M3 : Lesson 3: Vagus Toning – Breath and Sound Tools
A reminder that as you implement new tools also consider attending the Live BBNR Classes (Brain Body Neuro Reset) for more varied practices and coregulation as you move through the Regulate material. See schedule on Home page for times/dates.
Please see the Module 3 Workbook for Lesson 3 materials.
Transcript
Module 3 lesson 3, bagel toning breathing practices, voo breathing, heart mat, quick coherence breath, and the mantra breath. Breathe work for vagal tone. Breath work is one of the best practices to improve vagal tone as both the sound and vibration of the breath stimulate the vagus nerve. In general, breathing should be slow, deep, long, and centered in the belly. Breathing practices can take from 1 to 3 months to consistently shift long term chronic patterns and establish a state of ventral vagal safety.
Breathwork, even though it engages the parasympathetic nervous system, can initially activate a limbic protective response as it changes your brain chemistry. Now I want to pause here and let you know to work with this surge of protection response such as an anxiety spike that might happen with breath work, You have to know that the brain sometimes feel safer being in hyper vigilance. And when you try to slow down the breath, It can be misinterpreted that calming down is not safe because this is not normal. So you just need to know that you are doing what is best for you by doing these calming breathing practices so that when and if you have an adverse effect, You just let your brain know it is safe to calm down and just continue your practices but maybe for a shorter duration at first. And lastly, breath work in combination with mindfulness can support somatic awareness of your body sensations and your emotions.
Becoming more mindful in general of your breath. I want you to think about how you are generally breathing as you are walking upstairs, while you’re talking to people, while you’re working, are you holding your breath? Are you breathing rapidly? Are you breathing through your chest? Try to focus on breathing more through your lower abdomen on a regular basis.
And just know that by doing this, you’re starting to develop mindfulness by just catching how am I breathing right now? And you’re actually toning your vagus nerve just with that mindful awareness and the attempt to breathe through your belly. So also know that, again, when you change this, you might have a little stress response at first and that’s totally normal. Breath work though is one of the ways that we can voluntarily target our parasympathetic nervous system right away. Our parasympathetic nervous system is always monitoring our breath and regulating outside of our conscious control.
But by using our breath, we then gain some conscious influence over our unconscious parasympathetic state. So now you know that your primary neuroplasticity tool has been awareness, pattern, interrupt, and be here. What I’d like for you to do from now on is to now bring in a few moments of any of the following breath practices that you’re gonna learn to this pattern interrupt process throughout the day. This will help you to build more capacity to be present in your body. So with that, we’re gonna move on to our first breath practice.
Vail toning exercise number 1, vu breathing. This uses sound and breath. I will go over this in the slide, and then I’ll stop the slide and show you on me how to do this practice. This breath is used to get the vagus nerve to kind of feed or nourish the organs with its connectivity. I’ve had someone describe it’s almost like a baby breastfeeding from its mother.
It’s a type of deep nourishment to your body. So do this whenever you’re feeling irritation, anger, fear, or stress, it’s one of the most simple, most commonly used tools for vagal toning. There are 2 versions, the first version. You’re gonna do your first version with your eyes open or closed. Your hands will be on your belly.
You’ll inhale into your lower abdomen. And as you exhale slowly, you will stay in a low, vibrant tory tone. The key is nice, long, exhales. And you’ll repeat this maybe 1 to 2 minutes and then just rest and notice your body and your environment for several moments more. Another version that’s common is vu, but showing more energy through your teeth and eyes.
And I’ll demonstrate this in a moment, but your ice are gonna be more open. You’re gonna inhale on your lower abdomen and exhale and say, boo, like the first one. But you’re gonna open your mouth a bit and show your teeth, and then you’ll open and close your mouth, and I’ll I’ll this will make more sense in a moment. You’re gonna feel the vibration more through your face And again, this is going to stimulate a little more of the ventral bagel pathway of facial connection. Again, repeating for 1 to 2 minutes.
Alright. Are you ready to woo? Okay. So eyes open or close. Whatever is more comfortable for you.
Hands on your belly. K? Inhale into your lower abdomen. Exhale and just stay in a low tone. And through your belly.
One more. Just notice your body. Notice any shift. I know for me my head feels more heavy. That’s the first version.
It’s that simple. It’s something you can do often. Alright? Version 2. Boo energy with a little more expression through your teeth and eyes.
Ready? Same thing. Inhale. A lower abdomen, exhale, and then go, See how I’m almost speaking through my eyes. I’m showing my teeth.
I’m you know, ebbing and flowing. I’m almost trying to just exercise my face. Yes. It looks a little funny, but It’s very effective for helping to stimulate your ventil bagel pathway. So let’s try that again.
