Important Vagus Nerve Nonsense Compliments of Western Medicine
I have been teaching about the vagus nerve for years, sharing this post and the post I wrote on how I discovered this vagus nerve healing fun, before vagus nerve - yoga science research was becoming more mainstream.
Recently, I learned some interesting information in regards to the vagus nerve and western medicine. Someone I love had a spell that medical people refer to as a vagal response. Have you ever heard the term "vagaled out."
When the spell was first happening, I checked for the obvious
-stroke check first and when I was clear that was not the issue... I quickly checked heart rate and heart beat strength. Heart rate was way down & thready feeling, person feels like they are going to faint, and loss of color in the face. So I knew we were most likely dealing with a vagus response.
Image from this article: https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/i-now-suspect-the-vagus-nerve-is-the-key-to-well-being.html
I have been teaching about the vagus nerve for years, sharing this post and the post I wrote on how I discovered this vagus nerve healing fun, before vagus nerve - yoga science research was becoming more mainstream.
Recently, I learned some interesting information in regards to the vagus nerve and western medicine. Someone I love had a spell that medical people refer to as a vagal response. Have you ever heard the term "vagaled out."
When the spell was first happening, I checked for the obvious
-stroke check first and when I was clear that was not the issue... I quickly checked heart rate and heart beat strength. Heart rate was way down & thready feeling, person feels like they are going to faint, and loss of color in the face. So I knew we were most likely dealing with a vagus response.
I, of course, looked up information to share with the one weaving this spell, so their body's response would be better understood.
In looking up vagus response information, I tapped into all this research on how the medical field now knows that a toned vagus nerve supports weight loss.
A paragraph from one study:
A number of studies have demonstrated that pulsed electrical stimulations on vagus nerve could induce multiple physiologic functions related to food intake, energy metabolism, and glycemic control, which can result in appreciable weight loss20–22. An implantable vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) device for weight control was recently approved by Food and Drug Administration and commercialized20,23. Major concerns of current electrical stimulation are potential compensation mechanisms that blunt physiological responses14 and vicinity tissue damage that induces adverse effects17,24,25. In addition, the electrical system is bulky and complicated in operation. All the electrical stimulations need to be programed externally and the device needs to be charged periodically13,26. How to achieve real-time-responsive and self-sustainable stimulation remains a major challenge for this promising weight control strategy. National Library of Medicine
I underlined the last sentence because, instead of recommending a inner conscience connection lifestyle habit, AKA Yoga, the medical field came up with an electrical implant to intermittently stimulate the vagus nerve to possibly tone it.
AND, the medical field seems clueless about Yoga and its ability to tone the vagus nerve.
Hmmm, maybe this is Yoga's beautiful method of supporting weight loss and healthy lifestyle choices: vagus nerve toning!
Instead of recommending Yoga for the vagus nerve's toning and health, let's do the typical western medicine quick fix BullShit (another word for nonsense) and implant people with electrical stimulation devices.
Toning the vagus nerve with Yoga prevents you from missing all the benefits of doing the actual work , a truly toned vagus nerve with the side benefits of weight loss:
-Calmer disposition
-Deeper breathing habits & lung capacity
-Stopping the negative self talk
-Ability to choose healthier habits without struggle or feeling bad
-And so much more. Read my many posts on Yoga's benefits, several of them being about weight loss benefits... the Sages of India knew what they were up to!
The field of western medicine have suppressed what the sages of natural medicine have known for hundreds and hundreds of years:
-Take this lab created pill instead of an herb, Nature's healing food.
-Have this surgery instead of changing your eating and lifestyle habits.
-Let’s implant this vagus nerve electrical stimulation device instead of teaching you time honored, Yoga inner conscious connection habits.
Trust me, I am grateful for western medicine. In emergency situations, trauma, and acute issues; western medicine shines.
For the healing of chronic lifestyle diseases, western medicine leaves a lot to be desired.
If you believe in the ability of your body, mind, & spirit to heal itself... western medicine loses its pull to have you right where they want you: buying their medically recommended drugs, surgery, etc.
Change Doesn’t Just “Happen”...Be The Change You Want To See In Yourself. 
https://www.paulayoumellrn.com/sacred-circle-mentorship
Sacred Circle Wise Women Mentorship™ was created to support students and clients with the tools to make lifestyle changes, to be able to self heal, and to Create Constant Calm with the tools of Yoga. When I first started teaching Sacred Circle, in person classes, we did Yoga together weekly. I taught the various tools of Yoga (it is not just poses) as a means of calming and toning the parasympathetic nervous system (vagus nerve). Just like doing daily push-ups creates whole body physical strength… having a daily Yoga practice creates whole body-mind-spirit strength! You are fortifying yourself to face the challenges of life with a skip in your step.
