequency band associated with meditation, creative flow, and "wakeful relaxation." It does this through two mechanisms: direct alpha wave stimulation in the cortex, and increasing GABA, glycine, dopamine, and serotonin synthesis through glutamate receptor modulation.
Connection to your work: Alpha waves are the electrical signature of being inside the window of tolerance. L-theanine doesn't sedate you (hypoarousal) or stimulate you (hyperarousal) — it pushes you toward center. It also modulates the HPA axis, reducing cortisol and blunting the physiological stress response. In studies, 200mg reduced heart rate and salivary stress markers during challenging mental tasks. It's the chemical version of what co-regulation does relationally.
Taurine is an inhibitory amino acid that quiets excitatory signaling in the brain. It modulates GABA-A receptors, stabilizes neuronal membranes, and regulates calcium signaling. Unlike benzodiazepines or GABAergic drugs, taurine doesn't force sedation — it raises the threshold for excitation, making your neurons less twitchy without making them sluggish.
Connection to your work: Taurine directly addresses excitability — the word you used yourself. It's a buffer against hyperarousal that works at the cellular level. If containment (Bion) is the psychological skill of holding excitement, taurine is the neurochemical assist. It doesn't replace the skill, but it gives your neurons more headroom while you're developing it.
Magnesium regulates 300+ enzymatic processes including neurotransmitter production and stress hormone metabolism. It directly modulates cortisol, norepinephrine, and GABA pathways. The glycinate form specifically provides glycine alongside magnesium — glycine itself is an inhibitory neurotransmitter and sleep-quality enhancer. Most people eating modern diets are subclinically deficient.
Connection to your work: Magnesium is the mineral of parasympathetic function. Deficiency presents as anxiety, poor sleep, muscle tension, and hyperexcitability — basically a narrowed window of tolerance caused by a missing cofactor. Carnivore diets can be lower in magnesium depending on what you eat, making supplementation particularly relevant for you. The glycinate form does double duty: magnesium for nervous system regulation, glycine for sleep architecture.
Ashwagandha is the most evidence-backed adaptogen for cortisol reduction. A 2012 RCT showed 28% lower serum cortisol in participants with anxiety disorders. It modulates the HPA axis — the system that governs your stress response — by reducing ACTH signaling and lowering baseline glucocorticoid output.
Connection to your work: If your nervous system is the instrument, cortisol is the string tension. Ashwagandha doesn't numb the instrument — it lowers chronic over-tightening so the strings can vibrate properly. Best taken in the evening because it addresses cumulative daytime cortisol load. KSM-66 is the specific extract with the most clinical evidence; other forms vary wildly.
Glycine acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brainstem and spinal cord, and plays a key role in lowering core body temperature at sleep onset — a critical step for initiating deep sleep. 3g before bed is the studied dose. It improves subjective sleep quality, reduces daytime fatigue, and enhances cognitive performance the next day without any hangover effect.
Connection to your work: Sleep is when vagal tone recovers and the window of tolerance resets. Anything that improves sleep architecture directly supports everything else you're building. Glycine is the simplest, cheapest sleep aid with essentially zero downside. It's also synergistic with magnesium glycinate (the glycine in that compound contributes to the same effect).
Movement modalities — honest assessment of each
Isometric exercise (holding tension without movement — wall sits, plank holds, static squeezes) creates a unique autonomic pattern. The first ~30 seconds trigger vagal withdrawal (sympathetic activation), then sustained holds shift to sympathetic dominance. But here's the relevant part: the release phase after an isometric hold creates a powerful parasympathetic rebound. Your nervous system surges toward activation during the hold, then swings back toward rest when you let go.
This is pendulation in its purest physical form. Hold tension → release → feel the wave of settling. Repeated cycles of isometric hold/release directly train your nervous system to oscillate between activation and rest — exactly the skill Peter Levine describes as the marker of a resilient nervous system. Isometrics also build interoceptive awareness: you learn to feel internal states (muscle tension, heart rate, breathing) with precision, which Porges identifies as a key component of neuroception.
The limitation: Isometrics alone don't provide the social co-regulation or rhythmic entrainment that relational movement offers. They're a solo regulation tool — powerful for building internal capacity, but they don't exercise the "between" channel of neuroception. Best combined with something relational.
