Vagal Tone Archives - Archangel Michael Health | Primary Care & Integrative Medicine in Gainesville, Florida

A diverse group of people sitting in a wide circle, meditating or in quiet reflection, on a wooden platform in a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a forest.

The Mortality Benefit of Belonging: Spiritual Practice and Physiology

A consistent finding across decades of epidemiological research is that adults who attend religious services regularly, or who maintain a sustained personal spiritual practice, live[…]

Woman in a seated forward fold yoga pose, resting her forehead on a grey foam block.

Christopher Bray - 4 May 2026 - 6:59 pm

Where the Body Holds the Score: Fascia, Sympathetic Tone, and Somatic Release

The clinical observation that emotional trauma seems to lodge somewhere beyond the cognitive mind has migrated from psychotherapy lore into mainstream physiology. Sustained sympathetic nervous[…]

An older woman with grey hair sits in a rocking chair on a covered porch, eyes closed, wrapped in a textured orange blanket, with a forest in the background.

Christopher Bray - 18 April 2026 - 8:31 pm

The HPA Axis Under Chronic Stress: How Your Body’s Alarm System Becomes the Disease

April is Stress Awareness Month, a useful prompt to think about the biology beneath the feeling. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the body’s central stress-response[…]

Posts about Vagal Tone

The Mortality Benefit of Belonging: Spiritual Practice and Physiology

Where the Body Holds the Score: Fascia, Sympathetic Tone, and Somatic Release

The HPA Axis Under Chronic Stress: How Your Body’s Alarm System Becomes the Disease