Unlock the power of your vagus nerve to overcome trauma, pain and chronic stress
Book Review by K.S.Loganathan.
Jessica Macguire is a physiotherapist with 15 years experience who has written several books and given many talks on neuroscience. As a leading global educator, she conducts numerous programs on how to heal the nervous system from the damaging effects of chronic pain, autoimmune issues, gut disorders, depression , anxiety, and burnout, which can arise from excessive stress or trauma. Chronic and traumatic stress can leave behind a neurological footprint. In an interview, she has stated that early in her career, she noticed that physiotherapy can give relief to patients in pain, but the effects were temporary if not sustained with lifestyle changes and tailored to individual needs.
She believes that at the core, nervous system regulation is about building true resilience to recover from life’s shocks. She now teaches people to recalibrate the nervous system through repetitive exercises that reset the performance of the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body, which connects our brain with the most important organs via our neck, chest, heart, and lungs, to our gut. It has both motor and sensory functions and it affects the heart rate and its variability, digestion, and immune systems. The vagus nerve is a major part of the two-way brain-body connection carrying early warning signals of pain, danger, or safety to and from the brain and the body. This constant loop of messages is responsible for keeping the internal thermostat regulated and it allows us to respond to situations as they arise. When the “just right” state is breached, it can be ” too hot”, displaying aggressive behavior, or ” too cold”, as it starts shutting down.
A dysregulated nervous system can cause gut issues, inflammatory conditions, skin irritation, hypertension, and persistent pain, as the system goes into overdrive. The gut instinct is our interoceptive system at work, sending messages from the body to the brain. The brain also synthesizes information gathered from the exteroceptive system to arrive at a ‘fight -or-flight’ response.
Macguire advocates a biopsychosocial approach that trains the nervous system to shift between interoception and exteroception when we choose to. By exercises involving breath, posture, and touch, the body-up signals can send the right messages to the brain. She teaches exercises to map the territory of your inner world and tune them to your just right, too hot and too cold states and also to accurately describe your emotional state. Although exercises like yoga, deep breathing , moderate intensity activity ,digestion activation, good posture, music and a social connect are well known to be beneficial , the author combines them in about twenty bioplasticity tools to manage and regulate your own nervous system to derive optimal benefits. By listening to our body and mind and their responses to the internal and external stimuli, one can tune the whole nervous system and achieve natural activation of the parasympathetic system. It is advisable to take them up after consultation with a medical specialist for special cases such as neurodivergent individuals, and those with auditory processing difficulties, or for sportspeople with performance anxieties. A regulated body- brain system responds to the actual situations rather than imagined ones and helps us enjoy life and health in a productive way.
The book distils medical advances into actionable steps for self-regulation. It contains many illustrations and endnotes. It will be of immense help to people dealing with the effects of stress, trauma, and chronic illness as well as professionals in health care. Part One, comprising a nervous system primer, should be part of every health and wellness training program.
Thanks to Pan MacMillan India for sending a review copy.
