How to Help Clients Regulate Their Nervous System Through Stillness

Stillness is often described as nourishing, grounding, and restorative. Yet for many clients, it can feel unsafe, unfamiliar, or even impossible. Through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, you can help clients develop a roadmap that gradually makes stillness a safe and regulated experience. This roadmap is less about “achieving” stillness and more about befriending the nervous system and learning how to move toward safety one step at a time.

The process often begins by exploring the beliefs a client holds about action and inaction. Many people carry deep, often unconscious assumptions about what it means to pause. For clients whose nervous systems lean toward a sympathetic state, stillness may feel dangerous, as if stopping leaves them vulnerable to harm. Others who find themselves in a dorsal state may experience stillness as collapse or disconnection, interpreting quiet as disappearing. By contrast, when anchored in a ventral state, clients can experience stillness as nourishing and restorative. Exploring these beliefs helps clients notice how their biology, shaped by life experience, colors their perception of quiet moments.

Once clients begin to uncover these beliefs, the next step is identifying the cues of safety and danger that shape their relationship with stillness. This involves noticing internal cues, such as body sensations that either soothe or threaten, as well as external cues in the environment that contribute to calm or agitation. It also includes relational cues, recognizing how the presence or absence of another person influences their sense of safety. By mapping these signals, clients begin to understand the “safety–danger equation” that determines whether stillness is accessible in any given moment.

To make stillness less overwhelming, it is useful to present it as a continuum rather than an all-or-nothing state. You can invite clients to draw a line with one end representing the absence of stillness—marked by numbness, agitation, or distraction—and the other end representing its presence, such as feelings of quiet, spaciousness, or peace. Clients can then label points in between with words like “distracted,” “slowing down,” or “quiet rhythm.” This exercise helps them shift away from all-or-nothing thinking and begin to see stillness as a spectrum they can gradually enter.

The practice itself can begin with micro-moments of stillness. Clients do not need to start with long periods of meditation or silence. Instead, even a few seconds of being safely still can be powerful. Reminding clients that even in quiet moments the body is still moving, the lungs expand, the heart beats, the blood flows, and can reassure their nervous systems that stillness does not equal danger. This makes the practice more approachable and less likely to trigger defensive responses.

Because we are wired for connection, stillness can also be cultivated through co-regulation. You may encourage clients to share poems, write haiku, or explore quiet forms of creativity with others. These practices allow clients to anchor stillness in safe relational experiences rather than isolation. The presence of a compassionate witness often helps the nervous system feel secure enough to pause.

Finally, it is important for clients to learn how to discern between stretching and stressing their systems. Sometimes stillness can be a healthy stretch, in which the nervous system feels gently challenged but nourished. At other times, the same practice can tip into stress, leading to collapse or agitation. Helping clients recognize this distinction allows them to stop before regulation gives way to survival, turning the practice of stillness into a process of “stretch and savor” rather than overwhelm.

Ultimately, creating a roadmap for stillness is not about enforcing silence. It is about inviting safety, curiosity, and compassion into quiet moments. By guiding clients to map their nervous system responses, examine their beliefs, experiment with continuums, and practice micro-moments of stillness, you can help them discover that stillness is not a void to be feared but a restorative experience to be welcomed.