Map Your Healing Journey

Trauma and grief recovery is more about planting flowers, not pulling weeds. One way to help your body and brain while pursuing trauma and grief recovery work is to strengthen your vagal tone.

What is Vagal Tone?

Vagal tone is self-care with a purpose.

Imagine that there is a highway that goes directly between New York City and Los Angeles. When that highway is well maintained and cared for, people and goods can travel SUPER fast between these two places. When that highway is *not* well cared for, there are potholes and dangerous drop offs and people and goods get stuck and traffic is slow and everyone is *stressed out.*

Vagal tone is that highway. NYC is your brain, and LA is your gut.

Isn’t the human body amazing?

Part of trauma recovery is keeping that highway in good shape, so that the vagus nerve can send signals smoothly between the brain and the gut. When we have strong vagal tone, stress is much easier to bear and recover from.

Vagal Tone is About the Vagus Nerve

Nervous System with Vagus Nerve from Bodyworlds exhibit at OMSI in Portland, Oregon — The nervous system with the vagus nerve from Bodyworlds exhibit at OMSI in Portland, Oregon

Seriously, the vagus nerve is the human body’s SUPERHERO. I will NEVER LOVE ANYTHING MORE THAN I LOVE THE VAGUS NERVE, NOT EVEN CHOCOLATE. YES, I JUST SAID THAT. I have good reason, as the vagus nerve is central to eradicating PTSD symptoms.

The vagus nerve is the main part of that highway between your gut and brain. It is also known as the “wandering nerve” because it is present throughout the body. This nerve originates in the brain stem and through the face, neck, lungs, heart, diaphragm, and abdomen, including the stomach, spleen, intestines, colon, liver, and kidneys. This system stimulates the “rest and digest” part of the nervous system (the parasympathetic branch) and is involved in nearly every physiological action in the human body.

When we go through trauma – especially longterm trauma and grief – this part of our vagus nerve gets turned “on,” and it is not meant to be “on” all the time. In fact, the default is for it to be off, only switching on when our bodies sense danger. When it is on, that’s when we are in Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn, or some combination.

Why Do You Need to Care About It?

The strength of your vagal tone affects every system in your body.

I’m going to say that again, because it is SO IMPORTANT.

The strength of your vagal tone affects every system in your body.

A low (or weak) vagal tone results in brain fog, depression, fatigue, bloating, constipation and other gastrointestinal disorders, and a series of inflammatory conditions, like type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular disease.

Strengthening your vagal tone helps every system in your body, and ESPECIALLY helps going through trauma and grief recovery.

What To Do To Improve Vagal Tone

Blond woman in a Vagus Nerd bright pink tank top — I’m a vagus nerd!

Improving vagal tone is planting flowers instead of pulling weeds. Or, to mix metaphors like I did earlier in this post, it’s taking regular care of that super highway between the gut and brain.

My biggest piece of advice is to incorporate things that you already do, like to do, or really want to do. Plant the flowers that you like the most.

Here’s what I do as basic vagal tone strengtheners:

Practice REGULATING YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM. The easiest way to incorporate this is to start intentional deep breathing. This tactical and box breathing video by Mark Divine is a very good tutorial.

Drink a lot of water. Cold water can activate the vagus nerve for higher vagal tone.

Eat regularly. Once a day, incorporate a bagged salad OR a smoothie with avocado (or other healthy fats), spinach, chia seeds, flax meal, and whatever else you want. I started doing this two years ago and it has made a HUGE difference.

Move your body. This could be walking, stretching, yoga, weight lifting, whatever.

Check out these exercises you can do to reset your ventral vagus nerve. They include The Basic Exercise, The Half Salamander Exercise and The Full Salamander Exercise.

Here are a couple of graphics that you can download to your phone or computer as a reminder of things you can do to strengthen that vagal tone.