Tools for Regulating Your Nervous System

Whether you’re trying to build more resilience, handle stress better, be less anxious, sleep better or overcome bigger hurts and trauma, helping your nervous system be more regulated and adaptable is important work.

It can feel so out of our control: that automatic response to stress and triggers, leaving us wondering why we can’t handle ourselves better.

While most common de-stressing advice will tell you to take a bubble bath or get a mani-pedi and of course, these things can offer a brief reprieve, when your nervous system is dysregulated you will still find yourself aggravated and triggered.

While there may be bigger needs to tend to with a therapist or other mental health professional, learning tools that trigger our sense of safety and calm are very powerful. They are also effective both in the moment and when we practice them over time, we become more regulated in general. They are also very often free, only requiring a bit of time and a quiet space (for some anyway) and the willingness to practice them.

Our autonomic, which is not under our conscious control, has two branches: sympathetic and parasympathetic. Our sympathetic response is our stress response, directed by cortisol and adrenaline. Its counterpart is the parasympathetic branch known as rest and digest or feed and breed. The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve (originates from our brain stem) and is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s a large nerve, known as the wandering nerve as it winds through most of our internal organs and it is responsible for regulating heart and breathing rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination and reproduction.

This nerve plays a huge role in the overall regulation of our nervous system, countering the sympathetic, fight and flight responses as well as lesser known stress reactions known as reeze and fawn. When we’re not able to activate it that sympathetic drive takes over leaving us more anxious, fearful, irritated and overwhelmed.

I cover our five different types of stress responses on this episode of the  Dr Brooke show

Luckily we have a lot of ways to activate this nerve or increase it’s “tone”. When vagal nerve tone is higher we feel more grounded, engaged and present. We are better able to handle and recover from stress. We are more flexible, open minded and feel more regulated. Higher vagal tone allows for us to rest and recover.

We talk so much about stress and the popular idea of “adrenal fatigue” 

 

Ear Tugging + Auricular Release

Your ears are a great place to essentially physically access your vagus nerve and it’s a relatively benign looking process so you can do this almost anywhere. There are a couple of different strategies but my fav is simply pulling on your ear.

You want to pinch and gently pull down on your earlobe. Do this a few times and then also punch and pull slightly on the rest of your ear, up around the helix (curved part of your ear). You don’t want to hurt yourself but you want to do this hard enough to feel it, remember you are trying to trigger a nerve response. You might feel more relaxed, feel the urge to sigh or feel a sensation in your chest. Those all signal this is working so pull/pinch just hard enough to notice a shift in sensation in your head, neck, shoulders or chest.

Another auricular release technique is to place your finger inside the opening of the outer ear and press slightly down and slightly towards the back of your head. You are not putting your finger far into the ear canal, but rather in that hollowed out part just above your ear lobe. Now move your fingers slowly in small circles. Again you might feel the urge to yawn or sigh or feel more relaxed which means it’s working.

There is no set amount of time, pinches, tugs or circles. Simply to do this until you feel a sense of calm or other signs that your vagus nerve is triggered such as an urge to swallow, a sigh or yawn.

 

Singing + Humming

The vagus nerve innervates the vocal cords via two branches; superior laryngeal and recurrent laryngeal. These two branches give both sensation to the vocal cord area and innervate the muscles that move the vocal cords directly.

When you use your vocal cords in a coordinated, intentional way as you do when you sing, hum or chant you are activating that vagus nerve to send input there. Research has even shown that chanting “om” can calm the limbic area of the brain where we perceive threats and regulate our emotional state.

Gargling also works, yet not as preferable to most as humming. But an aggressive gargle, think to the point you almost gag, is another powerful tool to stimulate the vagus nerve via its branches that innervate the back of the mouth and throat.

 

Laughing

Laughing will trigger your vagus nerve by inducing diaphragmatic breathing – and it triggers oxytocin which turns off cortisol release.

Ten minutes a day has been shown to improve a variety or health outcomes and lower stress. So turn on a funny podcast, find your fav comedian on Instagram or YouTube, watch SNL clips on Facebook, turn on a funny movie or call a friend that makes you laugh.

 

Physiological Sigh

When we are stressed or feeling tension our breathing can become more shallow and into just the upper parts of our lungs.

You may have noticed that you sigh sometimes on your own when you shift into a more relaxed state, this exercise will intentionally create that shift into relaxation.

