The Unsung Hero of Healing: Understanding the Vagus Nerve
When we talk about healing from trauma, emotional regulation, and even physical health, one key player that we must consider — the vagus nerve. This incredible part of our body holds the power to transform how we feel, heal, and connect.
Let’s dive into why the vagus nerve matters so much — and how learning to support it can open new pathways to well-being.
What Is the Vagus Nerve?
The vagus nerve (which means “wandering” in Latin) is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It’s called the "wandering nerve" because it travels all the way from your brainstem, weaving through your face, throat, heart, lungs, and digestive system — touching almost every major organ along the way.
Think of it like a communication superhighway between your brain and body. It constantly sends information back and forth, helping you feel safe, stay regulated, digest your food, slow your heart rate, and even connect emotionally with others.
The Vagus Nerve’s Purpose: More Than Just Relaxation
One of the vagus nerve’s main jobs is regulating the parasympathetic nervous system — the "rest and digest" system that helps us feel calm, safe, and grounded. When the vagus nerve is working well, your body knows how to shift out of fight-or-flight mode when the danger has passed.
It’s responsible for:
Slowing your heart rate after stress
Deepening your breathing
Promoting healthy digestion
Supporting immune system function
Helping you feel connected, compassionate, and emotionally balanced
But its role goes even deeper than simply helping us relax.
The vagus nerve is stimulated with every breath you take and every move you make. Each inhale and exhale, each shift of your posture, each beat of your heart — all of these rhythms send signals through the vagus nerve, influencing your inner state.
It is beautifully and complexly woven throughout your body, acting like a living thread that connects your brain to your face, throat, lungs, heart, gut, and even your immune system. It listens carefully to your internal world — how you're breathing, how your heart is beating, how your digestion is functioning — and it carries that information back up to your brain, shaping how safe or stressed you feel.
At the same time, your brain sends messages down the vagus nerve, adjusting your body’s systems moment by moment. This two-way flow is happening constantly, outside of your conscious awareness, creating a dynamic conversation between your mind and body.
When we understand just how integrated the vagus nerve is — how it participates in our breath, voice, heartbeat, digestion, facial expressions, and emotional experiences — we begin to see that healing isn’t a matter of trying harder to calm down. It’s about learning to work with the systems already designed to help us restore balance.
Your body is wired for healing. The vagus nerve is one of the most powerful ways that inner healing unfolds.
Vagal Tone: Why It Matters for Healing
You might hear therapists and somatic practitioners talk about "vagal tone." In simple terms, vagal tone describes how flexible and responsive your vagus nerve is.
High vagal tone means your body can more easily return to a calm, regulated state after stress. You feel more resilient, grounded, and emotionally available.
Low vagal tone means it’s harder to recover after challenges. You might feel anxious, disconnected, exhausted, or shut down for long periods.
Why the Vagus Nerve Is Central to Trauma Healing
When you’ve lived in survival mode for a long time, it can feel like calm and safety are out of reach.
Trauma and chronic stress wire the nervous system to stay alert for danger — even when the threat is no longer present.
Over time, this ongoing state of hypervigilance deeply impacts the vagus nerve. Instead of flowing freely between states of activation and rest, the nervous system can get stuck in patterns of fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown. The vagus nerve, which normally helps signal safety and relaxation to your body, becomes overwhelmed or underactive. It struggles to send the "all clear" signals that tell your body it's safe to soften, digest, connect, or rest.
This can show up in many ways:
Racing thoughts and difficulty slowing down
Shallow or rapid breathing
Chronic digestive issues
Difficulty sleeping or feeling rested
Emotional numbness or feeling disconnected from yourself and others
Overreactive emotional responses, or feeling "on edge" much of the time
In a survival state, the vagus nerve’s natural rhythms of regulation are disrupted. Even when you're physically safe, your body and brain may not feel safe. The internal alarms stay on, preparing you for danger that never comes — exhausting your system over time and making true relaxation feel nearly impossible.
Importantly, this is not a sign of weakness or brokenness. It’s your body doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you. Trauma doesn’t just live in memories — it lives in the body’s protective wiring, in the very circuits that were built to keep you alive during overwhelming times.
The good news is that this wiring isn’t permanent. Because of neuroplasticity and the inherent wisdom of your body, with the right support, these survival-based patterns can begin to soften. The vagus nerve can learn to recognize safety again. Healing is about gently and consistently sending new messages to your nervous system — messages that say, "It’s safe to be here now."
The good news? Your vagus nerve can be supported and healed
Thanks to the incredible power of neuroplasticity — your nervous system’s ability to rewire, adapt, and grow — it’s never too late to help this vital part of your body function more smoothly. The vagus nerve isn’t a rigid structure; it’s dynamic and responsive, capable of strengthening and creating new pathways when given the right support. Through gentle, consistent practices like mindful breathing, movement, vocal exercises, and safe connection, you can nurture your vagus nerve and restore a greater sense of balance, resilience, and safety within yourself. Healing the vagus nerve is really a process of reawakening the natural pathways of regulation your body already holds, patiently guiding it back toward ease, connection, and well-being.
You can play an active role in supporting and healing your vagus nerve.
Every time you practice mindful breathing, soothing movement, vocal exercises, or safe connection, you are actively inviting healing into your system. Little by little, you are retraining your nervous system to recognize safety, build resilience, and return to a state of deeper ease and connection. Healing your vagus nerve is not about forcing change — it's about creating the conditions of safety where healing naturally unfolds.
Small daily practices can make a big difference in nurturing your vagus nerve, such as:
Slow, deep breathing, especially longer exhales
Humming, chanting, or singing (which stimulate the vagus through the throat)
Cold exposure (like splashing cool water on your face)
Gentle movement and stretching
Mindful connection — making eye contact, smiling, spending time with safe, supportive people
Somatic therapy and nervous system work — like the modalities I integrate in my practice
By intentionally working with your vagus nerve, you are giving your body new experiences of safety — experiences it can start to recognize, trust, and return to more easily over time.
