I Can and I Will Breathe: The Power of the Vagus Nerve
Camille Lester, MHC
Happy August. How are you holding up, in all honesty? I honor the reality that the summer of 2020 has felt like a blur within a collective and clunky cobbled together mosaic of grief, desire, hope, and mourning. Session after session, my clients and I have grappled with how fast time is passing but also how slow it’s ticking by; while our understanding of the self passes and drags alongside us as well... breathing feeling staggered and shallow.
Day after day, week after week, month after month… there has been something that fundamentally shifted my own understanding of reality. I would be remiss if I did not name the sheer darkness summer 2020 has cast on Black and Brown communities. While it's imperative to note, injustice has been simmering in communities of color across this nation for hundreds of years, for some reason, this summer felt like everything bubbled over and seared a path into collective action; morsels of joy embedded in the unbelievably horrid. I found myself breathing again…
As our homes have suddenly become our offices, we wait anxiously for a call back from work about next steps, we log in each Monday to file for another week of unemployment, we postpone weddings and vacations, we celebrate distanced birthdays, engagements, anniversaries, and we attempt to engage and teach and love on our children (while balancing all of the prior)…. How have you been breathing? As the world is constantly shifting, the intent of this blog is to bring us back to our only constants--our breath + our bodies, by with intention, engaging in breathing as an embodied freedom practice.
Lets get free.
The power of breath:
Breathing is one of the most fundamental aspects to life. Every system in a living beings body relies on oxygen—from cognition to digestion to regulating stress hormones. Breathing is vital.
What is the Vagus Nerve?
The vagus nerve is known as your body’s communication superhighway. Research suggests that tapping into your vagus nerve is a “remote control” to your body’s nervous system. The vagus is the 10th of 12 cranial nerves that extend directly from the brain and provides the primary control for the nervous system's parasympathetic division: the rest-and-digest counterpoint to the sympathetic nervous system's fight-or-flight response. When the body is not under stress, the vagus nerve sends commands that slow heart and breathing rates and increase digestion. In times of stress, control shifts to the sympathetic system, which produces the opposite effect (Gould, 2019). The hope embedded within activating the vagus nerve during times of stress is to honor and acknowledge the moments where your system feels like it is going into a stress/trauma response (i.e. becoming activated, feeling triggered, heart racing, etc.) and with loving awareness begin to activate your parasympathetic (rest) system. Breathing, and breathing with intention, has notable benefits to folks living with depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and post traumatic stress disorder (Briet et al., 2018).
Benefits (Brain- Gut axis)
Large divisions of the vagus nerve reside in the digestive system (aka “2nd brain”). Stimulating our vagus nerve naturally releases serotonin, a neurotransmitter found in the gut and the body’s natural “feel good” chemical. Serotonins impact on the brain could be considered the starring role in the body as it helps regulate mood, focus, calmness, and stabilizes emotions. In moments of stress/anxiety breathing is literally our lifeline and our medicine.
You can and you must breathe.
How to activate:
Place your hands across your chest or wrapped around your stomach in a loving manner
Breathe into your nose until your stomach feels full (deep belly breathing)
Hold your breath for 3-5 seconds
Speak an intention for self (what are you choosing in this moment, “I choose my sacred space” “I am safe” “I am loved” “I am grounded” “I am rooted and my roots extend deep” “love flows through me”
Slowly exhale out of your mouth
Repeat
Committing to a daily practice of breathing/breathwork can be monumental in pushing forth one’s healing work. With loving awareness breathing allows us to notice our bodies reactions to stimuli (the stimuli teaching and revealing to us lessons in the process), gifts us agency to get back into our body and regain control of our response to said stimuli, and connect with our bio-reality/chemistry. Notice how much you are having to breathe and reset and note what situations, what triggers, what posts, what people, what environments, or what commitments are also involved.
An app that I recommend to clients beginning their own breathing practices and that I love to use myself is breathwrk. I also enjoy indulging in the work of the nap bishop, Tricia Hersey (@TheNapMinistry.)
As George Floyd’s, Eric Garner’s, Elijah McClain’s, and… and… last words echo in my mind during moments of reflection; i've made a promise to them… as long as I can, I WILL breathe. For my community. For my family. For my clients. For healing. For my body.
Breathe.
Take good care,
C