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Your body is running a thousand background processes right now — pumping blood, digesting food, healing microscopic damage, and adjusting hormones — all without you thinking about it.

That’s the autonomic nervous system (ANS) at work: the silent regulator connecting your brain and spinal cord to every organ, tissue, and cell (Waxenbaum et al., 2024).

It keeps you alive — and in balance — without ever asking for your attention.

What is the ANS?

The ANS is your body’s autopilot.

It maintains vital functions like heart rate, breathing, digestion, and immune response — automatically and continuously (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2024).

It’s made up of three main branches:

• Sympathetic nervous system – your body’s stress responder (fight-or-flight).
• Parasympathetic nervous system – your recovery and repair mode (rest-and-digest).
• Enteric nervous system – your gut’s independent control center.

The enteric system manages digestion. The other two are constantly balancing each other — one energizing, the other calming — to maintain homeostasis, your internal equilibrium (Waxenbaum et al., 2024).

The sympathetic nervous system

When things get intense, this system takes charge.

The sympathetic nervous system prepares you for action. It’s the one that saves you from danger, sharpens focus, and floods your body with energy.

Once activated, it:

• Releases adrenaline and other stress hormones.
• Raises heart rate and blood pressure.
• Shifts blood flow to your muscles and brain.
• Reduces blood flow to the gut and skin.

This is the fight-or-flight response: essential for survival, but harmful when it stays switched on too long.

Chronic activation can lead to high blood pressure, inflammation, poor digestion, and fatigue (Britannica, “Sympathetic Nervous System,” 2024).

The parasympathetic nervous system

Once the danger has passed, the parasympathetic system steps in.

This is the body’s rest-and-digest network: it slows things down so you can repair and replenish.

When active, it:

• Slows heart rate and lowers blood pressure.
• Increases digestion and nutrient absorption.
• Dilates blood vessels, improving circulation to vital organs.
• Balances inflammation, promoting healing.

The star player here is the vagus nerve — the longest cranial nerve in your body. About 75% of its fibers are parasympathetic, connecting your brain to your heart, lungs, and gut (Waxenbaum et al., 2024). Through this nerve, the parasympathetic system influences everything from mood and immunity to metabolism and sleep.

Sympathetic vs. parasympathetic

Here’s how these two systems work together — and why that balance matters:

When the stress response dominates, as it often does in modern life, your sleep, digestion, and mental clarity begin to suffer (Waxenbaum et al., 2024).

Why it matters

A well-balanced autonomic nervous system is essential for resilience — your ability to recover from stress and maintain health.

When the fight-or-flight response and the rest-and-digest response work in harmony, your body adapts efficiently to challenges and then returns to calm.

But when stress wins out, inflammation rises and chronic imbalance sets in; the physiological foundation for burnout, anxiety, poor sleep, and chronic disease (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2024).

The takeaway

A lot of what keeps you alive happens automatically. But that doesn’t mean you’re powerless to influence it.

Through tools like breathwork, movement, biofeedback, and vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), you can help your nervous system rediscover equilibrium, the state your body was designed to live in.

Chronic stress fuels inflammation. Inflammation fuels disease. And before you know it, you're caught in a cycle that wears down your body, ages you faster, and drains your energy. In short, stress is your enemy. The best way to deal with an enemy is to choose only those battles you can win.

There are the big stresses in life and the small stresses. We hardly need to explore the big stresses; we all know them. There’s no winning against them. They just are, and we do our best to accept them. The small stresses, however, we can conquer the minute they kick up a fuss.

These are the less remarkable, less noticeable stresses. Those dozen or so situations and happenings that tense up your mind just a smidge, like a person tightening a guitar string. Just a little at a time. The tardy bus, the broken shoelace, the spilled coffee, the rude coworker, the winding queue, the stolen seat, all piling on top of each other, turning that mind string until it is so tense your entire being develops a distinct, steely twang.

There may be many, and they may sometimes be hard to see, but one West African approach to life can help you thwart these little enemies and stop them from strumming your nerves with their fingers.

It’s called “itutu.” It is a way of seeing minor stresses and worries that takes the sting out of them. (uOkraSoupThrowaway, 2024)

As The School of Life explains in their video, A Philosophy of Calm, itutu “denotes a particular approach to life: unhurried, composed, assured, and unflappable.” (The School of Life, 2020a) Among the Yoruba people, to “have itutu” is to embody coolness — to meet frustration with poise and to remain untouched by the noise of small misfortunes. (The School of Life, 2020b)

This calm isn’t a divine gift; it can be learned. It’s the fruit of knowing, as the Yoruba say, that some things belong to “àṣẹ” — the natural order — and lie beyond our control.

Anger arises when we overestimate our power to change external reality. Itutu arises when we see the limits clearly and choose peace within them.

Modern science would call this emotional regulation, the ability of the prefrontal cortex to modulate limbic reactivity. When you practice the qualities embodied by itutu, you train your nervous system to stay out of fight-or-flight. (Ford et al., 2018)

Over time, this translates into measurable benefits: lower cortisol, steadier heart rate variability, reduced inflammation, and potentially improved longevity. (Ford et al., 2018)

Cultivating this mindset makes you resilient. You learn to save your energy for what truly matters, and your calm becomes your default setting.

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The vagus nerve is a key part of the body’s system for calm and regulation. It helps influence heart rate, digestion, immune responses, and how the body adapts to stress (Habib, 2019). Vagal activity is associated with resilience and recovery (Goggins et al., 2022).

In today’s fast-paced world, ongoing stress can place extra demand on the nervous system. When the body struggles to shift out of a constant “on” state, this may contribute to challenges such as poor stress regulation, inflammation, or digestive discomfort (Habib, 2019).

There are clinically studied ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, including non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS). Alongside these, there are also simple, natural practices that may help support vagal activity as part of everyday life.

Embrace the cold

Brief cold exposure can encourage activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. This might include a short cold shower, a dip in cool water, or even splashing cold water on your face. These experiences can prompt the body to shift toward a calmer, rest-and-digest state (Habib, 2019).

Breathe mindfully

Breathing is one of the few automatic bodily processes you can consciously influence. Slow, deep breathing that engages the diaphragm can help signal the body to relax, supporting heart rate regulation and parasympathetic activity (Habib, 2019).

Try this

Place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.

As you breathe in through your nose, allow your belly to rise while keeping your chest relatively still.

Exhale slowly through your mouth.

This style of diaphragmatic breathing can help support vagal function and encourage a calmer physiological state.

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Sing, hum, chant … or gargle

The vagus nerve has branches that connect with the muscles of the throat and vocal cords. Activities such as singing, humming, chanting, or even gargling can create gentle vibrations in this area, which may help stimulate vagal pathways (Habib, 2019).

Get moving

Physical activity supports the nervous system as well as the muscles. During exercise, the body becomes more alert, while recovery afterward relies on parasympathetic activity to restore balance. Over time, this process can help train the nervous system to move more efficiently between states of activity and rest (Goggins et al., 2022).

Regular movement is associated with better stress recovery and overall nervous system health (Habib, 2019).

Socialize and laugh

Social connection plays a meaningful role in nervous system regulation. Spending time with others, sharing positive experiences, and laughing can support parasympathetic activity and are linked to lower stress levels and improved heart rate variability (Habib, 2019).

Supporting your vagus nerve doesn’t require dramatic lifestyle changes. Small, consistent practices can help create the conditions for better balance and resilience over time.

For those seeking a more targeted approach, non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS) is a clinically studied option designed to stimulate the vagus nerve safely and effectively.

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