The Nuance
The Breath Is a Back Door to Your Vagus Nerve
‘Respiratory discipline’ can activate your most potent anti-stress system
Your body reacts to stress in a number of well-mapped ways. Heart rate and blood pressure speed up, muscles tense, digestion slows, and breathing becomes clipped and rapid.
All of this happens because your brain has registered the presence of some sort of threat. Whether physical or psychological, this threat triggers a trickle (or a gush) of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and other stress-related hormones. These chemical messengers shift the activity of your nervous and immune systems in ways that are meant to help you either flee from danger or weather some kind of ordeal or confrontation.
None of this tends to be a problem if it happens in moderation. Your body is designed to experience plenty of stress-related activation, and there’s some evidence that short bouts of stress may helpfully sharpen your focus, strengthen your memory, and provide other temporary benefits without doing any lasting damage. (If the stress response were wholly bad, your body wouldn’t engage it so readily.)
But if stress is too severe or too persistent, much can go wrong.
