How to Help Anxiety with Breathing and a Trip to Vagus

Take a Deep Breath…

We hear it all the time. Take a deep breath. It’s actually good advice but rarely explained why. To better understand, we need to take a trip to Vagus.

The Vagus Nerve starts at the brain and runs down into the gut, branching out to different areas to he body along the way. It modulates things like mood, heart rate, and involuntary reactions such as coughing and sneezing. It does a lot.

When you take a deep breath, your diaphragm actually stimulates the Vagus Nerve and generates a relaxation response. The problem is, when no one explains the science behind it, it’s easy to dismiss as more well meaning advice. You take a couple deep breaths but you don’t buy into the process and your mind is still stuck in neutral going 90 miles an hour. You give up and tell yourself it doesn’t work.

Take a deep ‘mindful’ breath. ‘Mindful’ another one of those misunderstood and misrepresented buzzwords that we’ll get to later. Take a deep, belly breath, understanding that each time you inhale and exhale, you’re activating that nerve that’s telling your brain you can relax. The more you do it, the more you buy into, the more you re-wire your brain for relaxation.

If you try ‘belly breathing’ for two minutes and give up, frustrated, you’re sending the signal to your brain that it doesn’t work. You’ve now told your brain that it doesn’t work and you’ve attached an emotion, frustration, to it. Double whammy and not likely to work… ever.

Being anxious is miserable and we want immediate relief. If something doesn’t work right way, it’s useless. But now that you know a little more about the science behind the well meaning advice of ‘take a deep breath’, maybe give it a chance.