Courting the Parasympathetic Vagus Nerve Response ~ The Wise Woman Path to Birth Without Pain or Fear

The feminine archetype is the domain of the parasympathetic.

She is receptive. She rests. She digests. She chooses the sperm from the place of consciously receiving, not by being dominated or succumbing.

She also does not simply shut down, freeze, dissociate… There is a healthy vagal response, not one which becomes all encompassing, causing contraction AWAY from life and challenging stimuli.

Of course, the healthy Womban is able to both activate when needed, and be in repose when desired.

Our culture as a whole has a large demographic of people living in perpetual sympathetic overdrive. We live in fight or flight, racing to the finish line… living in a strong masculine dominant drive which is not healthy even for males to set up shop in.

For the ancient masculine, warrior archetype (which yes, some women engaged in throughout prehistory as well), the sympathetic response was reserved for that quick flash of action in the hunt, or to defend, or even in times of greater expense such as battle.

But the battle must end, the hunt resolve, and hopefully either scene will end with a feast. Rest, and digest.

The feminine, and the masculine in the pre-hunt pursuit/stalking phase, exists in a deeper brainwave state, predominated by the parasympathetic, primarily mitigated by the vagus nerve.

Of course, we also have a parasympathetic branch in the pelvis, and for the womb, it is particularly crucial to maintain a healthy response in this area as well. This quite literally allows us to root in to the Mother and have a healthy sacral response, that push/pull that comes from our electromagnetic connection to the Earth herself. This is the true source of instinct and even what some may consider intuition.

Modern medicine would list the pelvic splanchnic nerves as primarily nerves of communication between pelvic viscera and brain, having a role in the hormonal cascade of birth and beyond. What we often overlook is the importance of the healthy response of all nerve fibers, including autonomic, and sensory nerves, which can be dampened or deadened by trauma, physical restriction, or lesions of the nerves themselves. The pelvic nerves are a subject for an entire story all their own.

But the primary focus of parasympathetic activation is in the role of the vagus. This article is going to get rather intellectual here, but bear with me, because at the end, I’m going to tie it in for you with the world of physiologically normal birth, and I want you to get this… I truly do believe this nerve, and our nervous system as a whole, deserves our attention and some contemplation.

In India, they have long understood the role of this two-branched 10th cranial nerve which they called Ida and Pingala, the lunar and solar channels. They understood what we are now only beginning to understand about the importance of these nerves on the spiritual foundation for our growth as human beings. They show these nerves as if they were two serpents, crossing at the chakras, or energy centers, and meeting at the third eye, in the brain, where their consciousness can merge with the energy of the Susumna or central channel (the spinal cord) in order to open the Crown chakra. A lot of yogic study and inquiry goes into the activation of these three primary channels, and balancing their energies in the body.

While the connection remains somewhat nebulous, there is some relative mapping of the left and right vagus nerves (Ida and Pingala) and their relation to the anterior (front/ventral) and posterior (back/dorsal) portions of the vagus’ pathway. This is the modern concept created by Dr Steven Porges and Peter Levine call polyvagal theory, the understanding that the dorsal branch and ventral branch of the vagus act in somewhat different ways.

To put it simply, the dorsal (back) vagus is our more primitive vagal nerve, common to all animals including fish. Its response is responding to cues in a way which pulls us away from connection, out of awareness, and into a state of self-protection. It is the root of the “freeze” response. It can come in so strongly to counteract sympathetic arousal, that it can lead to dissociation, collapse, or the inability to think or emote clearly.

Typically, the dorsal vagus serves to help the body pendulate between activation and relaxation. But when it is trying to counteract an overactive sympathetic response, it can shut us down. In other words, it can be a trauma response.

Meanwhile the ventral (front) vagus is a newer addition that is found in mammals but not reptiles, birds or fish. Its response is to respond to cues by connecting and activating socially, fostering emotional safety and connection. This part of the vagus nerve system is predominated by the nerve’s pathway in the face and throat, relating to communication and social action/ engagement and self-expression. When we respond in a healthy way to stimuli, even challenge, we are able to activate fully into our healthy social engagement and proper attachment/bonding behavior. In other words, we are able to meet life and other beings even in difficult conversation where they are at, rather than fighting, fleeing, or freezing/dissociating.

To my best understanding, interestingly, the right branch of the vagus (the Pingala or Solar channel) runs to the front in the neck region, supplying these parasympathetic vagus nerve fibers to the larynx and pharynx, the organs of our expression. From there however, it is actually the left vagus nerve, the Ida/Lunar which travels through the anterior part of our thorax (abdomen), while the Solar channel continues along our back.

My theory of this is that this Yang energy of the Solar channel is more closely correlated to the motor nerves of the central nervous system in this region of the solar plexus chakra. Our soft belly, while theoretically the realm of outward action, is actually the more receptive side of this thoracolumbar region. That’s my best way of relating to this polyvagal theory anyway, and it certainly tracks well with my sentiments about the particular receptivity of the anterior of our body in this region to other people’s energy, despite the front side of our body generally being the domain of forward momentum and outward expression of will.

