tgrendl, for most modern aircraft, cyclic is still quite effective, because you do not need to be developing thrust to develop control. The exception is a teetering rotor, which needs thust to develop lateral or longitudinal control power.
In any case,reduce collective, push the nose forward, and fly out. It would be the rare case that everything fails to respond. If you get stuck, be sure the collective is fully down, and you should slide down into autorotation.
Here is a very good web site that has flow depiction of the rotor flow as a descent progresses from gentle descent to VRS and then to autorotation, it was put up by Dr. Gordon Leishman of University of Maryland (and a Brit, I believe, formerly of Westland). Scroll down to the single rotor cases which are well labeled, and run the movies. Note that he shows how little forward component is needed before the VRS is broken. For those on dialups, it might take a while to download each. I would be glad to post some stills from them if anyone needs that done.
http://www.enae.umd.edu/AGRC/Aero/vring.html