What if the Primal Wound can be Found in the Cranial Nerves

I’ve been in a weird state of anxiety lately—it came out of nowhere, and then, when I thought maybe I was having a heart attack, I remembered about the vagus nerve, and I went to my long-time yoga teacher, Kent Bond, for a private lesson.

A year ago, I fell on my tailbone and my back has been tight and painful ever since despite repeated visits to the chiropractor, despite my (admittedly limited) efforts at stretching, at rolling my paraspinals out on a yoga tune-up ball.

I have a feeling what happened is that my tight back travelled to my diaphragm, and all that muscular and fascial tension started squeezing my vagus nerve. This is a recipe for anxiety, as the vagus nerve tells your brain how your body is doing. When I am anxious, I hide out in a form of stressed hibernation.

A few days ago I went to see Mark Lucas, a chiropractor who does what some of the Sharks players call “hippie shit” because they don’t know what else to call the healing magic he does to their bodies, and that visit started me on the road to better. I’d, in some ways, sort of given up, but Dr. Mark reminded me that healing is always possible, and so I was woke.

Kent’s wife lent me a book I had read a couple of years ago, Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg, and I was reminded that I have been forgetting to do exercises it offers that help reset the tone of the cranial nerves (the vagus is cranial nerve X). (More on them in a future post.)

I left Kent’s place pain-free. In another post I’ll write about what we did, but basically I lay on the floor and breathed while Kent walked me through a meditation during which my brain screamed at me I was not safe. I had to repeatedly tell my brain I was, in fact, really, really safe, and slowly, slowly, the rigid muscles in my back unwound all on their own. We did some Feldenkrais exercises (think unzipping a zipper sloooooowly) and I cried because my body was letting go and it was such a relief. My brain had thought I had to hold on. My brain had thought everything was supposed to be hard. My brain had to shift and deal with the new thought that easy was okay. I was okay.

I want to share with you a paragraph from the book Kent’s wife lent me because I want you to go out and get the book. I want you to get Rolfed and to go to a craniosacral therapist if what you read resonates with you. I want you to come to California and work with Kent. This book will tell you why these things are a good idea.

Here:

Cranial Nerve Dysfunction and Social Engagement

We consider “normal” human behavior to be an expression of positive social values. Our actions should be beneficial for our own survival and well-being, as well as for the well-being of others.

When we are socially engaged, it is easy for other people to understand our behavior, and what we do makes sense to others; most of us are socially engaged most of the time. However, sometimes we temporarily drop into a state of chronic activation of the spinal sympathetic chain system (fight or flight) or of dorsal vagal activity (withdrawal, shutdown). Then, if our autonomic nervous system is resilient, we will soon bounce back up to a state of social engagement.

Unfortunately, some of us are not socially engaged most of the time; if we lack the necessary resilience to spontaneously come back to a state of social engagement, we become stuck in sympathetic-chain or dorsal vagal states. In these states, is is often hard for other people to understand our values, motivation, and behavior. Our actions seem irrational, often run counter to our best interests, and be destructive to ourselves and others. If we are not socially engaged, it makes life difficult not only for ourselves but for those around us.

I know a lot of this terminology might be confusing, but I wanted to give you a taste of a book I believe could change your life if you are struggling with the trauma of being adopted or the trauma of being a human and if you feel, in your body, unsafe, anxious, and/or alienated from the rest of the world.

Here are some things I regularly do to help regulate my vagus nerve: I end each shower with one minute of cold water on my face. I know. It sounds horrible, but it’s okay. When I’m walking around I blow air out my mouth so I look like a horse. Sorry, I don’t know how else to describe it. I gargle. I sing.

So that’s a start. Welcome to your brain stem and to the nerves that emerge from it, your own set of roots.