An Owner's Guide to the Vagus Nerve

by Winden Rowe, MS, NCC, LPC

Running up and down the human body like a long and strong intricate cable of connection is something called the vagus nerve.

A few facts about the basic functions of the vagus nerve:

1. Your vagus nerve does something called “innervate,” meaning it taps into all of the major organ systems. It sends signals from the brain to the body and vice versa, all day, everyday. It is a key component of something you have likely heard of in the wellness field, the gut-brain axis.
2. This cranial nerve, a major component of the autonomic nervous system, is responsible for keeping us safe. In response to any sign of threat, real or perceived, this nerve is in charge of making sure that we are aware of the potential danger and then signaling to the brain and body a series of commands to ensure safety in the face of the threat.
3. The vagus nerve is polyfunctional, designed to signal whether things are safe or not–whether we need to run or to freeze and shut down. These responses originate in different branches of the nerve: the lower, middle, and upper vagus.
4. Depending on which branch your vagus nerve tends to operationalize most, that branch will, over time, tend to dominate the body as its primary function. For example, if you grow up in a safe place and feel a general sense of connection with those in your environment, the upper part of the vagus nerve, the ventral vagus, will strengthen over time like a muscle, making this branch of the vagus nerve your default mode. The reverse can also happen. If you grow up powerless in an unsafe environment (think children in poverty, or children in schools with gun violence—both real and constant threats), the middle or even lower branches of the vagus nerve dominate the body and win out over feeling safe and calm.
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   Vardin Papikyan/ Unsplash

Vardin Papikyan/ Unsplash

If you have experienced the vagus nerve overtake your ability to function, here are a few ways to restore a sense of safety and calm:

1. MOVE. The vagus nerve is an ancient pathway of our nervous system, found in animal models of all kinds; when animals are in trouble, they are most likely to move away from threat as a way to regain a sense of safety. This is not just a rational function but also a way that the body shakes off and expends any hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biochemicals and processes that carry out the fear response. Moving the body helps get such chemicals flowing, moving, and excreted or “used up” as a way to restore calm. Yoga, running, walking, stretching, even standing up and “shaking it off”—shaking your limbs—is a great way to rewire the vagal response.
2. BREATHE. Breathing is one of the most automatic processes in the body but also a function that we can influence with mindfulness. Breathing plays a role in the responses of both branches of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic.. Sympathetic responses engage in activation. Parasympathetic responses engage in calming, braking, resting, and digesting. Inhaling with intention signals to the body that we want energy, want to activate, want to feed the brain and body with oxygen, the primary fuel and driver for the nervous system. When we exhale, the body is signaled to calm, to slow, to recalibrate. Funnily enough when people are overwhelmed, they are traditionally told to “take a deep breath!.” But what we really should be advising is to take a breath of any length possible and then to focus on slowly exhaling, on repeat. If you have ever taken a yoga class and been cued to exhale three times in a row with emphasis, your instructor is hoping to engage your parasympathetic nervous system. The impact on the vagus nerve is tremendous: it is a positive way to regain a sense of calm.
3. FIND THE HELPERS. Not everyone has someone to turn to in a moment of overwhelm, but if we all learned to better support one another, and to be attentive to those in distress, the world would be a very different place. The vagus nerve is biology’s way of asking us to practice self-care and safe connection. If we learn that it’s okay to ask for help and that help is met, that’s the fastn route to returning to a sense of self-regulation and calm.

There are many more ways for healing the nervous system and restoring healthy vagal tone. They involve things like counseling, EMDR, psychedelic therapies, somatic experiencing, and more. It’s not always easy to access the care and support of trained professionals, especially in a moment of overwhelm. Learn to take time out to practice these simple tools and start to notice over time how you respond to distress. Just as vagal responses can increase in the negative, so can positive and healthy responses as we learn to practice these simple, free, and easy tools.

To learn more, please visit www.polyvagalinstitute.org.