The Vagus Nerve and Shamanic Healing: How Ancient Practices Regulate the Nervous System
Running from the brainstem to the gut, branching to the heart, lungs, throat, and face, the vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the human body and the primary highway of the parasympathetic nervous system. Its name comes from the Latin word for "wandering," and it wanders everywhere —...
The Vagus Nerve and Shamanic Healing: How Ancient Practices Regulate the Nervous System
The Wandering Nerve That Connects Everything
Running from the brainstem to the gut, branching to the heart, lungs, throat, and face, the vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the human body and the primary highway of the parasympathetic nervous system. Its name comes from the Latin word for “wandering,” and it wanders everywhere — connecting the brain to virtually every major organ, carrying 80% of its signals upward from body to brain rather than downward from brain to body.
The vagus nerve is not just a nerve. It is a bidirectional communication system between consciousness and the body. It regulates heart rate, breathing, digestion, inflammation, and immune response. It mediates the felt sense of safety or danger, connection or isolation, peace or terror. And for thousands of years — long before anyone knew what a vagus nerve was — shamanic practitioners have been manipulating it with stunning precision through drumming, chanting, breathwork, and ceremony.
Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory provides the scientific framework for understanding what shamans have always practiced: healing happens through the nervous system, and the nervous system heals through specific patterns of rhythm, vibration, sound, breath, and social connection.
Polyvagal Theory: Three Circuits of Consciousness
Stephen Porges, professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina and founding director of the Polyvagal Institute, developed Polyvagal Theory to explain how the autonomic nervous system mediates our experience of safety, danger, and social connection. The theory identifies three hierarchical neural circuits, each associated with distinct physiological states and states of consciousness:
The Ventral Vagal Circuit (Social Engagement System)
Evolutionary origin: Unique to mammals Physiological state: Calm, connected, present Consciousness quality: Open, curious, compassionate, relational
The ventral vagal complex — the myelinated, “smart” branch of the vagus — regulates the heart, lungs, face, and middle ear. When this circuit is dominant, heart rate is variable and responsive (high heart rate variability, or HRV), breathing is slow and rhythmic, facial muscles are expressive and receptive, the voice is melodic and warm, and the immune system functions optimally.
This is the state of safety, belonging, and connection. It is also, not coincidentally, the state that shamanic ceremonies are designed to cultivate: the circle of community, the shared rhythm, the ceremonial container that signals to every participant’s nervous system that it is safe to open, to feel, to heal.
The Sympathetic Circuit (Fight-or-Flight)
Evolutionary origin: Shared with reptiles Physiological state: Mobilized, activated, stressed Consciousness quality: Vigilant, reactive, defended
When the nervous system detects threat, it shifts from ventral vagal to sympathetic dominance. Heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, muscles tense, breathing becomes rapid and shallow, digestion shuts down, the immune system is suppressed, and consciousness narrows to threat detection and response.
This is the state of anxiety, anger, panic, and hypervigilance. In trauma survivors, the sympathetic system can become chronically activated — the body lives as though danger is always present, even when the environment is safe.
The Dorsal Vagal Circuit (Shutdown/Freeze)
Evolutionary origin: Ancient, shared with reptiles and fish Physiological state: Collapsed, frozen, dissociated Consciousness quality: Numb, disconnected, absent
When threat is overwhelming and escape is impossible, the nervous system drops below sympathetic activation into dorsal vagal shutdown. Heart rate plummets, blood pressure drops, breathing becomes shallow, muscles go limp, consciousness fogs or dissociates, and the organism essentially “plays dead.” This is the freeze response — and it is the physiological basis of dissociation, depression, learned helplessness, and the characteristic “shutdown” of severe trauma.
The key insight of Polyvagal Theory is that these are not psychological choices but automatic physiological responses. You cannot think your way out of a dorsal vagal shutdown any more than you can think your way out of a fever. The nervous system must be regulated through the body — through breath, rhythm, vibration, movement, warmth, and safe social connection.
This is precisely what shamanic healing provides.
