Indigestion

When we’re stressed we enter ‘fight or flight’ mode. We stop salivating, our mouth goes dry. Our stomach grinds to a halt, contractions stop and enzymes and digestive acids are no longer secreted. Our small intestines stop the peristaltic flow of movement along the conveyor belt of nutritional extraction, and as a result, nothing is absorbed.

Meanwhile, the large intestines desperately try to dump our unwanted waste in an attempt to lighten the load and get us sprinting like Usain Bolt. The entire machinery of our digestive factory shuts down.

Once the stress has calmed down, the system kicks back into gear, but it takes time to get up to full operational capacity, and quite often it gets switched off before it gets there due to yet another moment of tension.

Stress also revs up our nervous system; we eat too fast and don’t chew enough. 

Chewing is important as it breaks food down into manageable pieces for the stomach to then mechanically bash against into our stomach walls for further break down (before chemical dissolution). It also gets our saliva going, which is the first step to a smooth digestive process.

It’s a bit like when we want to remove old wallpaper, the first thing we do if we want a job that won’t tax us, is to spray the wallpaper with water to soften it up ready for breakdown. It is the same with saliva.

But when we eat too fast because we are too adrenalised, or nervous, we miss out on this vital step, and our digestion can’t cope. When you want to relieve indigestion, preventing stress is often the answer.

Meditation works at all levels to aid the digestive process, making it one of the most effective natural remedies for indigestion.

It quietens the frequency and intensity of the stress response so that our digestion is not subject to such volatile functioning. It also evens out any wonky programming that may have taken hold in our digestive rhythms.

Beeja meditation makes sure that just the right amount of parasympathetic activation occurs in our nervous system so that the stomach releases all of the right digestive fluids to break down our food, and that we produce plenty of juicy saliva.

It also calms us down so we’re not too nervous or adrenalised. Instead of hurriedly shoving a sandwich in our chops, we can take the time to enjoy food more, chewing properly and swallowing only when this initial phase of digestion is completed.

Meditation also helps us become more in tune with our body. Without even trying, we pay more attention to the things we eat.

Our compulsive eating habits are a bit like putting too many logs onto a fire: when we do this, the fire becomes suffocated and begins to die down without burning through the fuel. It is exactly the same with our digestive fire.