Las 4 mejores posturas de yoga para relajarse, según los expertos
Relájate con posturas de yoga que pueden reducir tus niveles de estrés. ... Muchas personas de todo el mundo se ven afectadas negativamente por el ...
truco de relajación súper simple
Este es un <anchor>truco de relajación súper simple</anchor> que puedes hacer en cualquier momento para desestresarte. También puede profundizar una sensación de calma cuando estás sosteniendo tus posturas de yoga, y Gadron sostiene que debido a ese alivio, tiendes a mantener las posturas por más tiempo. Una versión fácil es inhalar contando hasta cuatro y exhalar contando hasta seis.
Longer Exhalations Are an Easy Way to Hack Your Vagus Nerve | Psychology Today
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###### Vagus Nerve

# Longer Exhalations Are an Easy Way to Hack Your Vagus Nerve

## Respiratory vagus nerve stimulation (rVNS) counteracts fight-or-flight stress.

THE BASICS

### Key points

- Heart rate variability represents the healthy fluctuation of a human or animal's heart rate.
- Higher HRV is associated with stronger vagus nerve function, better overall health, and improved cognition.
- 2 minutes of deep breathing engages the vagus nerve, increases HRV, and improves decision-making.

Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock

Vagus nerve in yellow.

Source: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock

What is HRV? Heart rate variability represents the healthy fluctuation in beat-to-beat intervals of a human or animal's heart rate. During the inhalation phase of a breathing cycle, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) facilitates a brief acceleration of heart rate; during exhalation, the vagus nerve secretes a transmitter substance (ACh) which causes deceleration within beat-to-beat intervals via the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).

HRV is used to index the robustness of someone's vagus nerve responses and vagal tone (VT). Higher HRV is associated with stronger vagus nerve function, lower chronic stress levels, better overall health, and improved cognition.

Although clinical research on HRV doesn't always discuss the vagus nerve, it's well established that HRV is an effective way to index vagal tone and gauge the robustness of someone's physiological ability to counteract SNS-driven fight-or-flight stress responses.

Nota bene: I grew up in a household with a neuroscientist father, Richard Bergland (1932-2007), who was also the author of The Fabric of Mind. My dad idolized Nobel-prize winner Otto Loewi (1873-1961), who discovered the first neurotransmitter (acetylcholine), which is the chief neurotransmitter of the PNS. What we now refer to as acetylcholine or ACh was originally coined "vagusstoff" (German for "vagus substance") by Loewi around 1921.

 Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Diagram of the frog heart preparation used by Otto Loewi. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) slows heart rate while accelerator (sympathetic nervous system) nerve stimulation speeds up heart rate.

Source: Wikipedia/Creative Commons

As a tennis player, my father used the same breathing techniques he used in his neurosurgery operating room to stay calm. He taught me the basics of how to use deep, slow breathing techniques to hack the vagus nerve and slow down my heart rate, just like a frog in Loewi's lab.

Dad kept his neuroscience lessons on the tennis court simple. He'd say, "If you want to maintain grace under pressure, visualize squirting some vagusstoff into your nervous system by taking a deep breath—with a big inhale and a long, slow exhale—as you bounce the ball four times before every serve."

Without going into too much detail, my father taught me that by increasing the duration of my exhale after taking a deep breath, I could trigger my vagus nerve to squirt out some stress-busting "vagusstoff" on demand. This "stuff" was like a self-made tranquilizer that would relax my nerves and help me avoid choking or double-faulting during match points.

THE BASICS

Later, as a student at Hampshire College, I practiced yoga regularly and was guided by an instructor who also emphasized the importance of focusing on the inhalation/exhalation ratio during yogic breathing exercises. Although he didn't mention anything to do with neurobiology or psychophysiology, it was clear that many of my instructor's breathing techniques emphasized longer exhalations, just like my father had taught me.

Based solely on life experience, I saw a parallel and had a hunch that these centuries-old methods of shifting the inhalation/exhalation ratio that often had long-winded Sanskrit names such as "bhastrika pranayama" were ancient vagal maneuvers unwittingly designed to hack the vagus nerve long before Otto Loewi discovered vagusstoff.

Vagus Nerve Essential Reads





It's reassuring to have fresh research corroborate that each of us can trigger a " relaxation response" ( Benson et al., 1975) simply by focusing on the inhalation-to-exhalation ratio of our breathing and consciously extending the length of each exhale while doing breathing exercises as we go about our day-to-day lives.

Wellcome Library/Public Domain

Early anatomical drawing of the "wandering" vagus nerve.