Drumming and the Vagus Nerve
When a shaman drums, the rhythmic vibrations do not merely enter through the ears. They are felt through the entire body — through bone conduction, through the chest cavity, through the viscera. This whole-body rhythmic stimulation has direct effects on the vagus nerve:
Rhythmic auditory stimulation activates vagal afferents. Sound waves stimulate the auricular branch of the vagus nerve (the Arnold nerve), which innervates the outer ear. Rhythmic stimulation of this branch activates parasympathetic pathways, shifting the nervous system from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) toward ventral vagal (safe and connected).
Vibrational resonance in the chest. Low-frequency drumming vibrations resonate in the thoracic cavity, directly stimulating the vagus nerve where it passes alongside the heart and lungs. This is the physiological mechanism behind the felt sense of “the drum reaching my heart” that shamanic practitioners universally describe.
Entrainment of cardiac rhythms. Sustained rhythmic drumming at 4-4.5 Hz (the theta range) can entrain heart rate variability, shifting cardiac rhythms toward the coherent, regular patterns associated with high vagal tone and emotional regulation. The HeartMath Institute has documented similar effects with rhythmic breathing practices.
Activation of the social engagement system. Drumming in a group activates the ventral vagal social engagement system on multiple levels: the shared rhythm creates synchrony between participants’ nervous systems, the communal setting signals safety, and the rhythmic entrainment of multiple bodies creates a field of co-regulation — each person’s regulated nervous system helping to regulate the others.
Chanting, Toning, and Vagal Activation
Vocal practices are among the most direct and powerful ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, and every shamanic tradition uses them:
The mechanics of vocal toning. When you produce sustained vocal sounds — humming, chanting, singing, or toning — the vocal cords vibrate, and those vibrations directly stimulate the vagus nerve where it innervates the larynx. The longer and more sustained the vocalization, the greater the vagal stimulation.
“Om” and its equivalents. The universal sacred syllable “Om” (and its equivalents in every tradition — the “Amen” of Christianity, the “Amin” of Islam, the drone of the didgeridoo, the sustained tones of Gregorian chant) produces a specific vibration pattern that maximally stimulates vagal tone. Research has shown that chanting “Om” produces significantly different brain activation patterns than chanting a control syllable, with specific activation of limbic brain regions associated with emotional regulation.
The “Voo” sound. Trauma therapist Peter Levine developed the “Voo” exercise — a deep, sustained vocalization of “Vooooo” — specifically to stimulate the ventral vagal complex and shift the nervous system out of freeze states. This is identical in principle to the deep, sustained vocal drones used in shamanic traditions from Siberia to Australia.
Icaros: The shamanic songs of healing. In Amazonian ayahuasca traditions, the icaro — the shaman’s healing song — is considered the primary therapeutic tool. Icaros use specific melodic patterns, rhythms, and vocal qualities that appear designed to modulate the autonomic nervous system of the listener. The shaman’s voice literally regulates the patient’s vagus nerve.
Overtone singing and multiphonic chanting. Mongolian and Tuvan throat singing, Tibetan multiphonic chanting, and other traditional vocal techniques produce multiple simultaneous frequencies that create complex patterns of vagal stimulation. These practices have been used for centuries in healing and ceremonial contexts.
Breathwork and the Vagal Highway
Breathing is the most direct voluntary control mechanism for the vagus nerve. Every inhalation slightly accelerates the heart (sympathetic activation), and every exhalation slightly decelerates it (parasympathetic/vagal activation). This is called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and it is the basis of every breathwork tradition from pranayama to holotropic breathwork to the Wim Hof Method.
Shamanic breathwork practices manipulate this relationship in sophisticated ways:
Slow, deep breathing (4-6 breaths per minute) maximizes vagal tone by extending the exhalation phase. This is the basic practice of most meditation traditions and produces the calm, alert, connected state of ventral vagal dominance.
Rhythmic breathing synchronized with drumming creates a dual entrainment — the breath and the drum both locking onto the same theta frequency, producing deepened vagal activation and theta brainwave entrainment simultaneously.
