Resources on the Vagus

Whenever the topic of this long, wandering, ‘famous’ nerve - there’s no predicting where the conversation might end up. As one of 12 cranial nerves that influences everything from swallowing to our heart rate to stomach acid production to our ‘gut’ feelings, it’s useful to establish that a few organizing principles . To organize my own thinking on this matter, I decided to bring some ideas together on one post.

  1. It has both sensory and motor branches.

  2. The Poly part of Polyvagal refers to the 3 branches, and the 4 nuclei

  3. It has inspired the Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges which has huge implications in the world of trauma resolution and somatic psychology

  4. The vagus is formed when our digestive ‘system’ is still only one long gut tube (3 - 4 weeks after conception). This is a primitive structure.

  5. Developing an understanding for how the primitive enteric nervous system and the sophisticated highly evolved social nervous system interact - can be a paradigm shift in how we understand our self in relationship to our world.

Jennifer Herzog