Nervous System Reset: Why Yoga Is Essential for Modern Stress
Yoga is an incredibly powerful tool for calming the nervous system. I see this firsthand when teaching classes—after savasana, my students often look visibly more relaxed, as if they've just woken from a restful night’s sleep. As a teacher, it brings me great joy to help create that sense of peace and calm.
The impact of yoga and stretching on the nervous system has been backed by science time and again. Most practitioners have experienced it: arriving at class weighed down by the stress of work or personal life, and leaving feeling noticeably calmer and more centered. If you’ve ever wondered why that happens, the answer lies in the Autonomic Nervous System—and more specifically, the vagus nerve.
At a basic level, the nervous system consists of two main parts:
The Central Nervous System (CNS), which includes the brain and spinal cord.
The Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), which includes all the nerves outside the brain and spine.
One branch of the PNS is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which controls involuntary functions like breathing, digestion, and heart rate. This system is key to understanding how yoga influences the body.
The ANS is made up of two components: the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS).
The Sympathetic branch is our “fight or flight” response, activating the body in response to stress or perceived danger.
The Parasympathetic branch is the “rest and digest” system, which supports recovery, repair, and relaxation.
While both systems are essential, chronic stress causes the sympathetic side to become overactive. In the past, this response would have been crucial for escaping physical danger. Today, modern stressors—deadlines, traffic, constant notifications—keep our bodies in this heightened state for far too long. This can lead to anxiety, sleep disturbances, weakened immunity, and high blood pressure.
That’s where yoga comes in.
Yoga helps reset the nervous system by soothing an overactive SNS and stimulating the parasympathetic side. This shift can improve sleep, digestion, emotional regulation, and mental clarity.
The primary pathway of the parasympathetic system is the vagus nerve—the longest cranial nerve in the body. It helps regulate heart rate, breathing, digestion, immune response, and mood. When this nerve is stimulated, the body is encouraged into a state of calm and recovery.
Yoga directly affects the vagus nerve by improving vagal tone, which refers to how efficiently the nerve functions. A higher vagal tone means your body can return to a state of calm more quickly after stress.
Yoga supports vagal tone in many ways:
Breathwork (Pranayama) directly stimulates the vagus nerve, reducing stress and anxiety.
Inversions and heart-opening postures activate baroreceptors in the neck, which signal the vagus nerve to lower heart rate and relax the nervous system.
Gentle asanas and flowing movements encourage the body to shift from a sympathetic to parasympathetic state.
Mindfulness and meditation has been directly linked with improved heart-rate variability, which is a measure of the variation in time between heartbeats, and is a direct indicator of a nervous system that is functioning healthily.
Because yoga naturally stimulates the vagus nerve, it offers powerful support for regulating internal states, building resilience, and promoting long-term mental and physical health.
Personally, I’ve felt these benefits. In my younger years, I struggled with chronic nausea and digestive issues, which I now believe were linked to anxiety. Over the past two years—since becoming a yoga instructor—I’ve seen a noticeable shift in how my body handles stress. Meditation, breathwork, and a consistent yoga practice have helped me return to a calm state much more quickly after moments of stress. I genuinely believe that my vagal tone has improved, and my body feels better equipped to move out of fight-or-flight mode and into rest-and-digest.
This is why I’m so passionate about sharing yoga with others. I’ve experienced the transformation in my own mind and body, and I witness it regularly in my students. In a world that moves so quickly, it’s amazing how just thirty minutes a day of intentional movement and breath can help the nervous system slow down—and make a profound difference in our overall well-being.
