This time last year, I’d never even heard of the vagus nerve. I didn’t know it would soon enter everyday vocabulary – or that I’d be focusing my energy on soothing it to carry me through one of the hardest periods of my life. But after a tragic loss at the end of last year, I knew ordinary talking therapies wouldn’t cut it. I needed something else. I was craving something that aligned my body, with my mind. Something that could pull me back together, head, heart and limbs, and make me feel like a whole self again – a feeling that had been shattered in the wake of my grief.
Without too much thought, I booked myself onto a weekly Sunday night restorative yoga class. I thought it might be soothing, like a hot bath. I did not expect it to become the most healing process I’ve ever encountered.
At my local class, restorative yoga takes place in a candlelit room with relaxing instrumental music playing. Over an hour, we move through five to six different stretches, all of which our instructor reminds us we can opt out of if we’d rather. What we all do, however, is breathe. Breathe and stretch in the low light.
This may not sound radical, but – for me – something profound started happening. In the class, I was able to confront emotions I wasn’t able to otherwise. After I left each session, walking out in the cold winter evenings back to my car, I felt changed. Something had shifted. I could almost feel the healing taking place in real time.
So, what was going on? Why was this class having such a profound effect? I wanted to understand, so I turned to Google, and that’s when I hit upon the vagus nerve.
If the vagus nerve sounds familiar, and you’ve been on the internet in the last 12 months, it probably is. #vagusnerve has had over 185 million views on TikTok, with videos offering vagus nerve ‘resets’, ‘tone’ and stimulations. Guru Mel Robbins has been talking about the vagus nerve on her podcast, which is downloaded by 37 million people each month: “The vagus nerve is a treasure in your body!”. Meanwhile, Penguin has recently published a book on the topic by one of America’s leading neuroscientists, Dr Kevin J Tracey. Articles have also been appearing in newspapers as a wave of new vagus nerve stimulation devices hit the market. The belief – online, at least – is that our vagus nerve is an overlooked and accessible shortcut to eradicating stress, anxiety and depression, the holy grail in our overstimulated and fractured world.
So, what is the vagus, or ‘wandering’ nerve? (‘Vagus’ is Latin for ‘wandering’.) Well, it starts in your brain and extends all the way down to your abdomen, branching to all major organs, including the heart, kidneys, lungs and digestive tract, sending signals to help control digestion, heart rate, mood, and the immune system. This ‘information superhighway’, connecting body and brain, is the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system – a series of nerves that allow us to ‘rest and digest’. The vagus nerve can act like a brake on your ‘fight or flight’ responses (also known as the sympathetic nervous system), allowing you to do the exact opposite: reduce stress and relax. As my instructor reminds us each week, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system during yoga classes thanks to the breathwork (singing, humming and chanting are also believed to do the same thing).
But I wanted to understand what was really happening. Is stimulating your vagus nerve – through breathwork, cold water, ear and neck massages, even the “cradling your forehead or chest” techniques social media recommends – simply another neatly packaged wellness trend? Or is there genuine substance behind the hype? I know what I experience in my restorative yoga classes. Yet when anything accelerates across TikTok at viral speed, my instinct is skepticism. Was stimulating my vagus nerve truly helping me process my grief – or was I reaching for a compelling explanation?
To separate sensation from science, I delved deeper into the research. Tiago da Silva Costa is a Senior Research Fellow in Psychiatry at Newcastle University’s Northern Centre for Mood Disorders. “If someone came to me and said, ‘I'm suffering with a trauma, do you think vagus nerve stimulation would help?’ my opinion as a clinician is that we don’t have any evidence for that”. While Tiago and his colleagues believe there are important links between the vagus nerve and depression in particular, he’s the first to say that the science just isn’t there yet. However, he’s interested in my experience. In fact, Tiago has been carrying out research, examining the vagus nerve and the respiratory system. “It’s very early days, but I think you are definitely onto something when it comes to the breathing”.
