Our digestive systems digest our life experiences and the food that nourishes us. Stomach cramps, pain, and feeling nauseous are some of the physical ways our body communicates emotional distress. Ultimately, we want to digest food and experiences that bring harmony and health. As humans, we are also digesting inflammatory matter and life experiences that can profoundly affect our health, harmony, and longevity.
Gut feelings of fear and danger can alert and activate the central nervous system into the sympathetic mode, from environmental cues (triggers) that may well be below our conscious awareness. As we saw with the polyvagal theory, when the autonomic nervous system is recruited for defence, physical and mental functioning is impaired. For example, blood flow is diverted away from digestion to be available for flight or fight. Digestion and gut motility (movement) slow and the anus may tense.
The gut holds implicit neural networks of memory that are sometimes tender to touch. The digestive system can hold onto faecal matter when the sympathetic nervous system is active, just as we can hold on to unexpressed emotions. To digest both food and emotions, we need to feel safe (bring the social engagement system online).
Feeling states can be held in the belly for years and unexpected feelings (implicit memory) can arise during touch or focused attention and feeling these areas. The belly might feel tender to touch with unexplained pain or there may be numbness. When implicit memory does not get digested, adhesions can build up around inflammation, and biochemical reactions in the body can create imbalances in the flora and neurotransmitters, which can lead to chronic painful conditions of the digestive tract associated with implicit memory stress from undigested life experiences.
The ENS normally communicates with the central nervous system (CNS) through the parasympathetic (e.g. via the vagus nerve) and sympathetic (e.g. via the prevertebral ganglia) nervous systems. If the vagus nerve is severed, the enteric nervous system can continue to function autonomously.
The ENS is located in the sheaths of tissue lining the oesophagus, stomach, small intestine and colon. It is a network of neurones, neurotransmitters and proteins that communicate messages between neurones, support cells like those found in the brain proper and a complex circuitry that enables it to act independently, learn, remember and produce gut feelings.
The ENS sends and receives impulses, records experiences and responds to emotions. The gut can upset the brain just as the brain can upset the gut. Over 90% of vagal nerve fibres are afferent; meaning their function is to send information from the body to the brain.
Dr Michael Gershon, professor of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, is one of the founders of a new field of medicine called “neurogastroenterology”, studying how the enteric nervous system mirrors the central nervous system.
The enteric nervous system produces and uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, most of which are identical to the ones found in the CNS, such as acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, and norepinephrine. Nitric oxide and benzodiazepines are also present. More than 90% of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut, as well as about 50% of the body’s dopamine, which is part of the ‘feel good’ biochemical responses. There are also small brain proteins called neuropeptides, along with the major cells of the immune system and enkephalins (a member of the endorphins family) in the gut.
This podcast is included as "Helpful listening" for this RE: Wise Traditions Podcast Episode #5 (30 minutes) The Gut: Key to Good Health, by neurologist and neurosurgeon Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride, author of Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GaPS): Natural Treatment For Autism, ADHD/ADD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Depression and Schizophrenia.
"I believe that our most primitive emotions live and are stored in our guts" - Ellen Heed:
... But how did these emotions get there? I was sitting on the toilet earlier today thinking about the relationship between how our guts work and our enteric nervous system (the brain embedded in our guts).
We have our central nervous system, that's the brain and spinal cord, which becomes the peripheral nervous system when it travels south of the neck, and nerves exit away from the cord. But we actually have several distinct branches of the peripheral nervous system, one of which is the enteric nervous system. The enteric nervous system is located inside the gut wall.
The nerves that are embedded in our gut talk to our brain. That’s called the gut/brain axis.
We start our life as a tiny embryo. As we grow, we are little beings surrounded by our mother's guts and enteric nervous system. We’re likely to feel the rhythmicity and flow as food moves through her guts. To understand the relationship between the emotional body and how our body remembers emotional experiences, we have to think about the enteric nervous system. We feel her digestion as rhythmic pressure from food that's circulating, and perhaps we have the capability of remembering that rhythm. As peristalsis squeezes food down the digestive tube, we as embryos are surrounded by that, feeling its pulsation.