A 12-week Pilates RCT showed significant improvements in HRV, indicating improved autonomic balance and increased parasympathetic function. The effect is dose-dependent and intensity-dependent — beginner-level Pilates showed no measurable autonomic changes, while intermediate/advanced practice did. The mechanism is primarily through controlled breathing coordinated with movement — Pilates' emphasis on breath patterning drives the vagal benefits, not the movement alone.
What Pilates gives you: Breath-movement integration, which is essentially forced respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) — the heartbeat-breathing synchrony that is the direct expression of vagal tone. It also builds proprioceptive awareness (knowing where your body is in space), which feeds the "inside" channel of neuroception.
The honest take: Beginner Pilates won't move the needle on autonomic regulation. It needs to be challenging enough to create real breath-load coordination — easy mat Pilates where you're never out of breath isn't doing the vagal training. Also, classical Pilates is a solo practice — no co-regulation component. It's excellent for interoception and breath control, mediocre for relational nervous system training.
Contact improvisation (CI) is a partner dance form where two people move together through shared weight, touch, and momentum — no choreography, no leader/follower. Research describes it as creating an "interkinaesthetic field" where both dancers' proprioceptive systems merge into a shared sensory space. A 2025 study specifically compared dance with and without touch, finding that touch-based contact improvisation uniquely improved affect regulation, reduced stress, and increased sense of connectedness.
This is co-regulation as movement practice. CI exercises all three neuroception channels simultaneously: inside (interoception of your own body), outside (spatial awareness), and between (real-time attunement to another nervous system through touch). Polyvagal-informed dance/movement therapy literature specifically uses CI principles to help people shift from dorsal vagal shutdown or sympathetic hyperarousal into ventral vagal social engagement. It trains the exact skill you described with your wife — tracking to another person's nervous system — but through dynamic movement rather than stillness.
The honest take: CI has the strongest theoretical and evidential connection to everything you're working on. The barrier is accessibility — it requires a partner, and many CI communities have a somewhat niche culture. It can feel awkward initially because it asks for physical trust with another person in an unstructured context. But if you have someone you trust (like your wife), even basic shared-weight exercises at home hit the same mechanisms. The research literature is robust; this isn't woo.
The most studied mind-body movement practice for autonomic regulation. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of multiple RCTs confirmed significant increases in high-frequency HRV power (the direct marker of vagal tone, p = 0.003) and SDNN (overall HRV). The mechanism operates through three channels: slow controlled breathing drives respiratory sinus arrhythmia, meditative attention shifts the nervous system toward parasympathetic dominance, and slow continuous movement creates sustained, low-intensity proprioceptive input.
What tai chi uniquely offers: It's the only movement modality that combines titrated physical intensity (never overwhelming) with meditative state and breath regulation in a single practice. It's essentially the physical embodiment of operating inside the window of tolerance — continuous activation that never tips into hyperarousal, constant settling that never collapses into hypoarousal. Peter Levine specifically references the "felt sense" that tai chi cultivates as foundational to somatic awareness.
The honest take: The evidence is genuinely strong — strongest of any movement modality for HRV improvement. The drawback is cultural: most tai chi instruction in Western contexts is either too slow to hold your attention or too mystified in language to connect to what you actually care about. Finding a teacher who frames it in terms of nervous system regulation rather than "qi flow" makes a big difference. Also, classical tai chi is solo — it doesn't train the co-regulation channel (though push hands practice does, and is essentially a standing contact improvisation).
Cold water on the face or body triggers the mammalian dive reflex — cold activates the trigeminal nerve, which fires the vagus through a direct reflex arc, causing immediate heart rate decrease and parasympathetic surge. Research shows that repeated cold exposure reduces the sympathetic response to other stressors and increases baseline parasympathetic activity. A controlled trial demonstrated that even cold face stimulation alone significantly reduced acute psychosocial stress responses.
What cold gives you: It's the fastest vagal stimulus available — measurable parasympathetic activation within seconds. But more importantly, regular cold exposure trains the pendulation reflex itself. You go into sympathetic activation (the cold shock), then your parasympathetic system pulls you back. Repeat daily and you're literally doing reps of pendulation at the physiological level. Over time, your system gets faster at recovering from activation generally — not just from cold.
The honest take: The vagal stimulation evidence is real and well-documented. Cold showers, face dunking, or cold water immersion all work. The limitation: cold exposure is purely self-regulatory — no relational component, no proprioceptive complexity. It's a raw autonomic training tool, not a practice that builds interoceptive sophistication or social engagement. Think of it as cardio for the vagus nerve — valuable but narrow. Also, the bro-culture around cold plunges has outpaced the science in its claims; the stress-adaptation benefits are meaningful but modest. It's a tool, not a transformation.
