Stop for a moment and feel your body. Now answer honestly. You wake up with your neck so stiff that it's hard to turn your head to look at the alarm clock. You feel like a tension band is tightening around your forehead and 100% right at the start of the day, and throughout the day you feel like you're constantly wrinkling your forehead without even realizing it . You have ear pain, but your doctor says your ear is perfectly fine. You notice that your shoulders are always close to your ears, as if you were carrying an invisible weight on your neck. Or perhaps you feel that you can't swallow metaphorically about some situation in your life and that something has gotten stuck in your throat. If so, this episode is for you. If you don't know me yet, I'm Clara, a dentist by profession, and in this podcast I intend to take bruxism far beyond the teeth. Today we'll talk about the vagus nerve and how its lack of tone translates into that triangle of pain formed by your jaw, your neck, and your head. You will understand what lies behind that pain, and we will interpret it as a signal from your dysregulated internal security system that is telling you something you need to hear. The vagus nerve is the longest and most fascinating cranial nerve. It is called vagus nerve because it wanders or roams from the brain to the abdomen, regulating organs as important as the heart or lungs and facilitating processes such as digestion. It is the king of the parasympathetic system. The parasympathetic system is that part of the nervous system that allows you to go into rest or repair mode. Within this area I want to emphasize the vagus nerve, its importance within the mouth, in the triangle of the skull and the cervical spine, and in the ear area. In the mouth it controls swallowing and has fibers in the back of the tongue. To give you an idea, its function could be to say, relax, swallow. Everything 's fine. When you devour the life you want, everything is fine. To relax the vagus nerve, our tongue cannot be tense. Our mouth cannot be tense, our jaw cannot be clenched. That's why, since the tongue is such a powerful muscle in our body, you can do tongue exercises, as I'm going to explain at the end of this episode. We move on to the triangle of the skull and the cervical spine. Your jaw and your neck, especially the cervical vertebrae from the first to the third, are a single functional unit. When you clench your teeth, that tension is transferred directly to the muscles in your neck, especially the sternocleidomastoid and trapezius. And as for the ear, due to the physical proximity of the most sensitive muscles, which are these chewing muscles, inflammation of the temporomandibular joint or spasm of these masseter and facial muscles in general are often referred to as the ear, and many people confuse them with otitis, ear pain, but in reality it is your jaw that is sending you a message for help. This is for the physical aspect. If we look at it from the perspective of neuroscience, one key concept is vagal tone. A vagal tone can be high or low. A high vagal tone signifies flexibility in the face of stress. And a low vagal tone signifies rigidity. We need to have a high vagal tone , to stimulate and activate the vagal tone in order to be healthy, relaxed, and stress-free. If your vagus nerve is disconnected or has low tone, the sympathetic nervous system , which is activated by stress, takes complete control of you during sleep. There is no muscle relaxation, even when you are resting. Rest, as I told you a while ago, is so important to activate the parasympathetic system, which, if you were a computer, would be the one that restarts or updates its entire system and its updates. If you live in a friendly environment, you can't update all your software and you become overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed and stressed. When you clench your jaw, the muscles release pro-inflammatory substances that inflame your body, such as substance P. And this sensitizes the trigeminal nerve, okay? Which, very briefly, connects the nerves in the neck and head area. And what does he do? This can cause tension headaches or even morning migraines. Does this painting look familiar? And the brain amplifies the pain because the vagus nerve is not doing its anti-inflammatory function and goes back again on the same hamster wheel. There is also another function that is important for me to consider, which would be the psychosomatic aspect, since the neck represents flexibility in life or the ability to see from different perspectives. A rigid cervical spine would suggest a rigid mind or a rigid life situation . What is it that you don't want to see if you turn your head? The vagus nerve also affects the social context and self-confidence. If you live in a work or personal environment where you don't feel safe, where you don't feel understood, where you don't feel loved, your vagus nerve shuts down. Bruxism is then the cry of a nervous system that feels unprotected, and we clench to avoid screaming, we clench to hold the unsustainable, we clench due to vital incoherence. Next, I'm going to suggest some simple practical exercises to calm this triangle of pain, to inform this vagus nerve that you are moving towards calm and to extinguish this fire, this inner emergency that has led you to the situation you are experiencing today of pain, lack of mobility and so much tension. In this area, of this triangle, the first proposal would be auricular stimulation. As I've told you, the vagus nerve has a branch in the ear, in the ear area. With your index finger and thumb, gently massage the inside of the concha, I do n't know how to say it, of your ear, the inside of your ear, the curved part over the ear hole with circular motions for a minute or so, okay? and at the same time synchronize it with your breathing. And you'll notice, you'll observe how your breathing becomes slower as you do this circular massage. The next exercise would be to make a sighing sound that activates your vagal tone. Inhale deeply through your nose and as you exhale, let out a loud, long, and heavy sigh, letting your jaw drop completely, open and fall, and dislocate. Imagine the air simultaneously descending from your neck to your abdomen, relaxing your cervical spine with each inhalation and each exhalation. The next suggestion would be to make a neck movement, but very slowly, to one side and then the other, okay? Very subtle, very subtle, barely a couple of centimeters. And meanwhile, you keep the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. And if you can, press your entire tongue against the entire roof of your mouth. And feel how, as you gently rotate your head, the tension dissolves at the base of your skull. Yes. To one side, with your tongue against the roof of your mouth, and to the other. Superb. While you're doing all this, I invite you to ask yourself a question. Grab a pen and paper and write this down. What is that heavy thing on my neck? What makes me grit my teeth to carry it? That's how it ended. This chapter has been a short one, but I think very powerful. I don't want to give you any more information. Your headaches, your stiff neck, your bruxism are your vagus nerve's way of telling you that you need to return to a state of internal coherence. You are not a defective body. You are not destined to live like this forever. You are a body that is communicating with itself. If this episode has helped you understand the connection between your vagus nerve, your neck, and your mouth, I invite you to subscribe, leave me a star rating, or share it with people you think might be suffering from this problem and who might find it helpful in understanding their health condition. Tell me what you thought of it, what you gained from it . I'll read your comments and see you in the next chapter. Ciao.