Check to See the Anxiety & the Vagus Nerve Connection

Discover how muscle tension is more than just a physical strain—it's a key player in perpetuating anxiety. Join me, Emily, a neuromuscular massage therapist, as we unravel the intricate relationship between stress, tension, and the fight-or-flight response locked within your muscles. Through a fascinating exploration, you'll understand why relaxation is not just a luxury but a necessity for mental peace. Plus, I introduce you to the transformative power of the vagus nerve reset, a tool that can help guide your body from a state of perpetual alarm back to tranquility.

Ever wondered why your body feels like it's constantly bracing for impact, even during mundane tasks? This episode offers a practical test to illustrate this phenomenon and provides actionable insights into how daily stressors like tight deadlines and constant urgency can send our primitive survival instincts into overdrive. Hear how I work with my clients to manually calm the vagus nerve and learn how you can perform these exercises at home. Whether you're navigating everyday stress or dealing with chronic anxiety, this conversation equips you with the knowledge and techniques to reclaim a sense of safety and calm in your life.

Transcript

Emily: 0:01

Did you know that tense muscles increase your anxiety? You have specific fight-or-flight muscles in your body that get caught in that muscle anxiety cycle. So if you don't relax your muscles it's just going to keep feeding that anxiety. Hi, I'm Emily and I am a neuromuscular massage therapist and I help ladies every day break that fight or flight and anxiety cycle. How I do that is relax certain muscles in their body that support breaking that anxiety. Obviously, one of my go-tos is the vagus nerve reset. Now in session I can manually relax and do specific techniques to calm that vagus nerve down. But after the session I often, if they have time, teach my clients how to do that basic exercise, that vagus nerve reset. If you're interested in learning how to do that, I do have that link down in the show notes. I can send you in your email the step-by-step on how to do that. But let's talk about how anxiety feeds muscles and we're going to do a little test because I want to show you that there's a direct connection.

Emily: 1:33

So if you are in a state where you in a location where you can like sit and just examine your body, so don't do this. If you're driving, save it till later, but go ahead and make a fist with your hands, just really clench them really, really tight, and often it goes directly up to your jaw. Your jaw gets really tight and tense and your teeth start clenching and you can just feel it. If you keep holding that fist, that really tight, tight fist not just a closed hand, but a tight, gripped fist you can feel the tension traveling up your arm and into different body areas. And once you open your hand and let that relax and no longer make a fist, you can feel that ease. And that is just when we're doing this little exercise. So right now, when you're just making that fist and then relax, you can feel the tension relaxing.

Emily: 2:41

So when we're having a stressful day and other things catch our mind and we're not even focusing or paying attention to how our body feels, our body is still recognizing that tension. It still feels ooh, I have to be on guard for this, because that's what it's telling itself. Because that's what it's telling itself. It's saying I don't feel safe in this situation or I just had to protect myself Now. So what does that look like in today's society? Because most of us aren't being chased by wild animals, that primitive nature inside us, which is why we have this originally.

Emily: 3:24

So what does it look like? It's often just that day-to-day stressors, the stressors, the feeling of pressure, with the clock not being late, hurry up, we got to get going. It's that sense of urgency and often deadlines, because you're like I have to get this done. And there's that pressure and stress and that mental load and you could just feel it rising and packing on and your body takes that in. That's where the stress lies, that's where everything in your body starts feeling it. So when you are on guard, your body's going ooh, do we have to fight? Is this a fighting time? Are we going to do it right now? How about now? And logically, you know saying well, no, I'm just in the office and it's fine. But your body is not making that connection. It says no, my priority number one is your safety. And if you're telling me that we're tense and this is a tenseful situation, nope, we're going to be on guard. So that's what the body does. Its number one survival, or its number one thing, is surviving. That's what the primary focus is on, and it will take away from other body parts doing their job because says right now, this is what we need to do so, when we can take time to relax, that then our body can settle down and say, okay, well, now we're safe.

Emily: 5:04

And often for people who don't have chronic anxiety or that chronic stress or that burnout feeling, they can jump back and forth between feeling safe and feeling stressed, feeling safe and ready to fight. And they can their their nervous system automatically does that. They don't have to put in any additional effort to do it. But when we get in that chronic state, that chronic state of stress and tension and that mental load, and am I getting all the things done? Am I forgetting things? So even when you are just at home relaxing, your body's still taking it in. It still says we're not quite sure about that.

Emily: 5:52

So that is why self-care on the daily is a must, especially for those who deal with stress every day. That's why they say, oh, what does the saying go? The saying goes every day you should spend 20 minutes in nature. Unless you're really busy, then you should spend an hour and you're like but I'm really busy, I don't have an extra hour. But that's where it's saying. It's saying, because the daily things of daily life add up, you need to take that additional time to decompress the body's all about balance and that's what it's looking for. So if you do find yourself in a high stressful situation, you might need to take extra precautions, extra self-care, so that it doesn't accumulate and it doesn't start damaging and doesn't start getting in that cycle.

Emily: 6:59

Default to that basic exercise of vagus nerve reset, because I know it works and I know it reprograms my body on how to settle down. It does a better job than, in my opinion, than doing affirmations, because it's like the key to settling your body down. You don't have to force it, you don't have to convince it, it just does it and that is why I really, really like it. That's why I'm on a mission just to tell everybody about it, because so many people do suffer from chronic anxiety, do suffer from the daily stress, and we need to learn how to decompress from that. We need the tools, and so I'm very thankful that we have these tools podcasts, youtube videos to learn how to to combat stressors in our daily lives. They don't accumulate and if you try it and you find it, you download the video on how to do the step-by-step.

Emily: 8:06

It's very simple, it's very easy, easy to implement and after you do it a few times, it won't take any additional that mental strain to do it. You'll just start doing it out of habit, which is perfect. That's what we want. We want the good, healthy, natural habits to sustain us in our day-to-day. But I hope you find it helpful. I want it to be helpful. I desire everybody to be able to do these natural things, because anxiety it's hard, it is overwhelming. It plays a toll on our mental, our emotional, our physical health. It hits all the notches in our body and that is why, like I said previously, my goal is to teach everybody how to reset their vagus nerve so that they can have a happier life, so that mental wear is lifted, so that they can bounce back and forth between am I stressed or am I calm, and they can just be, at the end of the day, that calm state. So go ahead, practice that vagus nerve reset, breathe and do all the good things. We'll see you next time.