Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Roughly four fifths of the traffic on the vagus nerve is heading up from your body to your brain. Your brain is largely reading a report from your body.
That is the strongest argument for working with the body rather than only with thoughts. If the report says danger, telling yourself a better story means swimming against the current. Change what the body is reporting, through movement, breath, warmth or company, and the better story becomes easier to believe.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'He breathed from His Spirit into him; He gave you hearing, sight, and minds' (Quran 32:9). Body and spirit arrive in the same sentence rather than in separate compartments.
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.
What the research says
A narrative review of the vagus nerve at the gut and brain interface describes it as roughly eighty per cent sensory, carrying information from the body up to the brain. That is anatomy rather than treatment evidence, and by itself it does not prove body based therapy works better than talking. It does explain why so many methods aim there.
Bonaz B, Bazin T, Pellissier S. (2018). The Vagus Nerve at the Interface of the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis.. Frontiers in neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Most of the information runs upward, so changing the body changes what the brain has to work from.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Breathing that has gone almost invisible happens in both kinds of stillness, so it will not tell you which one you are looking at. Muscle tone will.
Sound sensitivity is not a fault in your hearing. Under threat the ear opens out towards high and low sounds, the range that carries warning, and that is the range which makes ordinary life feel loud.
Neurofeedback usually starts with an assessment, then a block of sessions, then a review, and it is mostly paid for privately. Ask about all of that before you begin.