What Is the Vagus Nerve and Why Does It Matter for Healing from Trauma?
You've probably been hearing about the vagus nerve lately. It keeps showing up in wellness content, therapy conversations, and mental health research. And if you've been dealing with stress, anxiety, or the aftermath of difficult experiences, understanding it might change the way you think about healing.
At CCA Therapy in Indianapolis, the vagus nerve is part of almost every conversation we have about how the body holds stress and how healing actually happens.
Here's what it is and why it matters.
What Is the Vagus Nerve?
The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your body. It runs from your brainstem all the way down through your neck, chest, and abdomen, connecting to your heart, lungs, and digestive organs along the way.
The name comes from the Latin word for "wandering" — and that's exactly what it does. It wanders through your entire body, carrying information back and forth between your brain and your organs.
It's the main highway of your parasympathetic nervous system — the part responsible for rest, digestion, connection, and recovery. When the vagus nerve is functioning well, your body can move fluidly between activation (responding to stress) and settling (returning to calm). You get activated when you need to be. And then you come back down.
That coming-back-down part? That's vagal tone. And for a lot of people who have experienced chronic stress or trauma, it's the part that stops working well.
What Happens to the Vagus Nerve After Stress and Trauma?
When you experience something overwhelming, your nervous system activates to protect you. Your heart rate goes up. Your muscles tighten. Your digestion slows. Your brain narrows its focus to the threat.
This is brilliant and necessary in a genuine emergency.
The problem is that when stress is chronic or when a traumatic experience doesn't get fully processed, the nervous system can get stuck in that activated state. The threat response stays partially online even when the danger has passed. And the vagus nerve, which is supposed to help you return to safety and calm, may not be doing its job as effectively as it once did.
This is sometimes called low vagal tone. And it can show up in ways that feel completely unrelated to anything mental:
🔹 Digestive issues that don't have a clear medical cause 🔹 A heart rate that feels elevated even at rest 🔹 Difficulty taking a full deep breath 🔹 Feeling on edge or unable to relax even in safe situations 🔹 Trouble connecting with others or feeling present in relationships 🔹 Chronic fatigue that sleep doesn't fix
Sound familiar? These may be signs that your vagus nerve and nervous system need support.
The Vagus Nerve and Polyvagal Theory
You may have also heard of Polyvagal Theory — a framework developed by researcher Dr. Stephen Porges that describes how the vagus nerve operates in three different states depending on the level of perceived threat.
In simple terms:
Safe and connected — your ventral vagal state. You feel calm, present, able to connect with others and think clearly. This is where healing happens.
Fight or flight — your sympathetic state. You feel activated, anxious, on edge. Your body is mobilizing to respond to a threat.
Freeze or shutdown — your dorsal vagal state. You feel numb, collapsed, disconnected, or like you're watching life from behind glass.
Many people who have experienced chronic stress or trauma spend a lot of time in the bottom two states — cycling between anxious activation and flat shutdown — without much time in that safe, connected, ventral vagal space.
Healing, in this framework, is about spending more time in that safe state. And the vagus nerve is the pathway to get there.
How Therapy Can Support Vagal Tone
Here's the part that matters most for anyone wondering what to actually do with this information.
The vagus nerve responds to safety signals. When your nervous system receives consistent, repeated signals that you are safe, the vagus nerve gradually learns to activate the calm-and-connected response more readily.
Brainspotting works directly with the subcortical brain — the deep, non-verbal part of your brain where survival responses and vagal tone are regulated. By finding the specific eye position that connects to where stress or trauma is held, and staying with it in a safe relational environment, Brainspotting may help the nervous system begin to process and release what's been keeping it stuck.
Somatic therapy approaches also work specifically with the body's responses — helping you notice, tolerate, and gradually shift the physical patterns of activation and shutdown that come with dysregulated vagal tone.
This is why anxiety therapy that works with the nervous system can feel so different from talk therapy. You're not just understanding your patterns intellectually. You're helping your body — and your vagus nerve — learn something new.
Small Things That May Support Your Vagus Nerve
Research suggests several accessible practices may support vagal tone over time. These aren't substitutes for therapy when deeper work is needed, but they can be genuinely supportive alongside it:
✅ Slow, extended exhales — breathing out longer than you breathe in activates the vagus nerve directly. Try inhaling for 4 counts and exhaling for 6 to 8.
✅ Humming or singing — the vagus nerve connects to the muscles in your throat. Humming, singing, or even gargling may gently stimulate it.
✅ Cold water on your face — briefly splashing cold water on your face may activate the dive reflex, which involves the vagus nerve.
✅ Safe social connection — being in the presence of someone you trust and feel safe with is one of the most powerful vagal toners there is.
✅ Gentle movement — yoga, walking, and other gentle physical activity may support vagal tone over time.
None of these are quick fixes. But they're ways of regularly signaling to your nervous system that it's safe to settle.
Please note: while we talk a lot about the mind-body connection here, this post is not a substitute for medical or mental health treatment. Because the body is complex, please ensure you are cleared by a medical doctor for any physical symptoms before exploring them through a somatic or mental health lens.
Your Nervous System Can Learn to Feel Safe Again
The vagus nerve is not fixed. Vagal tone can change with the right support. And that's genuinely hopeful — because it means the cycling between anxious and shut down that feels so permanent doesn't have to be.
Book a free 15-minute consultation at CCA Therapy in Indianapolis. We'll talk about what's been going on in your body and your nervous system, and whether trauma therapy in Indianapolis using somatic and Brainspotting approaches might be the right next step for you.
Your nervous system learned to protect you. Now let's help it learn that it's safe.
About the Author: Ethany Michaud, LCSW is a certified Brainspotting practitioner and somatic therapist at Circle City Alliance Therapy and Consulting in Indianapolis, Indiana. She specializes in trauma, nervous system healing, and anxiety — and works with the vagus nerve and Polyvagal Theory as a foundation for almost everything she does in sessions.
