Activate Your Vagus Nerve: Unleash Your Body's Natural Ability to Heal Paperback – September 2, 2022

This book is a God send for anyone with issues around sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system. A map to take your nervous system back to "rest and digest" and get out of "fight or flight." Life changing.

This book is helping me figure out how to reset my fight or flight response. Very easy to read and understand.

I enjoy this book just because I am in the medical field and was able to understand how the author was explaining the purpose and function of the vagus nerve. Some people might be turned off by it because it can be above their level of interest or knowledge.

It's very approachable and there are good exercises and things to do to bolster your vagus nerve. My only "complaint" is that you might come away from the book thinking the vagus is the end-all-be-all for health in the body. And hormones and the enteric (gut) system is given about a sentence in the book. So don't loose sight of the entirety of the system when reading this. But it IS a great book about the vagus.

The book is ok. There is too much scientific information for my taste. There are some simple suggestions and exercises that in general people might find useful. However I'm disappointed that people who are specialising in this don't have any emotional trauma information and this is hugely related to Vagus nerve. Lately there are a lot of books regarding this topic "Walking the tiger" "The Body Keeps the score", "When the body says no" and it's important for people to know that emotions don't fade away but they get stuck in the fascia and muscles. Also there wasn't nothing about the Ventral vegal and Dorsal Vegal. Ventral vegal is when Vagus nerve is functioning properly and Dorsal is when there is freeze of the emotion when the nervous system cannot handle that much stress and activation, it shuts down.

Who knew the vagus nerve did so much!?!?A recommended read!

This book gives a very clear picture of the importance & relevance of consciously addressing the health of our Vagus Nerve. Those of us who had less than ideal family dynamics absolutely need to know about how our sympathetic & parasympathetic nervous systems are functioning because most likely, they are not balanced. So, we are victims of our history because we don't know we can actually correct the patterns of fight/flight & ease into a healthier option. That's how important this is.

My most recent bout with depression has lasted almost 3 years. I'd already been on Zoloft (antidepressant) since 2009, and have had enough extremely negative experiences with pharmaceuticals, that I am in a constant quest of answers that are more effective and gentle than drugs. In August 2018, I was thrilled to read Stephen Porges' "The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory" and it's as if I'd held my breath for practical suggestions until I found Dr. Habib's [pocket guide] to "Activating your Vagus Nerve" in June, 2019. I immediately began to use his suggestions, and for the past 3 months I've had an overall improvement in depression and anxiety, and additionally, if I'm feeling especially stressed, down, or heavy hearted, I just go to my bathroom and gag myself with my toothbrush or gargle with himalayan salt water, and come out refreshed/soothed and feeling much more calm and normal. The Appendix is a very helpful reference, and the techniques with the highest efficacy for me have been gargling, gagging, and Wim Hof deep breathing and cold showers. THANK YOU DR. HABIB for helping me to nearly exterminate a 3-year bout with depression!