Sacred Circle Mentorship is now an online teaching & learning experience with the HIGHLY recommended option of joining the Yoga piece. Classes start Monday, September 14th, 2020. This is the 2020 5 week session teachings of the Earth Element. Earth Element focuses on physical health; a great place to start the years mentorship work.
Read here for more info on the self healing mentorship: https://www.paulayoumellrn.com/sacred-circle-mentorship
A functional medicine health coaching experience to teach you the lifestyle medicine habits to put into place in your self healing life.
Sacred Circle is the perfect weaving together of the lifestyle medicine teachings (in the mentorship) and the vagus nerve toning through gentle, very beginner's yoga (in the yoga research group) so you can be the change you want to see in yourself!
Read Here for more info on the Yoga education piece.
This September is a special Yoga Education Research 12 week session. I am grateful for everyone who joins to contribute to the science of Yoga, Vagus Nerve info, and betterment of health & healing modalities for everyone interested in slow health education & slow healing. Thank You.
Our purpose & your perfect opportunity: to tone your vagus nerve to keep you in rest and digest mode, calm you down so you can be in a comfortable personal space to make, and keep making, the lifestyle choices that will self heal your body, mind, and spirit and support weight loss and self healing.
All classes are being taught virtually on Zoom (link to be sent to students soon).
All classes will be recorded and sent to everyone so you can view again OR if you need to watch the recording because the live time doesn't work for you. Many students do this, join the class and watch the videos later (on their own time) to learn, grown, transform, & self heal. Modern technology has its advantages.
If you are looking for change, want to self heal, and want to tone that vagus nerve for a lifetime of advantages...Join me on September 14th for the Earth Element Session of Sacred Circle.
You will be glad you did. I will be glad you did. We will be glad people ready to learn, grow, transform, & self heal.
The Wind/Air Session of Sacred Circle will begin in later October after a 2 week break post Earth Element learning. Two weeks gives time for assimilation and integration of the health education information before we learn new information.
My Yoga Mat IS My Magic Carpet
OR... Why I Love Yoga, Take 3!
4 1/2 years ago I wrote an article titled Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing that has been published on several Yoga, Mindfulness, Health, & Healing websites. It was my attempt to lure you into a personal practice that will transform the manner in which you exist in this world and support you making the best health and healing choices with each and every choice you need to make!
Did I lure you? Are you immersing into yoga to change your inner landscape so your outer world blossoms?
OR... Why I Love Yoga, Take 3!
5 years ago I wrote an article titled Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing that has been published on several Yoga, Mindfulness, Health, & Healing websites (In a professional holistic Nursing journal as well). This writing was/is my attempt to lure you into a personal practice that will transform the manner in which you exist in this world and support you making the best health and healing choices with each and every choice you need to make.
Did I lure you? Are you immersing into yoga to change your inner landscape so your outer world blossoms?
Yoga plants seeds. Seeds that are possibilities for life long change.
Yoga lifts you up (body, mind, and spirit) so you can soar and sway with the breezes of life, being calmly flexible. Yoga also roots you down and grounds you into your life so you can be stable and steady no matter what comes your way.
Yoga has taught me, reminded me, that my human body is a sacred vessel for spirit. My body is the home of the divine essence that is me.
I am a soul in a human existence not a human walking around with a soul (Wayne Dyer, one of many, kindly reminded us of this). Once we embrace our divine essence and purpose, in our human form, it becomes easier to make those healing lifestyle changes and stick to them.
Your lifestyle choices can and will build your soul a home that is a castle that can weather life with grace. Your lifestyle choices can also cobble together a shack that feels unwell, daily, and falls apart easily.
When we come home to this, truly embody the fact that we are divine beings within a human body, it makes the task of choosing healthy lifestyle habits the path of least resistance.
Our inner conversation goes from impulsively eating, without conscious thought, those two pieces of cake sitting there just because they ARE sitting there to being about making choices that are best for body-mind-spirit.
Building Castles not Shacks.
A regular Yoga practice creates new neural pathways of thinking in body, mind, heart, and spirit. These pathways create inner calm, peace, and presence in the hear & now. I have always called this Inner Conscious Connection. Mindfulness is the word we all here now.
Stepping off of my Yoga Mat Magic Carpet, navigating the world in a magical way, transforms the whole world into my Yoga Mat Magic Carpet.
