The Three State Model for Coaches Who Skipped Polyvagal

We spend a lot of time in the coaching world trying to teach clients complex neurobiology. We draw ladders, talk about ancient nerves, and use jargon we only half-understand ourselves, all because we think a theory's popularity equals its utility. It doesn't. Your client doesn't need to pass a neuroscience exam to feel better. They need a simple, usable map of their own interior, a way to name what's happening in their body without needing a PhD. The obsession with theoretical purity has crowded out the far more important goal: practical self-awareness. It's time for a simpler, more teachable three-state model.

Common Questions

### What is this three-state model, exactly?

It’s a framework for mapping nervous system states onto a grid of two simple things: energy (high or low) and safety (felt or absent). This gives us three practical states: Mobilised (high energy), Still (low energy), and Settled (the safe, flexible baseline). It’s about what the body is doing and how it feels, not which specific nerve branch is active.

### How is this different from fight/flight/freeze?

It adds the crucial context of safety. 'Mobilised' covers both anxious fight/flight and joyful, energetic play. 'Still' can be a collapsed, dissociative freeze or deep, restorative rest. The classic stress responses are flavours of Mobilised or Still when safety is absent. This model makes room for the full range of human experience, not just pathology.

### Do I need to unlearn other nervous system theories to use this?

Not at all. Think of this as a different user interface for the same operating system. Other theories, like the one you're probably thinking of, describe the deep architecture—the plumbing. This model describes the felt sense of the water: its pressure and temperature. It’s a client-facing language for the underlying physiology, designed for teachability over theoretical complexity.

The Tyranny of the Three-Coloured Ladder

Let's be honest. The little ladder diagram, with its traffic-light colours, is everywhere. It’s in slide decks, on Instagram tiles, and probably Sharpied onto a whiteboard in a clinic near you. It has become a visual shorthand for the nervous system, which is fine, until it isn't. The problem is that it has also become a kind of prescriptive hierarchy, implying that the goal is always to ‘climb’ to the green zone.

This can inadvertently lead to clients pathologising their own survival states. A state of deep, necessary shutdown gets labelled ‘dorsal’ in a faintly accusatory tone, as if it’s a personal failing rather than a profound act of self-preservation. The goal is not just to live in the green zone. The goal is to build a system with the resilience to move through all the states with more ease—what Andrew Kemp calls autonomic flexibility. To have the capacity for both energised mobilization and deep stillness, and to return to a safe baseline afterwards. We’re not trying to get clients to climb a ladder; we’re trying to help them become better surfers of their own internal waves. For that, we need a better map of the ocean.

A Simpler Map: Energy x Safety

Your nervous system doesn’t run on diagrams. It runs on glucose and threat assessments. So let's build a model from those first principles. Imagine a simple graph.

The vertical axis is Energy. At the top, you have high energy: the heart is beating faster, breathing is quicker, muscles are primed, fuel is burning. This is the domain of the sympathetic nervous system. At the bottom, you have low energy: the system is conserving resources, heart rate is slow, digestion is prioritised. This is parasympathetic territory.

The horizontal axis is Safety. This isn't an objective fact; it’s the brain’s split-second, non-conscious appraisal of risk, based on cues from the world and cues from inside your own body (your interoception). This process is heavily mediated by the interplay between threat-detection circuits like the amygdala and the calming, executive function of the prefrontal cortex, a link beautifully illustrated in Julian Thayer’s work on heart rate variability.

When you plot states on this grid, you move away from jargon and into the physics of being human. A state is no longer just a label; it’s a coordinate defined by how much energy is in the system and whether the system believes itself to be safe.

Your client's nervous system state isn't a diagnosis. It's a strategy for survival, running on old code.

The Three States: Mobilised, Still, and Settled

This Energy x Safety grid gives us three distinct, teachable territories of experience. I call this the Kokorology three-state model.

1. Mobilised (High Energy): This is the state of doing. But its flavour depends entirely on safety.

Without Safety: It’s the classic stress response. Anxious, hypervigilant, irritable, panicked. It's the feeling of being pursued by a lion, as Robert Sapolsky would put it. Your HPA axis (the body's central stress circuit) is in overdrive. This is the state of juggling PTO guilt while trying to hit a deadline, or the low-grade hum of dread on a packed commuter train.
With Safety: It’s joyful, creative, and focused. It's getting lost in a challenging project, a competitive game of tennis, dancing, or laughing with friends. It's the feeling of chasing the lion. The energy is high, but the context is one of delight or chosen challenge, not threat.

