#7 - Wandering around Vagus - August 2023

Quickly tune in to your nervous system & the 3 experiential states

Welcome to Month 7 of Wandering Around Vagus, a paid monthly subscription series exploring the Vagus Nerve + Polyvagal Theory.

I’m Tina Foster of Foster & Flourish, the creator and guide of Wandering Around Vagus.

First, a few quick notes to help you orient within our pages:

• If you’re new, here’s the link to the START page.

• You can find last month’s post (our sixth) on finding shapes and movements for all 3 states here.

• Monthly & Supplementary Posts + Recordings and other topics can be accessed from the navigation bar atop the Wandering Around Vagus Homepage.

• All past posts live on the archive page.​

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Our second group practice was last month.

Have you watched or listened to the recording?

• Here’s the link to the class 2 recordings.

• Here’s the link to the page where all past class recordings are archived.

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What we’ll do this month

This month, we'll focus on the automatic processes conducted by our autonomic nervous system (ANS) with the help of the vagus nerve. These automatic/ autonomic processes maintain body functions such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion without the need of our conscious intervention. Also this month we’ll learn a technique that helps us become more aware of these automatic processes when we need to be.

Our automated processes save us time and energy. We don’t have to think about breathing, regulating our heartbeat or “doing” our digestion after a meal and can pay attention to other parts of our lives while our ANS takes care of the basics on our behalf.

The problem begins when, just because we can, we entirely ignore these automatic functions until health issues connected with them rear their heads—as chronic stress, pain, fatigue and similar illnesses.

Below, I share my own story illustrating how issues that disrupt our autonomic processes can be frightening when misunderstood or ignored and can hugely impact our quality of life.

Automatic behaviors and “choices”

The vagus nerve and our autonomic processes operate far beyond basic functions such as breathing. They also influence our behavior and choices in very significant ways that we’re less aware of. Namely:

1. they guide and protect us by activating and focusing our energy when we need to function at a higher level. Afterward, they reinstate calm and soften our focus.

2. they take us toward or away from people, places and things based on how safe or threatening our system determines them to be.

As with breath and heartbeat, these subtle behavioral responses of our ANS self-manage pretty well but function most effectively with the help of our conscious attention.

This month, we’ll learn a short, targeted method for tuning into our autonomic experiences in order to connect with the information they provide so we establish a conscious partnership with our nervous system.

By the end of this 13 minute audio you’ll have a better sense of:

• how to tune in to the information your nervous system holds at any given moment.

• how to partner with your nervous system longterm and use the information it holds in a more intentional, proactive way.

• how to practice skillfully following autonomic messages and your actions in response to them.

• how to keep listening with curiosity and compassion while staying out of judgment and self-criticism.

• new ways to participate in the shaping of your nervous system so that it doesn’t only shape you.