Let me guess, you've heard about the vagus nerve, you understand that this
10th cranial nerve is largely responsible for your parasympathetic nervous system response,
your rest and digest response, super important for managing stress and anxiety. You've probably
also heard that breathing exercises are one of the most effective ways at home to predictably
stimulate your vagus nerve. But then you do a little searching online and you find very,
very different breathing practices. You see a lot of people doing things like this.
Maybe you see some yoga students in white robes doing something like this.
And then maybe you see people doing low, slow breathing, that looks something like this.
And you get really confused. Obviously, those are very different practices, they're going to
affect your body, and your nervous system, and your vagus nerve, yes or no, very differently.
And so what exactly do you do? If you're confused, this video is for you. Hey, my name is Lucas. I'm
a yoga teacher, I'm a breathing coach. Breathing exercises have just exploded in popularity in
recent years, which is amazing. Unfortunately, a lot of people are confused and get a little
mixed up. They do practices that stimulate your sympathetic nervous system right before bed. Not
the greatest idea. They do practices that put you to sleep first thing in the morning. Again, not
the greatest idea. With all the best of intentions it's easy to get things flip-flopped. Hopefully
this video will help set the record straight, help you understand specifically how to do breathing
practices to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system, to stimulate vagal tone, your
vagus nerve response. In this video we'll cover number one the biomechanics of breathing. How your
diaphragm affects your heart, which communicates via your vagus nerve to your brain, how all that's
connected. Number two, we'll talk about three breathing practices that are particularly helpful
for your vagus nerve - ocean breathing, chin lock, and then the magical one-to-two ratio in terms
of extending your exhale. And lastly, we'll do a stress less breathing practice together. As usual,
if you'd like to skip forward there's a PDF down below, you can just grab that. Let's get started
talking about the biomechanics of breathing and how this relates to your vagus nerve. Your
primary breathing muscle is called your diaphragm and it's an unusual muscle, it's shaped kind of
like a plunger or a jellyfish. If you take two fingers and poke around underneath your bottom rib
your diaphragm is there separating your upper and lower thoracic cavities. It's a skeletal muscle,
so not so different than your biceps, but it's very strange in its function. When it's relaxed
it has this dome shape, this plunger shape. When it contracts, it flattens down. Your inhalation is
actually where the muscle contraction happens. So, your inhale is started by your diaphragm
contracting and flattening down, that creates a vacuum that initiates the breath. How this
relates to your vagus nerve is very interesting. Your diaphragm in its relaxed position it snuggles
up against your heart and actually reduces the stroke volume. When you inhale deeply, deeply,
deeply, it creates extra intra-thoracic space and your heart volume, stroke volume, actually
increases. And inside your heart there are baroreceptors, like a barometer, baroreceptors.
They sense pressure and when they sense that pressure they communicate that pressure change,
they communicate via your vagus nerve to your brain, and your brain then speeds up your heart.
This is why were you to inhale really quickly your heart rate would speed up.
Your vagus nerve is primarily a sensory nerve. It's also a motor nerve, but the majority of its
function is actually sensing what's going on down here with a lot of your vital organs. So when it
senses these pressure changes it communicates to your brain. Your inhalation creates more space,
more stroke volume, and a faster heartbeat. This is not wrong, but it's important to
understand when you see somebody breathing short, shallow, high, focused on the inhale.
That is not going to stimulate your vagus nerve. That is not going to stimulate a parasympathetic
response, quite the opposite. Now, when we exhale this is the weird thing, your exhale is passive,
meaning your diaphragm, this muscle, it relaxes up and snuggles up into your heart and it reduces the
stroke volume. And, again, those baroreceptors communicate via your vagus nerve to your brain
to slow your heart down. How does all of this come to play with breathing? Essentially the
exhale is where the magic happens for slowing your heart. The exhale is where the magic happens for
stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system response. And so when we spend more time exhaling,
this is what we'll do, we spend more time stimulating our vagus nerve. Okay,
let's look at three techniques that are really helpful for vagal nerve activation. When we're
breathing there's lots of different things that we can do and these three practices some of them
might be really easy for you, some of them might not work for you, don't think that you have to
get all of them right, but if and when you can combine all three of these it is a really potent
recipe for self-soothing. The first one we'll look at is called ocean breathing and ocean breathing
is a yoga breathing technique. The classic name is ujjayi breathing or victorious breathing and
it sounds like Darth Vader or a whisper sound in the back of your throat. I'll do it with my mouth
open first and then I'll show you with my mouth closed, which is how we traditionally practice.
Now with my mouth closed.
What this practice does is it oscillates or vibrates your vagus nerve, which runs down either
side of your neck, and it helps to promote vagus nerve activation. Just like humming, chanting,
singing, oming, any kind of campfire song, in the same way that feels good, that feels relaxing,
this soft ocean breath when you're doing breathing exercises designed to self-soothe can be really,
really effective. The next technique is called the chin lock and this is a classic
yoga technique called jalandhara bandha, which very few people are practicing these days. But
it's very simple and really effective. How it works is at the top of the inhale we'll close
our nose and lock our chin to our chest. This chin lock it compresses our vagus nerve gently and then
releases, and again this is for vagus nerve activation. I'll show you what it looks like.
Again,
it compresses and then releases your vagus nerve and can help amplify that rest-digest-relax
response. The final technique, which is very, very important, is to double the length of your exhale.
When we breathe slowly, specifically when we emphasize the exhale portion of the breath,
that means our diaphragm spends more time relaxed, more time snuggled up against our
heart, those baroreceptors via our vagus nerve communicate to our brain to slow
everything down. Were we to breathe short and shallow, our heart rate *fast pumping sound*. When
we exhale and spend extra time with that exhale our heart rate slows, our parasympathetic nervous
system is stimulated. These three techniques - ocean breath, chin lock, doubling the length of
our exhale, these are really, really powerful techniques that when combined can have a very,
very quick, self-soothing effect to relieve stress and anxiety. Let's practice together.
We'll do a practice here that's called stress less breathing. It's just a simple name I've
given it. We'll inhale through our nose to the count of four, close our nose, lock our chin,
and hold for four. And then we'll exhale to the count of eight. As you'll notice,
we're doubling the length of our exhale, to spend more time with our diaphragm snuggled
up against our heart. Let's practice together. Stress less breathing.
Inhale through both nostrils, one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, hold, one,
two, three, four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale,
one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, hold, one, two, three, four. Lift your chin,
exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, one, two, three, four. Close your
nose, lock your chin, hold, one, two, three, four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven, six, five,
four, three, two, one. Inhale, one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, one, two,
three, four. Lift your chin, release, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Inhale, one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, one, two, three,
four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Inhale, one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, one, two, three,
four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Inhale, one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, hold, one,
two, three, four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Inhale, one, two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, one, two, three,
four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, one,
two, three, four. Close your nose, lock your chin, one, two, three, four. Lift your chin,
exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Final round. Inhale, one, two, three, four.
Close your nose, lock your chin, hold, one, two, three, four. Lift your chin, exhale, eight, seven,
six, five, four, three, two, one. Eyes remain closed, body relaxed, breath is normal. I hope you
found that video helpful. Hopefully that gives you some insight in terms of how breathing exercises
can impact your parasympathetic, rest-digest-relax stress response. If you'd like more science based
videos, please hit subscribe down below. I always love to hear from you in the comments section. Do
grab that PDF down below in the description and you can find my breathing courses and my
teaching calendar at yogabody.com. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you in the next video.