Think with your Guts.

We are often told to 'listen to your gut' but where did that even come from? What makes listening to our gut even more powerful that listening to our brain?

It would seem more logical that the organ that is designed to do all the intellectual work be the one we listen to for advice however it's not always telling us what's best for us. Sometimes we have to take a step back and 'listen to our gut'. Come from a place of just knowing what is right. Some people also call this intuition or conversations with God or any other name they might give to a universal higher power. What it involves is listening to how our body responds to emotions. There has been increasing research on how our bodies process emotions and it might not be how you thought.

Our bodies are designed to function as a whole unit with each part integrated to all of the others. There are three main parts that process our emotions and start the cascade of cellular response throughout our whole body. This means that we don't just experience emotions in our mind but in our entire bodies and we can store them in our tissues causing physical discomforts.

The '3 brains' or emotional centers are the mind, heart and gut. The mind directs our behaviours and 90% of this occurs subconsciously. The heart has more neuro pathways from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart and the gut (the processor) produces 90% of the body's seratonin and also produces other 'feel-good' hormones as well.

Ensuring that all three parts are working well and working together are really important for overall wellness. We can get our bodies working in harmony by treating them well. Our gut needs a foundationally balanced diet with support from supplemented nutrients as needed. Today our food is more highly processed and generally lacks the density of nutrients that it used to which can lead to nutrient deficiencies even when the individual is at a healthy weight. Our hearts need support by working though our emotions. We can use techniques such as meditation, mindfulness, journaling and yoga to help ground us spiritually and help us process our emotions in a healthy way. To support our mind, we need to be careful what we feed it as well. We need to reduce our negative thought patterns and replace it with positive thoughts and feelings about ourselves so we can have calm and clarity.

So when you think to 'listen to your gut' remember you are accessing a wealth of knowledge about yourself and to have the most wellness, we need to start by creating balance in all areas of our health and feeding our brains well.