Why Your Nervous System Isn’t A Master Switch And How Small, Values-Led Habits Stick

We explore a potentially kinder path to wellbeing as we enter 2026, and a veering away from 'wellbeing overload', in what is ultimately just a gentle and very personal ramble through the thorny business of making a resolution and actually sticking to it.  There are no answers here, more just a pondering.  The episode is as errant and wandery as the vagus nerve itself, to be perfectly frank!  On the subject of that vagus nerve, we do have some fun questioning the current vagus nerve hype and polyvagal absolutism, while looking at building habits that honour values over perfection.  You'll find personal stories of cancer treatment, menopause challenges, and coaching ground a practical approach to stepping into discomfort to make change, finding discipline if you are a pleasure-seeker and veer towards the 'instant reward' button, and finally, the value that trumps them all: human connections and friendships.

• reframing wellbeing from optimisation to sufficiency
• what polyvagal theory explains and where it overreaches
• why the vagus nerve is a lens not a master switch
• nervous system as an ecosystem shaped by context
• midlife health, hormone therapy and strength needs
• breath work, meditation and nature as steady supports
• friendship and social connection as top protective factors
• the dopamine problem of immediate reward vs values
• designing non‑negotiable anchors and micro‑breaks
• choosing two practices and letting the rest be optional

So drop us a line, be in touch, and until we meet again, I hope that your voice finds the space it needs to be really heard

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Transcript

Framing Wellbeing And Change

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Today's podcast as we go into 2026 is all about well-being and the well-being world and about the choices we feel we need to make or we do need to make to be healthier, better humans. And I know that for me there are plenty of things I need to improve on as I go into 2026. And I've been thinking a little bit more deeply this year about how I might make change. So this podcast is a bit about how we make change. It's also a little conversation about some of the narratives around well-being that are useful lenses, but may not be quite the truths that we sometimes think they are, as we all kind of move into an era of sort of lay expertise in different areas of science. So just having a little look at one or two of the theories that are around that may be really, really useful, but may not be quite what they what they set out to be. So I hope you can sit back and enjoy. This is VoiceCast with Nikki Kennedy, exploring voice in every sense, the sound you make, the story you tell, and the presence you bring. I'm Nikki Kennedy, your host, a classical singer, vocal health and rehabilitation specialist, and an executive coach. And my work is about helping people transform, find new directions, get unstuck, and express themselves in ways that feel authentic and true. Together we'll look at how your voice and your presence can shape change in work, in life, and in yourself. Excuse me if there are a few coughs and tickles through this little chat. This is a solo podcast today, and I couldn't really resist. I feel like everyone has something to say about a new year, because it's such a natural moment to really think about making change and and starting afresh. There's that lovely sense of of maybe I can maybe I can get fitter, um, spend less money, uh, eat better, be more healthy, be more successful in business, whatever it is for you, there's always going to be something that we think we can definitely do better. But all these years when I just feel like every time I'm saying the same stuff. I've been thinking about it and delving a bit more deeply into how we might make real change where we really want to. It sometimes feels as if we're living in the most incredibly informed age of well-being in history. And I think a lot of people, including myself, can sometimes begin to feel a bit overwhelmed by it. Now I'm not really a perfectionist, but I imagine that if you are, you would quickly become a slave to the endless list of optimization that we're sort of seeing in health. We're looking at health span over lifespan, which is great, and we're determined to be better at ageing. It's all great, and I read this stuff and I think, fantastic, that sounds so good. I would love to do all of those things. We're surrounded by excellent, sensible, evidence-based advice, but there is well, I don't know, for me there's a growing sense that looking after myself is just another almost a competitive full-time occupation. I think that some of the evidence gets taken up and becomes an absolute as well. It starts to inform every decision. And we'll get on to a little chat about the vegas nerve later in that particular context. So I'm not really talking about burnout, but it's a kind of really scary level of admin. We're in danger of well-being conversations stopping being about living reasonably well and starting to look like a form of obsessing, over hacking any body and mind system that we can. And don't get me wrong, it's just that we can get a bit lost in the to-do list. Well, may maybe I'm just speaking for myself. Some people may be able to just extract what they want, but I really struggle. The advice for somebody like myself, let me