The twelve nerves between your brain and your body

Clients sometimes ask why a strength session with me might include eye movements, humming, a balance drill, or attention to the jaw. Part of the answer lives in twelve pairs of nerves that connect your brain directly to your head, face, and neck, and to many of your organs: the cranial nerves.

They carry what you sense — sight, smell, sound, taste, and balance. They control how your eyes, face, tongue, and neck move. And one of them, the vagus nerve, is a major pathway for the part of your nervous system that helps you rest and digest.

The twelve, in plain language

1. Olfactory — smell.
2. Optic — vision: sharpness, color, and peripheral sight.
3. Oculomotor — moves most of the eye muscles, lifts the eyelid, and controls the pupil.
4. Trochlear — moves the eye down and inward.
5. Trigeminal — sensation across the face, and the muscles you use to chew.
6. Abducens — moves the eye outward.
7. Facial — facial expression, blinking, and taste at the front of the tongue.
8. Vestibulocochlear — hearing and balance, from the inner ear.
9. Glossopharyngeal — swallowing, throat sensation, and taste at the back of the tongue.
10. Vagus — helps regulate heart rate, digestion, breathing, swallowing, and voice, and carries much of the communication between gut and brain.
11. Accessory — turning your head and shrugging your shoulders.
12. Hypoglossal — the tongue movements you use to speak and swallow.

Why this matters for how you move

Your body constantly combines information from your eyes, your inner ear, and the sensations from your feet and joints to decide how stable you are. When one of those sources becomes less clear — after a concussion, during a period of dizziness, with visual strain, or simply with age — your body may respond by bracing, holding its breath, or moving more cautiously.

That is not weakness. It is protection. But it can limit the strength you are able to access.

So in our sessions, we sometimes introduce small inputs through these systems — where your eyes go during a movement, a slow exhale or a hum, softening the jaw, or a balance challenge — and then we reassess. Does the movement feel steadier? Has the range changed? If it helps, we keep it. If it doesn't, we move on.

What this is not

This is not treatment for a nerve condition. New or worsening dizziness, changes in vision, facial weakness or numbness, difficulty swallowing, or sudden changes in hearing need prompt medical attention.

What I offer is a way of paying attention to the connections between how you sense, how you move, and how settled you feel — and using that awareness to help your body find more options.