Oct '25 (edited) • General Discussion
Partial Recording for Today's Live Class ! Covering Vagus Nerve 101 Concepts
Hey everyone !
Super stoked to share this, and grateful for all who came today - and grateful for those who are out there living their lives !
You're all valued and important 🥰😊😇
Yeah, so here is a recording of the first 30 minutes - I do a recap of the concepts that I think are really crucial for you to know before you start stimulating your Vagus Nerve -
What is it, how it functions, why is it helpful to even stimulate it at all, we cover a lot of important ground.
And I assure you, your use of VNS is going to be improved if you understand what you're trying to do / accomplish.
Give it a watch especially if you haven't made a venture into the Classroom Module 1 - Vagus Nerve 101
Super key, and I'll also post the transcript in the comments below so you can read what was discussed.
Cheers!
-Sterling
P.S. Transcript is here:
All right, cool.
Hey, what's up everybody?
Welcome to a quick clip for the Vegas Skool.
I wanted to do just a quick run through
of module one of the Vegas nerve stimulation
classroom module.
I know that a lot of people these days aren't reading a lot,
so I just want to do just a video of it
so you can see what's actually in there.
The first thing is I think a lot of people
come to the Vegas Skool because they go,
a friend told me about ultrasound
and a Vegas nerve stimulation, so I want to try that.
And so naturally, I think the first place they might go
is they might go to the classroom
and then just click on ultrasound V1
and little just buy an ultrasound
from any of these distributors.
And that's totally like, that's fine.
I think probably most will do that.
But I've always been of the opinion
that at least knowing about what the Vegas nerve is,
even at a precursory level, like a 101 level,
what is the Vegas nerve?
Is probably going to help you get better results
out of the ultrasound or whatever method you're choosing
to use to stimulate the Vegas nerve.
So like, is that fair?
That's a fair point, right?
So what I would encourage people to do
at some point in their journey in Vegas nerve world,
not even just Vegas Skool,
but Vegas nerve world in general,
is to click through or just at least watch this video, right?
And so I'm going to go through the first thing,
it's the first for a reason,
Vegas nerve stimulation module.
So what is the Vegas nerve, right?
The Vegas nerve is, it's basically this interconnection highway
that goes from your brain, your brain stem,
probably has connections to your pineal gland.
So some of you, your alarm bell should be going off,
oh, my pineal gland.
I know that's pretty important for like melatonin, serotonin,
dreaming, DMT production.
There is a burgeoning scientific discipline
that's looking at the interconnectivity
between the pineal gland,
yes, the one in the center of your head
and the entire vagal nerve system.
That's called Nemertian theory
or Vegas nerve origin theory,
'cause the Vegas nerve had to kind of come from something
and we believe that it's connected to the pineal gland.
So anyway, it's a super highway
that connects all throughout most of your body.
I'd say 95% of the critical places in your body
that need to be connected to,
all throughout your abdomen, everywhere here,
your heart, your lungs, your spleen, your digestion areas,
all of this stuff is really tied in.
So people sometimes call it the wandering nerve.
This means that if you try to dissect a human body,
which none of us will ever do in our lifetimes
unless you're like an anatomist.
But when they do look at it, they go, wow,
this thing goes everywhere.
So Vegas, V-A-G-U-S, and just like Las Vegas,
the city in Nevada, the gambling center of the world
next to Macau, is the wanderer.
That's what it means in the Latin,
means someone who just wanders around
and so the vagal nerve does that.
But the body doesn't have things in there
that are just pointless, right?
Is that fair?
Like if there's a nerve that's going to your heart
and there's one that goes to your spleen
and your digestion and your reproductive organs,
like it's not just 'cause the body was like,
this sounds like for fun, for funsies, whatever.
No, there's a purpose, there's a deeper purpose for it.
So the vagus nerve is wandering throughout the entire body
and there is a deeper purpose for it.
There's also a name for it called the Great Nerve,
which is, that's the name that it was originally given
by the Roman surgeon named Galen, G-A-L-E-N.
And so yeah, that's another term you might see applied
to the vagus nerve.
So wandering nerve, vagus nerve, great nerve, et cetera.