Two inhales followed by one long exhale. When you have two quicker inhales close to gether you will inflate the small alveoli (or air sacs) deep in your lungs. The extended exhale will release more carbon dioxide. Your first inhale should be deep, try to go to your lung’s capacity, then do one more inhale

 

Cold Exposure

Cold exposure is a popular practice for building resilience and vagus nerve activation. It can range from putting your hands in ice water to a cold finish during your shower to a full cold plunge.

Research shows women do not actually need to get as cold for as long as men. In fact 59 degrees is where women start shivering, so we can get the benefit at a more comfortable temperature, and 3 minutes seems to be long enough. Work your tolerance up, starting the ice water to your hands or face, colder showers, working your way to a plunge if desired. Cold water to your face or hands is also a great vagus nerve trigger, so it builds nervous system resilience as well.

 

Alternating Tense + Release

This technique requires laying down comfortably and tightening up muscles creating tension, holding for a few seconds and then releasing fully.

Start with your head and face (scrunching up and creating tension in your facial muscles), then moving down to your shoulders (bringing your shoulders up to your ears), arms (make a fist, flex your fist into your wrist), to your torso (contract your abs like you are doing a crunch), legs (contract your gluts and then your quads) and moving down to contracting your calves by pointing your toes and finishing with scrunching up your toes as if around a tennis ball.

Repeat if necessary and be sure you tense, hold (typically 5-10 seconds) and then release fully before moving on to the next body part. Notice the difference between how you feel in tension vs. relaxation, becoming more familiar with relaxation if you tend to hold tension in your body.  This is a great one to do before trying to drift off to sleep but you can do it anytime you need to relax and release tension as well.

 

Aromatherapy

Smell, or olfaction, is one of our most primal of the five senses. It is often the first warning sign of danger and it is quick to trigger a sympathetic, fight or flight response or a parasympathetic, safety response.

You can use a simple essential oil like lavender that associated with relaxation or you can use a smell that  reminds you of a safe person or place. This might be your grandmother’s perfume or the smell of someone you love’s favorite flowers. If holidays were a happy time, a scent of pine tree or pumpkin spice might trigger this safe, comforting feeling. The act of a deep inhalation and slow exhalation of a scent will trigger the vagus nerve via diaphragmatic breathing, so this one helps reset your stress response two different ways.

 

Bilateral Stimulation Techniques

Our brain has a left brain half that is associated with creativity and emotions and a right brain which is the hemisphere associated with logic and patterns. Bilateral stimulation techniques will stimulate both sides, mimicking what happens during REM sleep.

During our sleep where we process and sift through information and experiences from the day. This occurs in REM sleep stages which is categorized by that back and forth, rapid eye movement. EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is an example of bilateral stimulation.

I cover EMDR in this episode of the Dr Brooke Show where we also share an amazing resource I personally use very frequently: virtual EMDR.

When movements like the crossing of your arms or looking right to left cross the midline of our bodies it causes an integration or a working together of both hemispheres allowing us to process triggers or anxiety, putting us into a calm state.

 

The Butterfly Hug is another bilateral stimulation tool that you can do this sitting or standing. Simply cross your arms across your chest with your hands palm down on your upper arms or shoulders. Next you alternate tapping gently on your upper arms, one after the other in a rhythmic pattern (like fluttering butterfly wings) while taking slow deep breaths focusing on the sensation of your hands touching your arms.

You can also do this type of bilateral stimulation by simply placing your hands on your thighs (lying or sitting down) and either tap or gently squeeze your thighs, alternating sides in a rhythmic pattern.

 

This can also be done with sounds where a different tone is played to one ear vs. the other known as binaural beats which is an auditory illusion. When one side of the brean hears one tone and the other hears a tone at a different frequency, the brain perceives a third tone hich is the difference between the two.

For example, if you play a 4 hz tone in one ear and a 9 hertz tone in the other, your brain actually interprets a 5hz tone. Different ranges are associated with relaxation, creativity, concentration, etc. the 1-4Hz (delta) range is associated with sleep and relaxation, 4-8Hz (theta) with reduced anxiety, 8-13Hz (alpha) encourages positivity and decreased anxiety, 14-30 Hz (beta) improves concentration and problem solving and 40Hz enhances learning.

 

You don’t have to utlize all of these tools but find one or two that work for you!

A more regulated nervous system will go a long way towards helping you heal chronic health issues, improve digestion, have better hormoen balance and lower inflammation. If you have issues that seem not to resovle or recurr, reach out and let’s chat about how your nervous system might be playing a role.