2. Still (Low Energy): This is the state of not doing. And again, the flavour is critical.

Without Safety: It's the freeze or shutdown response. Numb, disconnected, heavy, hopeless, collapsed. This isn't rest; it's a life-preservation strategy, a metabolic power-down when fighting or fleeing isn't an option (van der Kolk, 2014). It feels like wading through treacle. It’s the exhaustion that hits after a week of high-stakes meetings, a state familiar to anyone in dense, high-pressure European cities where the work culture never quite clocks off.
With Safety: It's genuine rest and recovery. Deep sleep, meditation, a quiet moment with a book, the feeling of ease on the first day of a long-awaited holiday. The body is powered down, but for restoration, not out of defence.

3. Settled (The Secure Base): This isn't a point on the grid, but the underlying capacity that makes the safe versions of Mobilised and Still possible. It's a state of high vagal tone, social connection, and flexible responsiveness. According to recent research by Barbara Kok and colleagues, this state creates an "upward spiral" where positive social connection builds vagal tone, which in turn makes it easier to connect (Kok, 2013). This is our home base, the regulated biological platform from which we can venture out into challenge and return from it to rest. Building this capacity is the core of nervous system regulation work we teach in the Regulation L1 course.

Teaching the Model Without a PhD

As a practitioner, your job isn't to be a neurobiologist; it's to be a translator. This model is designed for translation. Instead of lecturing on nerve branches, you can use simple, embodied metaphors.

You can frame it as an internal "Weather Report." Is it stormy and chaotic inside (Mobilised without safety)? Sunny and energetic (Mobilised with safety)? Is it a dense, heavy fog (Still without safety)? Or a calm, clear night (Still with safety)? This gives clients a language that’s immediate and intuitive, helping them build the interoceptive skill that Sahib Khalsa's work identifies as fundamental to mental health.

Or use a "Battery" metaphor. Are you at 110% and overheating (anxious mobilization)? Are you at 10% and in low-power mode (shutdown)? Or are you at a healthy 80% on the charger (restorative stillness)? Tracking these states becomes less about judgement and more about observation, a process made simple inside the Kokorology Journal.

When you hand your clients a simple, intuitive map like this, they don't get stuck on the theory. They get busy navigating their own experience. This is the foundation of the work we do with practitioners inside our Kokorology Practitioner Certification.

What to do this week

For coaches wanting to test-drive this model:

Map your own territory. For the next three days, use a notepad or our Journal to tag your own states: Mobilised, Still, or Settled.
Add the flavour. Was your Mobilised state energised or anxious? Was your Still state restful or numb? Add a single word to describe the quality.
Notice the thresholds. Identify one common trigger that reliably shifts you from Settled into a stressed Mobilised or Still state. What is the very first sensation in your body that signals the shift?
Experiment with language. With one trusted client, try asking, "What's the energy level in your body right now, high or low?" and see what kind of answer you get.

TL;DR

Stop trying to teach complex neuroanatomy to your clients. A more practical framework is the three-state model, which maps nervous system behaviour onto two simple axes: energy (high/low) and safety (felt/absent). This yields three states: 'Mobilised' (high energy), 'Still' (low energy), and 'Settled' (a safe, resilient baseline). This model, informed by the work of researchers like Sapolsky on stress and Kok (2013) on vagal tone, gives clients a way to understand their body's strategies without getting lost in jargon, turning complex physiology into a usable tool for self-awareness.

Where this fits in the Kokorology system

This post introduces a core teaching framework used across our system. The three-state model is the theoretical engine behind the state-tracking function in the Kokorology Journal and a foundational concept we build out in the Regulation L1 course.

Closing

The best frameworks aren't the most academically pure; they're the most useful. A good model doesn't just describe the territory, it gives someone a compass to navigate it. The three-state model is a compass. It is designed to be picked up, put in a coaching toolkit, and used to help people find their way back to their own secure base, one observation at a time. It’s a tool for your practice, not just a theory for your bookshelf.

Start with the Coach's Guide: The Three-State Model.
Go deeper inside the Kokorology Practitioner Certification.
Get more free frameworks in our Regulation Guide.

Sources

Khalsa, S. S., et al. (2018). Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Kemp, A. H., & Quintana, D. S. (2013). The relationship between vagal tone, physical health, and cognition. Frontiers in Psychology.
Kok, B. E., et al. (2013). How positive emotions build physical health: Perceived positive social connections account for the upward spiral between positive emotions and vagal tone. Psychological Science.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.
Thayer, J. F., et al. (2009). A meta-analysis of heart rate variability and neuroimaging studies: implications for heart rate variability as a marker of stress and health. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.