CST Study group vegas nerve

Craniosacral East's first Blog, describing our recent study group in my office. Please click on our link to explore more about Craniosacral Therapy.


Today in my office we had a study group going over the embryological origins of the Vagus Nerve which connects to the organs relating to digestion and more.

The strange image to your left is your brain from below and the brain stem. It's where your spinal cord connects to your brain.

One of the nerves that come out of your brainstem is your vegas nerve. You can see how many organs this nerve touches upon.




To better place the brain stem, you can see in the image to the right as the spinal cord enters the brain. Notice the bulge known as the Pons. This is where the 12 paired Cranial Nerves emanate, one of the pairs being the Vagus Nerve (from vagabond for how it travels all around the organs)


What made the class even more interesting is we had images from the early embryonic development of this cranial nerve along with the primitive digestive track.


Notice the Vagus nerve development on the left drawing, clearly developing within the 4 week old embryo.

Interruptions in an embryo's development at this point can affect their Vagal nerve response & digestion much later in life as adults.

When we worked on each other on the tables, we kept in our mind these images and others we viewed of the embyonic seams that later develop into the face and throat. You can very faintly see the folded seams in the drawn picture of the embryo. They are the folds just above the word VAGUS NERVE. Unfortunately I didn't have any images of these seams that are work well with the low resolution photo content of this blog.

By keeping in our mind images of the embryonic origins of the Seams and how they become the face, and Vagus nerve and how it grew in connection with all these organs it helps us have a developmental feel for the body we are touching. If we also keep in our mind where the vegus nerve is in the adult body, and how it travels out of the skull, long held developmental tensions or issues, can be stilled. It's not that we do anything mechanical to this nerve, it's that we have it somewhere in our awareness, how it exits the skull, what organs it touches, and how it started to develop, alongside your organs when you were only a few weeks old.




If you are Craniosacral Practitioner and are interested in joing our study group in NYC Monthly. Please let me know. Or you can always subscribe to the blog if you live out of town and want the brief review.