We're also feeling a lot of other pulsations. Perhaps we're feeling the blood pulsing through the placenta. We feel the rush of blood in our ears. We may hear the fluid movement of our amniotic surround. We're feeling the movement of her breath, the rhythm of her diaphragm raising and lowering into her abdominal cavity. And then there’s the rhythmicity of food as it moves through the large intestine, which surrounds the uterus while we're gestating.I wonder whether the rhythmicity of her digestion and her blood chemistry may form some kind of association in our primordial memory banks. Her blood is our blood while we're gestating. We may develop associations between the rhythms we’re feeling and her emotional state.
Our mother's blood is full of neurotransmitters and polypeptides which reflect responses to her environment. Here's something to think about: could those chemicals become part of our emotional world, even in utero? I speculate it's possible that we learn something about the relationship between digestion and emotion during gestation.
To take this speculation even further, is it possible we might even learn about constipation while in the womb? Perhaps we begin to associate certain emotional states with certain digestive states. Like how stress creates constipation. Sexological Bodyworkers have the unique ability and capability to touch the enteric nervous system, through contact with two anal sphincters. That's something that very few people think about, and even fewer people actually do. This is significant because we can work with people's emotional body directly through touching the external anal sphincter, and particularly the internal anal sphincter.
Something to consider next time you’re sitting on the toilet! I’m planting seeds for discussion because I think this is the way we learn about emotional health and its links to whole health. - Ellen Heed
Digestion and memory
Memory in the doing and non-doing
An integral part of learning from any doing is including non-doing integration time. Brain imaging has shown that memory is enhanced during sleep. All animals sleep after they have experienced something, and in this sleeping, learning happens. Wave patterns occur in the brain specifically for learning. Resting quietly for at least five minutes at the end of each session is similar to the yogic practice of savasana. This is referred to as installation. Without installation, the brain does not have the physical opportunity to remember.
"Your bushy dendrites keep sprouting new buds, and your brain prunes them. Buds that are not tuned disappear within two days" - Lisa Feldman Barrett
This is significant to understand when guiding a person in inhabiting new ways of being since learning from any action and doing in a session, without installation, is likely to be lost and forgotten explicitly and so is not as useful as it could be. The installation supports this learning to become a referenceable memory that a person can call on in future experiences to support their confidence in life.
The following influence the ways we learn
Climatising: the longer we stay with an experience, the more likely we are to climatise and become indigenous to it. Living in predictable patterns may reduce receptivity as the brain saves energy by projecting what is 'known' rather than receiving new data which consumes more energy. Climatising also facilitates a sense of safety and relaxation as the brain is not looking out for danger. When we feel safe through repeated practice, our confidence can develop from conscious incompetence into conscious competence and into what we might understand as embodied competence.
Symbolising - Symbolic representation is foundational for creating referencable explicit memory. Without symbolic reference, memories are likely to be recalled somatically through associations or the senses with less conscious recognition.
Intensity of "affect" naturally has more impact and is likely, in similar ways to novelty, to be a pattern interrupt which fires receptors into rapidly noticing that equilibrium needs attending to.
Multi-Sensory: The more senses are involved in an experience with corresponding interoceptive awareness, reinforced by meanings and associations, the more it’s likely to be encoded.
Novelty. Pattern interrupts expand conscious awareness as a natural survival function, with the senses opening to rapidly take in data that is not what the mind had predicted. There is a dopamine hormonal reward for discovering and learning, as knowledge acquired through foraging and learning is the ultimate power for surviving in nature.
Motivational relevance: The more salience and personal relevance we feel in our associations, the more likely we are to be interested in and motivated to remember them.
