The Vagus Nerve Podcast
The Vagus Nerve Podcast
We created this because the world needs to know what the Vagus Nerve is really about.
Consider this an outlet that will give you the latest information and actionable insights into how the Vagus Nerve really works — pulled from years of working directly with clients, building stimulation technology, and digging through the primary research that most popular articles never cite.
This is information that you won't find in textbooks, or even in most corners of the internet. Not even many of the so-called experts on the Vagus Nerve will know the information contained within this Podcast. We don't say that lightly. The medical world tends to engage with the vagus nerve through the narrow lens of implanted devices for treatment-resistant depression and epilepsy, while the wellness world tends to flatten it into "do some breathing." The reality, in our view, sits somewhere far more interesting than either.
Big claims! They are accurate! Find out for yourself — and listen to the episodes below:
WHO THIS PODCAST IS FOR
This show is for the person who has already done the basic reading on the vagus nerve and now wants the next layer down. If you've watched the YouTube explainers, tried a few breathing apps, and you're sitting there thinking "okay but what is this thing actually doing and how do I get serious about it" — this is for you.
It's also for practitioners — coaches, therapists, somatic workers, integrative MDs — who want a more nuanced model of the vagus nerve than what's available in mainstream training. Several of the episodes below intentionally challenge frameworks that are popular right now in the trauma and somatic worlds.
Episode 6 — Evicting Intruders From Your Vagus Nerve
What parasympathetic activation actually needs, and why a gadget alone won't get you there.
Sterling walks through how the weekly coaching in the program works and why he treats it as essential: you can use any technology you like, but without real parasympathetic activation through social engagement with another person, you get a small fraction of the results.
The title comes from his picture of the vagus nerve as a temple that invaders have moved into, with parasympathetic activation as what gives it the drive to evict them. He also talks about the depersonalization he went through after his car accident, and shares stories from recent coaching calls.
Episode 5 — Your Body Is A Pendulum Running Machine
Pendulums again, and why they are a clearer way to think about what used to be called trauma.
Sterling explains where the idea comes from (chapter two of Vadim Zeland's book Reality Transurfing, which he read in 2017) and how pendulums show up everywhere, from the push and pull of relationships to fashion colors that come back around every few years.
Then the mind as an MP3 player: everything you encounter is a track competing for a slot. A trauma is a pendulum imprinted by threat or force, but a kind word, a meme or a film loads one the same way. You are not removing a trauma; you are swapping one track for another, and you get to choose what plays.
Episode 4 — The "T-Word" Versus Pendulums
More on the "T-word," plus an insight into the vagus nerve that, as far as we can tell, nobody else has published.
Recorded on a walk through a park in Shenzhen, China. Sterling picks up from Episode 3: every event carries a valence, harmonic or disharmonic, and what people call the "T-word" is really two clashing valences held in the body at the same time.
Then the insight he says nobody else had published: the left and right vagus nerves each carry one side of a comparison, and the organs between them (heart, lungs, gut, throat) do the weighing. He pictures it as two dragons reaching for one fiery ball, and closes on why he got into bioelectric medicine.
Episode 3 — "Trauma"
Why Sterling won't use the "T-word," and the idea he uses instead: pendulums.
Trauma coaches often join the Facebook group and tell members their problems come from trauma. Sterling argues that the word itself does harm: it pulls people back into painful memories and tells them they are broken.
Instead he describes the vagus nerve as something like a music recorder that stores the tone of events, and introduces pendulums: ideas that swing at their own rhythm and latch onto a mind, helped along by mass media. You are not broken, he says; you can take the excess importance out of these pendulums and choose the music you want playing.
Episode 2 — The Vagus Nerve Program
This recording is no longer available. The episode link broke, and SoundCloud archived the only copy.
Episode 1 — Introduction
This recording is no longer available. The episode link broke, and SoundCloud archived the only copy.
WHERE TO LISTEN
Right here. Every surviving episode plays on this page, and you can download any of them to listen offline. If you'd like to hear when new episodes come out, the easiest way is to drop your email on our Stay In Touch page.
SUMMARY
The Vagus Nerve Podcast exists because there is a layer of practical, hands-on, sometimes contrarian knowledge about this nerve that hasn't really made it into mainstream conversation yet. The episodes above are the cleanest distillation we've produced of that knowledge.
If you find this useful, the next step is to actually do something with it — and that's what the program is for.
