Creating a Healing Terrain For The Vagus Nerve
Healing is more than addressing lab markers or optimizing nutrients. It’s about restoring safety to the body on a cellular level.
Functional lab testing and personalized nutrition are powerful tools. They help us identify root causes, target deficiencies, and tailor protocols with precision. For some clients, this targeted support is enough to create significant change. But for many others, there’s still something missing: a sense of internal safety.
Nutrition addresses the biochemical side of healing. What often goes unaddressed is the electrical side: the nervous system’s tone, signaling, and ability to shift out of defense mode. When we integrate vagus nerve toning and brain retraining into a personalized, lab-informed plan, we begin to create a true healing terrain. This foundational wellness allows the body to move from survival into repair.
In this state, nutrients are better absorbed, inflammation quiets, hormones recalibrate, and cellular healing activates. The body is no longer stuck in defense. It begins to remember how to restore balance. This is when true transformation happens: not just symptom relief, but lasting homeostasis, resilience, and vitality.
In our recent post, we explored the Cell Danger Response (CDR)—a protective metabolic reaction our cells initiate when faced with physical, emotional, or environmental threats. When the CDR becomes chronically activated, the body remains stuck in a loop of defense, impairing mitochondrial function, gut health, and immune balance. This disruption can block the natural healing cycle, impairing mitochondrial function, gut health, and immune balance, blocking natural healing, known as salugenesis.
What happens after infections are cleared, nutrient levels are replenished, gut imbalances are corrected, and the body still doesn’t feel safe enough to heal?
That’s where nervous system regulation and vagus nerve activation come in.
The Missing Link in Healing: Nervous System Healing Starts with Safety
Several individuals with chronic illness face an invisible hurdle: their nervous system has been wired for survival for so long, it doesn’t remember how to rest. This chronic state of fight-or-flight isn’t just a psychological issue; it’s a physiological pattern. And unless we address it directly, healing may be impossible.
This is why we view nervous system work as the foundation of healing, not a replacement for nutrition and lab-based care, but the grounding that allows all other interventions to truly work.
When the nervous system is regulated, clients often experience better digestion, balanced hormones, stronger immunity, and greater tolerance to treatment. These improvements occur because the body shifts out of survival mode and into a state where healing becomes possible.
Chronic stress follows a predictable loop: alarm (fight or flight), resistance (pushing through), and eventually exhaustion, where chronic symptoms emerge. This isn’t just psychological; it’s deeply embedded in the limbic system and autonomic nervous system. Left unaddressed, this loop can drive inflammation, fatigue, digestive issues, and hormonal imbalances.
The key to breaking this cycle? Rewiring the brain’s response to stress and restoring a sense of safety in the body.
The Role of Brain Retraining
Brain retraining programs, such as Primal Trust or the Dynamic Neural Retraining System, work by rewiring neural pathways that have been shaped by chronic stress, trauma, or illness. These patterns can cause the brain to continually scan for danger and overreact to stimuli, including foods, supplements, people, or even benign environments.
Your Healing Can Become “Stuck”: Why Vagus Nerve Toning Matters
The vagus nerve is one of the most important communication pathways between your brain and body. When stimulated, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, your body’s “rest, digest, and heal” mode. This activation helps regulate everything from digestion and inflammation to mood, sleep, and heart rate. Daily vagus nerve exercises can support your body’s ability to bounce back from stress and restore balance at the cellular level.
Think of vagus nerve toning like strength training for your nervous system. Just as physical strength requires consistent effort, easing chronic stress takes regular practice. Even 15 to 20 minutes a day can make a big difference. Over time, you teach your body to return to calm and connection more easily, creating nervous system muscle memory.
You can stimulate the vagus nerve in many ways. Gentle humming or chanting activates the vocal cords, which improves vagal tone. Splashing cold water on your face triggers a parasympathetic response. Gargling, heart-focused breathing, and slow grounding movements also help release stress and shift the body from threat to safety.
These techniques work by releasing stored stress and shifting your body’s internal state from a place of perceived threat to one of safety and trust.
Breathwork: VU Breathing Technique
One of the simplest and most effective ways to tone the vagus nerve is through breathwork. Slow, deep belly breathing signals safety to the body and shifts you out of fight-or-flight mode. A practice is called the VU Breathing Technique, sometimes called the “Breathifier” method.
Begin by inhaling deeply through your nose into the lower abdomen, allowing the diaphragm to fully expand. As you exhale, create a low, vibratory “VU” sound—similar to a long hum in the back of your throat, like a foghorn. Repeat this cycle for two to five minutes while seated or lying down in a calm space.
It might feel unusual at first, especially making the vocal sound, but with practice, it will feel natural. Over time, this practice can help stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, induce calm, and support emotional regulation and nervous system balance.
HeartMath and Heart Rate Variability Training: Tuning the Heart-Brain Connection
Heart Rate Variability, or HRV, is the natural variation in time between heartbeats. A healthy heart does not beat evenly but adjusts constantly to your internal and external environment. High HRV shows nervous system flexibility and resilience, while low HRV may signal chronic stress, fatigue, or inflammation.
The HeartMath technique helps increase HRV by combining breathwork with emotional self-regulation to create “coherence,” a state where the rhythms of your heart, breath, and brain align. This promotes healing, focus, and emotional balance.
