Vagus Nerve Vocal Stimulation

This short practice prompts you to stimulate your vagus nerve, the "rest and digest" response that activates the parasympathetic nervous system regulating digestion, heart rate, and breathing. Activating your vagus nerve sends signals of safety throughout the body, putting you in a more calm state. For this ancient practice of chanting, we will be focus on using the sacred symbol OM or AUM. If you enjoy this practice, I encourage you to follow East Asian practicioners for more chanting meditations, or exploring your own sounds and mantras to chant for vagus nerve stimulation.

Transcript

Hello!

Welcome to this quick practice to help you stimulate your vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve is a major component of the parasympathetic nervous system,

Which is responsible for the body's rest and digest response.

So if you think about fight or flight being our stress response,

You can think about the vagus nerve as the thing that sort of calms down the stress response.

It is responsible for regulating things like mood,

Saliva production,

Digestion,

Breathing,

Heart rate,

Everything that impacts us physically when we feel stress.

And a great way to stimulate your vagus nerve so that you can feel more regulated in moments of stress is to do vocal stimulation.

So today we're going to be doing a little bit of chanting in order to stimulate our vagus nerve.

So just begin by finding a comfortable and quiet place.

You can try this sitting down or laying down,

But just take a moment to get comfortable.

And once you find yourself in a comfortable position,

Close your eyes and just practice taking a few deep breaths to tune into your mind-body connection.

We'll start by experimenting with just a little bit of humming.

So if you can try this with me,

I'm just going to take a deep breath in,

And as I exhale,

I'm going to hum just a little bit,

Getting that stimulation in the throat going.

So deep breath in.

We'll try that one more time.

Just try to pay attention to how that feels.

Deep breath in.

One more time.

Taking a deep breath in.

Again,

Just noticing how that sensation feels in your body.

You can do this as many times as you need to.

For now,

I'd like us to try chanting the phrase OM.

You can try a different phrase if that resonates better for you.

For many,

OM is a symbol that is sacred to spiritual beliefs.

It is frequently used in the practice of yoga,

And it's also been studied as having positive effects on the brain when chanted.

So we'll go ahead and try chanting using that phrase now.

We'll take a deep breath in.

OM Allow that sound to resonate within you.

Feel the vibrations in your body.

You can continue chanting for a few minutes,

Maintaining a relaxed and steady pace.

If your mind wanders,

You can gently bring your focus back to the sound of your voice and the sensation of chanting.

And this is a practice you can access at any time,

Whenever you feel like you're needing some calm and centering in your life.

Thanks for joining me.

Reviews

So calming right away in such a small amount of time! Thank you!

I’ve never tried chanting before, but this was a great introduction. It left me feeling curious about trying more chanting or other similar techniques. Great for beginners!

Fantastic