Have you ever had a morning in which you wake up with a painful knot in your neck? What happened? Did you sleep in a funny position or was it the wild dream that had you tossing and turning? Maybe it was due to the stressful work meeting you had the day before or because you feel worried about something in the future. While this may sound strange, your tight neck could even be related to what you ate the night before or an event that happened many years ago.
Intuitively, we all know that stress shows up in our bodies as muscular tension. But, when we look more closely at the body-mind connection we recognize that fascia plays a key role in how we physically experience stress and heal from traumatic events. Furthermore, since the vagus nerve plays an important role in communicating changes in fascia to your brain, we explore how attending to vagal tone helps you to heal.
Fascia also plays a key role in your resilience. You can nourish fascia and the vagus nerve by attending to your body and mind through sensory awareness, conscious breathing, and mindful movement. These tools help you to recover more quickly from stressful experiences and heal traumatic events from your past.
Fascia, also known as connective tissue, is a fibrous web that extends into every structure and system of your body. There are many different types of fascia (see the images in this post to get a feeling for the varieties) including superficial layers just under your skin and deeper layers that wrap around your bones and muscles. Fascia provides a nourishing and lubricating layer around your lungs which intertwines with your pericardium—the layer of fascia around your heart. You’ll also find connective tissue around all of your digestive organs. One of the key functions of healthy fascia is that it allows the surrounding tissues to slide and glide across each other.
Fascia is also found in each of your endocrine glands; so much so that the founder of Integral Anatomy, Dr. Gil Hedley, refers to fascia as a whole body endocrine organ. For example, fascia plays a key role in transmitting hormones (e.g. adrenaline, estrogen, insulin, thyroid hormones, oxytocin) and neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, GABA, acetylcholine) throughout your body. Thus we see that fascia is also deeply intertwined with the nervous system. Furthermore, fascia plays a key role in the immune system.
Lack of movement, emotional stress, physical injury and historical trauma can lead to the stickiness or hardening of fascia. There is a small amount of this hardening of the fascia that occurs each night when we sleep. Dr. Hedley refers to this as the “fuzz” that accumulates between the layers of fascia (if you are comfortable with viewing a cadaver, you can see his “fuzz speech” here). Overtime, this fuzz can build up and is associated with vicious cycles of chronic pain, systemic inflammation, histamine intolerance, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis). The good news is that mindful movement, deep breathing, and massage all help to melt the fuzz and rehydrate your fascia (scroll down to the bottom of this post for a video practice).
The vagus nerve plays a key role in communicating changes in fascia to your brain. You can think of the vagus nerve as a bi-directional information highway between brain and body that helps regulate your autonomic nervous system. Stressful events engage your sympathetic nervous system through the fight or flight response. The sympathetic nervous system is like a gas pedal which speeds you up and the vagus nerve provides a “vagal brake” which slows you down. When fully engaged, the vagus nerve allows you to let go of fight or flight for the purpose of resting, digesting, and bonding with others during times of safety. However, in situations that are traumatic or life threatening, this vagal brake can kick in an abrupt manner bringing you to a hard stop. This is referred to as vasovagal syncope which can lead to nausea, dizziness, or fainting.
The vagus nerve also plays a key role in your digestive system health as it innervates (extends into) the stomach, spleen, liver, intestines, and colon as part of the gut-brain axis. The gut has been called our second or “enteric” brain, in part because the gut is capable of producing the same neurotransmitters found in the brain. These neurochemicals are communicated between our digestive system and brainstem via the vagus nerve. However, the fascia plays a key role in the quality of the conversation.
You can think of fascia as the largest sensory organ in your body as it houses 250 million nerve endings. What is fascinating is that there are 3 times as many sensory neurons than motor neurons; thus fascia has a primary role of communicating information about what’s happening in your body to your brain. The tissues of the fascia are meant to expand and contract. However, when we have experienced a physical injury or emotional trauma we tend to go into shock which restricts movement to ensure our survival. Simply put, we either move into either freeze (tonic immobility) or faint (collapsed immobility) responses. If this trauma response doesn’t’ resolve we can feel stuck in having too much tone in the body or too little. We lose that capacity to rhythmically expand and contract. Unresolved trauma has consequences on our emotional and physical health (you can read more about this connection here). Not only can the fascial fuzz build up; but, without movement we tend to lose our connection to our bodily sensations. We are more likely to feel disconnected or even dissociated. So, physical and emotional healing involves restoring a relationship to your body. However, when you have chronic pain or illness it is often difficult to reconnect to the body.
You may feel as though your body has betrayed you or that your illness has been a source of trauma in and of itself. Or, reconnecting to sensations might feel frightening because you are more likely to experience painful emotions or traumatic memories. So, the key is to progress slowly on the path towards embodiment. Fascia and the vagus nerve hold keys about how to do this safely.
