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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Worth knowing mostly for what it implies. One nerve, nudged electrically, is used for an inflammatory disease and for a mood disorder, two things we normally keep in separate cabinets. That does not make your breathing exercise the equivalent of surgery. It does put it on a real map instead of in the folder marked wishful thinking, which matters if you have been quietly embarrassed about doing it.
'He moulded him; He breathed from His Spirit into him' (Quran 32:9). Body and spirit are named in one movement, which is roughly the territory this nerve occupies.
السجدة
ثُمَّ سَوَّىٰهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِۦۖ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
Then He moulded him; He breathed from His Spirit into him; He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful
Qur’an 32:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An experimental crossover study found that deep slow breathing and transcutaneous vagal stimulation both increased vagal tone, improved gut motility and reduced sensitivity to pain. The two routes produced overlapping effects within the same study, which is about as direct a link as this literature offers. It was small and experimental, and stimulation through the skin is not the same thing as an implanted device.
Frøkjaer JB, Bergmann S, Brock C, Madzak A, Farmer AD, Ellrich J, Drewes AM. (2016). Modulation of vagal tone enhances gastroduodenal motility and reduces somatic pain sensitivity.. Neurogastroenterology and motility doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The same nerve carries traffic between body and brain whichever way you reach it, by wire or by breath.
An immune system that stays switched on with nothing to fight can begin turning on healthy tissue. It is doing its job with the wrong target.
The goal is not to have less energy. It is to have a brake you can feather rather than slam.
Coming alive at night is a common pattern after trauma. Mornings are flat, the day is heavy, and something lifts around the time you are meant to be winding down.