Dance broadly — ecstatic dance, 5Rhythms, free movement to music — engages the nervous system through rhythmic entrainment. Your motor system synchronizes to an external beat, which pulls your autonomic rhythm into alignment. Research on dance/movement therapy shows it promotes "state-shifting" through three polyvagal states: centered (grounded, contained), mobilized (playful, energetic), and settled (calm, restful). The transitions between states are the therapeutic mechanism, not any single state.
What rhythmic dance gives you: Volitional movement through different arousal states — you're literally practicing navigating the window of tolerance in your body. Music provides an external regulatory scaffold (like your wife's nervous system, but sonic). Group dance adds co-regulation through movement synchrony. It's also one of the few practices that accesses genuine joy and play as autonomic states — which are distinct from "calm" and equally important for a wide window.
The honest take: The evidence for structured dance/movement therapy is solid. The evidence for informal "put on music and move" is inferred but not directly studied with the same rigor. The barrier is self-consciousness — which is itself a neuroception issue (threat detection in a social context). Dancing alone bypasses this but loses the co-regulation. Dancing with a trusted person (your wife) gets the best of both. Group ecstatic dance classes vary wildly in quality and culture. The thing that matters is whether you actually let your body move without controlling it — that's where the autonomic regulation happens. Performing choreography doesn't have the same effect.
The Unified Picture
What you're doing doesn't have one name because it spans multiple frameworks. But here's the thread that connects everything:
You are systematically reclaiming your nervous system's sovereignty.
Notifications were outsourcing your attention to algorithms. Sharing early ideas was outsourcing your excitement regulation to other people's reactions. Overcaffeination pushes you into hyperarousal and then you have to fight your way back to center. The carnivore diet was the first act of reclamation — taking metabolic control back from processed food's inflammatory disruption of the gut-brain axis.
The supplements provide the neurochemical floor while you build the organic infrastructure: co-regulation with your wife, containment of your own excitement, volitional control of your social inputs, and movement practices that train the pendulation reflex.
The word that captures all of this at the highest level is autonomic sovereignty — your nervous system's ability to regulate itself through its own resources and chosen connections, rather than depending on substances, devices, or compulsive behaviors to do the job.
Sobriety on carnivore is your first real test of this sovereignty without chemical assistance. The infrastructure you've built — the relational co-regulation, the containment practice, the attention management, the movement potential — is exactly what makes this viable. You're not just "getting clean." You're building the system that makes clean unnecessary to name, because it's just how you operate.
Where to Go Deeper
The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy
Deb Dana (2018)
Not Porges himself (who's dense and academic) — Dana translates his theory into felt, practical language. The most directly useful book for what you're experiencing. Short, readable, exercise-rich.
Start here
Practice
Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System
Deb Dana (2022)
Dana's most practical book. Mapping exercises, daily practices, language for describing autonomic states. If you only read one book, this or her 2018 book.
Start here
Practice
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
Peter Levine (1997)
The original Somatic Experiencing book. Titration, pendulation, resourcing — all laid out with animal examples (like your kitten instinct). You'll recognize your own process throughout.
Accessible
In an Unspoken Voice
Peter Levine (2010)
Levine's more mature work connecting body sensation, regulation, and autonomic recovery. More depth than Waking the Tiger. The chapter on pendulation alone is worth it.
Deep dive
The Developing Mind
Dan Siegel (1999 / 3rd ed. 2020)
Where "window of tolerance" comes from. How relationships literally shape brain structure. Academic but foundational. The interpersonal neurobiology framework.
Deep dive
Neuroscience
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Robert Sapolsky (2004)
The stress physiology classic. Explains why chronic activation destroys health and how mammals are designed to oscillate between stress and recovery. Funny, accessible, rigorous. Directly relevant to the caffeine and excitability questions.
Science
Accessible
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk (2014)
Integrates polyvagal, somatic experiencing, and window of tolerance into a unified narrative. Has substantial sections on movement (yoga, dance, theater) as nervous system medicine. The cultural touchstone for this entire space.
Deep dive
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve
Stanley Rosenberg (2017)
The most practical, exercise-focused book on vagal tone. Specific physical exercises for activating ventral vagal function. Less theory, more "do this with your body." Good complement to Dana's books.
Practice