Gratitude is recognised when sensory receptivity opens simultaneously as activity comes to a pause. This is a recognition of pleasure in satiation rather than the dopamine reward pleasure of seeking. When gratitude is recognised during integration, there is more chance of an experience being stored in referencable memory that can be recalled.
A spectrum of feeling & expression, from chaos to rigidity
Sometimes, a feeling of "too much" can lead to what Daniel Siegel calls a "chaotic response". This can be described as a stream of letting go and an impaired ability to satiate, feel, contain, and digest life experiences.
The expression “verbal diarrhoea” can be understood as an expression of this and can also be expressed non-verbally in the physical body as diarrhoea with matter and life experiences passing through the body undigested and not fully felt, or metaphorically "sh**ing ourselves".
When we can feel more of ourselves and our life experiences without our fuse blowing, we are probably less likely to be dysregulated.
Another response to intense emotional affect is to hold this intensity inside without expression. Daniel Siegel refers to this as a "rigid response" where emotions are rationalised before they are felt. Body expressions of this can be understood as "bunged up" or "tight-arsed"”
Without sufficient interoceptive awareness, we are likely to override ourselves & not intuitively know our capacities. This can compromise our capacity to transform our life experiences through digestion and integration.
Without our gut intuition, we are disabled in our decision-making. Massaging the anus, as Ellen Heed describes in our practice as CSBs, can directly touch and relax our gut. The sensory receptors of the outer and inner sphincter, when relaxed, can transmit this relaxation and sense of letting go into the core of our being. When the core of our being is relaxed we are likely to be more attuned with ourselves, which improves our decision-making.
Vertebrate studies show that when the vagus nerve is severed the enteric nervous system continues to function independently from the brain in the skull. Because the enteric nervous system can operate autonomously this might explain why sometimes we can experience our guts as having "a mind of their own", behaving differently from how we perceive ourselves.
The feel-good experience of foraging for novelty or comfort can sometimes be compensatory for the lack of ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter communications from the gut when they cannot be felt. Sensory receptivity shuts down in response to overwhelming life experiences. Lifestyles with lots of activity without digestion can be understood as a mirror of this.
Addictive eating in response to stress is also a contributing factor to out-of-balance digestion. Too much food being swallowed may be a possible enactment of life experiences that have felt "too much to swallow".
The embodiment practices that we are teaching our clients are fundamental for learning to notice when we have had enough and to notice and register our "enoughness button".
Disconnection from our gut intelligence can lead to difficulties making decisions and loss of ability to notice “enough”.
The wheel of consent practices, which are foundational in our practice gives us the framework to discover trusting feeling more of ourselves, which informs our decision-making regarding what we are willing to engage in, wanting to engage in, and when we have had enough!
Enhancing interoceptive intuitive awareness with our gut's intelligence, knowing when we want something and when we have had enough, can be foundational for helping to change and balance chronic patterns of relationships.
These relationships can be with ourselves with a harsh inner dialogue that causes emotional pain and physical self-harm, with food and substances we consume. How we treat ourselves is often mirrored in how we treat others too. We can see this globally expressed in the harm and overtaking being done to the planet.
When our intuition is impaired, our empathy, attuned communication and compassion for others, animals and the planet are likely to be impaired too.
Most people who come to see us seek more and more of anything and are not able to relax sufficiently to feel the gratitude and satiation of that activity or relationship. They are in a dilemma with coping with the disharmony of unsatisfactory relationships and activity choices.
The enteric nervous system and belly massage
Belly massage can be a foundational beginning to any session where exploring the genitals or anus is part of the educational agreement. Consulting the belly first can support down-regulated felt intuition to inform the upper cortical structures' decision-making.
Belly massage can be a deeply connecting, intimate, comforting, and sometimes painfully integrating experience. It can be a useful practice for enhancing interoception through the interplay between touch and body focusing, which can lead to improved embodied choices about intimate decisions.
This is also an opportunity to contextualise belly massage using your knowledge of the parasympathetic and enteric nervous systems so you are both aligned with your focus of attention and intentions.