You might also call it kind of the parasympathetic controller.
So if you know about the sympathetic system,
the bite or flight, when you get really anxious and ramped up,
that's your sympathetic nervous system,
which produces adrenaline and responds to a adrenal type
of incidence.
The parasympathetic nerve is what produces like acetylcholine,
which is a calming nerve, right?
When you have acetylcholine, you feel kind of relaxed, chill,
like you're just hanging out, okay?
So that's kind of what the vagus nerve system
is all part of.
And some of the biggest ways that people,
not to get here too soon,
but some of the ways that people typically end up
croaking or dying, gosh, if I'm gonna put this on YouTube,
I don't think I can use that word.
What's the Gen Z TikTok politically correct term for dying?
I didn't even know, what is this?
This is like 1984 come real.
So when people are unalived by nature,
by their own body, typically it's stress related
and inflammatory related, right?
Not inflammatory, like somebody said something bad
on the internet, I mean, inflammation,
like the redness and the skin kind of inflammation.
So your vagus nerve, when it's not working,
like you can use your vagus nerve
and how relaxed you are day to day and moment to moment,
as kind of a general gauge
of how much inflammation is being pumped out of your body.
And if you find that you cannot relax for your life,
like if gun to your head, right?
I know it's not a good place to be like,
okay, I've got a gun to your head
and I want you to calm down, right?
So that's not a good way to phrase it,
but worse comes to worst
and you really were being honest with yourself.
How relaxed are you throughout the day?
Typically speaking, what I've seen and observed
over years of working with people
and specifically around their vagus nerve,
it's better to be around 80% vagal parasympathetic chill
with 20% of the day where you're like,
okay, I'm stressed, I'm in flow,
I'm like exercising, I'm running,
whatever it might be, white knuckle driving
through traffic, screaming and swearing and cursing
and everybody around you, that's 20% of your day.
But when you get sick, it flips
and it flips before you get sick.
So if you're at 80% of your day being like,
I am so white knuckle stressed
and 20% of your day or less is like,
you know, I'm just like super chill,
don't really have much that I really wanna do right now.
You can do things in that mode too,
it doesn't mean you're lazy,
I'm not encouraging laziness per se,
but chill about it, right?
Working but like relaxed and in a flow state,
that needs to be 80, but most of the time it's 20
and if you're 80% stressed,
it means your vagus nerve is not working
and it might not be your fault entirely, okay?
I'll scapegoat some other things.
Could be, in a case, the food you're eating, right?
Can be shutting down your vagus nerve, right?
Could be your environment, could be pollution,
could be heavy metals, could be mold,
could be just your mindset and framing
around what stress is or isn't, right?
Somebody could say, you could get a call from someone
and it can ignite you and make you upset.
You can get a call from that same person
but have a different mindset about it or different framing
and you're like, I'm chill about this, this is great.
So yeah, there's a lot of features that go into
what would allow you to be in the 80/20 split.
So anyway, so that's why the vagus nerve is important.
I mean, it's basically like the thing
that tells you that you're dying or not, right?
So it's kind of important and your heart will feel
like if you have too much inflammation,
your heart will basically fail and you're dead.
Like no heart, no life, that's it, right?
So on that moment to say is I definitely encourage people
at some time in their life to put their hands on their heart,
take a few deep breaths just like this
and just be like, thank you heart for beating
a hundred thousand times a day
because as long as you beat, I live, okay?
That's a nice little bit of gratitude
to give to your heart for doing that.
So anyway, anatomy basics, yeah, basically brain stem,
brain, down through your neck, both sides of the neck,
down to your heart and all the way down.
So these things are important.
Now, I've given a shout out to some of the polyvagal theory.
I don't really believe that polyvagal theory
is correct at all in terms of an anatomical thing,
but there are certain things where you can freeze
or shut down, but this is not something
that polyvagal theory invented.
This is, you know, polyvagal theory was published
in like 1991, okay?
So you're telling me that in 1990,
the year before polyvagal came out,
people didn't know what the word freeze
or shut down responses were.
Are you crazy?
I'm just remembering I got to upload this one clip to YouTube.
So no, that's not happening.
