Think about the last time you had a big decision to make and felt it in your stomach before you could put it into words. Or the flutter of nerves before speaking in front of a room. We talk about a gut feeling as though it were a figure of speech, but it turns out the language is more literal than most people realize.
Your gut has its own nervous system. It is called the enteric nervous system, and it contains hundreds of millions of nerve cells lining the digestive tract, enough that researchers often call it the second brain. It communicates constantly with the brain in your head, and here is the surprising part. Most of that traffic runs upward, from the gut to the brain, rather than the other way around.
This connection shapes how you feel more than we tend to give it credit for. A large share of the body’s serotonin, one of the key chemicals tied to mood, is produced in the gut. The trillions of bacteria living in your digestive system, known as the microbiome, appear to influence everything from stress levels to emotional resilience. When the gut is unsettled, the mind often follows.
It works in both directions. When you are stressed, your body shifts into fight or flight, and digestion is one of the first things it puts on hold. That is why anxiety can tie your stomach in knots or take your appetite away entirely. Calm the system down, and digestion comes back online.
There are gentle ways to support this relationship. Slow down at meals instead of eating at your desk or on the move, so your body registers that it is safe enough to digest. Notice the sensations in your belly through the day rather than overriding them. Feeding your gut bacteria well, with plenty of fibre-rich and fermented foods, gives the helpful microbes something to work with. And because stress is so hard on digestion, anything that genuinely lowers your stress load is also caring for your gut.
This is where energy work fits naturally. The solar plexus, the area just above the navel, sits right at this crossroads of digestion and emotion, and it is one of the places people most often feel tension release during a session. Reiki encourages the body to drop out of fight or flight and into the calmer rest and digest state where the gut does its best work.
If your stomach has been carrying your stress lately, it may be asking for the same thing the rest of you needs, which is a chance to settle. Jose offers reiki sessions at Transcendence Healing in Vancouver, and you can book a time online whenever you are ready to give your whole system a reset.
