In the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring our digestion.

According to yoga and ayurveda, digestion is the cornerstone of good health, in our body and mind. Everything that is taken in must be digested.

And not just food.

We digest everything we take in through our senses—our mouth, nose, eyes, ears, touch. And we digest all we take in through the mind and heart, such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

We need to process it all, integrating the nutritive properties and releasing that which keeps us from evolving and renewing.

Through this process of digestion, we are continually regenerating and renewing ourselves.

And yet optimal digestion can only happen when our bodies and minds feel safe enough to rest and digest.

soft belly, free diaphragm, & fluid breath

We also have to consider that the belly and pelvis are considered the seat of our emotional energy. This area, also known as the Water center, is fluid, changeable — an ocean.

An ocean of e-motion.

When we are soft and fluid, we continually flow from emotional state to state. When we’re tense in the belly, it tightens our breath. We hold more strongly and stress more easily. Things get hard. Stuck.

Now, as a tandem story, we’re often taught (or even encouraged) to hold in our belly for so many reasons. We grip, freeze, avoid, go numb. I can go on.

When our belly is tight, our diaphragm has less range of motion. And then everything gets more stuck.

Our diaphragm is responsible for our breath. It’s a thin, dome-shaped muscle that sits below the lungs and heart. It attaches to the sternum, and all along the bottom of the rib cage and spine.

Below it sits all our abdominal organs, which facilitate digestion and elimination.

When we inhale, the diaphragm pulls down, and when we exhale, it domes up.

As it helps pull the breath in and push out, it is rhythmically stimulating the vagus nerve as well as massaging the organs. The more movement, the better stimulation of both the nerve and our organs.

As our belly grows softer, there is less restriction for the diaphragm. Its movement is more free and full and the ocean breath flows more freely and fully, allowing graceful movements to ripple through the belly, softening everything further still.

nourishing the gut-brain connection

As we relax, the belly and our diaphragm move more fully, softening our belly further, which sends a message to the rest of the body to relax.

A message is sent from the belly up the vagus nerve to the brain to relax more, allowing our awareness, our cognitive mind and our relaxed heart, to go back down into the belly.

We can relax more on purpose and meet and care for our deeper feelings and emotions, sensations that may bubble up and be loosened in the softer environment.

We can then practice simply BEING with whatever arises with compassion and friendship. We can relax more and allow everything to rise and fall. We can practice allowing — neither judging nor shutting things down; neither exaggerating nor amplifying things.

We are simply practicing being present and being the loving presence we so crave. We’re simply practicing relaxing and visiting with ourselves.

This practice can help us create a safe space within ourselves, to help initiate the state of rest and digest and further the entire process of digestion.

Our soft belly helps us nourish the brain-gut connection, and we know that some of our deepest knowing wisdom also comes from the gut — gut instinct, intuition.

Fun fact: The gut contains 100 million nerve endings, about five times as many neurons as the spinal cord. Science now calls this our other “brain,” and it is known as the enteric nervous system. Science has found many of the same neurons are in the intestines as well as in the brain.

When we soften our belly, we can relax more deeply. Our mind gets the message from our body and our mind can then send the message down to the body to relax further still.

This is a compassionate relationship loop.

When we regularly take time to unwind ourselves and release habitual tension, we increase our capacity to keep the loop intact, even in the face of our day-to-day challenges.

This not only facilitates more complete digestion but also stronger immunity, growth, and repair of cells and tissues, circulation of energy and nutrition.

a deep core meditation

In the meditation I offered this week, we get down into our deep gut and core to experience the relationship between the belly, diaphragm, vagus nerve, and ability to digest.

Our practice will create conditions to relax more and release unnecessary habitual tension. In the last few weeks, we’ve set the foundation with the three-part breath and the VOO breath.

Now we’ll practice softening, releasing tension.

In my upcoming virtual restorative yoga teacher training, which begins Wednesday, February 1, you’ll learn to create and guide a customized practice that helps you and your students release layers of tension, calm the nervous system, and feel at ease. (Scholarships and payment plans are available.)

If you’re interested, I hope you’ll dive into the training details here.

In addition, I am offering the first module, Foundations of Restorative Yoga & the Nervous System as a standalone teacher training workshop that will be available for 5 CEUs. Learn more here.