Anyway, so why is it such a game changer?
Controls your heart rate variability.
If you're in health, your vagus nerve controls
your heart rate variability numbers, that's it.
If your vagus nerve is failing, your HRV
is gonna be total garbage at 20 milliseconds.
And if you're really healthy, 50 and up, pretty simple.
And digestion, mood, inflammation,
all these things are key.
So that is kind of like the main kind of field
of things that you should know about the vagus nerve
before you try stimulating it with ultrasound
or electricity through your ears or whatever it is
or just maybe doing some breathing,
which we will do a little bit today.
And we'll actually, I have an ultrasound here,
so we'll be doing ultrasound here today.
So that's cool.
So for those watching the replay,
make sure you join vagus Skool and come
and join one of our live videos, if you don't like reading.
No shame in that.
I mean, have you guys seen the AI generated videos
these days?
Amazing.
I can understand why you would never sit down
and read some content.
I mean, geez.
I could watch, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King videos all day
or, I don't know, Bob Ross painting.
I mean, that's crazy.
So anyway, next module, we'll do these quick
because we're gonna focus on breath work today.
Breath work is a super great way to access the vagus nerve.
You can breathe, you can hold your breath,
you can squeeze, you can do box breathing,
you can go into like Indian pranayamic breathing.
There's all kinds of ways to breathe.
Jesus talked about breathing, I guess, apparently, I don't know.
So yeah, the one that we're gonna,
the breathing method that we've found is like,
the best is really called the valsalva squeeze method.
And that's infinitely covered inside of the course room.
And it is related to diaphragmatic breathing.
So you breathe in through your mouth, obviously,
and you capture the air, you hold it in, right?
You don't let it escape, right?
So like if I pushed on, if someone took a deep breath in
and then I squeezed their chest or I gave them a big hug,
how would they not let the air just escape out of their body?
It's impossible, right?
'Cause you have a hole in your face and your body.
I mean, the air has to escape, right?
Technically, no, you can restrict air.
Like if you go underwater and you hold your breath underwater,
clearly it doesn't just vent out.
So you have some mechanisms to hold air inside of your body.
It's funny, it's like one of these things
where I'm kind of mind blown, right?
I like, I try to teach these things sometimes
and maybe I'm just not a good,
maybe I'm not the best breathwork teacher in the world.
I'm not for lack of trying.
No, I don't want to be the best breathwork teacher
in the world, that's not my life goal.
But sometimes I don't understand.
I'm like, okay, deep breath in, hold, and squeeze.
And that means you like kind of bear down,
like you're trying to take a big, fat, loving,
kindness thing in your restroom
and you just squeeze, right?
And like most people have done that.
If you haven't, I mean, what?
So, but some people are like, I don't know how to do it.
I don't know how to hold my breath.
I'm like, I don't, it's like,
it'd be like trying to explain to someone
how to like reach forward and grab an object.
It's like, what else can I tell you?
Use your brain, grab it, pick it up.
So it's kind of hard to do that
if you just don't understand what holding your breath is.
And trust me, some people are like,
oh, I know this intuitively, trust me.
Some people have no fricking idea.
They just don't, like it just does not register for them.
But you can learn it and you can get better at it, trust me.
Your ability to breathe is based on your diaphragm.
So you are using it, you are using your diaphragm,
but you just might not know it.
It's nobody taught this to you.
And so it's kind of like, what?
I can reach out and hold air in my body.
That's crazy.
So anyway, that's what we'll cover today.
Not on the recording.
But yeah, meditation is, meditation's okay.
I like active meditations, things where you're doing like,
again, the gratitude, loving kindness,
these kinds of things.
This is, I think, a better type of meditation,
but honestly, it's better to do something
rather than nothing.
You will suffer for not doing a practice
that's like good for you in that way, right?
And yeah, five minutes can help rewire your brain,
your nervous system, rewrite things.
It's really good.
You can track your HRV with devices,
or a ring, Apple Watch.
There's well Tory on your phone,
which uses your phone camera.
You put your finger on it,
and it will literally track your heart rate variability
through your fingertip.
So there's not really many excuses left for like,
oh, I don't have $1,000 to buy the new Apple Watch.
