3 vagus nerve exercises you can do today to sleep better

My team member Deb suffered from mold toxicity and spent many frustrating nights awake and exhausted because of it. She healed herself and her family after becoming trained in functional lab testing and health coaching.

During her journey, she learned some exercises that made a huge difference in her health. In fact, at a recent checkup her doctor kept checking her heart and she was scared that something was wrong!

Instead, he was amazed that her heart rate was 10-15 beats less on her exhale. This means that she is in a calm state and responds to stress very well. She knew that she was feeling calmer and less reactive, but she was amazed that her doctor noticed physical improvements as well.

Her doctor didn’t know what was responsible for her calm state until she told him-it was the vagal nerve exercises she had been doing for the past year.

The vagus nerve runs from the gut to the brain, like a highway connecting the body and the mind. This nerve is how the brain and gut communicate with each other, which is why when you’re nervous you get butterflies in your stomach.

Then the vagus nerve is weak from inflammation, infection, or stress, it can lead to digestive issues, feeling anxious, and not sleeping well.

As Deb wisely says, “The vagus nerve…is like sleep. We don’t realize how important it is until something’s not going right.”

Feeling calm is so important for sleep since so many people who can’t sleep normally are stuck in fight or flight. If you feel wired but tired at night, you’re stuck in the stress response, too, and it’s keeping you awake.

There are many exercises to tone the vagus nerve but some of them can be over-stimulating and should only be done with a trained professional.

However, vagus nerve exercises that anyone can do are humming, singing, and gargling.

Gargling for 30 seconds after you brush your teeth will strengthen your vagus nerve which will help you feel calm and sleep better.

Humming or singing for 5 minutes a day is a fun way to tone the vagus nerve.

As the health coach for the Complete Sleep Solution, Deb helps our clients with customized vagus nerve exercises. One of our clients noticed her heart rate slowed and her circulation improved while doing an exercise on her ear with Deb.

If you can’t sleep, it’s likely stress that is keeping you awake: stress in your body and your mind.

To truly overcome your insomnia, you want to use functional lab tests to find the stressors in your body such as hormones, gut health, liver function, toxins and more.

Doing vagus nerve exercises won’t correct an inflammatory diet or toxicity in your body, but it is one way to calm your nervous system so you can sleep more peacefully. As Deb says, “it’s the icing on the cake” for everything else we do in the program.

If you’ve tried what seems like everything and you still can’t sleep, that’s because there are imbalances in the body that are keeping you awake. The Complete Sleep Solution program uses lab testing to find what those imbalances are and gives you a plan to correct them so you can sleep normally. It’s the only way to permanently restore your health so you can sleep well.

Book a free consultation to talk about what’s going on with your sleep and see if the program is a good fit for you!