VAGAL NERVE SYSTEM (Part of the autonomic nervous system)
The heart hug increases vagal nerve tone quality exponentially. It can help with reflux and coughing and many other conditions.
Light, gentle, gliding of the skin produces the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin (for health, healing and happiness). Oxytocin is produced by light touch. This is the reason Bowen therapy is so relaxing.
One vagal tone exercise is this:
Breathe in through the nose, then out through pursed lips. When you inhale through the nose, you stimulate all the nitric oxide receptor sites. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. When you breathe out through pursed lips, it sends a little air back through the lungs, stimulating the vagus nerve system.
Add Heart hug to this breathing:
Pretend there is a clock on your chest over your heart. Put one hand over the other over your heart. Gently take skin and go all the way around the clock (6:00 to 6:00) then up to 9 or 3, INHALING. Then, just drop the hands back down to 6 while exhaling through pursed lips.
Next, curl the lips up with a smile while doing the heart hug, and this produces seratonin. Then, think of something you are grateful for while smiling and doing the heart hug. This produces even more seratonin.
Vagal tone is a measure of heart rate variability (the ability for the heart rate to speed up when alarmed or during stress and then slow back down after the alarming event, and its measure of the space in between that time). The vagus nerve deeply innervates the heart.
Pelvic tilts with breathing:
Lie on your back with your knees up and feet on the surface you’re lying on. Tilt your pelvis back and forth very, very slowly. Do deep breathing while doing this. This helps tone the vagal nerve. Add the following:
- Turn head left and right while letting your eyes go in the direction your head moves
- Keep turning head left and right while having your eyes go in the opposite direction
- Keep head stationary while holding eyes all the way left for 20 to 30 seconds or until you get a sigh or yawn
- Do the same to the right
