Hi, this is Ron Huxley with the second part on how to hack your nervous system. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about how to hack the vagus nerve. We talked a little bit about it through some of the other lessons more in depth in the first part of hacking your nervous system that had heart connection, will also have a really great handout that you can look at in our resource section that will talk about the science of safety and the polyvagal theory. So I won't go into a lot more detail here, except to give a brief overview again of why we want to what the biggest nerve is and why we want to hack it. The Vegas nerve has become one of the most hottest piece of research in the field of anatomy and attachment and stress, because the Vegas nerve is responsible for the balance between our sympathetic and our parasympathetic system.

As I mentioned in the head, heart connection, the Vegas nerve responds to is responsible in large part for the connection between the head and the heart to bring a balance in the sympathetic, which is the gas of our nervous system and the parasympathetic, which is the brake of our nervous system, now on the science of politic, the political science, it will talk a little bit about how this is really called the rest and digest. That's significant for us here because the rest and digest is a key component of our nervous system. Given that many of our nerves are not in our that responsible for intelligence or information gathering for deciding Cibrian safety or managing mood and emotion. It, it doesn't reside in our head, it resides in our gut and in our internal organs. It's a very significant part that brings information to the table. So what we want to do is we want to hack the vagus nerve so that we can increase neural resilience IE a strong vagal tone, ie a very dominant and trustworthy, parasympathetic system.

You don't want to drive in a car where you have no brakes, not going to be a good situation. So, here's some ways that you can help your vagus nerve be strong or have a strong tone. So the first thing is the simplest and that just breathing. We talked about this before we'll be talking about it again, because breath is important and vital to our body into our brain. Now, a may different ways to do breathing exercises. There's a lot of different methods out there, all of them are good.

And the head heart connection we talked about simply breathing in and out to the count of 10. Inhale being on the odd numbers and exhale being on the even numbers. That's a fine way to do it. You can mat mix and match it up with whatever works for you. For you, right now I'm going to teach you what is called four square breathing. Now, of course, bear breathing is defined because it has sort of four elements like four sides of a square, where we are going to breathe in for a four second count that we're going to hold that breath in, for a force that can count than ever going to exhale for a four second count, hold that exhale for four seconds, and then repeat.

So it's a lot like a square. So we have inhale, hold, exhale, hold, and then we do it over and over again. So I'm going to do this with you just give you one example of it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to raise my hand up when we're inhaling and then hold my hand out or we're holding, and then we're going to decrease my hand when we're exhaling. And then holding it once again, just so you get the visual as well as me using the fourth count. So here we go.

We're going to breathe in for four So you do that new number of times in succession, what you will find is that you begin to have a slower heart rate, your digestion you won't feel as but your digestion will improve. And you'll feel just the overall sense of ease or calmness, which is exactly what we want to do in this section for neural resilience. We want to promote sense of safety. Now, again, you can use breathing work with a lot of other different functions. A lot of people really recommend meditation. We're going to talk about meditation and mindfulness throughout this series as well.

And there are a lot of different ways based on bond people, different faith backgrounds, a lot of different lifestyles and philosophy. You can Use any and all those different forms of meditation along with your breathing because breathing is really essential to having good meditation and meditation, it's going to be crucial to be a part of your breathing. So that goes hand in hand with each other. So meditation can be a helpful tool or trick. Also because the vagus nerve has a lot to do with our throat and our mouth and our swallowing, again, it's that rest digest that we'll talk about in the polyvagal theory article, but that rest and digest is crucial because then the nerve endings are around our mouth, and our swallowing reflex reflex. So breathing obviously, is a big part of that.

Another form of that breathing exercise which really accentuate the your voice and your mouth is to do what's called balloon breathing. So as long as like you're breathing, you're blowing up a balloon. So we would purse your lips when you're blowing exhaling out air. Again, laying them in as at the bloom was sucking in sucking in air from the balloon, so it'd be like. So hope you hear that. So that's the kind of the idea that you want to use when you're doing balloon breathing and incorporates voice.

