Transcriber: Yonghan Zhao
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs Today I’m going to talk to you
about a part of your body that I bet many of you
have not hear about before. I’ll going to talk to you
about how to retrain your nervous system. This is the vagus nerve. And stay with me here because things are about to
get a little bit nerdy. Rather than being one singular nerve, we can look at the vagus nerve
as being a series of connections or a system of its own. It’s comparable in size
to the spinal cord. It starts out in the brain stem
and runs all the way down to the colon, touching almost every organ on its way. It really is the epicentre
of the mind-body connection. And what we know is that
when it comes to this kind of vagus, what happens there doesn’t stay there. So if we have a little look
at the different branches, we can see starting out
from the brain stem, coming down to the heart
is the ventral vagal branch. And this is also
being called the vagal brake, because it connects
to our heart’s pacemaker. So it acts like a brake
in slowing us back down when we feel anxious or stressed. This part of the vagus nerve
is myelinated, so it’s covered in a sheath
that makes it conduct its impulses with greater accuracy and precision. We can also see
the part of the vagus nerve running from the heart up to the face. It has connections to the muscles
of speech and communication that change our voice. It has connections to the middle ear that change how we listen
to the sound of the human voice, and connections to the muscles in our face to do with expression and also gestures. So from an evolutionary point of view, this part of the vagus nerve
is more recent. And what it tells us
is that humans that collaborated and worked together thrived. It also makes sense
in the people around us being one of the most potent influences
on our nervous system. We can see running from the brain stem
coming under the diaphragm and branching out there like a vine
to touch all of our organs is the dorsal vagal branch. Now, this also slows us down
when we feel stressed, but it does it in a different way. So this part of the vagus nerve
isn’t myelinated, or doesn’t have that covering, and so it’s not as accurate. When it tries to slow us down, it’s a little bit like if we were driving
in a car going too fast, pulling the handbrake on. So we may freeze, we may shut down, we may find it really hard to take action. So these different branches make up
part of our autonomic nervous system, the part that slows us down. And we also have another part
called the sympathetic nervous system. And together, this autonomic
nervous system is always acting in service
of our survival to keep us safe. And we can get to know it
a little bit better if we understand the window of tolerance. Now, this is a very useful framework coined by the incredible
neuroscientist Dr Daniel Siegel. So when we’re inside our window, the ventral vagal branch,
or the vagal brake, is working. And so we will feel a sense
of being calm and connected. Our nervous system is flexible,
we’re adaptable, our thoughts are coherent
and our energy is stable. When we start to face stresses, the first thing that will happen is that vagal brake
will just come off a little bit, and we’ll feel our energy
start to mobilize, which is a good thing. It helps us face challenges. But if we can’t deal with this
inside our window, we begin to move up above it
into the sympathetic nervous system state, which is a little bit
like our accelerator. It mobilizes our energy,
and we may feel anxious, angry, hypervigilant. We may find it hard
to be still or switch off. And we may have thoughts like ’I need to take action now
or something bad’s going to happen’ or ‘It’s not safe to be still’. If we can’t handle the stressor
in that situation, or it can’t be dealt with, we may then move down below the window
of tolerance into our dorsal vagal state. And this is a state
where we have a sense of hypoarousal, so our energy really drops right down. We may feel like a fog
comes between us and the environment, but also other people, so we feel disconnected
or dissociated from our body. Here’s the thing that we don’t
actually realize though: is the way that we move
between these different states is not something that we’re choosing. It takes place outside
of our conscious awareness in a lower center of the brain
known as the survival brain. And the survival brain
doesn’t communicate with us through words, thoughts or narratives. It communicates with us
by creating strong sensations and emotions in our body. And this is why we can’t think
or talk our way out of trauma. We need to work with the body. We also know that the autonomic
nervous system resides in our body. We know that's where the vagus nerve is. And we also know that’s
where the sympathetic nervous system is. The wellness industry has sold us a lie. That being calm is the goal. But it’s not. A healthy nervous system
is flexible and adaptable, and it can really move
between all these states with ease. And that is the goal. If we can learn to use things
like anger in our favor, then that’s healthy. Anger arises from the mobilizing energy
of our nervous system. But if we cut off from it
and push it down, then we can drop down too with it. Down into feeling powerless,
down into feeling hopeless, and like we can’t take any action. We need to let that mobilizing
energy into our system so that we have strength and agency
to take the action that we need to. Peak performance really comes
when we can match what’s happening outside of us
with the correct activation inside of us. So what’s the solution? How can we learn to have this flexible
and adaptable nervous system? It’s through learning to come
into this play zone of our nervous system. In the play zone, we feel energized,
engaged and connected. We can feel like we’re in our flow state. And play is a blend of two states. So we have the sympathetic
nervous systems mobilizing energy, which makes us feel excited and energized. But it’s combined with
the ventral vagal state inside our window, where we feel calm and connected. So we really are seeing
a blend of these two states to get there. The need for play doesn’t actually
end in our childhood. So research has shown that adults
who don't play are less curious, less imaginative and experience less spontaneous joy. So how can you bring
more play into your life? It might be something as simple as putting on a disco at home
with your kids and moving around. It could be throwing
a Frisbee with your dog and running around with them. It could be something like
going to a fun yoga class and moving and connecting
and laughing with strangers. Or play could be something
more complicated. It could be joining a theatre. Maybe it’s putting on a performance. Or maybe it's joining a choir. What we know is that play
is the most effective when is involved with other people because we harness the social engagement
system of our vagus nerve. So who are the people in your life
that feel the most playful? What environments feel like play to you? So maybe it’s going to a comedy show,
the theatre, somewhere in nature, or even a park. The idea is to find what attunes
to your unique nervous system. Play allows us to let the activation
into our nervous system without automatically responding
with fight or flight, and without releasing these stress
hormones into our body. Following chronic and traumatic stress, the size of our window
of tolerance can get smaller, so we can spend more time
stuck in the anxiety of the sympathetic nervous system or stuck down in the shut-down
of the dorsal vagal state. But play can help us come back inside
that window of tolerance. This can really be an antidote
following trauma. We also know that play
fine tunes our vagal brake. So yes, sometimes we do
need to use that vagal brake and slow ourselves back down. But it also goes the other way. So if we're feeling flat,
a sense of apathy, we have extreme procrastination
and we feel depressed, sometimes we need to
let this mobilizing energy come into our system so that we can experience vitality,
well-being, passion and purpose. And this is the beauty of play. What we know is that we move
between these different states by what our nervous system learns
through what we experience. So we may not be aware
that we are learning, but each experience is being stored
in the lower centres of our brain in the most incredible
memory storage system. The experiences of your life
that are the most emotional are stored and recalled preferentially. And this is what decides
how your nervous system automatically functions today. But the beauty of this
is this is something we can retrain. Just like we can retrain
our body after an injury, we can retrain our nervous system
after experiences that were traumatic. Play allows us to reclaim
our innate capacity for resilience and regulation. It allows us to gently stretch
our nervous system to come back into the window
and also to widen it over time. So, my invitation to you is to tomorrow write down three things
that help you experience more fun, joy, connection, flow and laughter. Thank you. (Applause) (Music)
