Wellbeing
Wishing our wonderful MFGSC community fabulous school holidays! Holidays are a terrific opportunity to have fun with family and friends, eat and sleep well, and engage in exercise and activity. It is also a terrific time to rest, relax and reset. Have you heard of the Vagus Nerve? The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that runs from our brain to our abdomen. It acts to counterbalance the fight, flight, or freeze system and triggers a relax and digest response in our body. The vagus nerve is why your heart races and stomach curdles when you sense a threat and why your breathing slows and your body relaxes when friends welcome you to their house. Through the vagus nerve, we react to signals in our environment in ways that calm, alarm, regulate or dysregulate the body, and these states in turn create emotional experience and play out in behaviour.By stimulating our vagus nerve we can receive powerful health benefits.
One of the main ways that you can stimulate the healthy function of the vagus nerve is through deep, slow belly breathing.
The moment we anticipate stress in any form, most of us tend to hold our breath. Breath holding activates the fight/flight/freeze response; it tends to increase the sensation of pain, stiffness, anxiety, or fear. You can learn to use breathing exercises to shift your focus away from stress or pain.
To practice deep breathing inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth:
- Breathe more deeply, into and from the belly. Think about expanding your
abdomen and widening your rib cage as you inhale. Placing a hand on your belly helps to notice if your belly is expanding. - Exhale longer than you inhale. It’s the exhale that triggers the relaxation response.
Other techniques for stimulating the vagus nerve include:
- Loud gargling with water or loud singing activates our vocal cords
- Foot massage: gentle or firm touch
- Cold water face immersion: immerse your forehead eyes and at least 2/3 of both cheeks into cold water.
- Laughter: having a good laugh lifts your mood, boosts your immune system and stimulates the vagus nerve.
Happy Reading and see you Term 3!Information gathered from Psychology Today Webpage
Sonia Panek