Activate your nervous system for healing

Yoga

Kundalini yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system by stimulating and toning the Vagus Nerve. The Vagus Nerve is a part of the Central Nervous System running from the hypothalamus and amygdala to the colon that controls the ability to move between the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems. The Vagus Nerve connects the mind to the body and vice-versa. When the Vagus Nerve oscillates correctly, it acts like a tuning fork

vagus nerve is a sensory nerve that starts at the base of the brain and travels down both sides of your neck through your stomach and intestines, enervating your heart and lungs, and connecting your throat, neck, ear and facial muscles.

Activating any of the organs enervated by your vagus nerve can help stimulate your vagus nerve to activate your parasympathetic nervous system; these include:

• Brain, which helps calm inflammation, control anxiety and relieve depression.

• Tongue, which helps to improve taste and saliva production, swallowing, and speech.

• Ears, which help to ease tinnitus.

• Eyes, which help the pupils shrink to make eye contact and promote social connection and safety.

• Larynx, which helps feed your lungs and diaphragm with oxygen.

• Stomach, which helps to stimulate stomach acid for healthy digestion.

• Intestines, which allow for nutrient absorption and trigger the muscle contractions (peristalsis) to

allow food and waste to move through the digestive tract.

• Pancreas, which triggers the production and release of enzymes that aid in digestion.

• Liver, which triggers detoxification and supports blood sugar functions.

• Lungs, which allows your airways to expand and contract

• Gallbladder, which triggers the release of bile that rids the body of toxins and breaks down fat

(critical for most paleo and keto diets).

• Heart, which helps to regulate heart rate and blood pressure.

• Spleen, which inhibits inflammation by calming the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines (substances

secreted by inflammatory cells that affect other cells).

• Kidneys, which release sodium, increase blood flow, and manage blood sugar.

• Bladder, which allows for bladder retention to prevent frequent urination.

• Reproductive organs and genitals, which support fertility and sexual arousal.

• Immune system, which regulates inflammation, switching off the production of proteins that fuel the inflammatory immune response.

The following practices engage these areas of the mind-body feedback loop to enhance and stimulate healthy functioning of your vagus nerve to activate your parasympathetic state.

Benefits of Cold Shower Therapy

Delivers blood to the capillaries

Cleans the circulatory system

Reduces blood pressure on internal organs, flushing internal organs and refreshing the blood supply

Strengthens the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems

Contracts the muscles and causes them to eliminate toxins and poisons more quickly

Strengthens the mucus membranes

Keeps the skin young and shining

Balances the glands

1. Cold Exposure

Cold exposure activates your parasympathetic nervous system. Sudden cold exposure causes blood vessels to dilate. Research found that the resulting increase in blood flow to your body and brain warms the tissue, improves nerve conduction and turns on your parasympathetic relaxation response.

Additional research confirmed that when the body adjusts to cold temperatures, your fight-or-flight (sympathetic) system declines and your rest-and-digest (parasympathetic) system increases. In this study, temperatures of 50°F (10°C) were considered cold.

Research specifically finds that “cold stimulation at the lateral neck region would result in higher heart rate variability” which is the gage for parasympathetic tone.

Cold water is one of the simplest ways to stimulate your vagus nerve and improve your vagal tone. Research has found that exposure to cold water may bring observable results. You can splash cold water on your face and neck or hold a zip lock bag full of ice against your face for 30-seconds. You can also drink cold fluids, take a 30-second cold shower or take a warm shower and finish with 30–60 seconds of cold water at the end.

Benefits of Breathing Deep and slow

Relax and calm you

This relaxation is of an active rather than a passive kind. It will re-tune and reset your brain so that correct decisions will flow automatically in a crisis situation.

Filling of the lungs to capacity will feed your electro-magnetic field. Revitalizing and re-adjusting your magnetic field will make you less liable to fall victim to accidents, sickness and negativity.

Pump the spinal fluid to the brain, giving greater energy

Regulate the body's pH (acid/alkalinity), which affects your ability to handle a stressful situation

Reduce and prevent toxic buildup caused by not clearing the mucous linings of the small air sacs (alveoli) of the the lungs

Stimulate the production of chemicals (endorphins) in the brain, which eliminate the tendency to depression.

Cleanse the blood

Energize, give greater alertness and awareness due to the life force (prana) in oxygen.

Give clarity, cool-headedness, and positivity

Aid in releasing blockages in meridian energy flow

Activate and cleanse nerve channels

Aid in speeding up healing, emotional and physical

Aids in breaking subconscious undesirable habit patterns and addictions

Reduce insecurity and fear

Rechannel previous mental conditioning on pain so as to reduce or eliminate pain (as, for example, in childbirth).

Restore the aura

Give capacity to control your negativity and emotions

As the lung capacity increases, the pituitary gland will begin to secrete and the intuitional power of the mind will begin to develop.

3. Breathing

Deep and slow breathing stimulates your vagus nerve and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. In fact, breath is one of the fastest ways to influence our nervous system, especially deep breathing that activates both the lungs and the diaphragm, especially when you breathe deeply from your diaphragm. This means when you breathe in, your belly should expand or go outward. When you breathe out your belly should cave in. The more your belly expands and the more it caves in, the deeper you’re breathing.