take myself as an example. I'm in menopause, but this advice might work, also might be being given to people in perimenopause. So any women from the age of sort of forty onwards are going to be being asked to consider movement for their mental health, uh, strength training for bone density and muscle growth, cardio for longevity and heart, uh breath work for nervous system regulation, meditation for clarity, yoga Pilates for strength and flexibility, social sport for belonging and running about in laughter, which is so important. Cold exposure is supposed to be really good, and I do swim in the sea a lot. Nature for perspective, you've got to get out for a walk. Oh yes, uh, and don't let me forget journaling and gratitude. So after this short break, we're going to come back and discuss perhaps one of the theories that has been dominating the well-being conversation. Uh, that is the theory which is known as polyvagal theory, which was developed by Stephen Porthess. And if you haven't heard of the vagus nerve or of uh vagal tone, for example, of the polyvagal theory, I can just briefly run through what that suggestion has been. It's an incredible uh story or lens to look at well-being through. Stephen Porhess's theory suggests that our nervous system is constantly scanning the world for safety or threat, and it responds through different physiological states. It builds on an idea of having this older reptilian brain, which is an ancient survival focused part of our nervous system compared with a um the the mammalian brain, this newer brain that has evolved. And the theory proposes that we don't just switch between calm or and then fight or flight, but we move between multiple states linked to things like social connection and safety, um, mobilization, and a more primitive shutdown response when threat feels overwhelming. That's the kind of flop or uh or freeze response. These shifts happen outside conscious control and they shape how we think, speak and breathe and relate to others long before the rational brain catches up. And actually it's a really, really useful way of framing what we observe in human beings when they're under threat, and how we approach our own nervous system when it's galloping out of control with anxiety, perhaps. We talk about the sympathetic and the parasympathetic systems, that's useful to know about as well in this discourse. The sympathetic nervous system is that fight or flight reflex, it's that kind of alert response, um, the threat response. Whereas the parasympathetic response, uh, that system is what we might call rest and digest. It's when the body's in a a state of just calm rest and the and the focus of the of the systems in the body is all about digesting and resting. So those are useful terminology for when we come back to very briefly have a look at these this theory as an example of one of the things that is dominating how we talk about well-being. Let's talk about that vagus nerve. It's the star of the show at the moment. It's all that anyone's talking about, vagal tone, and and I see people on Facebook asking, where can I get my vagus nerve toned and where can I and it's like it's the it's the be all and end all, and of course it does play a role in regulation, uh heart rate variability, gut brain signalling, and all kinds of aspects of social engagement. But somewhere along the way the vagus nerve has stopped being part of a system and it's become the system. It's the explanation for everything anxiety, trauma, leadership presence, creativity, digestion, emotional safety, as if one nerve could possibly carry that much responsibility. It's like a buzzword. And I think it's an oversimplification. All these things that are exploding in our research in recent years around neuroscience, gut health, the gut microbiome, and how that might play into choices and how we live and whether we can hack this or that system. They're major advances, but they're being distilled into easy self-help truths and they can become oversimplified. And I find myself becoming a bit sceptical of anything presented as like a master switch for human wellbeing, especially where it leads to wholesale change of habit. I say let's be more pragmatic and moderate. Let's make changes, but without putting too much pressure on ourselves. So going back to this vagal nerve, what what what am I challenging here? I'm not challenging anything. I mean this this mainly comes back to the work of Stephen Porthis and the polyvagal theory. But what doesn't get talked about is that a lot of other researchers have have said that in fact the nervous system is not as neatly hierarchical as he and his theory suggest, that the distinction between a ventral and a dorsal vagal system, if you've read about that, is oversimplified, and that a lot of these claims are relying on an inference rather than on any direct measurement or real science in humans. In other words, they're kind of logical conclusions that have been drawn by somebody and that make a quite useful lens for us to look through, and they do. So this so called reptile brain evolving into the mammalian brain it's potentially also been oversimplified to make a digestible theory, but it it makes something sound very simple and linear that clearly isn't. And finally, if we talk about heart rate variability, that's been associated with vagal tone too. But there are so many other factors that play into heart rate variability. It's not just one nerve. By challenging