“In the yoga class, I was able to confront emotions I wasn’t able to otherwise. After I left each session, I felt changed. Something had shifted. I could almost feel the healing taking place in real time”
Primarily, vagus nerve stimulation is used to treat epilepsy, employing devices implanted into the body, like a pacemaker – and there is general consensus that it is effective treatment. There is also some evidence that vagus nerve stimulation with an implant has positive results for patients who have treatment-resistant depression.
Currently, Tiago is working with 12 severely depressed patients with implanted devices. As he tells me about one man, a warm smile spreads across his face. This individual, he says, was “a disaster zone”. He had to stop working, spent weeks in hospital, “a mess.” But since the implantation, his life has transformed. “He’s now cycling in France”. His depression has gone, completely. “As a clinician, it's unbelievable. But it's also really uncomfortable because if you ask me what's special about him, I have no idea”. The science, even at this level, is nascent.
And yet that hasn’t stopped consumer devices from entering the market - wearable stimulators for the neck, ear or chest, some starting at around £200. They are marketed for everything from anxiety to cluster headaches. Tiago says people are always asking him if they should buy one. His answer is measured: “I don't see why not. The devices on the market are really safe. But by most indications, we don't really have any evidence that would treat trauma, we don't really have any evidence for anxiety, and with the implanted device, we have some evidence for depression, but even that is quite a complicated story”.
And yet he understands the appetite. “We do know a lot of people don’t respond to the mainstream treatments. People want something different. Some people are desperate”.
That tension – between hope and evidence – is not lost on Rosamund Dean, journalist and the author of Well, Well, Well, a newsletter examining today’s wellness world. “There is value in almost anything that makes people feel calmer, provided it doesn’t require a payment plan”, she tells me. “Humans have been chasing comfort and control since we invented gods, superstitions and extremely specific morning routines. The vulnerability creeps in when that comfort is framed as something you can only access through escalating purchases. A free humming exercise? Great. A £400 device? That’s where the line begins to blur”.
Both Rosamund and Tiago agree that a compelling narrative has formed around the vagus nerve – one perfectly tailored to our high-octane, increasingly expensive lives. A scroll on Instagram under #vagusnervereset shows hundreds of people promising ways to feel calm and anxiety-free in less than a minute, for free. We know that anxiety rates are soaring, especially among young people. Wouldn’t we all love a way to exit the chaos of modern life, almost instantly? As Rosamund says, “If you’re tired, anxious or just alive in 2026, then quick fixes are very appealing”.
For her, though, the fascination fits into something bigger. “Our appetite for wellness is insatiable because we're being asked to metabolise a frankly unreasonable amount of uncertainty while pretending everything is normal. Work has leaked into identity, rest has become something you optimise. Wellness promises to be a manual for living that no one ever gave us. When institutions feel shaky, and the future feels threatening, the body becomes the last controllable frontier”. Searching for control in a world that makes us feel out of control is extremely tempting, but particularly even more so if you experience anxiety or depression - symptoms notorious for leaving people feeling, well, out of control.
For me, the fact that the vagus nerve is rooted in biology is also a huge part of the appeal. It is the thing of science textbooks. I felt reassured by the anatomical diagram images thrown up in my googling; pictures I hadn't seen since my GCSEs. Somehow, these images proved my healing wasn’t in my head; it was real. It was the science that often evades our conversations and understanding around mental health. In the waves of my grief, the ‘vagus nerve’ and the ‘parasympathetic nervous system’ were a language I clung to like a raft; scientific, grounded in truth and fact. Surely they would guide me out of all my darkness.
It’s easy to see the timely appeal that has led to hype, but equally, it’s impossible to ignore how significant the vagus nerve might just be. It traverses so much of the body. Research is ongoing in areas as life-changing as chronic pain, inflammation and depression. How could we not be captivated by that possibility?
For now, I’ll keep going to my yoga class, I’ll keep breathing, and hopefully, I’ll keep healing, even if I don’t understand exactly why just yet.
