Understanding your vagus nerve - and how to get it back to baseline - is a critical aspect of physical and mental wellbeing. 

Here’s the thing. Our brains aren’t optimised for rational thinking, or surprisingly, even happiness. They’re optimised for survival. 

Say it with me - thank you brain for helping me stay alive, even during life’s most challenging moments. 

Our nervous system - which involves our brain and body - does what nervous systems do to help get us through stressful or even traumatic situations. This includes entering into states colloquially known as “fight”, “flight”, “freeze”, or “fawn”.

The problem isn’t entering those states - it’s getting stuck in them. Not coming back to baseline - where you feel relaxed, social, and capable of handling challenges - can lead to chronic nervous system dysregulation. 

Having now worked with hundreds of patients and taught over 20,000 students, I argue that chronic nervous system dysregulation is the overlooked root cause of myriad health issues including anxiety, depression, gut issues, burnout, IBS, some autoimmune disorders and persistent pain. 

Further, as part of a centuries old ingrained habit of medical gaslighting, women especially are more likely to have their very real pain dismissed by doctors as “psychosomatic” or “not that bad”. Feeling hopeless, they may even habituate to the pain. But we’re not helpless here, we can restore a sense of agency - we just need the right knowledge and tools to do so. We can reset our nervous system.

The vagus nerve 

Introducing: the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a major nerve that connects our brain with our most important systems, via our neck, chest, heart and lungs, to our gut. Understanding how the vagus nerve functions, and how to strengthen it, is a major unlock for addressing health problems at the source. 

For a more concrete example of what nervous system dysregulation can look like, consider two brave men who’ve shown these states in the public eye recently - ABC weather reporter Nate Bryne and Olympic boxer Harry Gearside. 

Last week, Nate experienced an on-air panic attack (a classic “fight or flight” response that’s gone into overdrive), who was fortunately supported by his team in a caring and professional way. Meanwhile, at the Paris Olympics, Australian boxer Harry Gearside spoke in an emotional post-match interview about his feelings of inner numbness, which indicate a classic period of dissociation as a way of coping with stress (“freeze”). 

Improving vagal tone 

Feeling anxiety or even panic like Nate from time to time is normal, but staying there literally exhausts our nervous systems. In this context, talk therapy has its limitations because it ignores the fact that stress and trauma is imprinted in the body. It also ignores that for people like Harry Gearside who we see enter into that more collapsed, dissociative state, talking can feel impossible and even be counterproductive. You have to bring the body into the conversation, to help ensure that the body and brain are communicating effectively with each other. 

Each one of us has our own nervous systems with its own unique histories, but in the same way that we can tone our muscles through training and exercise, we can also improve the function of our vagus nerve by building vagal tone. This in turn increases our “window of tolerance”, allowing us to move through different states with ease. 

A beginners guide to a nervous system reset

1. The first practical approach to building vagal tone is through co-regulation. Despite society’s messages that we need to tough life out alone, we literally need one another. If we think about our nervous system as a thermostat in a house – and sometimes when we’ve got challenges, the temperature goes up a bit higher, or it might go a bit colder, but ideally we want to come back to that set point, where we feel the most comfortable. If you have a partner, friend or colleague who is at their baseline and able to be present, they can help you to coax your nervous system back towards your baseline. 

2. The second is a trusty 10-minute walk around the block, office, or park. Personally, I love the ocean. Given that 80 per cent of the messages whizzing around your vagus nerve are being sent from your body to your brain, simply experiment and see how different your thoughts (i.e. cognition) are before and after a walk. Simple, but profound shifts are possible in a relatively short time frame.    

3. The third way is to connect with your immediate environment through your body. Start to use your sense of touch to pay attention to what’s around you, be it the chair that you’re sitting in, or the sensation of a cool breeze against your skin. This will help you to shift your attention to the body, and away from the mind. 

It’s important to note that the responsibility of good physical and mental health does not rest solely on the individual - we live in an interconnected society and our peaceful coexistence relies on good governance, a vibrant economy, respectful relations between all genders, and a connected and supportive social life. All of these aspects feed into what’s happening in our nervous systems.

But given what understanding the vagus nerve can unlock for people, it remains an underlooked part of the overall health picture. A healthy, flexible nervous system is one that can respond to all the challenges and opportunities that life has to offer fully in the present - and we all deserve no less than that.