Vagus nerve: thoughts, links, practices?

[oak]

Friends, our good friend Manuel Moe mentioned the "vagus nerve" in a post, and I think it deserves its own thread because of the following:

Even my cursory Google search demonstrates that said nerve is intimately related to many of our most important bodily processes, including the all-important gut.

Feel free to share any thoughts, impressions, relevant links, and especially any practices that can make life better by decompressing (?) said nerve.

Thanks!

[oak]

Friends, I found the reddit post below, and it immediately got me to thinking about the Win Hof method of breathing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/m2wh56/activating_the_vagus_nerve/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

While this isn't peer reviewed, of course, it got me thinking about the Wim Hof method of breathing.

We all know that breathing is important, but I've found that said Hof method has helped me with anxiety, and now getting used to my CPAP.

I am interested in breathing in regards to the vargus nerve.

Any thoughts or ESH (experience/strength/hope) are welcome.

[oak]

Friends, I truly wonder if my meltdowns, specifically on Saturdays and some evenings, are caused by vagus nerve compression.

[manuel_moe_g]

yeah, the body and mind are intricately linked

https://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/vagus-nerve

https://teachmeanatomy.info/head/cranial-nerves/vagus-nerve-cn-x/

this is the exercise i am playing with to access mental states that <go right to calm> for certain events instead of generating stress hormones in the amygdala that will just have to be burned off to get back to calm

in the morning, before doing any work that might trigger negative emotions, i break the work into tasks, and i visualize the task (in some way, often as a moving image of me doing the task on a TV screen) and mentally put that task right next to the cheek of a face or faces that i am imagining as huge in size and enhanced in details

the face or faces chosen is important, it is a face that i associate with <wholly> positive things, a face of a person i <wholly> trust

in my childhood, i can only think of two such faces of people: Mister Rogers on television and family friend Auntie Sylvia in real life

so i visualize that TV screen with a moving image of me doing the task, and i imagine that TV screen next to the cheek of the faces i imagine as huge in size and enhanced in details

again, the point of the exercise is that when i actually do the task during the day, i am already primed to <go right to calm> while working, no stress hormones generated at all