Nervous System Rewire

This session is a guide to recalibrate your nervous system, fostering balance and resilience. Immerse yourself in practices designed to rewire your responses and down-regulate your nervous system. Listen daily to support your nervous system. NOTE: this practice contains an ear massage. The listener is kindly asked to remove their ear buds or headphones to practice the massaging.

Transcript

Welcome to this nervous system rewire practice.

My name is Anais.

I am a trauma informed neuro mindfulness coach and I'm here to help you heal your anxiety and trauma.

In this practice we will be using a selection of somatic practices as well as breathing techniques to help your nervous system regulate itself and come back into what's called the rest,

Digest and repair or heal state.

All the exercises we will be doing today are focused on stimulating the vagus nerve,

The longest nerve in the body,

The mind-body connection,

The brain-gut connection.

When we activate or stimulate this vagus nerve,

Our digestive system,

Reproductive system,

Immune system comes back online.

We can start healing and repairing ourselves on all levels.

So let's get started.

Preferably you can sit for the first part of our practice and later you can go ahead and lie down.

I will communicate this to you as well.

So let's start by sitting upright with your spine long and straight,

Your head looking out forward,

Your shoulders relaxed,

Your eyes can relax in their sockets and you can gently close your eyes.

As you are sitting on the ground,

Your bed or any surface below you,

Start to become aware of the groundedness,

The support that is available to you.

Begin to notice that you can start to let go.

You can start to let go of holding on to tension,

Holding on to stress and you can allow your body to soften into the surface below you.

Start to become aware of the sounds in your environment.

What is a sound furthest away from you?

Can you allow yourself to just listen without painting a picture?

What is a sound closest to you and can you try to do the same?

Just listen.

Now we'll shift into our first practice of the day.

Breathing.

Breathing is one of the most effective and fast ways to regulate the nervous system.

Gently place your hand on your stomach or your belly.

Take a comfortable breath in.

Possibly your breath is reaching up to your chest.

Our aim is to move our breath lower into the stomach and to use our breathing muscle,

The diaphragm,

To breathe.

So as you start to breathe comfortably and deeply now,

Can you allow your breath to move deeper towards your stomach or possibly towards your lower belly?

Allow your exhales to come naturally and do their own thing.

The inhale always follows as your body's natural response.

Can you give yourself a little bit more space to breathe deeply and perhaps it helps to imagine that your belly is like a balloon that you are blowing air into.

As you inhale,

Your belly rises.

As you exhale,

Your belly falls.

Beautiful.

From this place of deep belly breathing,

Let's breathe together.

Exhale the breath that you are on now and now inhale and exhale.

Really stretch out your exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Allow your breath to gently flow and notice how you feel.

We'll now move into a self-massage technique.

Place both your index fingers in your ears.

Feel your ear canal and begin to massage the back of the ear canal,

Moving your fingers in semi-circles.

Notice what pace and which pressure feels comfortable to you in this moment.

Gently massaging the inside of your ear,

The back of the ear canal.

Don't go too far in your ear.

Simply feel that edge of the ear canal and massage it comfortably and gently.

Perhaps during our time together you might feel a need to yawn or take a deep sigh.

These are signs that your nervous system is discharging,

Down-regulating into the state of safety.

Allow it all to happen.

Now take your fingers out of your ears and place them on the top of your ears.

Put your thumb in the front and your index finger and middle finger in the back.

Gently massage the top of your ear.

Perhaps you might want to pull gently your ear up towards the ceiling.

Relax your belly.

Gently make your way down to the side of your ears and then gently coming down from the side of the ears all the way to the earlobe.

Massaging the earlobe in a way that feels perfect for you.

Possibly stretching out the earlobe,

Gently pulling it down just a little bit.

Take your time.

Take a deep breath.

Maintain the awareness inside your body.

There is no need to hold tension anywhere but also forgive yourself for holding tension.

This is a subconscious response.

There is nothing wrong with you.

We are actively releasing any built-up stress or tension right now.

Now take your fingers and place your ears in between your fingers.

Place your ring finger and pinky finger at the front of your ear,

At your tragus,

The small part where your ear begins and bring your index finger and middle finger at the back of the ear.

Gently start massaging up and down,

Touching the tragus with your pinky and ring finger and touching the back of the ear,

Almost touching your scalp with your index finger and middle finger.

Take a few breaths and notice again which pace feels right for you and which pressure feels right,

Making sure you are touching the tragus as that is where the vagus nerve directly ends in the auricular branch.

By massaging the ear we are directly activating the vagus nerve,

The parasympathetic nervous system.

Notice how this feels in your body,

What is happening inside of you.

Now release your hands and simply be for a few seconds in the stillness and silence of this present moment.

We will close off our practice together with some neuromodulation techniques.

We will be using our throat,

Our voice to activate the vagus nerve one last time.

The vagus nerve runs from your brain all the way down to your gut.

It runs through your ears and your throat.

You can gargle water,

Sing or hum.

These are all ways to activate the vagus nerve and bring calm into your body and mind.

Together today we will practice chanting.

We will make a VU sound.

I invite you to think about the horn of a big boat.

We will chant VU three times together.

During the chanting I invite you to relax your belly and become aware of the vibrations in your whole body.

Exhale the breath that you are on now.

Take a comfortable breath in and let's begin.

VU Allow your breath to find its natural rhythm and notice any sensations in your body right now.

Give yourself time and space to feel the effects and integrate them into your life.

Take with you extended exhales,

Ear massaging and throat activation whenever you need it.

Notice how you feel right now.

Bring your hands onto your heart and take a moment to extend gratitude,

Appreciation and love to yourself.

When we are doing this work,

It is not only about releasing stress,

Letting go of the built up energy.

It is also about bringing in what was missing.

If we were missing safety,

We bring it in.

If we were missing love,

We bring it in.

Give yourself what you truly need and allow yourself to be carried and held in your own compassionate presence or possibly also in the compassionate presence of your support network.

I am here for you.

I extend my love and gratitude to you.

Thank you for being here.

Reviews

Beautiful meditation! I woke up feeling very regulated . Hoping that this helps me through the day. A little less sleep than normal however, when I woke up, I just felt inside like my body was shaking… This helped to soothe things and it may come back to it again today the only part I was confused about was where to place my fingers on the outer part of the ear

This was amazing. I have never activated parasympaticus so quickly from the pretty bad PEM state I was in. Thank you.

I really feel warm and rosey after doing these practices🙏🏻. Thank you. I am in a journey of restoring my vagus nerve so I will come back often to this one.

Feeling calm and relaxed with some good tools I can tap into.

Beautiful! I especially enjoyed the auricular massage and throat activation.

I enjoyed this practice. I was unable to do the ear massage because I was wearing headphones. I really liked the humming/chanting at the end.