Gluten-Free Digestion Repair Starts in the Mind and the Heart

I have written a lot about the dietary aspects of repairing your digestion from the devastation gluten intolerance and other food in tolerances cause.  It is my personal experience that focusing only on diet did not heal your digestive tract fully. The healing of my leaky gut did not pick up the pace until I chose to focus just as much on achieving emotional wellness as I did not what I was eating.

Many medical professionals believe that the main reason people with Celiac Disease or gluten intolerance continue to have symptoms post-diagnosis is that they are eating some gluten. That may be true, but I don’t think it is the whole truth.

The missing piece here for me has been the acknowledgment that there is a lot of stress triggering events happening in the world right now and most people don’t have the emotional or spiritual resources to cope with the stress. Some of us are more sensitive than others to external stressors (myself included).  The stress I am referring to in this post is the internal experience or the internal reaction we have to external events. What I want to make clear is that we have A LOT of control over how we  react to and experience our world.

I find when I don’t acknowledge emotional stress it starts to impact not only my emotional health but I start having digestive problems, hormonal imbalances, and blood sugar problems. I am convinced my emotional state and my digestive health are undeniably intimately related and that becoming more mindful of this reality has resulted in a profound shift in my level of health and vitality on all levels. My supplements work better,  my hypoglycemia disappears, and my metabolism seems to get a boost when I regular employ basic stress relief practices.

A good part of the activity happening in our digestive, immune, lymphatic system, and nervous systems happens not only due to what we eat, but how we live in our bodies as a whole. By how we live in our bodies I mean what we take in on all levels: the thoughts we think, the environment we live in, the air we breathe, the people we spend time with,  the way we interpret and hold on to past events,  the media we are exposed to, etc.

I filter my experiences through my gut, or the core of my body, to a large extent. Keeping the flow of energy in my core organs is very important and a huge part of keeping healthy and letting daily stressors flow through me instead of getting stuck and causing illness.

Many studies have shown the incredibly transformative power of mind body approaches to healing. There are many skeptics out there, but I find that if one is willing to throw skepticism aside and “act as if”, to treat the healing journey as a sacred process,  healing miracles become possible.

Here are the Top 3 cost-free things I do to keep stress from making me sick:

1. Forgiveness and Compassion

I often find myself feeling upset to varying degrees about various things happening in the world or in my personal life. When I am holding onto anger, resentment, fear, or hurt feelings my core gets tight and my back begins to ache. When this happens I find it helpful to adopt an attitude of forgiveness and compassion for myself for having these ‘negative’ emotions and for the other parties in the situation. To do this I simply take out my journal and write about the situation without censoring the words. I always end up at a place of forgiveness, compassion, and greater insight. Writing helps me connect to the wisest parts of myself and release whatever needs to be released.

Another way I practice forgiveness and compassion is a new prayer I learned from a friend that is making its way around the internet. I visualize whomever (sometimes it is me who needs to forgive myself) I want to forgive or whom I feel I owe an apology and send this prayer their way:

Ho’oponopono Prayer:

“I Love You, I’m Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank You”

You can learn more about this prayer that originates from a Hawaiian healer here

Gratitude

I make it a regular practice before bed to review with my husband things we are grateful for that day. It helps me keep my mindset positive instead of going to bed ruminating over daily frustrations.  I have also kept a gratitude journal in which I wrote down 10 things every night before bed I was grateful for that day, it is really fun to pick up this old journal and review it whenever I am in a funky mood.

Nature As Healer

It is just not natural how much time I can spend each day sedentary and indoors  if I don’t  continually remind myself regular movement and especially exercising in nature is medication for me.

I find walking in nature to leave me feeling much calmer and peaceful than working out in a gym. I still like to go bust a sweat at a cardio dance class and reap great benefits from that, but nothing helps me let go of worries like a walk in nature.

This nature connection feels even more important when momma nature is ailing so much. Each news report of a natural disaster makes me want to  connect to mother earth even more in an effort remind yourself that despite all the trauma she has gone through she is still thriving in so many ways and so beautiful.

Just like all of us, for all our inner and outer scars, we are so beautiful and thriving in many ways.