Anna Ferguson

So it's an energy conservation state.

And so essentially it's like, here, have all this energy.

And when that doesn't work, it's like, right, we need to conserve energy and protect ourselves.

So we're going to increase this kind of pain reduction side effects of being in our parasympathetic state.

in order to protect you.

So there are protective mechanisms.

Ideally, we want to be functioning in that rest and digest state where we are connected and playful and curious and happy, but we teeter sometimes between these stress states of highly energized and low energy.

Yeah, so you can think of your vagus nerve as essentially a communication highway between your brain and your body.

So the vagus nerve runs down both left and right side from your brainstem all the way down to your abdomen.

And its job is to relay information from your body to your brain and your brain to your body.

Now, interestingly, it sends about 75% of information from your body to your brain and about 25% of information from your brain to your body.

Now, what this means is that your body is constantly sending messages to your brain.

Hey, I'm hungry.

Hey, there's a bit of muscle tension here.

Hey, there's something sitting in our gut that's not quite getting broken down that way.

And then it asks the brain to enact change, hormonal changes, physical changes, biological changes, whatever it can to help.

Now, what happens when we experience traumatic events or highly stressful or chronically stressful events is that communication system starts to get a little bit muddled.

We start to send messages that aren't necessarily true, right?

Like something's wrong with the body or something's wrong physically.

externally that we are getting these danger signals from and we're sending off alert signals in our brain and starting this stress response when really that's not aligned with reality the messages start to get muddled and they're harder to comprehend and understand so low vagal tone which is a weird way of saying just like your vagus nerve is not functioning optimally can impact how your body communicates with your brain so that connection between mind and body