What Is SSP? How the Safe and Sound Protocol + Sensory Mosaic of Healing® Unlock Your Body’s Wisdom
- Hannah
- Aug 18
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 11
From survival mode to safety—experience healing you can hear, feel, and see.
It's Music That Heals Your Body
It may sound like magic, but there’s science behind it.
The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is a powerful, evidence-based therapeutic tool designed to help regulate your nervous system—especially if trauma, anxiety, or chronic stress have kept you locked in survival mode.
Created by Dr. Stephen Porges, the neuroscientist behind Polyvagal Theory, SSP uses specially filtered music to gently stimulate your vagus nerve—the communication superhighway between your brain and body. This subtle activation can help your system shift from a state of hyper-alertness or numbness into one of safety, presence, and connection.
Think of it less like talk therapy, and more like nervous system training through sound. You don’t have to find the words for your story—your body is invited to soften and respond through listening.
This post explores:
What the Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) is
How SSP works with your vagus nerve to calm the body
The basics of Polyvagal Theory and why it matters for trauma and nervous system health
How the Sensory Mosaic of Healing® combines art therapy and SSP for deeper somatic healing
Why music and painting together can gently release stored trauma without forcing the process
My personal 5-day journey through SSP + Sensory Mosaic of Healing®, and the surprising changes I experienced
Polyvagal what? (hint: it's your nervous system)
To understand SSP, it helps to know a little about Polyvagal Theory.
Polyvagal Theory explains how your autonomic nervous system constantly scans for cues of safety or danger—not just in your mind, but deep in your body. This “neuroception” shapes how you feel, think, and relate to the world.
Your autonomic nervous system has three main states:
Fight/Flight (Sympathetic) – mobilized survival mode: anxiety, restlessness, tension.
Freeze/Shutdown (Dorsal Vagal) – collapse, withdrawal, disconnection.
Social Engagement (Ventral Vagal) – calm, connected, grounded, open.
SSP specifically targets the ventral vagal pathway, helping your body recognize and trust safety through sound. As you listen, your system can gradually shift—out of hypervigilance or numbness, and into a regulated, connected state.
The process is gentle and non-invasive, making it especially helpful for those with trauma stored in the body, sensory sensitivities, or chronic stress patterns.
Now, let's add some art-therapy with the Sensory Mosaic of Healing®
Healing doesn’t only happen through talking or thinking—it happens through sensation, sound, and creation.
The Sensory Mosaic of Healing® is a polyvagal-informed approach developed by Ana do Valle. It weaves together the Safe and Sound Protocol, creative expression, and body-based awareness.
This combination allows your nervous system to gently re-pattern itself—through sound, movement, and the language of color and texture.
As you listen to SSP’s specially filtered music, you paint. Each brushstroke is guided not by a prompt, but by what your body feels. Shapes, colors, and textures become a mirror for your inner state—a way for your nervous system to speak without words.
This was the method that spoke volumes to both my body and my soul. The music softened my defenses; the painting gave my feelings a safe place to land. Together, they created a space where healing wasn’t forced—it was invited.
Why Safe and Sound Protocol Works
The music and the artwork together because they speak two different—but equally important—languages to your nervous system.
The Safe and Sound Protocol uses sound to send messages of safety to your body. As you listen, your heart rate slows, your breathing deepens, and your system starts to relax.
At the same time, painting gives your body a way to respond. Without you even realizing it, your hands begin to translate what’s shifting inside—turning feelings, memories, and sensations into shapes and colors. You’re not just painting pictures; you’re creating visual narratives of your own healing.
You don’t have to plan it, force it, or even understand it in the moment. Your body knows what it needs to express. The art simply gives it a safe place to speak.
How the Sensory Mosaic of Healing® Healed Me
For five days in a row, I spent an hour each day listening to specially filtered music and painting.
There were no prompts. No rules. Just paper, paint, and sound.
After each painting, I filled out a short worksheet:
I gave it a name.
Named the emotion it carried.
Noted a sensation in my body.
Wrote three words that came to mind.
Finished with a short poem.
Every so often, a therapist would come by and invite me to point to my painting—showing where I felt sensations in my body.
At first, I thought, "how will this heal anything?" I wasn’t “talking it out,” I was just… painting.
But by the end of the week, I could feel a wave of relief move through me—like my body had finally let go of something it had been gripping for far too long.
At the close of the program, I learned something astonishing: these paintings, though not diagnostic, follow standard visual narratives. Practitioners trained in the Sensory Mosaic of Healing® can read the imagery, colors, posture, and sequence of the paintings to help you understand the journey your nervous system took during SSP.
The music had shifted my physiology. The painting had captured the story of that shift—without me even realizing it.
And then came the grand reveal: my own visual narratives, side-by-side with the standard ones. Suddenly, I could see the healing that had taken place inside me.
Below is a link to my own watercolor paintings and the visual narratives side by side. They are a separate link as I want to leave space for those who feel drawn to experience their own SSP + Sensory Mosaic of Healing® journey.
If you’re curious to see my watercolor from the process and how it aligned with the standard visual narratives click below ⬇
When Healing Becomes Something You Can See
I thought I was just painting. But each stroke, each color, each sensation—was my body telling the
truth it never got to speak. At the end, I didn’t just see art. I saw the transformation that had taken place. Silently. Without force.
More of my friends went through the program and we excitedly shared our artwork - seeing each other's healing. I even shared it with my trauma therapist back home with so much excitement it ended up being one of her favorite memories to recall with me.
It is one of the few therapeutic processes there is a visual representation of what took place on the inside.
Are Looking for a Gentler Way to Heal?
Healing is often invisible. You can feel lighter, breathe easier, move through your day with less fear—and yet, there’s no photograph, no before-and-after snapshot, to show the world.
This process was different.
Through the Safe and Sound Protocol and the Sensory Mosaic of Healing®, I watched my body’s story unfold in watercolor. Each painting held a chapter—a shift in color, form, or energy—reflecting the subtle changes I felt deep inside.
It reminded me that healing isn’t always about effort. Sometimes it’s about creating the right conditions for safety and then letting your nervous system do what it was made to do: come home to wholeness.
If you’ve been longing for a gentler way to meet your body’s needs, one that doesn’t demand words but welcomes expression, this approach might speak to you as it did to me.
You can follow my journey, explore the science, and learn more about embodied healing here on Instagram @wildflower_sojourner and sign up to receive weekly tried and true methods here.
Because healing isn’t just something you feel—it’s something you can see, cherish, and carry forward.
💜 Hannah
The Best Place to Begin - the Inside
Before you can calm your body, you have to calm the chaos, trauma, and stress that is on the inside. Download my free Lead Your Inner Team guide to start building self-leadership from the inside out.
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