Oct. 24, 2024
The Role of the Vagus Nerve in Yoga Practice
Learn how yoga stimulates the vagus nerve, promoting relaxation, reducing stress, and supporting your mental and physical health.
When you read the word "wanderer," what comes to mind? Perhaps a traveler, moving freely from place to place. But did you know that the word vagus in Latin means "wanderer"? It’s a perfect name for the vagus nerve, which winds its way from the brainstem through the body, connecting to vital organs like the heart, lungs, and digestive system. This nerve does more than just wander—it’s essential for regulating your body’s relaxation response.
Our body’s “wanderer” works hand-in-hand with the parasympathetic nervous system, often referred to as the “rest and digest” system. The vagus nerve plays a crucial role in calming the body after stress and returning it to a state of balance.
This is where yoga comes in. For thousands of years, the practice of yoga has harnessed this ancient wisdom to stimulate the vagus nerve and promote relaxation. Today, our science is finally catching up to what these traditions have known all along: yoga is a powerful ways to activate the vagus nerve and support overall well-being.
What is the Vagus Nerve?
Let’s break it down. The vagus nerve is one of the longest and most complex nerves in your body. It starts in the brainstem and runs through the neck and chest, branching out to vital organs like the heart, lungs, and digestive system.
You might imagine the vagus nerve as an intricate river system, flowing from its source in the brainstem and branching into numerous tributaries throughout the body. Like a river that nourishes the land it passes through, the vagus nerve extends its reach to vital organs such as the heart, lungs, spleen, liver, diaphragm, and intestines. Each "tributary" of this neural river plays a crucial role in regulating functions that are essential to your body's ability to relax and recover from stress.
The vagus nerve’s primary role is helping the body shift into rest-and-digest mode after stress. It does this by slowing the heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and supporting digestion.
What makes the vagus nerve so central in yoga practice? It constantly communicates between the brain and vital organs, helping to manage the body's response to stress. Through deep breathing and gentle yoga poses, you can stimulate this nerve, promoting relaxation and reducing tension.
Is the Vagus Nerve Only for Relaxing?
The vagus nerve is best known for its role in activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps calm the body through the "rest and digest" response. However, it plays a more complex role than just promoting relaxation. The vagus nerve helps maintain homeostasis—the body’s internal balance—so it can also influence upregulation when needed, allowing you to feel energized and focused.
Here’s how this works:
- Relaxation and Downregulation: Most commonly, the vagus nerve helps the body downregulate after stress by lowering the heart rate, reducing blood pressure, and promoting digestion. This is particularly helpful when you’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious, as it brings the body into a state of calm.
- Energizing and Upregulation: While the vagus nerve primarily aids in relaxation, proper vagal tone can also help with upregulation. By maintaining balance in the body, it enhances your ability to switch between states of relaxation and alertness. When your vagus nerve is toned, it allows you to recover from stress more easily, leading to improved energy and focus.
In some cases, techniques like cold exposure or breath-holding have been shown to briefly engage the sympathetic nervous system (the "fight or flight" response), offering a temporary boost in alertness and energy. However, breath-holding should never be practiced in water, as this can be dangerous. These techniques, when practiced safely, may activate a short-term stress response, followed by the vagus nerve's calming effect to bring the body back to balance.
Although the vagus nerve doesn't directly energize you, stimulating it through yoga, breathwork, and even cold exposure helps improve your overall energy balance. This creates a more flexible system, allowing you to access both relaxation and alertness as needed, based on your body's demands.
What is Vagal Toning?
Toning the vagus nerve means strengthening and enhancing its function, which helps the body manage stress and maintain internal balance more effectively. A toned vagus nerve can better regulate the parasympathetic nervous system, leading to improved relaxation, a lowered heart rate, better digestion, and faster recovery from stress.When we talk about vagal tone, we’re referring to the activity level of the parasympathetic nervous system. Higher vagal tone is linked to improved physical and mental health, including:
- Reduced inflammation: A well-toned vagus nerve helps decrease inflammation, boosting the immune system.