it, I'm not saying it's useless, but I'm just saying we shouldn't be taking these things as absolute truths. It's a helpful lens, it's not a complete explanation. It's a metaphor, really. It's it's more useful as a metaphor than as a neuroscience truth, but I'm seeing it often being peddled as a neuroscience truth. So maybe this podcast perhaps is is is me thinking about how we could use some of this advice and some of these lenses in a helpful way. Like what can influence our nervous system state? What does make sense to definitely do? What things really do work. So after this short break, we're going to go into some very personal musings about how I'm thinking about driving change this year, and this is I have to really come clean. I am certainly not setting myself up as an example of someone who's nailed well-being. I think there are aspects of well-being that I feel comfortable that I that I manage quite well, but m many, many things I really struggle with. I'm a feast or famine girl. I tend to go from for these moments of of glorious um discipline and then fall completely off and let everything go. I battle with my weight and have tried taking the GLP1 injections over this last year. That has really helped, but I know it's not for everybody, and there are concerns for some people about that. And certainly I can testify that if you come off them, which I did during my breast cancer treatment, you can very quickly find that you rediscover the food noise. So uh so that's something to be managed carefully. So I'm certainly not sitting here telling anybody how to deal with their well-being. That's not what this is about. What I think I'm doing here is musing about what I've seen in my own coaching clients, what I'm observing in myself very gradually about how we actually can make change. I'm not going to be the person that tells you what kind of change it's good to make, but I'm thinking more deeply about the things that might be holding me back from making change. And if there's something in what I'm talking about that resonates or is useful, uh, that comes from some of the methods that I use, then that's great. But I'm certainly not expecting it. Maybe you're just listening because you're interested in in hearing about it. But yeah, please don't please don't think this is advice. It's really just a a sharing. So let's have a think about some of the things that really do appeal, certainly to me, uh, in terms of an evidence base, but also in terms of what I what I know I really would benefit from spending time with. Um there are so many, of course, but uh I'm really keen to have a little look for myself at what what are the non-negotiables for me going to be and how am I going to make that change. When it comes down to it, I've really thought long and hard about obviously the the the f the food that I eat, uh avoiding ultra-processed foods, the exercise that I take, the nature and key to it all for me, especially over these last three or four months while I have been going through some medical treatment, th that has been the friendship circle, the people who have really made me feel supported and looked after. And that I think has been perhaps the number one thing, perhaps I would say in my wellbeing quest is really tending to that particular garden, those friendships. Because ultimately I think the rest will follow. I think that connection, social connection and kindness and generosity has been what has made me feel well through what could have been a period where I might have not felt well, and perhaps have helped me to deal with what could have been a difficult diagnosis. A cancer diagnosis is never an easy thing. Uh, and I will, of course, make the caveat that for me it has not been uh an immediately life-threatening cancer diagnosis or a really major health threat in the way that it has been for so many others, and and for those people my heart absolutely goes out. I know that I'm not in that category, and I know how lucky I am. For me, the the hardest part of it has been around dealing with hormone therapy, which is challenging, uh, but but but not really the kinds of existential questions that I think a lot of people have to face when they uh are given a diagnosis with the word cancer in it, and for that I'm supremely grateful. But it has made me reflect on many, many aspects of well-being and what keeps me well. And interestingly, of course, exercise is going to be, you know, right up there, and fitness, but breath work and meditation and social connections, friendships, I think are coming out on top. There are many, many pieces of evidence that are coming out now around breath work and around meditation, for example, which are not new theories, these are things that have been proved and been successfully deployed by large numbers of people over thousands of years. And that's when I get really interested. When I see a great piece of evidence coming out that explains why something like a Buddhist meditation scheme or a yoga philosophy actually works, and those things have been going on for so many years, so successfully for so many people, and they've been taken up to form the basis of psychological models, including the ones that I use uh in coaching, uh acceptance and commitment training and self-compassion, for example, then I'm really curious to find out more. And I'm keen to get myself into a better rhythm with those things because I do believe they genuinely will work. So if we can influence the