To practice, focus on the area around your heart and breathe slowly, inhale for five seconds, exhale for five. Think of a positive feeling like gratitude or love. Start with one to three minutes daily and increase gradually.
This practice calms the nervous system, lowers cortisol, supports hormone balance, and strengthens the heart’s electromagnetic field, improving both your inner state and connection with others.
Why HeartMath and HRV Training will lead to healing
Heart-focused breathing, like HeartMath or HRV biofeedback, is a powerful tool for regulating the nervous system. Start with one to three minutes daily and gradually increase as you become comfortable. These practices create harmony between the heart and brain, calming the nervous system, reducing reactivity, and boosting HRV, which is a key marker of stress recovery. They also lower cortisol and support healthy DHEA levels, linked to energy and resilience.
Consistent practice enhances the heart’s electromagnetic field, influencing both internal physiology and emotional state. Over time, it aids emotional regulation, promotes healing, and reshapes stress responses. Benefits include improved calm, energy, sleep, and resilience to anxiety, trauma, and chronic illness. It also supports cardiovascular and immune health and offers real-time tracking through HRV devices.
Eye Gaze Stabilization involves fixing your gaze on a stationary object while slowly turning your head side to side or up and down. This strengthens the vestibulo-ocular reflex, stabilizing vision during movement by improving coordination between your inner ear and eyes. It reduces dizziness, motion sensitivity, and improves balance while gently activating the brainstem to help regulate overstimulation. It’s useful during brain fog, after screen fatigue, or when feeling ungrounded.
Pursuit Eye Tracking means following a moving object, like your thumb or a pen, with your eyes while keeping your head still. This engages the cerebellum and frontal cortex, improving attention, visual tracking, and executive function. It’s especially helpful for anxiety, ADHD-like symptoms, or recovery from stress. Use it in the morning, before focus tasks, or during breaks to calm and refocus.
Near-Far Gaze (Accommodation Shifts) alternates your focus between a close object (like your finger near your nose) and a distant one (across the room). This trains your brain to shift focus efficiently, promotes neuroplasticity, reduces eye strain, and improves depth perception. Use it to relieve screen fatigue, before or after breathwork, and to reconnect with your surroundings.
Vagus nerve stimulation reduces stress by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering cortisol, calming heart rate, and building resilience. It improves nervous system regulation and vagal tone, supporting emotional stability and reducing reactivity. It also enhances digestion and immunity by boosting gut motility, reducing inflammation, and strengthening immune response, which helps with issues like bloating or constipation. Overall, a regulated nervous system promotes hormone balance, detoxification, and cellular repair, creating the foundation for lasting healing.
Creating a Healing Terrain
When vagus nerve toning and brain retraining are layered into a root-cause nutrition and lab-based protocol, we create a healing terrain, one that supports both the chemistry and the electrical wiring of the body. This is when transformation happens, not just symptom improvement, but a true restoration of homeostasis.
If your healing has plateaued despite doing “all the right things,” it may be time to consider nervous system work as the missing link.
At 23 Nutrition Therapy, we guide our clients through this integrative approach, blending evidence-based nutrition with nervous system regulation so the body feels safe, supported, and ready to heal.
From CDR to Trust-Based Healing
The Cell Danger Response reveals how stress disrupts mitochondrial and immune function. But unless we address how the brain and nervous system store that stress, we risk staying stuck in survival, even after we’ve addressed the physical root causes.
What often keeps people stuck is the unprocessed stress stored in the brain and nervous system. Unless we address this component, the body may continue to operate as though it’s under threat, even if lab markers improve or symptoms temporarily ease. For those with high-achieving, Type A, or perfectionist tendencies, this is especially important. These individuals often push through discomfort, override body signals, and internalize high stress as “normal.” They may hold themselves to impossible standards and struggle to rest, slow down, or trust the healing process. Ironically, these very traits, while often praised in our culture, can make it harder for the nervous system to shift out of fight-or-flight and into a state of repair.
This is why our approach at 23 Nutrition Therapy combines functional nutrition testing and molecular therapies with brain retraining and nervous system healing. We work with tools that address not just the biology, but also the lived experience of stress, helping the body re-establish a felt sense of safety. Because when we combine these modalities, we’re not just managing symptoms or checking boxes, we’re creating the conditions for the body to remember how to heal.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Rewiring Your Brain
In the next post, we’ll explore how memory, stress, and trauma shape our neural pathways and how brain retraining techniques like the ABC Dimensional Shift can help rewire your nervous system and unlock long-term healing.
Ready to Rewire Your Healing?
If you’ve addressed the root causes but still feel stuck, your body may not feel safe enough to heal. Let’s set you up with the tools to feel safe again.
Book a free 15-minute strategy call to explore how nutrition, vagus nerve training, and brain rewiring can support your healing journey.
While it can be overwhelming trying to navigate this on your own, working with a skilled Kalish Method Practitioner, detoxification specialist, and leap certified functional medicine dietitian is essential in developing an individualized plan for long-lasting success! The very first step before beginning the initial “Comprehensive Root Cause Analysis” program is to schedule a free 15-minute nutrition strategy call to discuss the best approach for you!
