Calm Anxiety: Vagus Nerve Ear Massage

Learn a subtle but powerful massage technique that stimulates the ear area, connected to the vagus nerve. This practice can help settle anxiety, release tension, and support nervous system regulation.

Transcript

OK, So we're going to come into our ears again. So there's a good few different ear techniques that we can use to activate our vagus nerve and to really help the body to receive this message that we are OK. We are safe. We are calm. We need our body to feel it. We can't just be in our head. We can't just be hearing certain words and intellectualizing everything. And, You know, Meditations, Everything are great. Side of things and we need our mindfulness but this is where you literally it's not even about what you're thinking it is just the body receiving the message so we're going to do a simple practice today and we're going to do basically an ear massage but again it's going to be activating certain points in the ear that will help to stimulate your vagus nerve and help you to soothe so What we're basically doing is we're getting into the part behind the ears. So say where like your ear is and then your hairline begins. That bit of skin there where you probably don't have any hair, You know, There's a gap there. This is the point that we're starting to massage. So this might be something that you naturally do. Like maybe if you're feeling a little bit worried, You actually might find yourself just naturally tugging this kind of area. You might not. Have never touched this part of my body in my life and that's okay too so what i want you to do is i just want you to follow my guide i'm just beginning to kind of feel your way to where that point is And you're just being really gentle here. You're not doing anything intense. You're not, You know, Hurting the skin or aggravating the skin. You're just sort of feeling into it. And we're just going to do the same the other side. Just feel into it and feel. Like whenever we get in touch with the body, Just feel like how tense or not tense it feels here. And just take a moment to actually feel into this. Close your eyes if you need to. Okay. What we're going to start to do now is we're going to, This is the way I find it the easiest to do. So almost making like a scissoring motion with your two hands. So if you want to do both sides at the same time. And what we're basically going to do is we're going to slide the fingers behind the ears. So we're sort of covering both the outside of the ear as well as behind the ear. And this really helps us to have this really lovely way of just sliding up and down and massaging. As I say, This point that this is where your neck vagus nerve runs along. So try doing this with both sides. Close your eyes if you need to. I know it might feel a bit weird, Might feel a bit strange, But let's just get into it. So take a deep breath as you're doing this. And just rubbing up and down Moving behind the air. Up and down the back of the ear. You might want to play around with going higher and lower. It might feel good for you to just do it in a small motion. And then maybe just take actually both the fingers of the two fingers that were sort of scissored out. Take them both and just try that now behind the ear. Again, Gently moving up and down, Up and down. Releasing tension, Recognising wherever you are, You are safe, You are okay. Even if we don't feel it from time to time, We just need to let our body know. We are okay. Take as long as you need here. It might feel a little bit of rubbing afterwards. So you might want to just take it back if you choose to sort of massage along the back of the neck or that part. They usually really tend to part where the neck meets the head. This is so beautiful to learn how to soothe yourself in this way, Because instead of us then looking outwards to someone else to soothe us all the time or panicking, It's like, OK, All I need to do is just come back into my body. If you know how to do this and you know how to come back into your body and you know how to go from. . . Feeling anxious, Stressed, Racing around. Into feeling calm, Into feeling grounded. You have such a powerful like. Thing that you're holding you are holding all the power then in your body it's like Quite often when I see anyone who struggles with anxiety, Which let's face it is kind of most of us in one way or another, It's almost like we need to learn how to come away from all of this. The stimulation and just go right, I've got a safe place right inside my body. You do have that and you can do that. So with this beautiful ear massage, Keep doing this if it feels good or move into this into another practice or just come back to this whenever you need to.