Sending Love from My Castle to Yours. Namaste.
Join Shelby Connelly & I at Five Elements Living Retreat Center for a 3 hour Yoga - Acupuncture Mini-Retreat: April 8th (evening retreat) or April 11th (morning retreat), 2018
Beginner's Yoga : Letting Go Of Awkward Yoga-Acupuncture-Self Care Evening Or Morning Retreat
More articles to inspire you to jump on a Magic Carpet of your own:
Green is the Heart Chakra... Love Your Yoga!
Why I love Yoga... Take 2
4+ years ago I wrote an article titled Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing. I have shared, many times, the ways in which Yoga benefits healing body, mind, and spirit. Type Yoga into the search bar, over there to the right, and you will find Yoga posts on weight loss, healing, body benefits, stress... you name it. I recommend it. Yoga that is.
Yoga is a self healing retreat every time you step onto the mat and everytime you step out into your world living life from a space of deep interconnectedness that Yoga spins and weaves for you; that you spin and weave for yourself.
When the weather drops below 45, I move to the porch: bright, cheery, & open window for fresh air. Below zero, bright sunny days, are still Yoga pleasant on the porch.
4+ years ago I wrote an article titled Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing. I have shared, many times, the ways in which Yoga benefits healing body, mind, and spirit. Type "Yoga" into the search bar, over there to the right, and you will find Yoga posts on weight loss, healing, body benefits, stress... you name it. I recommend it. Yoga that is.
Yoga is a self healing retreat every time you step onto the mat and every time you step out into your world living life from a space of deep interconnectedness that Yoga spins and weaves for you; that you spin and weave for yourself.
If 45 degrees F... yoga on the deck is my preferred place to practice. Yes, cats are a reoccurring theme in this mindfulness; sensing & appreciating the peaceful energy.
So often people tell me: "Oh, I do stretching exercises, I don't need yoga." Most people equate yoga with doing poses. Yoga is not just about the poses on the mat. That is part of it. Yoga is a way to bring presence of mind to your daily awareness. The poses are a way to embody mindfulness. Poses help to move life force energy, embody breath with movement, and guide our actions into a conscious connection with our true self.
Poses support you synchronizing breath with body, mind, and spirit. Breath is spirit. Yoga poses teach you how to be strong, flexible, and balanced in body, mind, and spirit so you can step off the mat and be strong, balanced, and flexible in all areas of your life activities, in all of your interactions, in your essence of being in this world.
Yoga is a way of being in the world that supports our moving with the flow of the universe, making conscious decisions based upon thoughtful wisdom and mindfulness around choice and consequence, and walking through daily happenings with a presence of peace and contentment (even when life seems to hand us chaos).
Magic happens when a person practices Yoga. Yoga is a tool to connect self with life force energy: inner life force energy and the life force energy of the universe (which are one & the same). The universe pulses on and with life force energy. Practicing yoga is a way of tapping into this universal energy, wisdom, consciousness. Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years. All indigenous cultures have healing systems for tapping into the infinite.
Deepening Practice for you... Yes, this is your Self Healing homework. ; )
I will happily send you the word document or PDF files of these below Yoga pose practices. You can print and laminate them if you choose. Email me with your request. pyoumell@gmail.com
Yoga Stick Figures by Charlotte Bradley of Yoga Flavored Life.
Embrace Your Sacred Cow
Cow? Really Paula... where can you possibly be going with this? Get as big as a cow? Be gentle like a cow? Have gorgeous, long lashes like a cow?
Nah, something much more practical! Chew like a cow people. Chew long, luxuriously, peacefully, and gently.
95% of the clients and students I work with have some sort of GI Tract upset. Their digestive tract is struggling to do the job of, well, digesting. So many more of your bodily processes (all of them really) rely on your digestion so the rest of your body's functions can happen effortlessly.
Cows gracing peacefully at The Lands At Hillside Farm, Shavertown, PA
Cow? Really Paula... where can you possibly be going with this? Get as big as a cow? Be gentle like a cow? Have gorgeous, long lashes like a cow?
Nah, something much more practical! Chew like a cow people. Chew long, luxuriously, peacefully, and gently.
