A resilient, adaptable and flexible nervous system needs to experience some stress, challenges, adversity and even failure. When you’re pushed outside of your comfort zone your nervous system can learn to function more effectively under stress, provided it gets to fully recover from the stress activation.
If you experience significant stress outside your comfort zone without a complete recovery of your nervous system, your resilience will be depleted. Over-riding your neurobiological limits by telling yourself “to just get on with it”, or “it’s not that bad”, or “other people have it so much worse” is often what prevents this recovery.
The vagal brake is a branch of the vagus nerve. It’s the connection between the brain and the heart’s pacemaker; the sinoatrial node. It regulates your physiology when it comes to stress. Chronic and traumatic stress can impact on your vagal brake, reducing your ability to recover from stressful events. This is how the vagus nerve can help with anxiety.
Although your vagus nerve is influenced by your past, you can teach your nervous system how to start using it’s built in brake again with neural exercises that re-engage it. You’ll then find greater ease moving between taking action, putting in extra effort, stepping outside of your comfort zone, standing up for yourself and then returning to a state of ease. You won’t get stuck in survival mode.
A large part of the Vagus Nerve Program is teaching how to recalibrate the nervous system.