The Vagus Nerve Isn’t the Whole Story: What Real Nervous System Healing Looks Like for Women
You’ve probably heard it: "Stimulate your vagus nerve and you'll feel calm." Cold plunges. Humming. Tapping. Breathwork.
There’s some truth here, but also a deeper truth that gets left behind.
Because your nervous system isn’t a gadget to be hacked. And your vagus nerve is not a solo operator. It’s part of a beautifully complex, deeply personal system that reflects your entire lived experience, especially as a woman.
Let’s talk about what that means, in a way that’s grounded, accurate, and honours the depth of your inner world.
What Is the Vagus Nerve?
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It connects your brainstem to nearly every major organ: your heart, lungs, digestive tract, and more. It’s the main communicator of the parasympathetic nervous system, the system responsible for rest, digestion, and social connection (Breit et al., 2018).
But that’s not the whole story.
Roughly 80% of vagus nerve fibres carry information from your body to your brain (not the other way around). This means that your lived, bodily experience is constantly shaping how safe or unsafe you feel, often beneath conscious awareness.
This is why affirmations, mindset work, or even some forms of talk therapy may fall short: your body hasn’t had enough direct experience of safety yet..
The Three Branches of the Nervous System: More Than Just Calm
Your autonomic nervous system has three primary branches:
Sympathetic: Fight or flight. Energy, activation, survival.
Dorsal vagal (Parasympathetic): Shut down, collapse, freeze. A survival response when fight/flight isn't possible.
Ventral vagal (Parasympathetic): Connection, co-regulation, emotional safety, playfulness, presence (Porges, 2011).
That last one? It’s often confused with "relaxation." But ventral vagal tone isn’t just calm. It’s connected calm. A sense that you can be with yourself, and with others, without needing to perform or protect.
This is what true regulation looks like. Not just the absence of anxiety, but the presence of felt safety. The lived experience of safety with both yourself and others.
Why This Matters More for Women
Women’s nervous systems are shaped not just by biology, but by socialisation. Many women were taught to tend, to please, to accommodate. This often means performing calm while the body is bracing underneath.
Hormonal rhythms, especially fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone, also affect vagal tone and nervous system sensitivity (Schmalenberger et al., 2020). For example:
Estrogen tends to support vagal function.
Stress during perimenopause can feel more intense due to changes in these regulatory supports.
And for many women, attachment patterns learned in childhood play a huge role. If you grew up reading the room, staying small, or being “good” to stay connected, your vagus nerve adapted to survive, not to thrive.
The Problem with "Vagus Nerve Hacks"
Yes, humming, cold exposure, and deep breathing can influence your vagus nerve if done correctly for your individual needs (not the now common one stop shop cathartic experience for all). But if your body has spent decades in survival mode? These alone won’t create the felt safety your system longs for.
Because what your nervous system most deeply needs isn’t a protocol, it’s presence. It needs co-regulation, slowness, curiosity. A chance to repattern, not just override.
Especially if you’ve experienced relational or developmental trauma, you can’t regulate in isolation. Your system learned protection in relationship. It must also learn safety in relationship.
What Actually Helps: Support That Meets You Where You Are
Your nervous system doesn’t respond to logic, it responds to lived experience.
That means the healing process has to feel safe in the body. Not just safe in theory, but safe enough to soften long-held protective patterns.
For many women, especially those who have spent a lifetime holding it all together, that kind of safety is unfamiliar.
It begins with:
Spaces where nothing is asked of you — where you don’t have to smile, explain, or manage anyone else’s comfort.
Being met by calm, attuned presence — a nervous system that isn’t rushed, reactive, or needing you to shrink.
Practices that invite your body to lead — gentle, rhythmic movement, breath, and stillness that don’t override your intuition.
Repairing what was missed in early relationship — not through talking alone, but through felt experiences of being seen, heard, and held without condition.
These are not quick fixes, they’re small, consistent signals to your body that connection is possible without abandoning yourself.
This is the essence of trauma-informed somatic work. Not to force regulation, but to relearn safety, one soft step at a time.
A Practice to Try: Orienting + Rhythmic Touch (Regulating Vagal Tone)
This practice supports the ventral vagal pathway by inviting sensory grounding and self-contact, two proven methods of increasing vagal tone (Porges, 2011).
Take a quiet moment. Look around the space you’re in and name:
3 things you see that feel grounding
2 sounds you can hear
1 sensation you feel in your body (no need to change it — just notice)
Now place one hand over your heart and the other over your abdomen.
Close your eyes, if that feels okay. Inhale through your nose for a slow count of four. Exhale through your mouth for a count of six, as if fogging up a mirror.
Repeat for 3–4 breaths.
Feel the warmth of your hands, the rhythm of your breath. Let your body sense:
“I am not in danger now.”
This isn’t a performance. It’s presence. And presence is where healing begins.
Final Thoughts
The vagus nerve is not a magic switch. It’s a key part of a whole system, one shaped by your biology, history, and stories.
Healing that system takes:
Time that honours your pace
Connection that feels safe enough to soften the old hold
Guidance that meets you where you are, not where you’re told to be
This is the work I offer in therapy and in Held, my online therapeutic circle.
If your nervous system is asking for something deeper than viral hype, something real, felt, and gently held, you’re welcome here.
Held: A Therapeutic Women’s Circle
A calm, nourishing space to regulate your nervous system, soften emotional overwhelm, and reconnect with the woman within — in community.
Learn more or book your place to be Held here →