95% of the clients and students I work with have some sort of GI Tract upset. Their digestive tract is struggling to do the job of, well, digesting. So many more of your bodily processes (all of them really) rely on your digestion so the rest of your body's functions can happen effortlessly. Yup, the bottom line is that efficient digestion is what creates the downstream effects of well nourished body cells or not so well nourished cells. Good digestion and a healthy digestive tract lead to:
- food well broken down into usable nutrients that are
- absorbed through that health 1 cell thick gut lining and then
- circulated effortlessly through the blood stream until these nutrients
- arrives safely at each and every body cell's doorstep and then they
- move across the cell membrane with ease and peace to be
- utilized by every intercellular organelle to make the miracle of you happen in each and every moment.
Digestion IS a sacred and beautiful thing.
Just because these below images leave out the mouth and esophagus... don't fall for the same foolishness. Both are very important parts of your digestive tract... as is your brain and nervous system! Mouth to brain to gut communication is so key for release of your digestive juiciness.
So I ask... why do we, as a culture, shovel food (or worse yet: food products) into our mouths with no thoughtfulness around what we are eating say nothing about how we are eating it. We then expect our bodies, minds, and spirits to soar with great health and carry us through our days effortlessly and with ease?
I have written numerous times about the sacredness of food, meal times, and chewing. Is anyone listening to me? I know my kids are not...
Here's a suggestion:
So many of us do realize that bedtime routines/rituals are so beneficial to creating deep and peaceful sleep every night. (Although, many of us are in need of embracing this bedtime sacredness as well.) My suggestion is to start seeing meal time rituals as important and sacred. Relax, breathe deeply, and chew well. Maybe light a candle to remind yourself how important you are and how important it is to slow down and nourish your body, mind, and spirit with food and eating (chewing your food well much like the cow does instinctively and intuitively with every bite and every mouthful of grass!).
For my PDF handout on chewing your food well click this link: http://issuu.com/paula754/docs/chewing_with_pictures
Blessings of Happy, Healthy, Peaceful, and Nourishing Meals To You!
5 Easy Ways To Shift The Energy Of Your Life's Path
Easy is a relative word and is subject to much subjectivity.
1. Practice being mindful in every moment.
Excerpted from an article I wrote in 2012 for the Potsdam Food Coop's newsletter, {in my day, you know the uphill both ways to school - barefoot AND in the snow, mindfulness was simply called yoga, ; ) }
I have always urged and supported others to practice some form of mind, body, spirit "exercise" to bring a centered awareness into their life as this daily habit makes the process of healthy lifestyle change flow with ease & grace (seriously my friends, I am not pulling your yoga leg here!):
Easy is a relative word and is subject to much subjectivity.
1. Practice being mindful in every moment.
Excerpted from an article I wrote in 2012 for the Potsdam Food Coop's newsletter, {in my day, you know the uphill both ways to school - barefoot AND in the snow, mindfulness was simply called yoga, ; ) }
I have always urged and supported others to practice some form of mind, body, spirit "exercise" to bring a centered awareness into their life as this daily habit makes the process of healthy lifestyle change flow with ease & grace (seriously my friends, I am not pulling your yoga leg here):
When we stop the constant chatter inside our heads and still our minds through mindfulness activities (yoga and other body awareness exercises), we tend to make choices that are in alignment with what is best for our health without feeling deprived. This is because we have learned to live in the present moment and are aligned in body, mind, and spirit. That is the awareness that Yoga brings to our being.
A cluttered "chattery" mind and a body that is not aligned in mind, body, and spirit tends to make decisions based upon impulse and cravings without regard to what is best for long term health.
2. Practice daily mindlessness! Zone out. Stop the chatter. Pay attention to breath only.
When we are so bent on living a life of being mindful in every moment we forget to just let go and be... be mindless for a bit. Literally people, NOTHING, going on in our heads!
Check out this Daily OM post by Madisyn Taylor. It was fitting to this thought of mindlessness.
3. Sign up for someone's daily email or social media posts that are positive and inspirational.
Read them. Reflect on them. Allow the words to weave their magic into your body, mind, and spirit. Live the words for your own peace and for the peace of all who walk your path with you.
Hey... I wrote a book on daily reflections and inspirations. This book will gift you a year's worth of body, mind, & spirit magic. Go ahead... cast a spell for yourself.
4. Revel, truly revel, in who you are and your life's purpose on this planet.
Let your true self shine, shine, shine.
"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."
Check out this youtube link for a bit of musical inspiration.
5. Offer kindness and compassion every where you go to everyone, every being, & everything. Seriously.
The natural - spiritual law of 3 fold:
"For all that we say and we do "for good or for ill, shall be returned to us threefold."
What goes around comes around baby! Make your karma & dharma shine, shine, shine! See the above song link for another deep dose of musical inspiration.
