In my last post, I wrote about rumination and how the mind can get stuck in loops that feel impossible to step out of, even when you know that going over something for the hundredth time is not helping.
But, what happens when you have interrupted the loop, talked it through, understood it, and yet the tightness in your chest is still there. That slightly unsettled feeling that lingers, even after your thoughts have quieted.
That gap has an explanation.
The 80/20 rule your body never told you about – vagus nerve explained
Most of us grow up assuming that the brain runs the show, that if we can just think clearly enough, reframe the situation, or understand it properly, the body will eventually follow.
But the vagus nerve, a long nerve connecting your brain to your heart, lungs, and digestive system, plays a central role in how your nervous system moves between stress and calm, and it doesn’t quite work the way most people expect.
Your nervous system has, very broadly, two modes: one that prepares you for stress and keeps you alert, and another that allows you to rest, recover, and feel settled again. The vagus nerve is one of the main pathways that helps your body shift back into that calmer state.
What’s less obvious is the direction in which most of that communication flows. Around 80 percent of the signals travelling through this pathway move upward, from body to brain, while only about 20 percent move down. In practice, that means your body is constantly sending more information to your brain than your brain sends back.
Your posture, your breathing, the tension in your shoulders, all of it is being read and translated into a simple signal of safety or unsafety, long before your thoughts have a chance to interpret it. So when you try to think your way calm, you’re working with a relatively small part of the system, while the part that actually decides whether to relax is reading something else entirely, something that doesn’t come in the form of thoughts, but of sensation.
The role of somatic healing
Somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body. Somatic healing is simply the practice of working through stress via the body, not instead of the mind, but alongside it.
The idea is that stress does not just pass through you. Tension that was never fully released, moments that never fully resolved, they accumulate physically. In the jaw, the chest, the gut, the way you hold yourself when you sit.
This is also why talking about something, journaling, or reframing your thoughts can feel like it only goes so far. Those approaches work with the thinking brain. But the part of your nervous system that governs how calm or activated you feel operates largely below conscious thought. You cannot logic your way into it. You have to meet it where it lives.
Somatic healing does not mean dramatic breathwork sessions or cold plunges. It can be as quiet as noticing where you are holding tension right now, as you read this. Feeling the weight of your body in the chair. Letting your exhale be slightly longer than it needs to be.
Small physical signals, sent consistently, that tell your nervous system: you are safe now. You can let go.
First step: Learning to notice what is already there
Before trying to change anything, it helps to start by noticing, because most of us move through the day without paying much attention to what our body is doing, and by the time we feel stressed, it has often been building for a while.
Some things worth starting to pay attention to:
- Your jaw. Is it clenched right now, even slightly? Most people are surprised when they check.
- Your shoulders. Are they sitting somewhere near your ears? This one tends to creep up without you noticing, especially during long work sessions or difficult conversations.
- Your breath. Is it shallow, sitting mostly in the chest rather than the belly? Shallow breathing is both a sign of activation and a signal that keeps it going.
- Your gut. Stress and the nervous system are deeply connected to digestion. Bloating, a tight stomach, or a general feeling of unease there is often the body holding something the mind has already moved past.
None of these are things to fix immediately. Just noticing them is already something. Awareness is the first step in giving your body a different signal.
Second step: Meet your body where it is
Once you start recognising the signals, these are some gentle ways to respond. None of them require a routine or a quiet room or any particular amount of time.
Shake it out. Literally shake your hands, your arms, your shoulders for thirty seconds. It sounds strange but it works. Animals do this instinctively after a stressful event to discharge the activation from their nervous system. We tend not to, and the tension just stays.
Place a hand on your chest or stomach. This is one of the simplest somatic practices there is. The warmth and pressure of your own hand activates receptors that signal safety to the nervous system. It is not a metaphor for self care. It is a physical input your body actually responds to.
Soften something deliberately. Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Let your hands open rather than staying curled. You are not trying to relax through willpower. You are giving your nervous system a small, concrete piece of evidence that the threat has passed.
Change your position. If you have been sitting tense and still for a long time, move. Stand up, stretch, walk to another room. The body processes stress partly through movement and staying in one position for hours can keep activation in place longer than it needs to be.
The mind and the body are not two separate things.
They are in constant conversation, and this post is really where one starts becoming the other. So it feels like the right moment to move into body and inner balance, where we look at what is going on physically, hormones, energy, and the small rituals that help you feel steady from the inside out.
Below I have added a podcast that I found very interesting:
🎧 Huberman Lab — episodes on stress, breathing, and the nervous system. Andrew Huberman explains the physiology behind a lot of this in a way that is thorough and accessible.
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