Difficult times seem to be the least spiritual of times, don't they? On one hand, your body wants to run, fight, or collapse. You're tired, anxious, and defensive. People feel threatening. Resources feel scarce. Not knowing what's ahead keeps you from sleeping or relating well with others. Your blood pressure rises and muscles tense. It's hard to stay focused. Yet, in those moments there are respites. Insight rises. Even if only in glimpses, you feel hope. Suddenly, you're not so afraid as you sense a splash of tranquility. Your "gut" tells you there is a way forward even if you don't know how yet. Welcome to the tension between your human experience and the wisdom of your Soul.

We all live this tension. Your physical body is designed to protect you from danger. While your inner light—that cosmic awareness that understands something greater—isn't as scared as it is curious. Your Soul is your guiding principle, your gnosis. It is the light force that holds knowledge far beyond your earthly awareness. Sensing that higher, wiser energy brings you peace. You can know the truth of a situation. You can know how to be. Your inner light guides you to gracious acts. Then comes the fear again. Your heart races, your muscles tense, your breathing shortens again. You want to run, hide, fight, or collapse in a ball of unconsciousness. That inner warmth is gone.

Being okay with this human-verses-spiritual tension is the way to manage your life here on earth. It's certainly your way through times that feel out of your control. I think sometimes, if we can't continuously stay in a state of Soulful bliss, we worry that we aren't "spiritual enough." That is just not true. Your Soul came to learn and gain knowledge. Soul knew it would be living in a tiny, human vehicle that needs basic resources like food, sleep, and water just to survive. It knew this body has a system—made up of your brain and nerves—that acts as a defensive engine. In that alone, you are spiritual.

Time on earth is a testing ground that your Soul decided to experience. I liken this testing ground to various levels of gym work. The weights get higher (or repetitions increase) as the muscles break down and rebuilt stronger. However, life is not always a constant struggle. There is much joy, connection, happiness, and play when you seek it. Even in the hardest of time there is pleasure and humor; many times it's the turmoil that brings on your levelheadedness. Life has layers and complexity. That is what your Soul came for—to understand this paradoxical experiment we humans call life. It's all in how you manage the journey.

So, how is any of this managed? First, let's start with the human part. Let's look at your nervous system, specifically your vagus nerve. Then we will discuss why and how this aligns with the Soul-felt energies of your chakras.

The Vagus Nerve
I bet you're hearing a lot about the vagus nerve these days. What is it? What does it do and why would it help us spiritually? The vagus, through polyvagal theory, is revealing that this nerve not only keeps your heart beating and organs digesting, but is also your lifeline to how safe or unsafe you feel. Through your vagus, signals of how to respond to your environment are both received and sent.

Your vagus is the largest branch of your autonomic nervous system ("autonomic" means it is automatically keeping the most important organs in your body going). It is a cranial nerve (a cranial nerve means a nerve connected to the brain). Of the twelve cranial nerves, the vagus is the tenth (CNX). It also communicates with the other cranial nerves that manage eye movement, olfactory senses, facial sensations, and movement, as well as taste, swallowing, and hearing.

The vagus extends down to the reproductive organs and up to the brain. Your heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, hormones, and all the processes these organs affect are communicating with this nerve. Yet, it does something even more amazing. It keeps you safe.

The last thirty-give years of research by Dr. Stephen Porges (who developed polyvagal theory) is showing that our bodies remember in ways the brain does not. While your brain remembers through images, events, or dates, the vagus and connecting organs store memories that are felt in the body. This felt experience can get difficult when you have lived through traumatic events.

There are three complexes of the vagus nerve that activate depending on your body's interpretation of what is happening. These three complexes work together or can override each other. They are:

• The safety or ventral vagal complex. This portion of the vagus nerve helps to slow the system down, bringing you back to a state of calm. It manages breathing, which in turn affects the rate of your heartbeat, slows blood pressure, and sends messages to the brain to listen, think, and respond with cues of safety. This looks like smiling, soft voice, relaxed muscles, and the ability to chew and swallow (think gathering in safe community for celebrations). This branch runs along the heart and lungs and up to the throat, where it manages the larynx, pharynx, and soft palate to help with speaking, listening, and swallowing.
  
  
• The mobility or sympathetic complex. The sympathetic branch prepares the body to move. That can be to run or fight if you're in danger or to play and exercise in everyday life. This mobility branch engages your hormonal axes to send cortisol to the body for bursts of energy. The nerve begins in the thoracic and lumbar regions of your spine. From the esophagus, stomach, bladder, kidneys, and pancreas down to the intestines and reproductive organs, this heavy-hitting branch slows down some processes of digestion while it speeds up others the more your body moves.
  
