Why Breathwork Isn’t Always Safe For Nervous System Regulation & What To Do Instead | Jessica Maguire

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There's a version of nervous system content that floats around social media - breathe slowly, feel your feelings, do the work - and then there's what the actual science says. This conversation is the latter.

I sat down with Jessica Maguire, a physiotherapist and nervous system researcher based in Australia, and within the first ten minutes we were both sharing losses we don't often talk about publicly. Jessica lost her older brother Sam to suicide in 2017. That grief, and the shock of it, sent her into a year of research on vagus nerve stimulation, interoception, and neuroplasticity - and ultimately became the foundation for everything she teaches. I shared what it was like to lose my dad suddenly in a car accident on the literal eve of my book launch about the gut-brain connection. Both of us said the same thing: you find out quickly whether you can practice what you teach. And you have no choice but to try.

What Jessica brings to this conversation that I haven't heard anywhere else is the precision. She breaks down all eight sensory systems - including interoception, the eighth, which is basically your brain's ability to read your own internal state - and explains why it's the most critical and most overlooked piece of nervous system health. She explains why IBS was recently reclassified as a disorder of gut-brain interaction. She walks through the difference between stress and trauma, why freeze and collapse are far more common responses than fight or flight but far less understood, and why calling everything trauma might actually be making people feel more helpless, not less. And then she makes the case for something she calls bioplasticity - the idea that healing isn't just about rewiring the brain, it's about changing the whole body, including the gut, the vagus nerve, and the physical patterns we hold in our posture without even knowing it.

The practical tools she shares are deceptively simple. Press the back of your legs into your chair. Feel the container of your body. That's it. But the neuroscience behind why it works is anything but simple - and she explains every bit of it.

A few of my favorite things we cover in this episode: 

• How Jessica's brother's death by suicide in 2017 led her to leave her physiotherapy clinic and spend a year researching nervous system regulation, interoception, and vagus nerve science
• Dr. Cole's reciprocal share: his father's sudden death in a car accident on the eve of the Gut Feelings launch - and what it meant to practice what he teaches in real time
• The eight sensory systems - and why interoception (the eighth) is the most overlooked key to nervous system health
• IBS reclassified as a disorder of gut-brain interaction - what that means and why it changes how we treat it
• The freeze and collapse response: why it's more common than fight or flight after trauma, yet the least understood
• Bioplasticity vs. neuroplasticity - why healing isn't just about the brain, it's about the whole body
• The social media overcorrection: how labeling everything as trauma, gaslighting, or narcissism is eroding resilience and our ability to have hard conversations
• Boundaries as clarity, not excommunication - the nuance between protecting yourself and avoiding conflict
• The "empathetic distress" research: what happens in the brain when we get dysregulated alongside others, and how staying connected to your own body is the solution
• In-the-moment regulation tools: pressing the back of the body into a chair, fast short breathing to interrupt a freeze spiral
• Why breathwork isn't always the right starting point - and how to sequence it correctly for dysregulated nervous systems
• Transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation devices: what the current research shows, why ear-based devices are the most promising, and what questions still need answering
• The 7-day silent grief retreat in Colorado that changed Jessica's life after losing her brother - and the unexpected friendship that came from it

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Happy listening, and we hope you learned a little bit more on the art of being well!

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In Health,

Dr. Will Cole