Claudia Hawkins LMT, CST

The Vagus Nerve: How Your Body Communicates with Your Brain

Did you know that one of your body’s most important sensory communication centers is located near the base of your skull?

It’s called the nodose ganglion, a cluster of sensory nerve cells along the vagus nerve.

Its primary role isn’t to tell your organs what to do. It’s to listen.

Throughout the day, your nervous system receives information from your heart, lungs, and digestive system about breathing, pressure, movement, fullness, and internal changes.

These signals travel through the vagus nerve to the brainstem, helping your brain stay informed about what’s happening inside your body.

This is part of what we call the gut–brain connection, a continuous conversation between the brain and body.

Why does this matter in craniosacral therapy?

The nervous system is constantly listening, responding, and adapting.

Through gentle, attentive touch, craniosacral therapy supports opportunities for the body to soften protective patterns, find greater ease, and explore new possibilities for regulation and balance.

The body doesn’t just respond to the brain. It communicates with it.

Supporting greater capacity, authentic expression, and a return to balance.

Building Capacity Through Craniosacral Work

One of the benefits of regular Craniosacral sessions is building greater capacity.

Capacity is our ability to move through stress, change, grief, emotion, and the unexpected without becoming as overwhelmed, braced or disconnected.

When something feels threatening or overwhelming, the body may respond by tightening, becoming vigilant, shutting down or preparing to protect us. We may notice this as tension in the jaw, head, neck, shoulders, back, abdomen, gluteal muscles or pelvis.

Craniosacral work offers the body time, space and support to slow down and notice these patterns without forcing them to change.

Over time, this may support greater capacity to:

⭐️Move through stress with more flexibility

⭐️Stay connected to your body and emotions

⭐️Make space for grief

⭐️Recognize needs and boundaries more clearly

⭐️Receive support

⭐️Experience more choice in how you respond

Craniosacral work isn't about being calm all the time. It's about having more room for life without your system having to work quite so hard to protect you.

Where could you use a little more support and capacity right now?

I am extending my hours on the following days and times:

Tuesday 10/13 10:00 - 8:30
Wednesday 10/14 10:00 - 7:00

I also have opening still this Saturday 10/10 and Sunday 10/11 !

Please remember to book sooner than later to get the time/ day that works best. You can schedule at www.claudiahawkins.com - let me know if you have any issues booking your next appointment(s)!

Claudia Hawkins LMT CST Finding a place and modality allowing you to feel safe, comfortable, acknowledged, and valued is essential in each and every session. I am a trauma informed somatic practitioner which means that I listen to your body and your issues in your tissues to facilitate the changes you need for your wellbei...

Through my own Craniosacral journey and witnessing others I find this to be true with GRIEF:

Grieving is a lifelong journey—one that teaches us about love, needs, loss, and learning to let go. Like the ocean, grief ebbs and flows. It changes shape. It recedes and returns, sometimes gently and sometimes with a force we did not expect.

Without the ability to grieve, we may find ourselves blocked or bracing, carrying a sense of not fully belonging—as though something is missing, yet we cannot quite put our finger on what it is or what is wrong.

We may grieve parts of ourselves that disappeared, became quiet, or moved out of reach in order for us to survive. We may also come to know parts of ourselves that emerged during difficult or traumatic experiences—parts we did not know existed until they were needed. Fierce parts. Protective parts. Capable parts. Parts that learned how to endure, disconnect, fight, freeze, adapt, perform, caretake, or keep moving when stopping did not feel possible.

Some of these parts may have carried us through what once felt unbearable. Later, when the danger has passed, we may discover that the ways they protected us no longer fit the life we are trying to live. Grief can be part of meeting all of this with compassion: mourning what had to disappear, honoring what came forward to help us survive, and making space for parts of ourselves that may now be ready to return—or for the capacity to bring forth a part of ourselves we never knew existed, allowing us to live more fully and to discover new ways of thriving.

Sometimes healing is not only about reclaiming what was lost. It can also be about discovering what has not yet had the chance to emerge—new capacities, new ways of relating, and new possibilities for how we move through the world.

We may grieve the things we had to endure, the things we had to become, or the things we had to do when there seemed to be no other choice. Sometimes it takes years, even decades, to find the words for what happened —to recognize the feelings connected to it and to discover where those experiences have been held in the body.

Grief asks to be felt, not solved.

We process so that we can digest what could not be digested before. We make room for what happened without allowing it to occupy every part of us. Slowly, what has felt frozen may begin to move. What has felt unbearably heavy or painful may become something we can carry differently. We may find more space to breathe, soften, connect, and flow.

Sometimes we grieve the death of someone we love—their presence, their voice, their touch, the memories we shared, and all of the “yet to comes” that never will. We grieve not only what was lost, but the future we imagined continuing alongside them. Sometimes we grieve a different version of the person that passed that we needed and did not get. Grief, like healing is not linear, it can be complex and messy but when you can give yourself permission to grieve, it changes and you change.

Allowing ourselves to feel that grief can bring immense pain and sadness. Yet grief is also an expression of love. The depth of our sorrow often speaks to the depth of what mattered.

Perhaps healing does not mean filling the absence or closing the cracks left by loss. Perhaps it means allowing grief, love, memory, and life to flow through those spaces—softening their edges over time.

We do not necessarily “get over” grief.

We learn its tides.

We learn how to live beside it.

And, little by little, we may discover that grief is not only about what we have lost. It can also become a way of honoring what we loved, what we needed, what we survived, the parts of us that carried us through, the parts that may now be finding their way home, and the parts of ourselves that are only now beginning to emerge—helping us live more fully and find new ways of thriving.

I’d love to connect with fellow practitioners in the Austin healing community.

My practice offers Trauma-Informed Craniosacral & Integrative Somatic Work, and I especially enjoy working collaboratively alongside psychotherapists, physical therapists, pelvic-floor specialists, acupuncturists, massage therapists, functional medicine practitioners, and other professionals who value whole-person care.

Sometimes a client has done a great deal of meaningful work and understands what they are experiencing, yet the body is still holding tension, guarding, stress patterns, or experiences that are difficult to access through words alone.

This is where my work can offer another layer of support—a gentle, body-centered space that honors consent, pacing, capacity, authentic expression, and each person’s own process.

I welcome referrals, professional connections, and opportunities to learn more about the work other Austin practitioners are offering as well. I believe our different modalities can beautifully complement one another.

Supporting greater capacity, authentic expression, and a return to balance.

Claudia Hawkins, LMT, CST
Trauma-Informed Craniosacral & Integrative Somatic Work

📍 3532 Bee Caves Road, Suite 201
Austin, TX 78746
Inside Elements Acupuncture

ClaudiaHawkins.com⁠

I love this page and highly recommend her education about Interpersonal Neurobiology perspective. Good stuff!

New Location Welcome Offer 🌷

As a thank-you for your continued support, existing clients receive $20 off their first session at my new location through September 29th.

This offer cannot be combined with other discounts or offers.

Schedule at www.claudiahawkins.com

Super appreciate all the reviews! I have 2 locations in North and Central (Southish) Austin!

Get on the books when you are ready would love to work with you again and new clients are welcome. Link on this page!