The vagus wanders from the medulla oblongata, down either side of the neck, wrapping itself around the heart, other organs, and trailing along the mesentery into the majority of the gut, sending fibers of its energy of repose (restfulness) into our very visceral response.

There, it meets the sacral parasympathetic branches of the pelvic splanchnic nerves, not directly touching of course, but dancing their dance of parasympathetic response in the space occupied by our womb, our iliopsoas muscles, and our gut.

We have to remember also, this is not a one way street, but rather, the nerves receive information in the form of pressure sensation, and carry impulses back to the brain which opens a hormone cascade. This is an important part of giving birth, and it’s also an integral part of courting the body’s capacity for balance.

So what does polyvagal theory have to do with the way womben, and those generally attuned to the feminine magnetic polarity, make decisions, the way we walk in the world?

The wounded feminine is in direct opposition to the wounded masculine. He dominates, is in perpetual war, constantly courting the sympathetic response, until He burns out, sometimes too late in the game after wars have decimated communities.

Meanwhile She collapses, involuting into a vacuum of dorsal vagal dominant freeze response. She fawns. She freezes. She encapsulates. She becomes a mess of adrenal fatigue and poor hormonal balance. Her grief crusts around her like the salt from the ocean which, ironically may be homeopathically part of her healing picture.

She fears social connection, or she fears conflict in connection, and thus is unable to do the real work of relating, which requires a give and take, and conflict resolution skill.

She becomes an island, attempting to do it alone, attempting to stand without community, even while she claims to desire this connection and safety net. She tends to push away that which she seeks, subconsciously, through subtle programs of sabotage, or through subtle or not subtle victim mentality.

Her very self protection becomes her undoing because it creates a distancing from the very medicine she needs. Community. Co-creation. Collaboration.

For the masculine side to be healthy and vital, we must de-stress our entire system, releasing the need to control and willfully bend fate to our personal desires. This isn’t to say that we give up on taking action entirely, but instead we marry our will to the desire for the good of our entire community. We recognize that only that which truly serves the whole, will serve us in our highest iteration.

For the feminine to be healthy and vital, she must build a healthy social response, releasing the collapse into excessive waiting, receptivity, inaction, and perhaps even victimization. She must learn to lean INTO conflict, rather than away, and how to discern true danger, from a perceived danger from an overly flighty or dissociative nervous system response.

Even in our self-preservation response of isolation, we lean away from a truly healthy and balanced parasympathetic response. What we are finding is that the parasympathetic actually responds faster than the sympathetic- milliseconds rather than seconds- allowing us to foster a deeply nourishing social activation response that allows us to find our true root in the Whole.

Through this response, we are able to more quickly respond to life, easily moving between active and passive states… between higher and deeper brainwave states. This is the fluidity that is the true domain of the feminine. The electromagnetic pulsation of the Earth herself, and likewise of our own crystalline electromagnetic bodies. We are meant to pulse. Active, passive, active, passive… with ease and grace.

The wounds of the feminine push us often into sympathetic overdrive and eventual dorsal vagal collapse. For many, the healing crisis then begins with an activation back into sympathetic, un-crusting that grief wound, finding her fire, pumping air and blood heat back into her horrendously dampened system. But she cannot remain there, either, or she will only collapse again, often pushing away her allies in the process, or alienating herself.

What she must do is court a healthy ventral vagal response, and learn to mitigate the two. Fire and Water, self and community, in a dance of wholeness.

Her medicine is in stepping out and realizing she was never meant to be an island. Our very societal fabric is woven from these threads of sympathetic nerves of entire populations of people caught in fight or flight. Our dog eat dog, man eat man world of “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality was not created for safe social interaction. Of course the feminine eventually collapsed here. Of course she built an egg shell of protection, encased in mineral deposits which could give her soft belly a break from harsh realities.

But the medicine must be found none the less, not in forging a new path as a solo, masculine, entrepreneurial business woman of the modern age…

Her true medicine lies in her ability to story tell while weaving threads of polyvagal response, Sun AND moon threads, with her sisters around the collective loom. Many hands make light work, and together the feminine matriarchal archetype can rise again, courting the response of the deep repose alongside healthy social response… lunar receptivity and solar activity… the kind that does not burn like a wildfire blazing across the lands as the fiery sympathetic does… but instead the kind of heat which gently warms us from afar.

Our collective initiation right now calls us to healthy community. Setting down the reins altogether and learning to pick up the threads instead and weave. Let the horses run free. Gather as humans again on our own two feet, on our haunches, and babble in circle, telling stories of Sun gods and Moon goddesses while we weave their stories into our tapestries, wearing them proudly.

The womben sat and gathered, cooked, chatted and story wove while spinning and weaving.

They did not have businesses. They did not hunt for the next client. People came to the wise womban’s hut for healing or to seek her midwifing because they knew that she would be there, holding the circle together with the other womben, just existing in the repose that knows her own Source.

And from there, she acts.

“The midwife performs her work by doing nothing. She teaches without speaking a word. Things arise and she lets them come. Things leave and she lets them go. Creating, not possessing. Working, but laying no claim. And when her work is done, she releases it. And so it lasts forever. “

~Whapio, in her Wise Woman re-iteration from the Tao de Ching