It's like, well Tory, I think, for the most part,
is like free or $4 a year or something like that.
I don't know.
There are ways to do it.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, how do you feel?
Just check in with yourself.
That's free.
Anybody can do that, right?
How do I feel?
I feel stressed 80% of the day.
If I were to strap a big, expensive device to you,
I could probably predict what it would say,
and it'd be pretty bad, right?
Is that fair?
Like if you're like, I feel like just garbage all day,
and I feel stressed, I can't relax, I can barely sleep.
And then I'm like, well,
you need an HRV monitor to be sure.
No, you don't.
No, you just, you reported it right there.
That is it.
That is the thing, right?
So if you're feeling like garbage,
I don't really need to get you an Apple Watch
or anything like that to say like,
oh yeah, these numbers are pretty bad,
regardless of what you're telling me.
No, these things are directly connected.
So if you don't wanna get a device
and you don't wanna deal with like more tech or whatever,
fine, fucking, how do you feel?
Write it down, I don't know.
Pretty simple.
So yeah, quickly we'll just go through these modules
so you know what's in here,
and I do wanna encourage you at least to read through it, right?
Although I'm more entertaining when I read it, but still,
just get in the habit of trying to read some stuff.
All right, so cold exposure.
Shock your vagus nerve awake, a cold shower.
Humming, singing, speaking.
These are ways to activate your vagus nerve.
You know, I believe that the vagus nerve
is actually involved in your formation of language
and song and your voice.
So when I see people up there on stage singing
or giving a presentation or yelling or whatever,
I'm like, something in there is their vagus nerve
making them able to do that.
So if the vagus nerve is able to make them do that,
how much of what they're saying
is actually partially coming from their vagus nerve,
not from their brain, so to speak.
Possible, it's actually possible.
So I almost look at people as like slightly possessed
by a vagus nerve, by their own,
or possessed by another human being
that's using their vagus nerve as a distribution network.
You see that a lot in social media or politics
or religion or anything like that.
So vagus nerve, you could go pretty deep
into the vagus nerve thing, as I have.
And not everything in there is pretty, right?
Don't let it trick you.
It's not like all birds and roses,
but I think it's really cool.
I just think it's really cool.
You can move, you can do Tai Chi, you can laugh, ha ha ha.
That's all fun.
That stuff is great.
Tai Chi, laughter yoga, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so there's some stuff to do there.
Then in terms of the technology,
there's electrical and ultrasound.
Those are pretty much like the two things.
Maybe you could argue, oh, well,
if I take a vibrating motor and I hold it up against my ear,
you can kind of stimulate the vagus nerve.
Maybe you could say, oh, we'll know acupuncture.
That stimulates the vagus nerve.
Well, not as directly as these things.
There are lots of things.
You could say like having romantic times
with a partner or with yourself
could technically be considered a form
of vagus nerve stimulation too.
There's a lot of things that you could say,
well, many orders removed.
I know Kevin Bacon, right?
I'm six orders of magnitude removed
from the famous celebrity from Flashdance.
I think it's Flashdance from the '80s of Mr. Kevin Bacon.
So I practically know the guy, right?
So there are ways to orders of distance, right?
Removed from the vagus nerve to stimulate it.
But, you know, I just,
let's just skip the foreplay and just go to,
how can we directly get things
into the vagus nerve specifically?
So that's, I'm just skipping to that point, okay?
So electrical stimulation either through the neck
or through the ear, those are two ways
that are popular.
There's a lot of devices.
There's a whole classroom module
just about electrical stimulation
from devices that are like a thousands of dollars
down to things that are like, I don't know, 70 dollars,
different little ear clip systems, all kinds of things,
things you can make yourself
if you want to get into the DIY thing.
I'm a big DIY or two.
So electrical is possible.
There's also ultrasound.
Ultrasound can go boop, right on the neck,
left to right side, that concept,
also through your body too.
So you don't put ultrasound on your ear.
It's kind of pointless 'cause it's a little bit big.
And you could get a lot more stimulation through the neck
and through the body.
So ultrasound is a possibility.
