The Vagus Nerve vs. The Sympathetic Nervous System: Who’s Really in Charge? And Have We Been Missing the Point?

by Jennifer Finch, M.A., LPC, NCC, SEP

February 9, 2025

Everywhere you turn, people are talking about vagal tone. How to breathe, hum, splash cold water on your face, and do yoga to activate the sacred parasympathetic response. And sure, those things can be helpful. But here’s what no one seems to be asking:

What about actually strengthening the sympathetic nervous system?

Because if the fight-or-flight system is in overdrive, simply over-exercising the rest-and-digest system won’t magically bring it under control. You don’t tame a wild horse by teaching it to nap.

Let’s be clear: Doing a breathwork session or a slow yin yoga class is great, but if you leave the studio and immediately flip back into high-alert panic mode the moment your phone dings, then what are we actually training? Are we regulating, or just seesawing between extremes?

The real goal, at least if you want actual nervous system resilience, is balance. In the work of nonduality, embodiment, and deep self-inquiry, we’re not trying to live in some artificially induced parasympathetic bliss state. We’re working toward a nervous system that can feel everything, think everything, and never be overwhelmed by it. A system that doesn’t need to flee, freeze, or numb out every time life turns up the heat.

Building an Anti-Fragile Sympathetic Response

The problem isn’t just that our sympathetic nervous system is overactive, it’s that it’s under-trained. It fires too fast, too hard, and with no endurance. If we want to stop flipping between overwhelm and collapse, we need to build a sympathetic nervous system that is active, alert, and strong, but not constantly alarmed.

So how do we do that?

1. Train your MIND and your body, not just your breath and your body. If you’re doomscrolling through alarming news or over-identifying with every anxious thought, no amount of box breathing or dramatic shaking, like a polar bear, will save you. You need to take ownership of where you put your attention. And become deeply in tune with how your body is responding/reacting when you place your attention on certain circumstances. “Where your attention goes, your energy/prana follows.”

2. Build capacity, not just recovery. Instead of constantly pulling yourself down from a stress high, practice sustaining intensity without spinning out. Think of it as strength training. Intentional stress exposure with controlled breathing. Like stretching until you feel gently challenged, feeling into your limits, in order to gain flexibility.

3. Take responsibility for your participation in *Americanitis. We’ve all been sold a life of overcommitment, overconsumption, and over-identification with productivity. You don’t need another supplement or another TikTok remedy; you need to stop glorifying exhaustion. (Paying particular attention to “comparison mind”.)

4. Practice in something that integrates wholeness from the start. Nonduality isn’t about escaping, it’s about integrating. The Zen phrase “We are what we think” isn’t just a poetic notion, it’s neuroscience. Your nervous system adapts to what you repeatedly engage in. If you’re constantly stirring the pot of stress, you don’t get to be surprised when it boils over.

Cold plunges, breathwork, and yoga? Good tools, but not the full solution. Those are momentary disruptions, not long-term rewiring. We need to build a sympathetic system that can stay engaged, resilient, and intelligent, without hijacking us.

This isn’t just about relaxation. It’s not about hacking your nervous system into a parasympathetic coma every time life gets hard.

It’s about becoming anti-fragile. It’s about building the capacity to hold great extremes—stress, suffering, uncertainty—without breaking. Because let’s be honest, the Buddhists nailed it with: life is suffering. No amount of deep breathing, mindfulness, or Kundalini changes that.

And while practices like shaking or movement can help discharge tension, we are not simply animals shaking off stress. We are not just bodies processing stress through motion. We are awareness itself—mind and body and soul intertwined. Trauma isn’t just stored in muscles; it’s held in the way we perceive, the meanings we create, the way we identify with our experiences. It’s not all somatic without cognition. We need both. Embodiment without awareness is just reaction. Awareness without embodiment is just abstraction.

I’m not against relaxation. In fact, I think it should be practiced, trained, and sharpened like any other skill. But resilience isn’t just about coming back down; it’s about learning how to stay up without losing your center.

So yes, train yourself to relax. But don’t stop there. Train yourself to stand in the fire and not be burned. Train your mind. Train your body. Train your attention. Train in integrated wholeness.

Because actual, embodied freedom isn’t about an escape to parasympathetic Shangri-La. It’s about capacity. To be a mountain, we must become a mountain.

And that, my friends, is a practice.

Be Here. And Be Now. Jen

For a deeper dive into the interplay between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, explore this previous post on a quick breakdown on how to distinguish the two.  

* Americanitis is a term or discovery of a “new disease” coined by George Miller Beard, a neurologist in the 1860s and 1970s. The term was extensively contributed to intellectual discussion by William James in 1890 to describe the variety of nervous disorders and illnesses caused by overwork and the fast pace of modern life at the turn of the century.