Other elements of using your voice or your mouth would be to sing, or to hump and or laughter. Again, this incorporates many other systems within the body. And we talk about laughter specifically when we talk about the reading section because one of the tools there will be to use laughter to live out our anxiety, which is a trick that helps us with social anxiety, very powerful, but it also releases a lot of pleasurable hormones throughout the body that will produce dopamine and just a sense of reward and positivity. So that has a Another benefit beyond that singing and humming, incorporate the tongue and the plate in the mouth, encourage appropriate your voice. There's again that sound that comes out, that will stimulate the vagus nerve. And in addition to that there's prosody and voice.

The prosody of voice basically means a sort of a singsong sense of voice. Now, this is something that's come out again through the polyvagal theory and attachment research that demonstrates that prosody of voice is very important in the relationship between a infant and their parent and this situation, we'll talk about an infant and their mother. So when a mother talks to their baby, they use prosody of voice so they'll say, we'll talk in a singsong voice saying, Oh, are you so cute? Like your little toes while you're smiling? Yes, Mama loves you. And so we use this sort of natural voice, voice tone.

That we sent a team to only do with babies and animals. I don't know why we do it just those two. But that is very common to all cultures, so is universal. And research from the attachment field demonstrates that children who hear this who are very much in their right hemisphere of their brain, which registers both gold tone, and because their words are not developed, which is a left brain function, that will then be a way for them to begin to learn how to communicate. It's kind of pre verbal approach to language. It's also the way that the infant and the mother will communicate with one another.

It also because it's responding to in the right hemisphere of the brain, which is very closely connected to our limbic or emotional centers of our brain will produce a sense of peacefulness and calmness which affects our vagal tone which affects our parasympathetic system, etc. Now infants who have been studied that have good digestion, have good gastric motility, who seem to be developing, well have a very strong vagal tone. And just opposite is true. Infants that have a very weak vagal tone will have trouble in all these areas, they won't nurse as well, they won't communicate as well to have trouble interacting with the parents, which this brings out that polyvagal idea social engagement because again, the so part of the nerves are in the face, as well as the ear. So what we hear and how we express our feelings and how we register other people's feelings, all as wrapped up one with another.

So another way that incorporate a strict creating strong vagal tone is just drinking water swallowing reflex. So the more when we swallowing that reflex. Drinking in the water have both the beneficial fats of water itself, but also increases vagal tone. Obviously a good way to have strong results. Not just to have a good, strong, healthy life so that if you exercise we have good sleep, you get good nutrition. All these things greatly impact your vagal tone and create neural resilience.

Additionally, I'm not a doctor, but we have a really helpful article on how to have a healthy gut. Happy gut are how happy feelings along with a healthy gut. And if you read through the article, you'll see that having just good nutrition as well as use of probiotics that create good Flora within the gut, where the bagel nerves surround, as well as many other nerve surround, that will create a very strong neural resilience as well. So very useful help with that. In regards to the social engagement system, one of the ways that we can create a we can hack our nervous system with hacking the vagal tone. vago bear is to have close intimate, positive relationships.

This is really important for us. connection because there is evidence to suggest that the vagus nerve also affects the release our secretion oxytocin. oxytocin is a bonding hormone is the hormone that brings pleasure but as usually comes up only in connection with other humans, so the mother and the baby when they're close connection, there are swallowing from the breast milk there is interaction with the prosody of voice there is facial recognition that's going on between the baby and the child icontact. And oxytocin is released in the warmth and closeness in the presence of this positive caregiver. And that helps with development helps with brain growth helps with emotional regulation. It helps with a host of different things that even impact a baby's ability to digest that milk and create a sense of attachment and love that fosters between the mother and the child.

So having strong relationships, having good friendships as well. Important and you can see how anxiety with regulating social anxiety can get in the way. What is really the thing we need to do the most, we often try to avoid the thing that creates pain or distress or feels like danger, or feels threatening humiliation in this case for social anxiety. But actually, that connection is what really is going to create a very strong neural resilient system. So that we are anxiety proof, cold shower, or even cold water on the face creates a startle reflex, sometimes even taking ice cubes and putting them on the face can help with creating this blood circulation and startle reflex which will tend to stimulate that parasympathetic system. Now, what would think that what is doing is starting the sympathetic nervous system, but the coldness is more related to the parasympathetic so it creates a parasympathetic response.

So I hope these are did help you as you are learning to build a strong anxiety proof Nervous System IE a sense of neuro resiliency