One of the benefits seen resulting from mindfulness practice is being better attuned to what your body is “telling” you.
(See my other blog post, Nine Ways That a Meditating Brain Creates Better Relationships.)
Here’s a great article from Scientific American about the gut, emotions, and accessing more of what you already know.
The emerging and surprising view of how the enteric nervous system in our bellies goes far beyond just processing the food we eat
By Adam HadhazyAs Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of “butterflies” in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our “second brain”.
A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.
Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making.
“The second brain doesn’t help with the great thought processes…religion, philosophy and poetry is left to the brain in the head,” says Michael Gershon, chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology and author of the 1998 book The Second Brain (HarperCollins).
Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system, Gershon says.
This multitude of neurons in the enteric nervous system enables us to “feel” the inner world of our gut and its contents. Much of this neural firepower comes to bear in the elaborate daily grind of digestion. Breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and expelling of waste requires chemical processing, mechanical mixing and rhythmic muscle contractions that move everything on down the line.
Click HERE to read the rest of this article at ScientificAmerican.com
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If you enjoy the articles and posts here on ReWire Your Brain For Love, you’ll probably also like my Monthly e-Newsletter, with tips to support your mindfulness meditation practice. Subscribers get a free meditation download, and are also automatically entered into regular prize giveaways. It’s fun, it’s FREE, and it’s only a single click away! CLICK HERE.
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If you enjoy the articles and posts here on ReWire Your Brain For Love, you’ll probably also like my Monthly e-Newsletter, with tips to support your mindfulness meditation practice. Subscribers get a free meditation download, and are also automatically entered into regular prize giveaways. It’s fun, it’s FREE, and it’s only a single click away! CLICK HERE.
{ 2 comments }
Thank you for sharing an interesting post.
In zazen (Zen meditation) we focus our minds in the hara, situated in the lower abdomen. When done with total focus, a feeling of well-being and centeredness develops.
Having practised this meditation daily for the last 30 years, I have discovered that any stressful life situation is easily transcended and there is a realization that there is nothing in life that is too much to handle.
Interesting to know. I had no idea.
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