JJ Virgin explains how the vagus nerve works like a train track carrying either safety or trauma responses. Breathwork and humming meant to tone it can backfire, triggering intense physiological reactions and releasing stored trauma, as seen at meditation retreats where participants shake and scream.
Okay. So let's talk vagus nerve because there's, you know, now the whole, it's starting to get to be really trendy.
Yes, it is.
Vagus nerve.
Vagus nerve toning.
Vagus nerve toning. Basic. So, so what's the story with all of that? Is this one of the things that you could do to start to shift your biology?
Here's the science about the vagus nerve that people need to know. The vagus nerve is just the train tracks. It depends on which train is running down the tracks. And we can have the train that says, I feel safe and secure. We call that parasympathetic or social engagement. This is where you're going to be in your best health and your best self, but that's only one of the trains that run down that vagus nerve track. The other train is the trauma response train. So the trauma response is communicated to the whole body through the vagus nerve. This is the train that will tell your cells, your mitochondria, your digestive system to shut down. And so that would not be the vagus nerve that you want to tone and strengthen. But what happens to a lot of people is that if they're doing breathwork to try to tone their vagus nerve, or maybe they're doing different humming or gargling, they can have some intense reactions and not understand it because they think, oh, I'm supposed to be toning my vagus nerve. Because it's only going to bring me a sense of safety and security. And that's not true. When we work with the vagus nerve, it can also tap into the trauma that's stored in our body and gut.
Well, having been through a lot of meditation retreats, I have seen people releasing that trauma. And it's quite— I mean, it's quite something like they have a whole medical team on board and people will be shaking uncontrollably, screaming, like there's a whole lot of stuff. And I will tell you, I look at that and go, well, I want that because I look, I could get better out than in, you know, I want what they have.
I want the outcome. Yes. And you know, this is where, I mean, I just, I love the science. I love to geek out on the science to really be able to see that the vagus nerve is what connects our emotions to our physiology. And so when I am in a state of fear in my daily life, I can know for sure that it's affecting my biology, that it's affecting my physiology. That it's impacting my immune system. It's impacting my metabolism. I don't have to wonder, even if I don't see it immediately, I know it's happening underneath the surface. And so the importance of a person being able to know moment by moment throughout their day, am I in a place of fear right now? Am I in place of overwhelm right now? Or am I in my window of capacity that I'm doing okay?
