The vagus nerve is the largest nerve in the body. Also called the 10th cranial nerve. This helps the body understand when it is safe to put your body and nervous system into resting mode. Breathing exercises can help stimulate the vagus nerve. This puts your body in rest mode. In this blog, you will read more about a breathing exercise that stimulates the vagus nerve.
Breathing Exercise for Vagus Nerve Stimulation
The vagus nerve can be stimulated by various exercises. Breathwork is one of them. There are various breathing techniques in pranayama that work on calming the nervous system and the vagus nerve. The Nadi Sodhana exercise, for example. This exercise stimulates the 10th cranial nerve directly. When there is rest in the brain, this affects the vagus nerve. By activating this, the entire body and mind come into a rest position. This is where recovery and relaxation arise.
This is how you practice nadi sodhana:
- Bring your right hand to your face.
- Place your right thumb on your right nostril
- Place your index and middle fingers on the third eye (between your eyebrows)
- Place your ring finger on your left nostril.
- Close your right nostril and inhale through your left nostril (ida)
- Close your left nostril and exhale through your right nostril – Inhale through your right nostril
- Close your right nostril
- Exhale through your left nostril
- Breathe in through your left nostril
- Close your left nostril
- Exhale through your right nostril
- Breathe in through your right nostril
- Close your right nostril
- Exhale through your left nostril
- Repeat the above exercise 10 more times or as long as you want.
Surrender and repetition
We often need about 21 days to create new patterns. Your body also needs time to get used to a ‘relaxed’ body from the stress position. When your vagus nerve initially gave signals of an unsafe situation that made you always alert, you will need to give your body the space to create new healthy patterns.
