Stress: What's Actually Happening in Your Body?
We all know what stress feels like.
Your shoulders creep up towards your ears, your jaw tightens, your heart starts racing, your thoughts are doing laps, and suddenly even a perfectly innocent email feels like one thing too many.
Sound familiar?
We tend to think of stress as something that happens in our heads. But stress isn't just a feeling. It's a whole-body response, involving your brain, nervous system, hormones, heart, breathing and muscles.
And while we can't always control what's happening around us, understanding what's happening inside us can help us find ways to manage it.
So, let's get into a little bit of science. Nothing too heavy.
Your Body Has a Built-In Alarm System
Imagine you're walking through the woods and suddenly come face to face with a bear. You're not going to stop and calmly weigh up your options. Your heart rate increases. Your breathing gets faster. Your muscles prepare for action. Stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, help mobilise energy so you can respond. Once you're somewhere safe your body gradually starts to settle again.
This is your body's stress response, often described as fight, flight or freeze. It's an incredibly useful system and it's not a bad thing. In the right situation, it's exactly what you need. It helps you react to danger, respond to challenges and get yourself out of a tricky situation. That burst of adrenaline before a big presentation or the focus you find when you're up against a deadline? Your stress response can help you rise to the occasion.
The problem isn't stress itself but your body can react in a similar way to psychological stressors, too a looming deadline, financial worries or a difficult conversation.
Unlike a bear in the woods, these everyday pressures don't always disappear quickly. And when stress keeps piling up, without enough opportunity for your body to settle and recover, it can start taking its toll.
Meet Your Nervous System
Your autonomic nervous system helps regulate many of the things your body does automatically, without you having to think about them — like heart rate, digestion and aspects of breathing.
One way to understand it is through two of its main branches.
The sympathetic nervous system helps your body mobilise for action. It's involved in the familiar fight-or-flight response, increasing readiness when you need to respond to a challenge.
The parasympathetic nervous system supports functions associated with recovery, including digestion and conserving energy. It's often nicknamed the “rest and digest” system.
These aren't two separate switches, where one is always on and the other is always off. They work alongside other systems to help your body respond to what's happening and adjust as circumstances change.
You need to be able to gear up when something demands your attention. You also need opportunities to settle, recover and replenish.
The aim isn't to be permanently chilled out, floating through life like a person who has never encountered a parking fine.
It's about having the ability to respond when you need to — and recover when you can.
So, What Is the Vagus Nerve?
Here's where things get interesting.
The vagus nerve is a major part of the parasympathetic nervous system. It's one of the main communication pathways connecting your brain with organs including your heart, lungs and digestive system.
The name comes from the Latin word for “wandering”, which makes sense when you consider how far it travels through the body.
It carries signals in both directions, helping your brain and organs share information. A large proportion of the sensory fibres in the vagus nerve carry information from the body towards the brain.
This means it's involved in more than simply telling your body to relax. It helps your brain monitor what's happening inside you and plays a role in regulating functions such as heart rate and digestion.
You might have heard people talk about “stimulating the vagus nerve” or “resetting” it to switch off stress.
There's a little more nuance to it than that.
The vagus nerve is involved in the body's regulation of stress and recovery, but it's not a magic button. You can't simply switch it on and make every stressful situation disappear.
What you can do is explore practices that may support your body's ability to settle and regulate itself.
And one of those is something you can do right now, without buying a single wellness gadget.
Can Your Breathing Help You Feel Calmer?
Your breathing is interesting because it happens automatically, but you can also influence it consciously.
When you're stressed, you might notice your breathing becomes faster, shallower or more noticeable. You may find yourself holding your breath without realising it.
Slowing your breathing down, comfortably and without forcing it, can influence your heart rate and the balance of activity within your autonomic nervous system. It can also give your attention something steady to focus on, rather than letting your thoughts run riot.
Research into slow breathing suggests it can have beneficial effects on measures associated with stress regulation. The exact effects vary between people and techniques, though, and one breathing exercise won't work the same way for everyone.
This is where practices such as yoga breathing and bee breath can be useful.
Bee breath, also known as Bhramari pranayama, involves breathing in gently through the nose and humming as you breathe out.
The slow, comfortable exhale and gentle humming can create a simple focus for your attention. You may also notice a soothing vibration around your face and head.
It's not about forcing your body into a state of relaxation or trying to breathe your way out of a genuinely difficult situation.
It's about giving yourself a moment to pause and seeing whether a different breathing pattern helps you feel a little more settled.
Try it: Five rounds of bee breath
Sit comfortably and let your shoulders soften.
Breathe in gently through your nose.
Breathe out with your lips closed, making a soft hmmmmmm sound.
Repeat for five comfortable rounds, noticing the sound and vibration.
Keep your breathing easy. There's no need to take huge breaths or hold your breath. If you feel dizzy or uncomfortable, stop and return to normal breathing.
Notice how you feel before and afterwards. You might feel calmer, or you might not notice much difference. Both are okay.
The point is to experiment, not to achieve perfect relaxation.
It's Not All About Breathing
Breathwork is one tool, but it's not the whole toolbox.
Supporting your body's ability to manage stress also means looking at the bigger picture.
Movement: Walking, yoga, mobility work or other forms of exercise you enjoy can help you manage stress and support your overall health. The right amount will depend on you, your circumstances and how well you're recovering.
Sleep: Sleep plays an important role in emotional regulation, concentration and physical recovery. When you're short on sleep, everyday challenges can feel much harder to handle.
Recovery: You can't keep asking your body to do more without allowing time to recover. Rest isn't a reward you earn after being productive enough. It's a basic part of looking after yourself.
Connection: Spending time with people you trust, talking things through or simply feeling supported can help you navigate difficult periods.
Small pauses: You don't need a 45-minute meditation, a perfect morning routine or a retreat in the mountains. Sometimes it's stepping outside for five minutes, unclenching your jaw or taking a few comfortable breaths between meetings.
And importantly, these things aren't substitutes for addressing the source of ongoing stress. If your workload is unreasonable, your finances are worrying you or you're dealing with something difficult, a breathing exercise can't magically fix the situation.
Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is change the circumstances where possible, ask for support or speak to a healthcare professional if stress is affecting your wellbeing.
You Don't Need to Be Calm All the Time
I think it's easy to turn wellbeing into yet another thing we're supposed to be good at.
We start practising yoga to feel better, then worry we're not meditating enough. We try breathwork, then wonder if we're doing it correctly. Before long, relaxing becomes another task on the to-do list.
Let's not do that.
Your nervous system is designed to respond to the demands of life. Feeling stressed sometimes doesn't mean your body is broken, and you don't need to be calm every minute of every day.
The goal isn't to eliminate stress. It's to understand your responses, recognise when you might need support, and find ways to give yourself opportunities to recover.
Sometimes that might mean movement. Sometimes it might mean rest. Sometimes it might mean tackling the thing that's causing the stress rather than trying to breathe your way through it.
And sometimes, it might mean sitting down for a minute, making a gentle buzzing noise and reminding yourself that you don't have to do everything at once.
That's a pretty good place to start.