Hyperventilation-based breathwork (as in holotropic breathwork or some shamanic traditions) initially produces sympathetic activation followed by a rebound into deep parasympathetic states — a controlled journey through all three levels of the polyvagal hierarchy.
Breath retention (holding the breath after exhalation) triggers the dive reflex — an ancient mammalian response that dramatically increases vagal tone, slows heart rate, and can produce altered states of consciousness.
Vagal Tone, Trauma, and Shamanic Healing
Polyvagal Theory provides a precise framework for understanding why shamanic healing works for trauma — and why conventional talk therapy often does not.
Trauma is not primarily stored in thoughts or memories. It is stored in the body — in the autonomic nervous system’s chronic activation of sympathetic (hypervigilance, anxiety, rage) or dorsal vagal (shutdown, dissociation, depression) defensive circuits. The traumatized nervous system is stuck in a state of perceived danger, regardless of the actual safety of the environment.
Talk therapy addresses the cognitive level — the story of what happened. But the story is not where the trauma lives. The trauma lives in the vagus nerve, in the chronic constriction of the diaphragm, in the elevated heart rate, in the collapsed posture, in the numb disconnection from bodily sensation.
Shamanic healing works directly at this level:
Ceremonial container = neuroception of safety. Porges coined the term “neuroception” to describe the nervous system’s unconscious evaluation of safety versus danger. The shamanic ceremony — with its ritual structure, communal presence, candlelight, incense, and the steady authority of the healer — provides a multi-sensory neuroception of safety that allows the nervous system to begin downshifting from defensive states.
Rhythmic drumming = vagal entrainment. The sustained theta rhythm directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system, counteracting sympathetic hyperactivation.
Chanting and song = vagal stimulation. Vocal practices directly tone the vagus nerve, shifting the system toward ventral vagal dominance.
Community and co-regulation. Healing in shamanic traditions almost always occurs in a group context. This is not incidental — it is essential. The ventral vagal social engagement system is designed for co-regulation. A calm, regulated nervous system in the healer literally entrains and regulates the dysregulated nervous system of the patient. This is the neuroscience of “holding space.”
Movement and dance. Many shamanic traditions incorporate rhythmic movement or dance. Physical movement discharges the trapped survival energy of sympathetic activation — the uncompleted fight-or-flight responses that Peter Levine identifies as the core of trauma.
Controlled catharsis. Shamanic ceremonies often include intense emotional expression — crying, shaking, screaming, or physical purging (as in ayahuasca ceremony). From a polyvagal perspective, this represents the discharge of frozen survival energy — the completion of defensive responses that were interrupted during the original traumatic event.
The Ancient Technology of Nervous System Regulation
What emerges from mapping polyvagal theory onto shamanic practice is a recognition that shamanic healing is, at its core, a technology of nervous system regulation. Every element of traditional ceremony — the rhythm, the song, the breath, the movement, the community, the ritual structure — can be understood as a precisely calibrated intervention in the autonomic nervous system.
The shamans did not have the language of vagal tone, sympathetic activation, or dorsal vagal shutdown. But they had something better: forty thousand years of empirical observation and refinement. They knew which rhythms calm the frightened. Which songs reach the frozen. Which breaths release the trapped. Which movements discharge the stuck.
They knew that healing is not a cognitive process but a somatic one — that the body must feel safe before the mind can process pain — that connection heals isolation — that rhythm regulates chaos — that the voice of the healer carries healing not in its words but in its vibration.
Polyvagal Theory has given us the scientific language to understand what they always knew. And in that understanding lies a bridge — between the ancient and the modern, between the indigenous and the clinical, between the wisdom of the ancestors and the precision of the laboratory.
The vagus nerve wanders through the body like a river. The shamans have always known how to navigate its waters.
This article synthesizes Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory, research on vagal stimulation through breathwork, vocalization, and rhythmic sound, Peter Levine’s somatic trauma therapy, and anthropological research on shamanic healing practices across cultures.