Repairing The Nervous System and Overcoming Trauma with Jessica Maguire
Jessica Maguire is a trauma-informed integrative physiotherapist whose passion for health first led to her degree in Health Science before completing her Masters in Physiotherapy. Her clinical experience made her fascinated by neuroscience and the potential of the nervous system to change itself. In this episode of the Love Intently Podcast, Jessica is here to teach you about the vagus nerve and the nervous system and how stress-related illnesses can arise from deregulation after traumatic stress.
After taking a two-year study sabbatical across Europe, America, UK, and Australia to do her research on neuroplasticity, Jessica finally answers what the vagus system is and why it’s important to us. (“it’s a two-way communicator between the brain and the body that controls how we move into different states of our nervous system and how our body systems respond to stress.”)
She says the autonomous nervous system has two branches, the Sympathetic nervous system and the Parasympathetic nervous system that performs different functions. (“The sympathetic nervous system acts as an accelerator to add more energy where we want to focus, while the parasympathetic nervous system acts as a brake that slows us back down.”) The parasympathetic nervous system has two parts: the Ventral (vagal brake) that “slows us down just enough for the situation,” and the Dorsal, which “slows us down too much and may lead to stress, losing motivation, and chronic fatigue.” These two ways of understanding that we can slow our system down help us get a picture of why we might feel fatigued after prolonged stress.
Jessica says there are ways of improving the vagal break so that our nervous system becomes more flexible and adaptable to meet the demands with an appropriate level of activation. (“We can influence both the brain and the nervous system to change.”)
She says her path to researching the vagus nervous system began when working as a psychotherapist in a clinic with patients for 13 years. (“I would see these similar patterns of people having prolonged stress and the symptoms getting worse.” Although we often look at it as though the brain controls everything and takes care of all the body, chronic pain could be a stressor. (“I wanted to understand the brain and the nervous system in more detail.”)
Jessica closed her clinic and spent two years studying to get to the heart of understanding the vagus nerve.
Her findings reported that the vagus nerve is indeed related to chronic pain in different ways, and there are things we can do about it. To understand how it works, it’s essential to get an idea of different nervous system states.
For instance, if you believe that you will be broke if you don’t go to work, the brain’s pain perception will increase. But if the beliefs are okay, it will help you understand that the situation is uncomfortable at the moment, the brain will not set the alarm for a threat. (“What we say is how the brain will detect the pain as a threat.”)
Fortunately, there’s a way to rewire our nervous system to our benefit, she says. We can train our nervous system through practices that help bring the vagal brake to show us just enough and still have the energy to go on.
One of the practices we can perform is learning to name the sensations we’ve got inside us. It helps engage the part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) to calm down.
We can also teach our nervous system to respond differently under stress. Anyone looking forward to rewiring their nervous system needs to have a “framework to help you understand the nervous system and have beliefs written down to bring awareness when the pain comes on.”
Jessica also talks about how connection affects us biologically and why it’s important to have a healthy connection. (“If I don’t have a good connection, I will carry that distress in my nervous system.”) But if you have excellent and healthy connections, it helps us come back to the green state quite fast when we are around somebody in the green state. The reversal is also true since the mirror neurons tend to watch other people and make you pick their energy and expressions.
In her thoughts about resilience, Jessica says that a lot of times, we think of resilience as having the energy to push through, ignoring our body needs and how it feels. But if you look at it from the mind-body system’s science, we can look at resilience as the “window of tolerance.” At the top of the window, there’s anxiety, anger, overwhelm, and irritation. The bottom part consists of depression and disconnection. ( “If we can pay attention to the sensation of that window as they go up and down, we won’t get to the extremes.”)
Jessica says resilience is having the tools and resources to deal with challenges. We build resilience by choice and bringing in that we are not hopeless or helpless. We also build it by ignoring the sensation in our bodies.
In this episode with Jessica, we chat about what brought her to begin researching the vagus nervous system, how to rewire your nervous system, building more resilience, and much more. Tune in to listen to her whole story and see below for a full list of topics covered in this episode.
In This Episode We Discussed:
-What is the vagus nerve system and why it’s important (“it’s a two-way communicator between the brain and the body that controls how we move into different states of our nervous system and how our body systems respond to stress”)
-What brought her to researching about the vagus nervous system (I would see these similar patterns of people having prolonged stress and the symptoms getting worse. I wanted to understand the brain and the nervous system in more detail.”)
-How the vagus nervous system is related to chronic pain (“for instance, if you believe that you will be broke if you don’t go to work, the pain perception in the brain will increase.”)
-How we can rewire our nervous system (“we can train through practices that help bring the vagal brake in and slows us down just a little bit but still have the energy to go on.”)
-Advice to those looking into rewiring their nervous system (“having a framework to help you understand the nervous system.”)
-How connections affect us biologically and why it’s important (“connections where we are around somebody who is in that green state and say we’re in yellow state, we will actually come back closer to the green state, just by being around them.”)
-Defining resilience (“Resilience is having the tools and resources to deal with challenges.”)
-How to build more resilience (“creating choice means, if I’m facing stress and feel helpless, my survival brain will increase its activation.”)
-What she wishes people knew about her (“People think that anybody who teaches these kinds of practices doesn’t experience stress or difficult emotions. But everyone does.”)
-3 truths about life and love that she lives by (“Recognizing the need of certain structures that help in fitness, health, spirituality, and business. Allowing co-regulation to be true. Finding the right people who are willing to grow with us.”)
-Best relationship advice (“Giving and receiving in care.”)