Okay, welcome to lesson number 19, the vagus nerve. Now this is a continuation lesson that we started in less than 18. So some of this stuff, I'm going to cover it, but we're going to go one step further. Now in the last lesson we left off talking about and introducing the Vegas nerve and how this is actually the connection, the physical connection between our mind which is comprised of our conscious mind, our unconscious mind and the primal mind to the body. Now, when we look at the biggest nerve, the vagus nerve, the reason why this is so important is because from the ears to our gut, this nerve connects everything in between. And so everything that is out of balance in our body has to do with some type of function with the vagus nerve.

So, just as a very quick review, you know, we we've talked in great detail about our coding and about our programming, how that started, how we were born with a primal mind and how just right off the bat, we were introduced to the experience of separation. And as we continue to be introduced to more experiences, we interpreted those experiences based upon positive or negative. And we know that our development of our unconscious mind as a baby was just based upon the thoughts, the images or the ideas of our environment and our nurturing that we received. And as we started to grow and develop, we developed a conscious mind where we started to then to think for ourselves So we call that the filter between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind our critical filter. And then of course, now as we do have a conscious mind, we have our five physical senses, and we have our six higher faculties.

Now, we also talks about how the average person goes through about 50,000 thoughts per day and about 90% of them are on an unconscious level, we just do things so automatic, and that is because of the neural connections that we've developed over the years. We just kind of do things like Tiger shoe, we talked about driving a car, a lot of our coding is in our internal GPS, and that internal GPS guides us and directs us. But one of the fallacies of that is we have been coded in programmed in our anxiety so we instantly feel that and when we start to feel a threat or rejection or a feeling of not being valued or not having worth, we are so coded that it's almost instantaneous that we start to be able to, to recognize that and, and still anxiety. So we've also gone through the micro step process is your goes to micro step process where once we recognize that we're in the moment of anxiety, you definitely want to use that.

And you want to use that by taking control of the motor functions. And that is the pattern interruption. That's where we can stop that process and start the to redirect the flow. And when we do that, I described the feeling that I had kind of a reversal feeling of anxiety and it was wonderful. And now we have gone through and we started to talk about our gut, and how important our gut is we talked about eating healthier, and the reason that we talked about eating healthier is because when our body doesn't ellipse or gut developed serotonin. That is our feel good chemical.

And that is the vast majority of the serotonin is created in the gut. Now, this the the concept of solar plexus was introduced. And our Solar Plexus is an area of our body. And we related that to Eastern philosophy where it is known as the third chakra. And we talked about the endocrine system and our endocrine system and our chakra system. They match up they overlay between each other.

And so now what we want to be able to do is dive a little bit further into the Vegas nerve and then how we can actually use some additional techniques and some additional things when we're not in the moment of anxiety and how to prevent it and continue the process of recoding our unconscious mind so that we don't experience it anymore. Now I can get into a lot of different scientific details about the vagus nerve. But I want to describe it as in something very simple. We've talked about positive and negative. So we we learned as babies, that there are basically two choices, there's right or wrong, there is there is good or bad, and there's positive and negative. But the Vegas enrollment should think of it like that.

Think of it as a as a highway that goes from your ears and that part of your brain all the way down to your gut. One Direction goes this way, and the other direction comes this way. And when the vagus nerve is in balance, we feel pretty good. Now there are times where one direction it needs to be turned on, and that's when we're in a real threat. But sometimes those threats aren't really real. But that surge of home hormones that goes one direction is is when we need to activate, but we also know that in our day and age, we're not Really under a lot of the same type of threat that our ancestors lived in.

And so we also the other direction is rest and recovery. So, you know, depending on the situation, we need to have this balance. And for most of us though, we live in an overbalance of constant thread of constant anxiety. And so what ends up happening is this freeway is like a traffic jam. And if we don't have the freeway clear, then our body's not going to communicate, the mind isn't going to communicate properly and the gut we talked about is a second mind. If that is not cleared coming back, then it's not gonna function properly either.

And so what we want to be able to do is stimulate or activate the vagus nerve so that it functions properly. Now I want to tell you something. When you get angry, and people start to read like mad, the Vegas nerve, that blood flow to the brain kind of shuts off a little bit. And so when people get really mad and upset, they don't think very well do they. And so when they do that they start to act irrationally crazy. And that's because the blood flow isn't there.

