Vagus Nerve Techniques: 8 Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety and Stress With

When we seek out therapy to cope with our anxiety symptoms, we are often encouraged to utilize various tools, such as deep breathing to practice mindfulness, and/or focus on a healthy diet, but why does this work?

According to polyvagal theory by Dr Stephen Porges, the act of activating your vagus nerve allows you to go from triggering the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the fight or flight response, to activating the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the rest and digest response. When activating the PNS, we begin to relax, our body achieves a more balanced oxygen intake, our heart rate lowers, blood pressure is reduced, and our stress hormone- cortisol is disengaged. At the same time, our neurotransmitters (the ones responsible for calming us) are increased. And finally, it allows us to connect ourselves to the present moment, our body, and provides a distraction from anxious thoughts.

What is the vagus nerve?

A deep understanding of the human body, how it functions, and all the intricate parts is needed to fully understand and explain the complete process the vagus nerve is responsible for, and how the nervous system functions. I am going to explain this topic here, but I highly encourage individuals to talk with their primary care doctors and other experts to gain a better understanding.

“The vagus nerve represents the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system, which oversees a vast array of crucial bodily functions, including control of mood, immune response, digestion, and heart rate” (Breit, et al, 2018). This nerve stretches from your brainstem down into your stomach and intestines. It is what supplies your heart and lungs, and connects your throat and facial muscles. In addition to its physical location, it helps to reduce inflammation and influences our immune response. It is the body’s communication highway and allows your organs to communicate with each other, the hormone release systems, the immune response systems, and the functions of the brain.

What is the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)?

The parasympathetic nervous system or PNS is part of our body’s autonomic systems, one that we don’t need to participate in for it to function. Some examples of these autonomic systems are heartbeat, breathing, digestion, immune response, hormone release, and inflammation response. However, we can recalibrate it (in a way). By retraining our system to discontinue sending communication to react to stress in a negative way, we learn and set up a healthy, more productive way to manage stress.

Here are 8 ways to reduce anxiety and your body’s response to stress, thereby activating your vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system to respond.

Always check with your doctor to make sure the activities below are safe for you to participate in and/or whenever you begin a new exercise routine.

1. Connect with others and with something greater than yourself.

According to Vernon B. Williams, MD, “when we engage with something greater than ourselves and feel a sense of connection to others and the outside world, it activates the vagus nerve…” (Paturel, 2024).

By activating the vagus nerve, we are essentially able to hijack the parasympathetic response versus a sympathetic one, resulting in feeling calmer, more relaxed, and gaining a general sense of wellbeing.

How you can do this:

Socialize/Engage with others:

Make a regular plan to socialize, go out to have a healthy meal with friends or family, interact with new people by joining something you enjoy (pottery class, bible study class, a dart league, volunteer for a cause you care about).

Get outside:

Take a walk outdoors with a friend/loved one, engage with the outside world, nature, something physically larger than you.

Music:

Listen to new music, explore new bands, artists, genres, etc…, seek out local artists or bands.

Create:

Engage in an artistic or creative project, activate your imagination, join an art or pottery class, start crocheting or knitting, make a vision board.

Challenge Yourself:

Do something challenging. Learn to play an instrument, set up a new challenge for yourself, learn to read music, complete simple math problems, do a crossword puzzle or word search, play sudoku, engage in brain games, learn a new way to cope.

Expand Your Horizon:

Learn a new language, connect with others in another country through apps that allow for language learning, challenge yourself with learning about a new culture, travel, read, take a class. Click here to visit an example of a website that offers a language/culture community via a subscription service. Or an example of a free option is the app Duolingo.

2. Meditation and Yoga

Meditation and yoga have a long history of providing a general sense of wellbeing, encouraging mindfulness, and aiding in wellness. Meditation and yoga help to reduce anxiety by allowing us to be mindfully present, aware of our thinking, the positive and the negative thoughts, and increases our focus on what is, versus what was or what will be. There are so many options to add either one of these to your daily routine. There are creative offerings in-person or virtually, free, low-cost, and regular pay.

Explore some of the ideas below

Join a structured class:

Look at your local community guide for low-cost or free classes offered or utilize Google to find classes near you. You can also explore what’s available virtually.

Explore what YouTube has to offer:

You can look up specific meditations or yoga vloggers on YouTube. Some of the vloggers offer topic specific yoga, such as, anxiety, grief, depression, back pain, etc… When searching for meditation, there are options that have a visual component to them as well.

Find an example of a yoga vlog here

Seek out an app to download:

You can find apps that allow you to take meditation and yoga on the go. Some of these apps require you to pay for services within the app, while others will offer free options.

Explore a list of suggested meditation apps at https://www.verywellmind.com/best-meditation-apps-4767322

Turn to a podcast:

You can find podcasts that offer extensive information on yoga, auditory meditations and step-by-step verbal directions on yoga positions. Check out some yoga podcasts here.

Research through reading:

There are books that go into depth about meditation and yoga, if you aren’t ready to begin joining in yet, engage your mind in the history, the how-to, and the benefits of meditation and yoga.

3. Basic Healthy Living

There is evidence supporting that eating a healthy diet can aid in the body’s stress recovery system. “There is preliminary evidence for gut bacteria to have beneficial effects on mood and anxiety, partly by affecting the activity of the vagus nerve” (Breit, et al, 2018).

Ways you can move towards a healthier lifestyle

4. Mindfulness Exercises

Mindfulness exercises are a great way of keeping your mind in the present moment. This can assist with reducing future or past thoughts and allow you to control what is in your control, the now. A few examples of mindfulness exercises are grounding, body scanning, mindful eating, and journaling.

Here is an example of a grounding exercise

Watch how to do a body scanning exercise 

5. Ocular Exercise

Utilizing ocular exercises can prompt a vagal nerve response and assist in relaxing your body or feeling more calm.

Watch an example of an ocular exercise

6. Breathing Exercise 

Deep and intentional breathing has been linked to improving stress resilience and reducing anxiety. An example of a breathing exercise you can do when you’re feeling higher stress or anxiety is called the “Physiological Sigh”. Our bodies will naturally do this during times of heightened stress, but you can do this with intention to assist in reducing your stress or anxiety, in real time.  What is the Physiological Sigh? It is the action of taking two inhales, through the nose, with a long exhale through the mouth.

Watch the video for a guided physiological sigh 

7.  Throat Exercise

Activating the throat muscles can assist in the activation of the vagal nerve. This can be done by gargling water, humming a tune, and/or singing a song.

This video will guide you in activating your throat muscles 

8. Cold Exercise 

Always speak with your doctor and use safety protocols when using this technique.

Short-term exposure to cold temperatures can help to stimulate the vagus nerve and reduce the body’s stress response. This can be done in a few ways: taking a cold shower, using cold water to wash your face, putting ice on the back of your neck near your occipital nerve or on your wrists, slowly drinking ice water, and/or polar plunges.

To learn more about cold and how it affects our body, watch this video 

Sources:

Breit, Sigrid, Kupferberg, Aleksandra, Rogler, Gerhard, Hasler, Gregor. March 13, 2018. Vagus Nerve as Modulator of the Brain-Gut Axis in Psychiatric and Inflammatory Disorders.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5859128/

Paturel, Amy, March 21, 2024. Bolster Your Brain by Stimulating the Vagus Nerve. https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/stimulating-the-vagus-nerve.html