What is Vagus Nerve Icing? - Video Transcript

Hi, everyone. I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist. Today, I'm going to be talking about the vagus nerve. This is a nerve that goes from our brains 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 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 get a video tutorial from someone else, but it is a legitimate therapeutic technique.

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. What this does is it activates our dive response. This is kind of exactly what it sounds like. If you think about diving into a cold pool of water or maybe you've done the polar plunge in the past in winter where it literally kind of startles or shocks your body.

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. 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. What happens is that then your heart rate slows and naturally your body takes on a calmer state.

This is something that's really helpful. 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 find some videos of people actually doing vagus nerve icing and try it out for yourself. Leave a comment and let me know how it goes or you know, if you've tried it in the past. I would love to hear about your experiences, be sure to follow me @catharticspacecounseling for more weekly content and you can check out my website www.catharticspacecounseling.com, or subscribe to my youtube channel, The Anxiety Therapist.

So I hope you all have a good week. I will see you next time.