For Deep Relaxation, Resiliency, and Sound Sleep

This is a complete Qigong Flow routine (purge-tonify-circulate) designed to improve vagal tone and promote relaxation. It is great for everyone, especially those who are faced with stress or experience insomnia.

The word vagus means wanderer because the vagal nerve is the longest nerve in the body that wanders from the brain to the gut. The vagus nerve is the main part of our autonomic and parasympathetic nervous system. Its function is vital for us to sleep, digest and relax. It oversees our mood, stress response and our ability to speak. The vagus nerve travels from your brain stem into multiple areas of your body such as your heart, gut, lungs, and tongue. It helps regulate the automatic systems of our body such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, hormones, and digestion. It also regulates our fight, flight, or freeze reactions, which affect our anxiety levels and ability to handle emotional and physical stressors. 

When the vagus nerve is healthy, you have a "high vagal tone". This means that you are able to relax after moments of stress. Improving vagal tone has been associated with improvement in many gastrointestinal illnesses, mental health, anxiety, cardiovascular function, and autoimmune conditions.

The function of the vagus nerve, known as vagal tone, may offer insight into our physical, neurological, and emotional health. Because the vagus nerve is so important for the gut-brain connection and other connections within the body, if the vagus nerve is not working correctly, there might be a greater risk of conditions including gastrointestinal issues, heart disease, epilepsy, depression, and anxiety. 

If vagal tone is low, then you will have a more difficult time to relax after stress, or return to comfortable baseline after stimulation. This can also cause you to have a heart rate that is too fast and slow to return to normal pace. This program is designed to help you have a healthy high vagal tone, so that you can cope with stress more easily and the body can return back to a state of balance and relaxation. This routine is best done in the late afternoon / early evening, during the bladder-kidney meridian time period of 3pm-7pm.

*Marisa pronounces the word vagus in the original Latin pronunciation, not the typical English pronunciation, because she likes the way it sounds better in Latin!