And part of that has to deal directly with the vagus nerve. So, think of think of it this way, if you were to get bumped, you know, on your body, you could bruise your body. And if you bruise a muscle, you're bruised a bone. Gosh, that really hurts, doesn't it? And when you get bruising in your body, it swells. And that is inflammation.

And inflammation is painful. And oftentimes when you get inflammation, sometimes you have to go to a medical doctor, and the medical doctor has to relieve that pressure by you know, taking out some of the blood or else it can cause further damage. And so when the vagus nerve is not active, faded, it's almost as if it's inflamed and we have to relax that we have to, you know, calm it down, we have to get back into a state of rest and relaxation. So I'm going to give you some things that you can do when you're not experiencing anxiety, but also when you may 1, start to experience anxiety. But first and foremost, you always need to trigger and utilize and practice the dragos to micro step method. Use your thoughts to control the motor functions of an activity and that guide your thought process away from whatever's causing the the stress or the anxiety.

Okay, so the very first thing is, your face has a lot of different nerve endings on it. And so cold water actually is something that immediately throws a pattern interruption and helps your Vegas nerve calm down. So cold Letter to the face a wet towel to the face ice cubes to the face. Well don't burn yourself ice cubes to the face or something cold. Now in that process at the same time here, I also noticed that when I take a long hot shower, a long hot bath, you you become flushed. And it's very easy when you're really really hot to get angry or get more anxious.

And those of you who know the experience of when it's hot, muggy, you know you just a little bit more cranky. So keep in mind that cold kind of helps the vagus nerve. The other thing is I want you to think of the vagus nerve going right down your neck and through controlling your esophagus and your voice box. And so they definitely without a doubt your vagus nerve is affecting your your neck and it's affecting your voicebox so anything that you do in the neck area is going to help activate the vagus nerve So anything like singing, humming, and there are some great breathing exercises that we're going to do that involves humming. And in fact, breathing I'm going to talk about here in just a minute. But just singing in and of itself is very beneficial.

Now, I actually did some research on singers and people who use their voice a lot. And I want you to look at this when when, when you look at my profile, and I'm, I'm just talking and I've been my neck back, you can, you can hear that my voice changes a little bit, because air is becoming a little bit restricted here or it's changing here. And so that flow as my vocal cords or cords are starting to activate is activating my nerve of my Vegas nerve. So humming, singing anything where you're also chanting and there's two main sounds The Eastern philosophy has chosen and they work very well and they are the our sound. And so if you just do the R or the oma sound, and but really anything that you do, you don't have to use our own. But those have other spiritual meanings that you know we were talking about in another course.

But anything that stimulates the voice. Now, yoga. Now don't get caught up too much in if you don't know yoga, and if you're into yoga, I will mention some of the terminologies the cat cow and the sun salutation and the downward dog, but basically all that is is the again, the vagus nerve goes from your ears to your gut and so anything that involves the the concave and complex movement of your neck and your diaphragm is going to stimulate the vagus nerve. And so you know, the cat callus basically leaning in and meaning out. And you know, some of us standing, you could do it on your all fours. And so if you're not into yoga, then just call it stretching.

So I've done a few yoga classes where I've led a group of my patients, and I call it American stretching. And it's a lot like when I was wrestling in high school and playing sports, and in the military, we did exactly the same things. We just didn't call it yoga. But we did very similar things. Now to call it yoga. Great.

The other thing about yoga is another recommendation is meditation. And sometimes you can involve meditation, with yoga, and meditation simply is just trying to relax and it's trying to just breathe and focus on your breathing in and out. And you know, the other thing about the the breathing is anything that involves your diaphragm, so you know Trying to breathe through your stomach sometimes. So when you're starting to feel anxious and your your heart is racing, the breathing starts to get going. And we've talked about that in great detail. So anytime you try to slow your breath, and you try to just breathe slowly and breathe slowly out, and I would always recommend, you know, a counting.