I'm a fan personally, but yeah, there you go.
How to integrate vagus nerve stimulation
into your daily life.
You can do random hacks, rituals,
make vagus nerve power automatic,
keep a vagus nerve stimulator next to your bed
so that when you're about to fall asleep,
you can use it, or when you wake up, it's right there.
That's a systematization of the process.
I recommend that, that's smart.
Something that's perfect, that doesn't get done
is less effective than something that's imperfect
or not like the 100% out of 100%
that actually gets done consistently.
That's a fact.
Write that down class, okay?
The perfect thing that you don't have,
'cause the perfect thing in vagus nerve stimulation
costs $50,000 and it's an ultrasound device
that can focus ultrasound down to your neck
and the entire system is $50,000.
I've used it, I've had it.
And you stimulate your vagus nerve with that thing.
You are like instantly in enlightenment.
I'm not even kidding.
And I'm talking about like enlightenment,
present moment awareness.
Like as if you just meditated for 10 days straight
in like an ashram in Nepal or something like that, right?
There are devices that are fricking wild.
And they're ultrasound based,
but they're very big and focused and expensive.
These are like custom made devices.
So the perfect thing that you don't have
being used inconsistently pales in comparison
to the lesser device, like this device, this thing,
this ultrasound, it factually, I can admit,
is not as good as the one that costs $50,000, okay?
But you guys don't have those devices.
I can call a friend and be like,
"Hey, can I use the machine?"
But even then it's not one that I just have around my house.
It's a research grade device.
It has to stay in a university.
I'm not gonna sleep in my lab all day, but they're great.
But this, which I can use for five minutes every day
or every other day is, I think, way more effective
because it's used consistently.
And this thing's like $150, $150 bucks.
So there's a one that's $54.
There's a version of this that's $54 for ultrasound.
So I'm like, okay, consistency does make a big difference.
So this is the difference between random hacky kind of methods
versus a ritual or systematization.
And I taught this for years.
So I definitely know what I'm talking about.
And I know that the best laid plans are not gonna work.
They're just not gonna work.
You have to be like, there are gonna be days in the future
where I'm gonna be dumb and lazy and obstinate
and stubborn and a total piece of human waste of flesh.
And I'm gonna get down to myself and I'm not gonna do anything.
But if it's just simple, that's why candy is so good
'cause it's just like you could just pop it in your mouth
and you get a little boost of something.
So just make it easy.
So anyway, there's more in there about what to do.
But anyway, and then the last module
for this piece of the classroom, and there are many things,
but it's just a recap and some cool stuff
about where vagus nerve stimulation can go
and where it is already going.
I believe that depression and PTSD is almost entirely treatable
with vagus nerve stimulation and with ultrasound, most likely.
I've seen plenty of cases of people who are like severely depressed
who used ultrasound and were like,
oh, something reframed in my mind just from the ultrasound,
not even that we'd coached them or anything like that,
just ultrasound.
And they improved their life significantly thereafter.
And that, for me, makes me go, wait, what?
That's crazy, like that doesn't make any sense,
but it tends to continue to happen.
So at some point I go, okay, maybe there's a there there.
And I think there is a there there.
So that's the direction that this goes, continues to go there,
but it's not limited there.
And I like to make a distinction between,
I have feet in two worlds, right?
One where I started was, in the most case,
exploring treatments for disorders of the human mind and body.
But not everything in life is a disorder.
Not everything in life is a medical diagnosis.
Not everything in life is about you being sick
and needing to be healed.
There are applications for ultrasound
and vagus nerve stimulation that are like,
hey, what about me in the back?
I'm perfectly healthy, I'm thriving, I'm happy,
I'm not miserable, what can I do?
Do all the sick people in the world
just get to have all the fun?
And I'm like, and because I worked in that,
I'm sick, I need help world for so long, right?
But I'm like, yeah, that's a good point.
If the coolest technology is being developed for sick care,
essentially, that is the met the model,
then the people who may really wanna try ultrasound
almost have to pretend that they're sick
to be able to get it.
So that's thereby encouraging the system
that you're trying to fix in a weird way, right?
Oh, I have to pretend that I'm a little sicker
than I normally am, so that somehow
I can get access to these cool tools.
