Basic Exercise SOS for Dorsal Vagal.docx

Basic Exercise SOS for Dorsal Vagal

Source: p.369 ‘Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve’

By Stanley Rosenberg

Repeat this exercise as often as needed. It takes less than two minutes to complete.

Before the exercise

I would argue these steps are optional, but they’re super helpful to understand how personally effective this exercise is for you.

For example, what I’ve written before:

My neck is stiff on both sides and tight. I am in the mid-range severity of dorsal vagal shutdown (freeze). I would rate the experience as 7/10 severity.

Evaluate both:

the relative freedom of movement in your head and neck

Assess your mental state with words and/or ratings

Steps:

1.Rotate your head to the right as far, as it goes comfortably.

2.Then, come back to the center and pause.

3.Rotate your head to the left, as far as it goes comfortably.

4.Assess:

How far you can rotate on each side
Assess if there’s pain or stiffness

Start the exercise:

The first few times that you do the exercise, you should lie on your back. After you are familiar with the exercise, you can do it by sitting on a chair, standing, or lying on your back.

1.Choose a spot to lay down on.

2.Standing or sitting, weave the fingers one hand together with the fingers of the other hand. See photo.

2. Go to your spot to lay down on.

(After you’ve done this exercise a few times you can maintain this position, or do it sitting on a chair, or standing).

3. The weight of your head will be resting comfortably on your interwoven fingers.

You should feel both:

the hardness of your cranium with your fingers

(the cranium is the part of the skull that encloses the brain)

the bones of your fingers on the back of your head

Note: If you have a stiff shoulder and cannot bring both of your hands up behind the back of your head, it is sufficient to use one hand, with the fingers and palm contacting both sides of the back of your head.

4.Keeping your head in place, look to the right, moving only your eyes, as far as you comfortably can.

Do not turn your head; just move your eyes.

5.Keep looking to the right until you swallow, yawn, or sigh. See photo.

Note: this will occur after a short period of time, but I would request that you try to utilise patience.

7. Bring your eyes back to looking straight ahead

8.Leave your hands in place and keep your head still.

9. Move your eyes to the left

10.Hold your eyes there until you notice a sigh, a yawn, or a swallow.

11. Sit up or stand up.

NOTE: If you become dizzy when you sit up or stand up, it is probably because you relaxed when you were lying down, and your blood pressure dropped. This is a normal reaction. It usually takes a minute or two before your blood pressure adjusts and pumps more blood to your brain.

Optional: Evaluate what you have experienced.

Prompt questions:

Has your mental state changed?
How would you rate your mental state?
Has there been any improvement in the mobility of your neck?
Has your breathing changed?

How it works:

The goal of this exercise is to enhance social engagement. It’s not a ‘cure’ for this state, but it helps me significantly. For me personally, I notice a lessened severity of mental and physical symptoms; I feel more ‘neutral’ and less hopeless; less physically heavy and slow; I have a ‘looser’ neck; and I have increased mental alertness.

How it helps the skeletal and nervous system:

This info is new to me, so I don’t feel comfortable paraphrasing it, and I’ve quoted it directly below. Perhaps in the future I might view and attach all the appendix photos when I have more time. If you’re curious, I recommend Googling images and info for the following, to increase understanding:

Central Nervous System (consists of the brain and spinal cord): this will show you the C1 and C2.

Brain anatomy, cranial nerves

“It repositions the atlas (C1, the first cervical/neck vertebra) and the axis (C2) and increases mobility in the neck and the entire spine. (See “Axis” and “Atlas” in the Appendix.) It increases blood flow to the brainstem, where the five cranial nerves necessary for social engagement originate. This can have a positive effect on the ventral branch of the vagus nerve (CN X), as well as on cranial nerves V, VII, IX, and XI.”