nervous system, not control it, but influence it, it's not a light switch, it's an ecosystem. So we we want to influence it, and we know that it's shaped by sleep, hormones, relationships, workload, meaning of life, health, background, purpose, upbringing, genetic influences, diet, exercise, I don't know, I've probably missed many other contexts that you might want to mention. But we know that it's shaped by those things. So really although no amount of humming is going to override exhaustion and no breathing ratio is going to compensate for chronic stress or lack of safety, they might help as part of a gentle holistic overview, along with journaling and walks in nature and exercise. But again, we're starting a to-do list, aren't we? It's insurmountable hugeness requiring a 5 a.m. start and two hours of well-being work before we even have breakfast. And I know there are people that do that, and fair play to you. Brilliant. I just don't think I'm capable of that. I'm not capable of sustaining it. And also, like where does a slice of cake and a glass of wine fit into that? And how do we manage our screen time? Does it have to be feast or famine, all or nothing? Or can we be pragmatic? So let's move to my checklist, my impossible checklist. I include myself in this problem. So according to the advice I trust, as I said, I should be doing a number of things. So I'm going to give you a bit more context about me. I'm going to use myself as an example, which feels very exposing, but there we are. So I'm a somewhat overweight but active woman. I'm approaching 60 years of age with a busy life and a massive to-do list. I'm a soul trader. I'm for good measure, I'm taking hormone therapy after breast cancer diagnosis, which exaggerates menopause symptoms to a kind of off-the-scale proportion. And I'm getting used to that, so I'm really struggling with elements of that. So that means I also have to consider bone health and muscle preservation in particular. My perfect world would have tennis for social connection. I love it, it makes me laugh. Chigung, because that's meditative uh meditative, I should say, and relates to Chinese medicine, and that's a lot more about prevention than medication. And I think it partners so well with Western medicine. I love putting Chinese medicine and Western medicine together. I think it's a an an absolute win. And Tai Chi, I'd love to learn. Again, running out of time here. Yoga because it's always been my home, and it's so great for mobility, but also strength and regulation. Meditation for attention and clarity, and I know I need to do it. I know how hard I find that discipline, but I've learnt through my coaching work how important it is to exercise that muscle. It doesn't you can't just come to it every now and then when you need it. I should be doing weight training because of that hormone therapy and the brittle bones that I'm likely to be developing. I need also to walk or run for that, and also for my cardiovascular. I love sea swimming, it's great for my mental health. I have a superb circle of friends, and couldn't be without them. And of course there are as yet really unproven but almost definite benefits from cold water swimming. There is some evidence, but not all the evidence that we quite want yet, but I'm pretty sure it's there, and I love a sauna. Journaling, I haven't really got the patience, and my handwriting is dreadful, but I do know that it's a good idea. So all of that, fabulous, but what am I going to fit that in? I've also got to work and live. So this is where I kind of come to the Michael Mosley paradox. I loved Michael Mosley. I'm so sad that he died in the way that he did. I really want to say that. He's given us so much, and his just one thing was brilliant. It was about taking one small doable action. It was human, it was non moralising, it was non judgmental. One thing you could do might, according to some evidence, make your life better. But here's the thing. There were over three hundred episodes. So just one thing quietly became just three hundred things. And that's not a failure of the idea. I believe the idea was probably to pick the one or two things that resonate with you. But of course the perfectionists amongst us will immediately start to try and do all of it. So evidence tells us what can help, but it doesn't tell us what we must do, and it certainly shouldn't be taken to extremes. We'd probably sense what's good for us. We know, for example, that elements of drinking red wine are good for you, and I love a glass of red wine, but we also know perfectly well that that doesn't mean you can consume vast quantities of it, which would clearly be bad for you. Just enjoy the odd glass. So without context, evidence becomes pressure and well being advice gets another way of us feeling that we're not quite enough. And also people take things to extreme. You know, we know that it's good to drink a certain amount of water. I see people walking around drinking literally litres of water, I wonder how they do it. I know I should drink more water, but I'm not about to be carrying one of those huge bottles around with me. So I'm maybe looking for a slightly saner model here. What if well being was more about just sufficiency? This is what's changing for me. A certain amount of discomfort. So I've set out this January to think about how I might have more success at actually making the change. Where can I go a bit deeper to move habits? I'm frankly sick of