Counting also helps focus that could be something that's part of the the drug goes to a micro step, where you're breathing in for four seconds, you'll hold for two seconds, and you breathe out for eight seconds, or breathe in for four seconds. Hold your breath for two seconds, breathe out for six seconds. This is actually very good practice. A lot of athletes do this to calm themselves down and get prepared and ready for whatever sport they're going to do. Well, I do a lot of public speaking and that used to be a technique that I used to do, quite frankly, a lot. Now if you're a yoga person You know, the terminology that they use is Ronnie Yama.

And this, all this really means is breathing, deep breathing and certain types of breathing. There's lots of different forms where you breathe this way and breathe that way. But for the purpose of anxiety in your in that attack, and even if you're using the ghost of Microsoft method, use it on the breathing, or breathe while you're using another technique. Alright, the other thing that's really, really good, and one of my favorite things to do, is just laugh. I mean, again, anything that involves the lungs and the diaphragm and movement and, you know, that kind of stuff is is going to be beneficial. And so one of the things that I tried to do and one of the things that has changed my life is, and I don't take myself so, so serious anymore.

I used to be a very, very serious person, you know, my, my, my bachelor's degree and master's degree, one of them was accounting. And so that's about it. As you can probably get, and so, when I started to get into the law of attraction, it allowed a little bit of diversion. But really one of the best things to do is just laugh, go watch a funny movie or you know, everybody's got a smartphone now that they carry with them, just have a bunch of apps that have a bunch of funny things on there. That will not only distract you, but it gets the diaphragm going. Now, another one of my favorites is love.

Human connection is very important. So if you have a partner or a lover or you're married or your boyfriend or girlfriend, you know, touch, hug, intimacy, the love hormones of oxytocin. And the endorphins dopa mean, those things to connect with individuals. Try not to be alone in when you're not experiencing anxiety. You know, it's just good to develop relationships develop with relationships with people that you can connect with and insert Doing part of that is human touch. So things like massage, acupuncture, going to a chiropractor getting the adjustments, in fact, for years, the vast majority of my clients were chiropractors.

And, you know, I used to work as a consultant through one of the major colleges. And so one of the things that I would say about all those chiropractors that might be listening to this is, you know, you did a very good job at adjusting but one of the things that I would certainly recommend and I did recommend to a lot of chiropractors is to teach how adjustments actually help the the nervous system, and specifically the biggest nerve that we're talking about. And one of the things that I found very interesting as a student of health psychology and clinical psychology is the fact that, you know, we hear about people having heart attacks a lot that the reason that they have heart attacks is they're really bad diet, which is a contributory factor here. But it's the cholesterol levels. Well, that's kind of BS. That is something that the pharmaceutical companies are out there.

And it's not totally accurate. One of the main reasons that people have heart attacks is that their biggest nerve is not that freeway is jammed one direction or another. So going to a chiropractor and having that adjustment, or making sure that you're doing these type of self medication processes that I'm talking about now, are extremely important for heart attack. You know, one of the first signs of a heart attack is death. Most people don't know that they have some of these issues in Dell, they have artistic and they die. And as a survivor of a hot heart attack.

You know, it is very, very important that you just take care of this part of your body from your ears, to your body is our to your gut is your physical health. From the rest of the talk going forward is our mental health. And both of those things are just as important. We now know the link is the vagus nerve. All right, and one of the elements that we talked about in the last lesson is getting a good diet. Now, when you think about the diet, obviously any type of diet that has a lot of fiber in it, where your body and your, from the time that you are chewing to the time that you are expelling, you know, anytime that you have a fibrous diet, that movement is going to be very good and all of that movement is going to help stimulate the vagus nerve and activated and then one of the last things is sun.

Just go get some sun try to get some sun Now, one of the things that my doctors recommended when I was really struggling with anxiety and they didn't give me this information, they threw a bunch of pills at me that I you know, just made things worse. For me, is one doctor did tell me to just look up light therapy and it was not a medical doctor. It was it was a chiropractor friend of mine who was actually a client of mine. And we were talking about light therapy. So I went and bought a blue light therapy and so during the wintertime, especially when the sunlight is not as much, and I was working inside all the time, as a as an accountant for a long, long time I was in getting my daily sensor anytime that you can go outside and get a little bit of sun, it's perfect.

You know, make sure that you're filling out your workbook and see in the next lesson.