  
• The immobility or dorsal vagal branch. This branch runs from the base of the skull (medulla oblongata) with CNX and affects all of the organs mentioned above. The dorsal vagal complex slows down the body, regulating energy when your system gets too overstimulated for periods of time. It is the branch that contributes to your body freezing in times of stress or danger. The key difference between the dorsal branch and the ventral branch is that dorsal can shut down the system while ventral slows the system enough for you to maintain a sense of safety and presence.

So, why is it important to know anything about this nerve? When you can attune to how your body is responding in certain situations, you can determine a human reaction verses a more Soulful message.

Through my work as a trauma therapist, I have seen how this nerve sends signals of both past experiences as well as higher sources of information. I have been fascinated to see that the seven main chakras, in our torso up to the top of our head, hold both the past and our timeless knowledge. To be clear, I don't see the chakras being a separate system from the vagus nerve. I see the energy in the chakras as being the unseen, energetic extension of the messages that the vagus nerve holds. While there are patterns, the messages are also unique to your own history and your own Soul. Here is an overview.

The Chakras
Chakras have been described by the ancient yogi masters as important energy centers. While they did not have access to the medical information we do now, they always understood that this energy aligned with important nerve centers, or plexus. We have probably hundreds of chakras in our body, but the ones that get the most attention are the ones that we feel the strongest and align within our torso. After you have read a little about the vagus and how it communicates with your organs, you can probably guess why these seven chakras get the most attention.

Root/Body Chakra: Rests at your pelvis. It aligns with the nerve plexus of your dorsal complex that aligns with reproductive organs and urinary tract. This energy is one of survival, birth, and early childhood.

Sacral/Emotion Chakra: Rests in your mid-belly and aligns with your hypogastric plexus and similar nerve endings near the belly button. The energy is also associated with the umbilical cord and defines early childhood attachment both in utero and early in life.

Solar Plexus/Mind Chakra: This energy center can get rather strong, as it is associated with the celiac plexus and aligns with the adrenal glands, which infuse the body with cortisol when needed. The mind is our identity in the outside world. Those identities switch and shift as experiences change throughout our lives.

Heart/Compassion Chakra: The heart chakra begins the journey into the safety branch of the vagus. When we calm, we intentionally breathe. When we feel that sense of safety, the energy around our heart expands and we enter our Soulful experience of kindness toward self and others.

Throat/Connection Chakra: The branches of the ventral complex split—or become bilateral—at the area around the larynx and pharynx, which are the portions of your body that regulate speech, breathing, and swallowing. These safety branches also intersect with your auricular nerves of the ears, where the connection through sound and dialogue is received through our hearing.

Third Eye/Imagination Chakra: The third eye chakra is located above the physical eyes at the center of your prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is where your higher reasoning flourishes. The vagus influences the ocular nerves around the eyes and other glands, such as the pineal gland (which regulates light sensitivity, among other things).

Crown/Empathy Chakra: The crown chakra is located at the anterior fontanelle, or the soft spot you had a birth. It is a vital neurological point and loaded with cranial tissue and cerebrospinal fluid. Connecting with this energy center allows you to open to higher reasoning, expansive awareness, and spiritual understanding of a greater life force in and around you.

The Soul
No activation between the vagus nerve and the chakras can take place without the energy of your Soul. Like the gas in an engine, this light charges your system. When you leave your body at the end of your days, your nervous system is nothing more than wiring. While you are here, know that a healthy nervous system is the way back to ventral vagal calm and balance. Spiritual practices are nothing more than calming practices. When your body is safe, your Soul can more easily be heard and translate wisdom throughout the body.

Here is one such exercise from my new book, Chakras, the Vagus Nerve and Your Soul: Journey to Wellness Through Your Subtle Energy and Your Nervous System, that can help you access equanimity through your ventral vagal fibers of your vagus. This simple practice connects to the heart chakra.

Heart to Soul Connection Exercise
The Soul amplifies love through the body. The ventral vagus complex slows your system down enough to experience that light. Here is an exercise to open calm and open heart chakra energy by tapping that vagal brake. If you are experiencing difficulties or are confused about something, just ask your heart center.

• Sit and just breathe.
• Pull connection to the heart and sit quietly.
• Connect with the sound of your heart. Hear it in your ears. Feel it beat in your chest.
• Breathe deep through your nose and slowly exhale through your mouth.
• Ask your heart the question you are struggling with.
• Let the energy of the heart speak to you.
• Allow space for anything that comes to you.

Thank any information for showing up today. Continue to just sit and connect. If you want to keep a journal by your side, I would suggest drawing images or writing words with your eyes closed, as this keeps you strongly connected to your inner guidance without engaging more "left brain" thoughts and words.

Practice this daily, as your system will become more accustomed. Know that you will have easier times than others to feel connected. Those less connected times do not mean you aren't spiritual or that you are failing in some way. Being spiritual is about the intention to work with this balance between your human self and Soul self.

Paradoxical, isn't it?