A pranayama practice to activate a healthy parasympathetic nervous system response

Acknowledge when you need to rest

Jan 15, 2025

two women lying on hammock — Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

This week, I’ll offer a few pranayama practices to help you shift into your parasympathetic nervous system. It’s helpful to use these practices when you may feel that you need some grounding. The parasympathetic system is part of the autonomic nervous system and is governed by the Vagus nerve, aka Cranial nerve X. It allows us to rest, digest, and relax.

The parasympathetic system is engaged every time we exhale. When this system is activated, it will bring us out of a stressed state. It helps to regulate our nervous system so we can move in and out of sympathetic and parasympathetic states with healthy resilience. We don’t want to chronically be in one state or the other, but we want to fluctuate between the two to avoid getting “stuck” in states of flight, fight, freeze, fawn, or dissociation/shutdown.

Some breathwork and pranayama practices that have been shown to help activate the parasympathetic nervous system include:

diaphragmatic breathing to start to help you tune in and notice how you are feeling in this moment and for breath awareness
focusing on the exhale-lengthen the exhale in a 1:2 ratio inhale:exhale
Dirgha pranayama-filling the lower, middle, and upper lungs with an inhale, retain the breath and exhale from the upper, middle then lower lungs
box breathing (inhale, pause, exhale, pause with all 4 parts being equal length)- check it out here!
resonant breathing, or coherence breathing- a practice to bring your breathing rate to 5-7 per minute-a whole newsletter designated to this is coming next week!
Simhasana, or Lion’s Breath-check it out here!
Nadi Shodana, or alternate nostril breathing-check it out here!

In a previous Post, I shared pranayama practices for healthy sympathetic nervous system responses, and this post is a partner to that. I think that recognizing when we tend toward more sympathetic or parasympathetic responses is an awareness that we can develop and hone. By improving our self-awareness to the state of our nervous system, we can improve our Vagal tone which allows us a greater ability to recover from stress and challenge. Improved Vagal tone helps to reduce muscle tension, lower our heart rate, lower our blood pressure, improve heart rate variability, lower our risk of depression, and helps us to us recover from stressful situations faster.

Along with pranayama practices, cardiovascular exercise and fitness can also help with Vagal tone1. Moderate-intensity activity working at 50-70% of your maximum heart rate(220-your age) has been shown to be effective in improving Vagal tone. Working at moderate-intensity 45 minutes, 5 days per week2has been shown to be a helpful amount to have a positive effect on Vagus nerve tone. Activity such as walking, swimming and cycling(either an arm or leg ergometer) are effective for achieving this type of intensity during an exercise session.

I offer these breathing practices as tools for you to use to access calm and to lower your stress. I am not a psychologist, and I do not claim to know how to help reduce anxiety and/or depression with the use of pranayama techniques. What I am offering are ways to use breath patterns to bring awareness to your own body and the state of your nervous system. If you find these practices to be agitating or if you do not know if these practices are safe for your medical condition(s), please speak to your medical provider before doing any of these.

I’m interested to hear if any of these resonate with you. Please leave a comment if you feel like sharing anything you notice with these practices.

Sharon Bullard

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