Here we go. There’s no perfect way of doing this. My mouth is kind of opening, closing, teeth showing, and relaxing. You can play around with it. So Those are the 2 versions of vu, and I love doing this often.
I still do it often when I’m driving and my kids have been crazy and there’s been a lot of stimulation. I just might be like, woah. Well, eyes open because I’m driving. You know, I’m just getting my own grounding. Now there’s a couple exercises that are similar to the vu breadth that I just one and mention that you might like.
There’s another way of doing this that’s called toning. In toning, There’s different ways of toning, but I’m gonna show you a way that I like to do where you’re making different, like, vowel sounds and vibrating your face in your your head, your chest. So it’s kinda like this. So my mouth is closed, and I’m just It’s similar to the Ulm mantra, which also you could do. The common thing here is it causes a vibration.
So use a sound that you like Okay? You can also make sounds like this. Kind of singing. I just made up a tune. You can make up your own tune.
All sorts of vowels and changing the pitch. I do this a lot with my kids, and we actually do it together where we kinda try to follow along with each other. So play around with this with just making sound, making vibration, focusing on vowels, getting expressive with your face, or maybe calm with your face, and just Whatever works for you. The principle is vibration and making sure that you’re breathing through the belly. So vuying is a great one to repeat throughout the day.
It’s a great one to do with your pattern interrupt that you learn in module 1, you know, a, aware of. I’m thinking stress. Cancel. Be here now. Notice your environment, and while I’m noticing my environment.
See how I kind of added that all together. So that’s it for who. Next step, we’re gonna talk about the heart math quick coherence technique. This is your next vagal toning exercise. The heartmath quick coherence technique.
How to do this. So I’m gonna run through how to do this. And, again, I’m gonna show you in real life. So just bear with me as I go through these instructions. You’re gonna breathe in a regular breath of a 5 second inhale, 5 second exhale.
You’re gonna touch your heart while you’re breathing. You can close your eyes or keep them open and focus on it. Point outside of you, and you’re gonna breathe this 5 second in breath, 5 second out breath, for about 5 breaths, so you just start doing that. And again, we’re gonna go through all this in just a moment. Next as you breathe, think of someone or something you love, appreciate or are grateful for while focusing on your breath and attention in your heart center.
And repeat breathing with this focus of love, appreciation, or gratitude for 1 to 3 minutes. Let images and feelings grow, change, and evolve. Try to feel your heart opening and generating emotions for them from your art as best you can, and even if you can’t feel, just do your best to imagine them. Sometimes looking at pictures helps to stimulate emotions. Visualizes energy at the end that you’re generating, leaving your heart and going towards them, and maybe continue to breathe and visualize for up to a few minutes.
So I wanna go over this, and I wanna tell you that I love doing this particular breath pattern first thing in the morning when I’m still in my bed, when I’m just wanting to get ready to start my day, focusing on my center, and producing a feeling of appreciation and gratitude. I also do this when I’m waiting, like, at a stoplight or in line or whenever I feel disconnected from myself, or when I get too self obsessed, different times. These are times when I use the heart coherence technique. Sometimes I do this practice even with my partner or my kids, and we imagine sending loving energy to each other. It’s really simple, and Actually, the research on this particular technique is pretty phenomenal.
So if you go to the HeartMath Institute, and they have a lot of different breath patterns, and I highly recommend learning them. There are several of them on the Internet, and any class that you see with heartmath, I think, is a great one to take. The research is just top notch, and it definitely makes you feel like, wow. This is something I should do because This type of breathing helps to expand your electromagnetic field. It has healing potential.
This is basically the same kind of breath that Doctor. Jody Spenza uses in a lot of his healing techniques, so it’s a good one to learn. With that being said, let’s do this together. So we’re gonna begin by placing our hands on our heart. You can close your eyes or open them.
And just breathe a regular pattern of 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out through your nose. So we’ll do we’re gonna do 5 of those breaths, and then we’ll move to the next part. Ready? Continue with that in breath and out breath. And next, think of someone or something that you care about, appreciate or are grateful for it.
Could even be a pet and continue this in breath and out breath for the next few minutes. We’ll just do this for a minute together because of time with the video. So I will be thinking about my appreciation for my kids while we do this. So what is that for you? Here we go.
Just letting any images or feelings grow, change, or evolve. Focusing on your heart and your breath and the person or thing. Try to feel your heart opening. Generating emotions for them. Just do your best.
Like I said, sometimes I look at a picture. It’s helpful. And now near the end, visualize this energy emanating from your heart to them wherever they are in the world. On the exhale, sending love and energy to them. And that’s it.
