Vagus Nerve Meditation

This is a full nervous system reset meditation to support you in relaxing, resting, and resetting. Kelly shares what the vagus nerve is, and how it plays a key role in the nervous system regulation, and activation of the parasympathetic nervous system and can create an instant sense of calm for your body and mind.

Transcript

Hello everyone and today we're doing something a little bit different which is a vagus nerve stimulation meditation. So in this practice we will start with a couple vagus nerve stimulation exercises so I encourage you to do this meditation seated. I think that might be easiest for you or potentially standing and then after we stimulate and activate the vagus nerve to help calm the nervous system. We'll then go into a little bit of breath work and meditation just to tie it all together and create this nice little nervous system soothing practice. So we'll begin just in a seated position. So creating a long spine, Softening your shoulders, Relaxing the jaw and letting go of any squeezing or clenching you have right at the eyebrows. Then we'll begin with three big deep cleansing breaths. So the first part of this vagus nerve activation will be that big exhale through an open mouth so don't be afraid to make some noise here. We'll begin by exhaling all the air out of our lungs and then inhale filling up and open mouth exhale sigh it out. Do this two more times just inhaling through the nose open mouth exhale sigh it out letting go and one more time making this one your loudest yet really letting go on that exhale. And now let your breath just be smooth and effortless. We're not changing the breath or forcing it in any way just really let it flow here. I'm going to start with three vagus nerve stimulation exercises to promote that feeling of instant calm. So we'll begin just by taking our two hands and you'll place one hand place the palm of your hand on your forehead and the other palm in the back of the head just gently cradling the front and the back of your skull with the lightest almost non-existent pressure just breathing deeply one hand on the forehead the other cradling the back of the head just feeling the warmth of the hands resting on the front and the back of the skull continuing those deep easy breaths and then taking your hands and remove them from the top of the head and take your hands right by your ears so you can lightly press your hands onto your ears and just draw small little circles here on the ears very light very gentle just little circles on the ears and then switching directions with your circles and now taking your hands and creating a space between the pointer finger and the middle finger place your ears in between that space so middle fingers in the front of the ears and pointer fingers just behind the ears and gently rub your hands up and down either side of the ear nice and slow just gently massaging the front and the back of that ear and now taking your ear lobes between your thumb and your pointer finger thumb and middle finger and gently pulling the ear lobes really lightly down and away from your jaw gently tracking the ear lobes towards your backside of your body ever so lightly super gentle and then releasing and doing our last final vagus nerve activation we'll take our gaze and we're gonna look and turn our head all the way over to the left side so looking all the way over to the left and now keep your head here and only with your eyes look over to the right so face chin everything's pointed to the left and then eyes go over to the right and then we'll take a big inhale and open mouth exhale sigh it out here good and then switching sides we're gonna turn our gaze our chin everything over to the right and then from here just move your eyes only over to the left and big inhale open mouth exhale sigh it out letting go good and then we'll return our head back to neutral closing the eyes if they aren't already closed just bring your awareness to your breath and as you're breathing make your breath just a little bit bigger so on your next inhale maybe you take in just 1% more breath and as you exhale maybe you release just 1% more so now your breaths to be full not in a forced way but in a nourishing complete way inhaling completely and exhaling entirely and send that breath down low into the belly like you're breathing down towards the floor down into your pelvis and just notice the natural rise and fall of the belly with every inhale and every exhale inhaling feel the belly rise and exhale it falls just taking these smooth effortless deep breaths and as you're breathing follow the pathway the air takes so on your next inhale feel the air move in through the nose across the sinuses down the throat to the expanding lungs and then exhale feel the breath leave the lungs move back up the throat across the sinuses and back out the nose just following your breath noticing that pathway as the air dances in and out of your body right at the tip of the nose allowing your breaths to be full and nourishing just taking those nice deep smooth belly breaths and we'll now do a few rounds of box breathing that'll be a 4 4 4 4 count let's do it together exhale all the air out of your lungs and then inhale for a count of 4 3 2 1 pause for 4 3 2 1 exhale 4 3 2 1 hold 4 3 2 1 and repeat so inhaling for a count of 4 holding for 4 and exhaling for 4 and holding for 4 sticking with this breath use that entire 4 count to fill all the way up on the inhale hold it for the 4 count completely empty your breath on the exhale and then hold again before you repeat for the next breath cycle we'll now do one final round of that box breathing and then release the count and just let the breath be smooth and effortless and now our final exercise to activate the vagus nerve and to ignite that sense of instant calm will be a humming breath so again we'll make a little bit of noise here but that's okay so in a moment we'll exhale all the air out of our lungs and then we'll inhale filling up but on the exhale keep your lips closed but hum so it'll sound like this we'll inhale and then exhale with closed lips hmm so let's try that together go ahead and exhale all the air out of your lungs and then inhale fill up keep the mouth closed and hum hmm all the way until you're out of breath and we'll do this a few more times just inhaling filling up keeping your lips closed but space in your mouth hum on the exhale until you're out of breath don't be afraid to make noise really let that hum go we'll do three more full rounds of this humming breath inhaling completely exhaling humming now we'll do one last final round of this breath good and now let your breath be smooth and effortless once again and just notice how you're feeling check in with your body and your mind here it's taking a moment of stillness and quiet and we'll close our meditation by taking a big deep breath in and one last time open mouth exhale sigh it out thank you so much for joining me for this Vegas nerve stimulation practice and for regulating your nervous system with me

Reviews

A great meditation allowing me to focus on my vagus nerve.

On the intens side. But really enjoyable and effective.
Thank you

Thank you for this, I found the touch particularly useful - is it safe to do that for longer?

I really enjoyed this meditation and feel much better than when I started! I can definitely take some of these vagus nerve stimulation and breathe techniques into my daily practise! Thanks so much!

Very calming meditation, I loved it. You might consider doing it without headphones, as there are exercises with ears.