When’s the last time you gave your vagus nerve some attention? Thought so.
If you’re au fait with all things wellness, you’ve probably encountered it before. The vagus nerve is a bit like the body’s M1, acting as a superhighway between your brain, major organs and gut. It relays signals that control relaxation, digestion and overall balance levels. In short, what happens in vagus… affects your entire nervous system.
2025 has seen a wave of new wellness tech designed to stimulate the vagus nerve and unlock better sleep, lower stress and higher levels of energy, naturally. The Netflix wellness docuseries Don’t Die, which focused on multimillionaire Bryan Johnson’s longevity journey, also spiked interest in vagus nerve stimulators (VNS).
Yōjō is the latest of such gadgets to emerge onto the market, designed to restore inner balance in people who feel besieged by stress.
When I met founder Waldi Hoon ahead of yōjō’s UK launch, she explained that our primitive hardware can’t differentiate between stressor levels — emails, bills, an impending visit from the in-laws — so the sympathetic nervous system, responsible for fight or flight, goes into overdrive. It’s always on, chugging away in the background, rarely giving the opposing parasympathetic system time to ‘rest and digest’; that is, help you relax, reset, or heal. It means a low level of stress or panic feels omnipresent, forever lurking in the periphery. This could manifest in poor sleep, exhaustion, raised blood pressure and inflammation, leaving you vulnerable to illnesses or burnout.
There are ways to even the keel, from meditation and breathwork to gentle yoga. The problem there is that they all require blocking out time in your schedule, which can be scarce in the first place or leave you guilt-ridden when you’re forced to skip sessions.
Yōjō
In some ways, yōjō is the lazy person’s route to descending from the summit of Mount Stress. The non-invasive earpiece can be worn while you’re working, travelling or watching telly, delivering inner equilibrium with barely any effort on your part.
How does it work? The device gently stimulates the auricular branch of the vagus nerve in the outer ear through electrical pulses, stirring the body’s natural rest-and-digest response, helping you relax while boosting anti-inflammatory processes.
I confess, I am a bit of a sceptic when it comes to wellness products, but if this could bring my shoulders down from up around my ears, it was worth a shot. The last thing I expected was that I would love yōjō so much that it now lives under my pillow, so I never miss a nightly session.
The clinical-looking device works through an earpiece attached to the remote-style stimulator, which in turn, connects to a companion app via Bluetooth.
It uses tailored programs, biotech, wellness tutorials and support from real experts to tweak your treatment. Everything comes packed into a small hard-cased travel pouch, which can be slung into a weekend bag or tote.
After a few in-app set-up questions, you’re prompted to do a face scan, or a ‘healthy selfie’ using your phone’s front camera. Lasting 30 seconds in good light while you remain still, this captures things like your heart rate, blood pressure, stress index and parasympathetic activity, all from tiny fluctuations in facial colour and movement.
Next, you’ll position the earpiece in a fold in your ear (always the left side), pick your mode — pick between Energy, Relax, Sleep and Stress — twiddle the intensity (it goes up to 30) and boom, your 30-minute timer will begin. Once the countdown is over, you’ll be asked for another face scan, so you can compare before and after metrics.
Yōjō’s VNS can be used without the app, but using both is a helpful way to chart your stress levels. Plus, you have access to tons of other relaxation-aiding content, like breathwork how-tos, simple yoga moves, and a health coach who chips in with tailored advice and tips when reading your reports.
yojo
The kit comes with an application gel, which you should apply to the tip of the earpiece. I barrelled in without it for my first session, and the stimulation was, if not exactly painful, certainly irritating. Two weeks in, and I fastidiously apply the solution, so now the only real sensation is a very faint buzzing outside my left ear and dull pressure, like you’d get from wearing earbuds.
Do intensity levels impact the results of a session? “The intensity is personal and has no impact on the efficacy of the stimulation,” Hoon assures me. “Some people use 4, some 15 — the outcome is the same. It’s your brain doing the good work, we’re just waking up the nerve and tricking the brain into a rest state. You just need to be able to feel it”.
I use yōjō in the evening when there’s more peace in my day, choosing the Relax or Sleep modes. I’ve never really had trouble with sleeping, but recently, high levels of stress have left me tossing and turning into the early hours. Not great when you’ve got a full day in the office ahead.
Engaging with yōjō before bed gave me some of my deepest sleeps ever. High quality, properly restful sleep, the kind of sleep babies wish they had. I intentionally skipped two sessions to gauge the difference, and noticed it took much longer to drop off on those nights. I also recall waking up for short stints, in contrast to post-yōjō sessions.
As for Energy mode, I’ve tried that while working from home, but not as frequently as my evening sessions. It’s difficult to say how much wearing the VNS while working focused my mind or brought clarity, but I certainly felt calmer and more in control, despite being nowhere near inbox zero. Was it a Pavlovian response to wearing the earpiece, or the stimulation shifting my brain’s gears into a more restful state? Either way, all outcomes have been roundly positive.
Cost — is it worth the price?
Resetting the see-saw of your nervous system comes at a price, but a reasonable one. Yōjō works on a subscription model, costing £399 a year, which includes delivery of the VNS device alongside all the app’s features and personal coaching on tap, should you need it.
If you struggle to relax or sleep because of torrential stress, I’d consider that money very well spent. Just over a quid a day? No sweat.