- Better emotional regulation: It supports better management of stress and anxiety.
- Improved heart health: Higher vagal tone is connected to heart rate variability (HRV), which is a key indicator of heart health.
- Enhanced digestion: A well-functioning vagus nerve improves digestion by helping regulate gut function.
The more you engage in practices that stimulate the vagus nerve—like yoga, breathwork, and meditation—the stronger your vagal tone becomes, allowing your body to shift between relaxation and action more efficiently.
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Five Ways to Stimulate the Vagus Nerve
While yoga is an effective—and our favourite—way to activate the vagus nerve, there are other simple practices that can also help stimulate it. These methods, much like yoga, can promote calm and improve your overall health.
1. Take a Breath
Slow, deep belly breathing is one of the most straightforward ways to stimulate the vagus nerve. Focusing on your breath during times of stress helps shift your attention away from the mind and toward the rhythm of the breath.
Try this: Breathe in through your nose for six counts and exhale through your mouth for eight counts, watching your belly expand and contract.
2. Meditate
Meditation and mindfulness activate the vagus nerve and calm the body’s stress response. Studies show that regular meditation lowers heart rate and blood pressure, improving both mental and physical health.
Try this: Take short breaks throughout the day to pause and focus on your surroundings. Use simple breathing techniques to relax your mind.
3. Exercise Physical activity, especially endurance exercises like jogging, cycling, and swimming, can stimulate the vagus nerve. Exercise enhances brain function, improves mood, and strengthens parasympathetic activity, which may explain the "runner’s high" many athletes experience. Try this: Engage in moderate to intense endurance activities for 30-60 minutes a few times a week to stimulate the vagus nerve. We have plenty of classes available once you start your free trial.
4. Hum or Sing The vagus nerve is connected to the vocal cords, so activities that engage your voice, like humming, singing, or chanting, can stimulate it. These vocal practices help soothe the nervous system and promote relaxation. Try this: Hum or chant softly for a few minutes when you need to relax. Singing in the shower counts, too!
5. Massage Physical touch, especially gentle massage of the neck, shoulders, or feet, can stimulate the vagus nerve and lower cortisol levels. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting calm and healing. Try this: Use gentle self-massage techniques or treat yourself to a professional massage to relax and support vagal activity.
The Vagus Nerve and Mental Health
Now, we can’t talk about the vagus nerve without talking about mental heatth, as tehre is a strong connection between them. Stimulating the vagus nerve can help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression by lowering cortisol levels and bringing balance to the nervous system. Yoga provides a natural and accessible way to activate this nerve, making it a powerful tool for supporting mental well-being.
By regularly practicing yoga, you help tone the vagus nerve, making it more efficient at regulating the body’s response to stress. Over time, this creates greater emotional resilience, allowing you to bounce back from stress more easily.
How to Incorporate Vagus Nerve Yoga Into Your Practice
Incorporating yoga that stimulates the vagus nerve doesn’t require a specific style or set of poses. The good news is that any yoga practice can offer benefits, as long as it encourages mindful movement and breathwork. Whether you're doing a flow class, restorative yoga, or focusing on breathwork, yoga in general is effective for vagal stimulation. At Heart and Bones online yoga, you can hit play on any class that suits your mood or needs, and still experience the calming, stress-relieving effects.
We also offer programs and playlists designed to help you stay consistent and make it easy to experience the full benefits of a regular yoga habit.
Daily Practices
You don’t need to overcomplicate your routine. Simply spending a few minutes focusing on breathwork or moving through your favourite yoga poses can help calm the nervous system and support vagal tone. Remember, it's the combination of consistency and mindfulness that really counts.
Consistency is Key
As with any aspect of yoga, consistency is crucial. The more regularly you stimulate the vagus nerve, the better your body becomes at managing stress. Small, daily practices add up over time, bringing long-term benefits that help you feel calmer, more balanced, and resilient.
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