Source: Wellcome Library/Public Domain

New Research Identifies Multiple Benefits of Longer Exhalations

In 2018, Roderik Gerritsen and Guido Band of Leiden University in the Netherlands published a detailed theoretical review, " Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity," in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. This review presents a wide range of studies that illustrate how slower respiration rates and longer exhalations phasically and tonically stimulate the vagus nerve. Using diaphragmatic breathing techniques to kickstart the calming "rest and digest" influence of the parasympathetic nervous system is referred to as respiratory vagus nerve stimulation (rVNS). (For more on traditional VNS and non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS) see here, here, here, and here.)

Throughout their paper, Gerritsen and Band explain how the latest research on rVNS fits into a historical timeline of other techniques used to harness runaway fight-or-flight stress responses and calm the autonomic nervous system. The authors write:

This two-pronged study was conducted by researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. The first arm of this study found that both slow deep "symmetric" breathing patterns (with an equal ratio of inhaling/exhalation timing) and skewed "vagus nerve" breathing patterns (with a longer exhalation than inhalation) significantly increased HRV.

WikiVisual/Creative Commons

Source: WikiVisual/Creative Commons

The second arm of this study asked one group of participants to perform two minutes of skewed vagus nerve breathing before taking a 30-minute decision-making test. The control group watched a video and did not focus on breathing patterns. Notably, participants in the group who focused on breathing patterns with longer exhalations for two minutes reported lower levels of stress and provided a significantly higher percentage of correct answers to business-related test questions than controls. The authors conclude, "These studies show that brief vagal breathing patterns reliably increase HRV and improve decision-making."

A myriad of breathing patterns can improve HRV. That said, based on the latest research, practicing rVNS breathing via longer exhalations for just two minutes appears to be an easy way to hack the vagus nerve and calm one's nervous system.

One gadget-free way to track the timing of your inhalation-to-exhalation breathing cycles per minute is to use a 4:8 ratio of four-second inhalations and eight-second exhalations. This breathing cycle takes 12 seconds which equates to five inhalation/exhalation cycles per minute. Based on road-tested outcomes, I really like the 4:8 ratio because it's easy to use my right hand to count up to five with each digit and use the fingers on my left hand like an abacus to keep track of each one-minute cycle.

Anytime you want to hack your vagus nerve to reduce stress or improve decision-making, a simple self-talk script could be: "I'm stressing out. In order to calm down so I can perform better on this decision-making task, I'm going to take two minutes (right now!) to do 10 rounds of vagus nerve breathing based on a 4:8 inhalation-to-exhalation ratio."

During the four-second inhalation phase, I'd recommend breathing in through your nose—as you relax the back of your eyes and visualize filling up your lower diaphragm with oxygen—and slowly count to four. Then, I'd recommend exhaling through pursed lips (as if you're blowing out lots of candles on a birthday cake) as you slowly count to eight.

Remember: If you're feeling especially stressed out, you can increase your rVNS breathing time to five minutes or a total of 25 twelve-second 4:8 breathing cycles. Repeat as needed.

LinkedIn Image Credit: fizkes/Shutterstock

References

Roderik J. S. Gerritsen and Guido P. H. Band. "Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity" Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (First published online: October 9, 2018) DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00397

Marijke De Couck, Ralf Caers, Liza Musch, Johanna Fliegauf, Antonio Giangreco, and Yori Gidron. "How Breathing Can Help You Make Better Decisions: Two Studies on the Effects of Breathing Patterns on Heart Rate Variability and Decision-Making in Business Cases." International Journal of Psychophysiology (First published online: March 1, 2019) DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2019.02.011

Kyle J. Bourassa, John J.B. Allen, Matthias R. Mehl, and David A. Sbarra. "The Impact of Narrative Expressive Writing on Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, and Blood Pressure Following Marital Separation." Psychosomatic Medicine (First published: May 8, 2017) DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000475

Bethany E. Kok, Kimberly A. Coffey, Michael A. Cohn, Lahnna I. Catalino, Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, Sara B. Algoe, Mary Brantley, and Barbara L. Fredrickson. "How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health: Perceived Positive Social Connections Account for the Upward Spiral Between Positive Emotions and Vagal Tone." Psychological Science (First published: May 6, 2013) DOI: 10.1177/0956797612470827

Igor Grossmann, Baljinder K. Sahdra, and Joseph Ciarrochi. "A Heart and A Mind: Self-distancing Facilitates the Association Between Heart Rate Variability and Wise Reasoning." Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (First published: April 8, 2016) DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00068

Alli N McCoy and Yong Siang Tan. "Otto Loewi (1873–1961): Dreamer and Nobel Laureate" Singapore Medical Journal (First published: January 2014) DOI: 10.11622/smedj.2014002

Herbert Benson, Martha M. Greenwood, and Helen Klemchuk. "The Relaxation Response: Psychophysiologic Aspects and Clinical Applications" The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine (First published: March 1, 1975) DOI: 10.2190/376W-E4MT-QM6Q-H0UM

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