The vagus nerve is nicknamed the wandering nerve for a reason. It leaves the brainstem and meanders through the body—lungs, heart, gut, immune system. It’s the constant scroll connecting brain and body, updating you on how things are running.
In balance, it’s brilliant. This is the nerdy stuff that makes me love science. Heart rate slows,
digestion hums, inflammation stays in check. Nature’s reminder: you’re not just observing
nature, you’re part of it. Built into your wiring is a system designed to reset. #natureheals
#natureisbalanced
But we got addicted to stress. Urgency feels like purpose. Dopamine hits from notifications feel like progress. Cortisol becomes the fuel we run on. It’s basically corporate TikTok for your biology. Live that way long enough and “fight or flight” drowns out the vagus nerve’s reset signals.
The result? Inflammation—a low-grade internal fire linked to everything from heart disease to brain fog to accelerated aging. It’s your system glitching because the vagus nerve’s calming signals are drowned out.
The vagus nerve is your body’s feed. Balanced, it’s healthy scrolling. But stress rewrites the algorithm. Once your system learns to look for threats, it keeps serving you the same thing: danger, urgency, “what’s wrong now?” It’s doom-scrolling, but inside your biology. And what makes you think replaying that meeting AGAIN is gonna change the outcome? Your vagus nerve gets tired of listening to it and taps out.
And just like your social feed, it doesn’t reset itself. You have to disrupt the algorithm.
When I was a kid, we reset by doing this crazy thing called… going outside. Riding bikes with friends. Playing until the streetlights came on. Nobody called it vagus nerve activation. We just called it Tuesday.
Now? We schedule our resets. Or buy them back. Breathwork classes. Sauna memberships. Cold plunge subscriptions. Yoga apps. Even sleep got complicated—blackout shades, sound machines, mouth tape, magnesium gummies. You do less prep before skydiving.
We hacked our way out of balance, and now we pay to remember how to be human again.
Here’s the truth: wellness isn’t a product. It isn’t a hack. It isn’t a book. It’s a lifestyle—and a mindset.
We hacked ourselves into imbalance with overstimulation and stress addiction. The fix isn’t another shortcut. It’s unhack your system. Get back to the rhythm nature designed: effort and recovery, stress and calm, push and reset.
Schedule it if you have to, but it’s free and available anytime you’d like. Take a breath.
And hey, to the guy that does breathwork and yoga stretches in the sauna—headphones don’t make you invisible. We hear you. Don’t be that guy.
Thrive on,
Brian
