Access the healing power of your vagus nerve for managing stress and optimising your wellbeing

Jan Normanton • November 10, 2024

Please enjoy one of the simple and quick exercises outlined in "Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve” by the late Stanley Rosenberg for fast and blessed relief from stress, overwhelm and anxiety 

Listen to this article

click to watch this article
If you are stressed, consider somatic massage or somatic coaching and know that your body has a whole set of inbuilt ways to help you manage your inner states.

This is an accessible and easy technique to bring about fast and blessed relief from stress, overwhelm and anxiety, and which if practised regularly, may offer a wide range of health and wellbeing benefits.


Some of the key benefits include managing overwhelm and being able to deal with life’s challenges with resilience, feeling calmer, more grounded and centred and ultimately having agency to manage our own internal stress states.


Rosenberg explores the connection between the vagus nerve and our emotional and physical health in this classic, explaining how this crucial nerve as well as further cranial nerves help regulate our body’s stress response and raise our resilience, a crucial benefit in and buffer from our stressful and busy lives.


His style makes the complex principles of neuroscience relatable and applicable to our everyday lives.


I embrace this and other simple practices outlined in his book for a sense of calm in my body, peace of mind and connection with myself on the daily.


This is a must in your care of self toolbox for the same to manage stress, overwhelm and anxiety effectively, efficiently and naturally. 

Safety is the cornerstone of healing.
By Jan Normanton September 14, 2025
Creating a safe environment is essential to reduce anxiety and stress, and encourage a sense of control and agency in clients
Does it feel like a hustle being on your healing journey?
By Jan Normanton September 11, 2025
May you remember when you’re on that hamsterwheel of healing, feeling it’s like a hustle to just slow down, breathe and drop into who you are and make peace with that and enjoy yourself!
Connection is key to a contented life
By Jan Normanton August 31, 2025
Connection to self, others, life itself offers safety and can provide the cornerstone of contentment and love. Whilst disconnection to self, others, life poses threat and so can cause the opposites – unhappiness and fear
Change can be challenging to a nervous system that seeks safety
By Jan Normanton May 25, 2025
Leaning into a change process that feels safer, planned, paced, can offer a smoother journey into what we do want, whilst tempering and taming the fears, doubts and sense of regression that may present themselves along the way
Why consider a bottom up approach to healing rather than a top down one
By Jan Normanton May 7, 2025
Whilst talking therapies have a significant role in healing in their own right, we can end up inadvertently holding up our healing process by getting invested in talking ABOUT our issues rather than dealing directly WITH our issues via the body – the place of trauma
Pay attention to where you place your attention to remain connected and grounded within
By Jan Normanton May 4, 2025
Distraction is everywhere! If we allow ourselves to engage like a kid in a candy shop, taking it all in with gusto, we can end up frazzled and fragmented, feeling less than safe and sound within
Paying attention and tending to our body can pay dividends and engender trust in ourselves
By Jan Normanton April 30, 2025
Paying attention and tending to our body can pay dividends, engendering trust and allowing us to show up in life in a dynamic and flowing way rather than fixated rules and regulations made up by the mind to keep us safe and based on old paradigms that may no longer serve us.
Direct embodied experience offers us the informed decision making tool that the brain can’t offer
By Jan Normanton April 16, 2025
It’s only through direct embodied experience where can make an informed decision about who we are and then really get to know ourselves. Relying upon the brain is only part of the picture and a skewed one at that full of external influences and second hand beliefs
Learn to discern the difference between the mind and body for your truth
By Jan Normanton April 12, 2025
There can be a disparity between what’s going on in your brain to keep us safe and what’s going on in real time in your body; learning to discern the difference as to what feels true can be surprising and helpful
How functional freeze may result in living an unlived life
By Jan Normanton April 9, 2025
Functional freeze can be a useful survival strategy when facing trauma, chronic stress and any form of overwhelm; habitualised however, it can become a sneaky way of life, resulting in a life unlived.
Show More