What is Vagus Nerve Icing?│The Anxiety Therapist

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Video transcript:
Hi everyone, I'm Kristen the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about the vagus nerve. So this is a nerve that goes from our brains um and connects to several different areas of our bodies. And there's something called vagus nerve icing. That's a technique that has been around for a while and is really effective at um sort of alleviating anxiety in the moment.
But it's also gotten a lot of popularity on social media lately and especially on TikTok, you'll find a lot of videos of people doing vagus nerve icing. And so I'd encourage you to check that out. I'm not going to demonstrate it in this video, but I am going to tell you what it is and why it works kind of the science behind it and then you can go out and um you know, kind of get a video tutorial um from someone else, but it is a legitimate therapeutic technique.
And what happens is that we can either put our face into a bowl of ice water or you can put ice on your face or chest or sometimes the back of your neck will even work. And what this does is it activates our dive response. And this, this is kind of exactly what it sounds like. So if you think about diving into a cold pool of water or maybe you've done the polar plunge in the past, you know, in winter where you're, it literally kind of startles or shocks your body.
Um and what happens is it's sort of like a hard reset for your mind and body to get recalibrated. So similar to pressing like control all delete on a computer. It resets your body so that it shifts attention away from whatever it was that was making you anxious or stressing you out and kind of shocks your system and why this works is that when your body has this dive response, the blood goes from more of the non essential organs to the essential organs, which would include your brain and your heart. And what happens is that then your heart rate slows and naturally your body takes on a calmer state.
So this is something that's really helpful. Um if you need something quick in the moment, you know, it's not a cure all for anxiety, it's not going to fix anything or take those anxious thoughts away, but it will help ground you in the present moment and kind of shock your body into resetting itself so that the anxiety doesn't feel quite as overwhelming and your nervous system has a chance to kind of calm down.
So I hope this was informative, like I said, go out and you know, find some videos of people actually doing vagus nerve icing and try it out for yourself and leave a comment, let me know how it goes or you know, if you've tried it in the past. Um I would just I would love to hear about your experiences, be sure to follow me at cathartic space counseling for more weekly content and um you can check out my website cathartic space counseling dot com or subscribe to my youtube channel, which is um, the anxiety therapist.
So I hope you all have a good week. I will see you next time.

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