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!
Wanting The Work
I confess. I am an observer of people. I think it is part of the path I walk on this earth. I observe to try and find solutions for people as they struggle with life's challenges. In my previous blog post I spoke of Working With What We Already Have. On this note, I want to remind you that each and every one of us, has inside of ourselves, ALL that we need to heal; to reach every goal we have for our physical, emotional, and spiritual health. We just need to work with what we have, call up our strengths (and we have far more than we think or give ourselves credit for having), and put into action the steps we personally need to create a healthier lifestyle.
OK, so first... my floor, back to working with what I had and my promised update. Here are finished pictures of the floor. Not bad for 100+ year old floors that the pro floor guy told me my best option was to bag them and start over!
Perfect? No.
Shabby chic? Yes.
I am happy!
Working in health care (true health care and not just disease symptom management) for 30 years and most recently for 20+ years in personal health education, I have made discoveries. We often have amazing goals for ourselves. We know where we want to be with our health, our body weight, and our physical wellness (emotional & spiritual wellness as well). Our end goals are very clear to us and we do truly want to attain these goals. Most of us have pretty good ideas about what we need to do to get to our goals.
Here's where things get sticky: wanting the work that leads us to these goals of health, weight loss, healing, physical fitness, emotional and spiritual happiness, etc.
In order to be successful at reaching our goals, we have to want to do the work to get there. This means changing the way we eat, what we eat, and our lifestyle habits little by little, step by step (or making sweeping changes if that is how you best function) and sticking with our changes to reach our goals and beyond. Maintaining health means living these newly incorporated eating and lifestyle habits for life, changing them up a bit as the seasons of the years and our lives evolve and need something different. (An example would be slowing down to embrace aging gracefully: giving you body more recovery time between fitness routines and allowing for more sleep at night than when you were 20!)
Reaching and maintaining our goals, for life, is a true "on top of the world" feeling!
The work comes in when we have to suffer a little to meet the challenge of change. I will give an example here in weight loss. In order to lose weight we have to change the way we eat, get rid of the garbage factory made food, and learn to eat less. With this comes the struggle to get through the feeling hungry challenges. If you are used to eating large meals, the challenge will be to leave the table feeling less than full and relaxing, breathing, and moving through this feeling knowing you will be ok, you will survive without feeling stuffed and full all of the time. Going hungry is the work of losing weight for some people. Wanting this work makes reaching the goal of weight loss easier and more acceptable for you to accept the challenges that lay before you.
This is true of many forms of lifestyle change to improve (yes, even heal) lifestyle diseases. To reach the goal of saying goodbye to diabetic, cholesterol, or hypertension medication and ill health symptoms, we must want the work that lies between the present dis - ease in the body and achieving the goal: major eating and lifestyle changes, living completely without sweeteners, and being OK with this and the impacting consequences of our changes.
My job as a natural health educator RN is to give you tools to support you through the WORK of making change and achieving goals. I have raved about the power of yoga to heal on numerous occasions. I am throwing it out to you again because that is just the kind of gal I am... repeat, repeat, repeat until someone actually listens to me! (I keep thinking this will someday work with my kids!)
Why I Love Yoga And Other Thoughts On Whole Food, Whole Health Healing
5 Shocking Ways Yoga Causes You To Lose Weight
The above three blog posts are inspiring posts on the benefits of yoga. I encourage you to explore what makes your mind, heart, and soul sing so that the path of the work comes more easily to and for you every day. Maybe for you it is meditation, prayer, martial arts, Qi gong, walks in the woods, etc. Find your personal soul medicine and practice it daily. Wanting the work will become second nature.
Much love, Paula
PS Upcoming Fall Online Class:
Herbs For Enhancing Your Natural Health
PPS Beloved Beet Recipe!
Substance part of the beet dish:
6 small to medium local & organic beets, gently steamed (save and drink the steam water)
2/3 can organic chickpeas
1 handful each of organic walnuts and pecans
1/2 handful organic pine nuts
Dressing:
2/3 to 3/4 cup full fat yogurt, from pasture raised cows / goats / sheep, etc.
2 tsp. local maple syrup
Fresh herbs of your liking: Basil, Oregano, Mint, Spearmint, Thyme, Tarragon, Chives , Garlic chives, Rosemary (I used all of these from my herb/weed garden out in front of my home)
Serve on a bed of local, organic, baby greens & sprinkle or slather with chunks of soft goat cheese