You may think of the brain as the command center of the body. But when it comes to trauma, stress, and emotional safety, the story actually begins in your body.
And that story flows through the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is like a long, wandering river that connects your brain to your body’s major systems: your heart, lungs, stomach, and more. It plays a central role in regulating your stress response and your sense of safety. But here’s what many people don’t realize:
🔄 80% of the vagus nerve’s communication goes upward (afferent), from the body to the brain.
Only about 20% goes downward (efferent), from the brain to the body.
That means: your body is speaking to your brain far more often than your brain is speaking to your body.
So when your chest feels tight, your stomach churns, or your heart races before a thought even forms—that’s your nervous system picking up cues before your mind can catch up.
🩵 Afferent Nerves: Body → Brain
These are the sensory pathways. They pick up signals from your internal world (heart rate, gut tension, breath) and your external world (facial expressions, tone of voice, body language).
Your body is constantly scanning for cues of safety or danger. This is called neuroception—a subconscious process of reading your environment.
When something feels “off,” your body often knows before your thoughts do.
🚪 Efferent Nerves: Brain → Body
These are the action pathways. They carry instructions from the brain to the body.
In a safe state, this might mean relaxing your shoulders, slowing your breath, or engaging socially. In a threat state, it might mean mobilizing (fight/flight) or shutting down (freeze/collapse).
This two-way loop is how trauma gets “stuck” in the body—and how healing happens, too.
🌿 Why This Matters in Therapy
Understanding this flow helps us shift from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to my system?”
Many of my clients—especially adult children of emotionally immature parents, Asian Americans taught to suppress feelings, or sensitive, high-achieving women—have spent years overriding their body’s signals.
They’ve been told to push through. To be good. To not feel too much.
But the body doesn’t forget. It keeps sending messages—until you learn how to listen.
🎶 Healing Through the Body
In therapy, we use practices like:
- EMDR to reprocess stuck trauma responses
- Somatic IFS to work with protective parts held in the body
- Music, rhythm, and gentle breath to signal safety back through the vagus nerve
You don’t have to think your way out of survival mode.
We start from the body up.
Because your body remembers. And with care, presence, and creative support—your body can recover, too.
Serving clients online in New York and in person in Austin, Texas
Therapy for trauma, nervous system healing, and reconnection with your inner world.
