Power Up Your Vagus Nerve

Feeling overwhelmed, anxious, restless, worried? Power up your vagus nerve. Vaga-what? Vagus nerve.

Vagus nerve is an important component of the parasympathetic nervous system. This nerve affects many functions in the body, including your mood, your heart rate, your respiratory function, your immune responses, and your digestion. Vagal tone can be influenced directly with your breathing, and its stimulation through meditation has the capacity to affect your moods and mitigate anxiety-related symptoms.

When you have a sense of overwhelm and everything feels to be a ‘trigger’, it is your sympathetic nervous system overdrive. This is what I call you having a ‘nervous system hyperactivity syndrome’. Did you spill a glass of water and it feels like the ‘sky is falling’? That is when you have just had it.

When we experience small and almost trivial events that seem to trigger us, or they feel ‘too much to handle’, that is when our sympathetic nervous system is firing in overdrive. In order to offset our anxious state, our anxious mind, we have to stimulate (yes, stimulate) our parasympathetic nervous system that will ultimately lead to a state of calm. So, take a breath, not all is lost…literally, you have to breathe to simulate your vagal tone. You must breathe to breathe.

Feeling anxious just thinking about calming down your anxiety? Perhaps you need a trusted-advisor? (psst. this is where I come in with my background in clinical practice and having worked with thousands, and to my surprise, the transformation is always possible).