Same thing with xenon and ultrasound and whatever it might be,
they're all medicalized.
So if you're happy and healthy and generally like,
I'm cool, I'm kosher, I'm good.
You can't get it 'cause you're not sick enough.
And I'm like, that's totally bullshit, sorry.
I hate that, I hate that for you.
So the other world that I look at is there is a space
for longevity, anti-aging, mood enhancement, right?
Like if you're already happy, look,
if you're already good and you're happy and you're content,
doing something to raise that level of contentedness
does not medicalize you and does not make you sick.
It's just an absolute shame that we've somehow
culturally accepted this framing.
That like healthy people deserve to play
with whatever toys and systems that they wanna play with
if they want to without being labeled like, oh, I'm sick.
Like Brian Johnson, for instance.
Healthy guy wants to be healthier.
Not a problem, doesn't mean he's a sick person.
He's healthy and he wants more of that.
That's not a big deal.
It is a big deal in a good way,
but it's not a big deal in a bad way.
So anyway, there's a lot in the horizon
for vagus nerve stimulation.
I can assure you that.
So, all right, so anyway, there's lots of things
you can do with ultrasound.
You could maybe have an ultrasound earbud.
I've worked on projects like that.
Fitness trackers that measure your vagus nerve
and give you a pulse of ultrasound.
If it detects that your vagus nerve is low in the moment.
So like smart responders, these things are possible.
I've done some of these things.
I've worked on things with HRV trackers
that directly send a pulse of vibration into the ear
or ultrasound the moment that you need it.
So things are coming.
There's even a lab that I visited down in UC San Diego
that's working on ultrasound like this,
but literally in the size of a sticker patch
that you can just place right on your neck
and it will use beam forming to focus on your vagus nerve
and the thing can last for like about 12 hours.
It's got 12 hours of battery life.
Not like you need to stimulate your vagus nerve
for 12 hours, but I'm just saying,
this technology is rapidly moving forward.
So what we use today is not a guarantee
of what it will look like in five to 10 years,
which I think is fricking awesome.
And then who knows, you know, maybe someday
you'll just have a little needle, a big tip needle.
They'll jam it up your neck.
They'll release a little kind of a little capsule
with ultrasound in it.
And your phone will be able to send signals into it
and it will stimulate your vagus nerve
and you'll be instantly cool, calm and collected
in any moment of the day.
I know, yes, I know that could be bad,
but at the same time, it could happen.
I don't know, I haven't seen that specifically exactly.
The one thing I did see was called neural dust
and that was developed at Berkeley at the time
that I was in Berkeley, California.
And it literally goes, not in your vagus nerve,
but in your brain.
And they have these little tiny cubes
that are ultrasound based that go into your brain
and then they can activate them remotely.
It's crazy.
So they call that neural dust.
The intention is to just sprinkle it all over your brain
and have little sensors and stimulators all over your head.
The internet of things, the internet of brains maybe,
we'll call it.
So yeah.
And there's some ways to get involved.
There's things coming up now that you know,
I think there's kind of a,
how do you say a co-op cooperative method
of ensuring that people get this?
The worst thing that could happen is like, you know,
Pfizer or Johnson and Johnson
decided to get into ultrasound.
'Cause you know, they would corrupt it,
medicalize it, just destroy it completely.
So I hope that doesn't happen, but we'll see.
Anyway, so that's that and then that's part of the classroom.
That's part of Vegas Skool.
It's free to join.
Got 429 members.
But yeah, we'd love to see you there.
We've got a community page.
I'm live right now.
And then the classroom is cool.
And, and that's it.
Thanks so much for watching.
My name is Jolene Cooley and we're gonna get back
to our live call and interact with our audience.
So thanks so much and take care.
Bye bye.
33:32
10
22 comments
Partial Recording for Today's Live Class ! Covering Vagus Nerve 101 Concepts
skool.com/vagus
This group is designed for the discussion of the Vagus Nerve, techniques to stimulate it, and the benefits of doing so.
Leaderboard (30-day)
1
+42
2
+42
3
+34
4
+26
5
+25
Powered by