Here is my favorite breathing technique:

1. Inhale for a count of four.

2. Hold for a count of four.

3. Exhale for a count of six to eight.

4. Wait for a count of four.

5. Repeat until your hands are back on the controls.

Slower, deep breathing improves oxygen saturation, lowers blood pressure, and will put your body into parasympathetic mode. The slow expansion of your lungs signals to your heart to slow down, which sends a feeling of calm throughout your entire nervous system. Your vagus nerve connects all of this signaling and releases acetylcholine, a calming chemical you can give yourself a shot of any time by doing relaxation techniques.

In one study, slow breathing exercises improved autonomic functions in healthy participants. Fast breathing didn’t. That’s because fast breathing makes your body think you’re running from predators. That sets off your body’s alarm bells and activates a stress response.

4. Supporting Gut Health

Your vagus nerve connects your gut and brain, known as the gut-brain axis, and sends both physical and biochemical signals in both directions. Supporting gut health and the healthy balance of gut bacteria (also known as gut microbiome) helps support the parasympathetic nervous system.

Your enteric nervous system, which governs digestive function and works in tandem with your parasympathetic nervous system, is comprised of your “microbiome”, or the bacteria that resides within your intestinal tract. Ideally there is a balance of good bacteria to keep opportunistic pathogens and bacteria in check. A healthy diet that includes a variety of plants and vegetables, along with probiotics, has been shown to support healthy function of the parasympathetic nervous system.

For example, one study found that feeding mice a probiotic reduced the amount of stress hormone in their blood. However, when their vagus nerve was cut, the probiotic had no effect. Healthy microbiome in your gut nervous system connects to your brain through your vagus nerve. Research has demonstrated that this connection helps curb anxiety and improve your mood, as many of the mood boosting hormones, like serotonin and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), your chief inhibitory neurotransmitter. “This can be the reason why the gut microbiome seems to affect mood. Low levels of GABA are linked to depression and mood disorders,” according to the study.

In another animal study mice supplemented with the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus experienced various positive changes in GABA receptors that were mediated by the vagus nerve.

5. Exercise and Physical Movement

Exercise helps to activate the parasympathetic state. Any kind of physical movement enhances healthy oxygen and blood flow, stimulating the vagus nerve which travels through both the lungs and the heart.

Research has correlated parasympathetic activation with exercise. The study explored how the vagus nerve stimulates digestive function during exercise and how lack of vagus nerve function compromised this gastric motility during exercise.

Movement and exercise also help you release and discharge stress. In fact, animals naturally shake to release tension after a life-threatening event.

In his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky explains that zebras and other animals dissipate stress by physically shaking to release stress hormones once a danger has passed. Moving your body helps release and discharge these stress hormones and shift out of flight-or-fight mode and into the parasympathetic state.

Benefits of Physical Movement & Yoga

increased flexibility

increased muscle strength and tone

improved respiration, energy and vitality

maintaining a balanced metabolism

weight reduction

cardio and circulatory health

improved athletic performance

protection from injury

6. Yoga

Yoga incorporates poses and breathing exercises that connect the back of the throat to the breath and movement, stimulating the vagus nerve and turning on the parasympathetic system.

For example, Ujjayi breathing, where both inhalation and exhalation are done through the nose, helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Twisted poses stimulate the organs of digestion and elimination that are enervated by your vagus nerve. Yoga also activates your pelvic floor which is connected to your vagus nerve. Similarly, heart opening yoga exercises can help to stimulate the vagus nerve traveling through the heart. Finally, when you end your yoga practice by chanting “OM”, the vibration stimulates your vagus nerve.

Research suggests a link between yoga and increased vagus nerve and parasympathetic system activity. For example, one study found that yogic breathing can stimulate the vagus nerve and increase parasympathetic tone.

7.Massage & Acupuncture Therapies

Massaging certain areas of your body, such as your neck and your foot, helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Research suggests that massaging certain areas like the carotid sinus (located on your neck) can stimulate the vagus nerve. You can also find a place a couple inches out from your collarbones. Use the back of the fingernails to “rake” the nerve downward as this is one location where the vagus nerve is most accessible through the skin. You can also stimulate the neck by doing head rolls. Bring your chin to chest, then roll your head in a complete circle 3-5 times. Reverse the direction of the circle to stimulate your vagus nerve.

Another 2012 research study suggests that pressure massage helped activate the vagus nerve of premature infants as demonstrated by weight gain in infants whose guts were stimulated which is thought to be largely mediated by vagus nerve activation

Reflexology foot massages have also been shown to increase vagal activity and heart rate variability while lowering heart rate and blood pressure, according to a study published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.

Acupuncture has also been shown to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, especially when focused on auricular acupuncture points or acupuncture points in the ear. Research found that auricular acupuncture supports vagal regulation which helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Another study credits some of the benefits of acupuncture near the head and neck to the proximity and stimulation of the vagus nerve (and hence the autonomic nervous system) stimulation with producing the clinical effects of the acupoints. The study notes that “having anatomic access to the vagus nerve and parasympathetic chain that permits electrical stimulation of those nerves in clinical practice, acupuncture may offer a less costly and safe alternative” for vagus nerve stimulation.