Dr. Stephen Porges, developer of the polyvagal theory, coined the term neuroception to reflect the process by which the autonomic nervous system scans for and responds to internal and external cues of threat. This happens automatically (without conscious awareness) which leads to chronic hypervigilance or high sensitivity to stress. However, you can also engage in conscious neuroception by observing your body for signals that give you feedback about the state of your nervous system. By observing your body, you can determine if you are feeling calm and connected, keyed up in “fight or flight,” feeling frozen or feeling shut down and collapsed.
Signals that you your body is in a threat response include:
Self-knowledge of your body and mind allows you to engage in strategies that bring you into an optimal zone of nervous system regulation. For example, if you feel dull, numb, or collapsed you may need upregulate your nervous system. You can do so with movement and breath practices that engage mobilization strategies to unwind from chronic freeze or faint responses. You can also explore how it feels to tune into cues of safety that allow you to rest into stillness and initiate a “relaxation response.” Be patient, reclaiming healthy stillness often takes longer to develop.
How do you know that you are in the “optimal zone” of nervous system regulation? I offer the following 8 C’s as cues that you’re in the zone. For those of you who know Internal Family Systems, being in the zone is “Self” energy. (If this is new, you can read more about parts work therapies here.)
You know you are in the zone when you feel:
Embodiment is the conscious awareness of your felt sense of self. You can wake up the connections between fascia and your vagus nerve when you breathe deeply or stretch your body. This helps you to become aware of your sensations and you will begin to notice changes that occur in your muscles, organs, or heart rate. It is through awareness of interceptive changes that we wake up our internal sense of self.
So, if you woke up with a sore neck, you can explore your sensations to gain insight into why your feel this way. For example, you might begin to notice that the tight feeling in your neck corresponds to a feeling of tightness in your throat, tension in your chest, or tightness in your belly. Or, you might begin to sense sense emotions of sadness, anger, or fear.
Physical tension in your muscles and connective tissue is a protective layer which we call “armoring” in somatic psychology. It is held as a form of memory and will not release until you know that you are safe. That is why we cannot force change upon ourselves. Doing so may cause a “rubber band” effect in which you stretch too far which leads to further contraction. Therefore, I invite you to think of an embodiment practice as a conversation with your body. You listen to sensations and respond with movement. Then, ask your body, “did I get it right?” Listen for feedback in the form of sensation. Moving and breathing should feel good enough and while you may feel an “edge” of discomfort you are still in your optimal zone of nervous system regulation.
Notice if you have a tendency to be aggressive with yourself. If you experience a “stuck” sensation gently rest your attention there. Ask this part of your body what it needs from you. See if you can soften and respond with your 8 C’s. How might curiosity help? Can you engage self-compassion? Perhaps creative and playful movements such as a gentle rocking or humming creates a greater sense of calm or connection with yourself.
If you’d like, try this short practice for fascia and the vagus nerve. This practice invites you to explore a relationship with your body through sensing, moving, breathing, and rolling to release tension in your diaphragm, chest, rib cage, and sacrum. Releasing tension from these areas not only helps with digestion but awakens your sensory-motor system which invites greater brainstem regulatory integrity.
As with all practices, we tend to benefit from repeating them on a regular basis. Over time, you can you build a reservoir of somatic intelligence that fosters an increased connection to your Self.
Arielle Schwartz, PhD, is a psychologist, internationally sought-out teacher, yoga instructor, and leading voice in the healing of PTSD and complex trauma. She is the author of five books, including The Complex PTSD Workbook, EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology, and The Post Traumatic Growth Guidebook. Dr. Schwartz is an accomplished teacher who guides therapists in the application of EMDR, somatic psychology, parts work therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of trauma and complex PTSD. She has a depth of understanding, passion, kindness, compassion, joy, and a succinct way of speaking about very complex topics. She is the founder of the Center for Resilience Informed Therapy in Boulder, Colorado where she maintains a private practice providing psychotherapy, supervision, and consultation. Dr. Schwartz believes that that the journey of trauma recovery is an awakening of the spiritual heart.
Arielle Schwartz, PhD, is a psychologist, internationally sought-out teacher, yoga instructor, and leading voice in the healing of PTSD and complex trauma. She is the author of five books, including The Complex PTSD Workbook, EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology, and The Post Traumatic Growth Guidebook.
Dr. Schwartz is an accomplished teacher who guides therapists in the application of EMDR, somatic psychology, parts work therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of trauma and complex PTSD. She guides you through a personal journey of healing in her Sounds True audio program, Trauma Recovery.
She has a depth of understanding, passion, kindness, compassion, joy, and a succinct way of speaking about very complex topics. She is the founder of the Center for Resilience Informed Therapy in Boulder, Colorado where she maintains a private practice providing psychotherapy, supervision, and consultation. Dr. Schwartz believes that that the journey of trauma recovery is an awakening of the spiritual heart.
