Issue #45 ·
How to Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve: 4 Practices to Relax
🧠 How to Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve, Tips for Stress Relief, and A Reminder to Train Strength
This week in building health 👇
How to Stimulate your Vagus Nerve
Do you ever feel like it’s too hard to relax?
Like you’re caught in a spiral of:
shallow breathing
worrying and anxiety
heart rate getting faster
that rising feeling of panic
How can you cut that cycle and find the space to relax?
The Vagus Nerve Connects the Brain to your Heart, Lungs, and Stomach
From the article I’m sharing today:
The vagus tunes into organ function and transmits this information to the brain. But it also sends data from the brain to control organ function, affecting heart rate, breathing, reflexes like swallowing or sneezing, and other automatic processes.
In practice, the vagus nerve acts as an entry point into your body’s systems.
If you can stimulate it with some exercises, you can regulate your heart rate, breathing, and digestion. And get yourself out of a “fight or flight” mode.
The Practices:
1— Controlled Breathing
Our breath is a shortcut into our bodies, and one of the few things you have very direct control over!
Try something like box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, or cyclic sighing.
They can all help calm down your brain
2— Singing and Humming
Got a favorite song?
Why not sing or hum it to yourself?
There’s a lot of research that shows how music, chanting, and singing can help stimulate your vagus nerve and help you calm down also.
3— Self-Compassion
One of the biggest traps that keeps us stressed is how we’re so hard on ourselves.
Here’s another reminder to be be kind when you make mistakes.
My favorite way to do this is to talk to myself in the third person-
“It’s okay Javier, everyone makes mistakes. You’ll figure this out.”
4— Touch, and Massage
It’s crazy how little (literal) human connection we get these days.
Think about it— when was the last time you got a good hug?
From the therapist Virginia Satir:
“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”
Hugs have been shown in research to have lots of health benefits too
Health is Exercise++ Recovery too!
A big part of getting and staying healthy is knowing how to rest and recovery well.
Especially today, where it feels like we need to be ON 24/7.
Take a break, recover, and relax knowing you’re taking care of your health.
→ Read more on this idea here (9 minutes)
My favorite health things for the week
// one
Best ways to manage stress
4 minutes | Harvard Health
Staying stressed is one of the worst things for your health.
It makes the body start to attack itself from inside, causing all sorts of problems in our systems
From the article:
In the short term, the stress response can help you navigate a difficult situation. But chronic stress can lead to physical damage. "Stress increases blood sugar and can make diabetes worse. It can create high blood pressure and cause insomnia. It can also make people become anxious, worried, depressed, or frustrated," says Dr. Webster. Chronic stress also increases the risk of heart disease, heartburn, and many other health problems.
Understand that managing stress should be your top priority for health, and start with that.
// two
"Be Ready for Anything"
7 minutes | David Epstein
Two weeks ago was the track and field world championships.
Usually track and field competes in obscurity, with no one watching any of the meets.
It’s only in the big ones like the Olympics or the World Championships where suddenly there a full audience, a bunch of cameras, and high pressure.
How do you deal with that?
From the article:
The remedy: Just like Asher-Smith advised, you need to have a flexible mindset and to expect something to go wrong — you just don’t know what it is, yet.
What’s my takeaway here?
It’s easy to practice healthy habits when the routine is going well. But the real test is when things are messy and unpredictable.
Be prepared for when things go wrong!
// three
Build Muscle, Live Longer
Just a quick reminder that it’s important to stay strong!
Until next time
I finally got a couple of workouts in this week!
Nothing too long, but it felt good to be a bit active again.
Hope you’re able to move and exercise too
Have a Healthy Weekend