saying the same thing year in, year out, and then being engaged in a constant battle and then feeling like a failure. Now I often ask my children for advice. They're both in their early twenties and they come up with really good stuff. I asked my son, because he's quite like me, he's wired a bit like me, and he thinks and behaves in similar ways. And I asked my daughter, because she's a little bit different, she carries and always has done, a natural discipline and an innate sort of composure that I definitely don't have. So she's a really good person for advice as well. And I asked them the other day about what's difficult for them in terms of motivation, self-discipline, and making healthy choices. Effie, I think, my daughter, didn't really have much to say because she doesn't struggle with it, but my son immediately articulated that it was always the problem of choosing immediate reward over long-term gain. And of course, that fits with the neuroscience too. The brain is reward-driven, it's not values driven. So dopamine responds reliably to certainty and immediacy rather than to any distant abstract outcomes. So if we get that hit, it's going to come directly after the activity. It's not going to turn up for something that is going to happen to us in the future. We know this, and we're learning about its impact through social media platforms and the problems with children and attention as they're sucked into that dopamine hit thing. So long-term goals require tolerating uncertainty and effort and emotional friction. Right, got that. So I need that to be at the heart of any change. So when people frame New Year's change as motivational willpower, they're setting up for a fail. It's not really laziness that stops us getting there, it's something around discipline, and I I think that is the capacity to stay with discomfort in service of something that matters. So resolutions often focus on outcomes, like I'm going to do this. But maybe maybe we need to focus more on the process, like I'm going to practice staying with this even when it's uncomfortable. At least that's what I'm going to try. I'm hoping it's going to reframe something and is a bit more self-compassionate, and it will remove that moral overlay of I failed. I'm hoping it's going to normalise struggle for me. It's going to align the change I want to make with values. And that's the piece I spend so much time exploring with clients as a coach and using acceptance and commitment training. So my son, naming this as his biggest challenge, shows to me an intuitive grasp of something a lot of adults never articulate, which is the hardest part of growth is not not knowing what to do, but it's continuing to do it when the novelty wears off and when it feels uncomfortable. I mean, I know a lot of people know this, and I might be seeming a bit remedial, but it's something I struggle with. So I'm thinking about how this might look for me. So maybe there's one non-negotiable anchor, which might mean for me putting a timer, for example, on the time between waking up and getting out of bed, as I do like to catch up on the news with a cup of tea. But I then might have to actually remind myself that I choose to step into the cold and discomfort, to commit to the short meditation practice for 15 to 20 minutes before moving on. I may have to say that out loud to myself, you know, I know very well what the benefits are, and I know it's important to stay with this and develop the practice, and I should be able to focus on those values. I choose to step into discomfort, and maybe there it's going to be easier to pick from the the one activity from the great list of things that I mentioned earlier, because I'm already halfway there. So by far the hardest bit for me is committing to stuff later in the day, like taking time to stop and have a cup of tea, or going round the block at lunchtime, going outside, you know. Just even taking lunchtime off or taking any kind of break is a challenge I need to look at. I get absorbed in work and I have a feeling like I can't stop. Again I'm going to try the same strategy. I'm going to be absorbed in a task, but I'm going to interrupt that task, even if it's just to sit and have a lovely, carefully brewed cup of tea in my favourite bone china teacup, and watch raindrops on the window for five minutes. I mean it shouldn't be so hard, should it? So that's me laying out my strategy. I've no idea whether that will be any help to anybody else in this world. But you know, maybe it does. It's a very tiny reframing. Instead of saying I'm gonna achieve this, I'm gonna say I'm gonna stay in discomfort while I'm doing this because of the values that are driving that desire for change. I hope 2026 brings great joy to everybody. Uh and it's going to bring us discomfort too. It's going to bring misery and sadness and terrible things. But it's how we deal with those things that will be important, how we take them, how we bounce back, how we learn from them, and how we get support from our closest friends and our family that makes all the difference. Take care. You've been listening to VoiceCast with Nikki Kennedy. For me, voice has always been more than just sound. It's presence, connection, music, transformation. I hope this episode has offered something to carry with you into your own conversations and your own story. So drop us a line, be in touch, and until we meet again, I hope that your voice finds the space it needs to be really heard.