Very simple. Something you can do really targets the vagus nerve, opens your heart field, and it has healing effects. Again, the research on it’s pretty phenomenal, so I recommend checking into that. Montabreathing, I am here now in this. This is one of my favorite go to heart coherence practices because it allows me to connect both with my body and the present moment.
And because I personally have a history of trauma and attachment issues, I have a tendency to fragment and dissociate leaving me unground it. So I use this mantra a lot. We use this a lot through our level 2 program as well. The purpose of this simple practice is to bring yourself into the body in the present moment and show yourself that you are safe despite emotions, beliefs, or sensations that you might be experiencing. We will repeat a mantra.
I am here. Now in this, silently to ourselves along with a steady, heart centered breath pattern of 5 seconds in 5 seconds out just like we learned in the previous heart coherence exercise called the HeartMath Quick Coherence Technique. This particular mantra is adapted from a book called the presence process by Michael Brown, which I highly recommend. Step 1, here’s how this mantra works along with our breath. On a 5 second inhale, you will repeat silently the word I.
Then on the 5 second exhale, you’ll repeat the word silently, am, On the inhale, again, you’ll repeat the word here. On the exhale, now on the inhale in and the exhale this and repeating it three times. After we do that three times, we will ground our energy the same 5 second in breath. You’ll breathe through your heart and into your heart a ball of golden light, and as you exhale, you’ll send that light from your heart, down your spine, down your legs all the way down, to the center of the earth, imagining a line of light connecting your heart to the center of the earth. And again, repeat that three times.
So I’m gonna show you how to do this. In person here. Okay. So are you ready to do the I am here now in this pattern? Okay.
So I’m gonna say it out loud just so that you can follow me. But when you’re doing this, don’t say it out loud. Just Just think it silently in your head. So ready. Here we go.
Inhale. I. Exhale. Am. Inhale.
Here. Exhale. Now, Inhale in. Exhale. This.
Let’s do this two more times. Here we go. I. Am here. Now in this.
Let’s do it one more time. I am. Here. Now in this. And now we’re gonna ground our energy same 5 second in breath.
Breathe into your heart, imagining a ball of gold in light filling your heart. And then as you exhale, imagine that golden light leaving your heart going down, your spine, down your legs all the way down into the center of the earth. Intend to be grounded.intend on your mind. I am connected to the earth in this moment. I belong here.
Let’s do it again. Imagine golden light running down your body, down into the earth. And even if you can’t imagine the golden light, just pretend that you can. I belong here. Let’s do it again.
I belong here on this earth at this time. Just feel what it feels like right now. To be more connected to yourself, to your body, I know for me, even just doing this with you, I feel incredibly soft, deeply grounded. The mantra I am here now in this is a cornerstone to the primal trust mentorship in level 2. You’re saying that you are willing to be here in this body, even in this body as it is.
You’re literally collecting your life force energy into your body. You’re letting your limbic system know it’s shared parts of you know that you are here now in this body. Because at one point, if you have trauma or any any really severe stress responses. You weren’t hearing your body, and there wasn’t somebody safe to be there with you. With your body.
A big part of this process is letting your inner psyche know that you have chosen to be here in this body You’re choosing to come back home to yourself. So all of this is for us to bring your presence right here, right now in this. And despite how you feel, whether you have pain or illness or whatever, or whether you’re going through a lot, When you bring your conscious presence right here, your nervous system, your body gets a queue of safety that you feel safe enough to be here in this, in that safety. It does magic for your autonomic nervous system, that sense of I am willing to be here in this. There is a calm over time that will happen.
I see huge shifts alone from just this mantra. I see people who would associate and fragment every little thing, learn to like, oh, I just need to choose to be here in this. And breathe for a moment and show scared parts of me that I’m coming back. I’m coming back to feel the feels And we’ll explore a little bit more about this, both in the somatics module and the trauma module, but just know that This mantra has a really deep rewiring capacity. That concludes our basic breath work for the level 1 practices.
However, in module 6, I will share with you a few more breath exercises that you can do if you like you’re ready to advance them. But in the beginning, keep it simple. Keep your breath work simple because not all breath practices are created equally. There’s a lot of practices such as Wim Hof and Holotropic, and that is going to increase your sympathetic activation. Now they’re wonderful practices and their purpose is to help you process trauma and all sorts of things.
But right now where you’re at in this program with rep with level 1 is to calm down, to regroup, and to self regulate in a gentle way. So just stick with these jumbo practices for now. And as you build your regulation capacity, then experiment with some of the other practices that I will recommend in module 6.