Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health

Charlotte Watts

• Publisher: Singing Dragon
• Print ISBN: 9781848193543
• eBook ISBN: 9780857013125
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Sport & Exercise Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Digestive issues are widespread and prove difficult to address through mainstream medicine. Senior yoga teacher Charlotte Watts sheds light on the connection between the gut and the brain, explains the links between stress, trauma and digestive issues and demonstrates how yoga with its focus on stilling the mind can have profound effects on conditions such as IBS, IBD, acid reflux, colitis, diverticulitis and more. Breath awareness allows the breath to drop into the belly and diaphragm, essential for good digestive function and understanding the fascial connections within the viscera help shape movement that enables optimal function.

Fully illustrated with clear diagrams and instructions, this volume provides yoga, movement and medical professionals with a solid understanding of the digestive system in relation to breath, mindfulness, posture, anatomy, movement, stress and trauma. It helps them to apply this knowledge to their practice and teaching approach.

PART ONE

Traditional Yogic Views
in a Modern World

In Part One of this book, we need to gather awareness of the landscape we are surveying, and, in a book with the word ‘yoga’ in the title, I feel it is respectful to start with the philosophical yoga model.

The particular menu of psycho-social stress, postural issues and dietary confusion of abundance creates a set of circumstances that were simply not around when the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and other yogic texts were written. Digestive issues have been around as long as the human gut, and yoga and its sister science Ayurveda (and their shared roots in Samkhya philosophy) picked up on this most fundamental expression of the human condition as a sign of something deeper within. For the modern human, we need to acknowledge the new context in which we stand or sit. Hunching over a laptop, stressed about your inbox, while snacking on a croissant…such habits have undoubtedly contributed to dis-ease in the modern digestive tract, so we need a different frame of reference to apply the rich tools that the yogic system provides.

Yoga has traditionally helped NS conditions such as IBS by recognising that philosophy dropping beneath mind-fluctuations helps stagnant energy release and rise from the lower body and the belly. This may seem at odds with the more reductionist views of differential diagnosis within modern medicine, but if we delve a little deeper, we can find parallels with the more recent research into the enteric nervous system, fascia, interoception and trauma. We will explore those in later parts of the book, but, to begin, we will focus on the philosophical and practical aspects of the yogic path that resonate most with where the modern human gut finds itself, what our gut-brain axis is trying to tell us and how we can listen and respond.

East meets West

If you are of a more scientific rationale and resistant to yogic modes of thinking such as chakras and nadis, dismissing them as ‘non-scientific’, consider being open to such ancient ideas by viewing them with a poetic eye rather than trying to box them in as literal absolutes.

If we suspend cynicism towards different philosophical models, we find that yoga provides an amazingly cogent mind-body system. In the world of visceral feelings and the unconscious that lies deep in the belly is acceptance of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty and being present to unfolding experience and gut feelings. It is here that an embodied yoga practice can most support digestive issues, where a disconnect between what is happening to us and the experience we have of it affects how we process the food we take in and how we can be nourished.

The subtle body

Material science and the more esoteric stance differ most when we consider the concept of a ‘subtle body’ (suksma sarira): that which is beyond physical matter.

What is the subtle body? Is it something material like connective tissue, hormonal secretion or neuronal pulse or is it formless like space, pure energy or consciousness? Is it tied to emotions such as fear or passion? In the tradition of yoga, the subtle body suggests that which is fine, delicate and infinitesimally small such as an atomic particle. It also speaks to the all-pervading spirit in the body and is one of the names of Siva. (Little 2016)

Before we could see inwards through imaging, x-rays and even dissection, yogis looked inwards through visualisation and meditation practices. Today our relationship with yoga is often more externalised, seeing images of a practice, rather than feeling them internally and even lacking trust in that we cannot see. Yet in our daily lives we can feel the space around us and rarely bump into people. This subtle body we feel is said to extend to 12 finger-widths out from the physical body. As Christopher Wallis states, ‘when we are unable to fully “show up” for any given experience, a remnant of it is deposited in our psyche – or, in Tantrik theory, in the “subtle body” which is simply the extension of the psyche’. The subtle body may be viewed as part of our kinaesthetic sense (see page 89).

The subtle body of the Upanishads and Hatha Yoga Pradipika in the 15th century was much more cryptic, requiring deep study and self-enquiry under a master, not as something ‘to do’, but as a rich, transformative process. Where prana might now be equated with energy, nadis with the NS and chakras with endocrine glands, the original descriptions were richer in metaphor, storytelling and imagery, like lotuses opening, rivers flowing and snakes unravelling upwards.

Physiological knowledge helps to contain these metaphors as places to understand in a felt sense. Prana, the life-force, can be explored and felt within our physical body out to the edges and into the midline and the belly. A view of the first three chakras, in particular in relation to their seat in the body and the psoas, the visceral fascia and the lower spine and hips, helps meld the esoteric with the pragmatic in a way that informs our practice and invites us to feel prana through the nerves, lymphatic system, capillaries, connective tissue and blood vessels.

Later in this book, we will use the topography of the chakras as a framework to understand how we develop gut and brain together, and then ultimately our psychology and samskaras (page 94).

Figure 1.1

Context of the Yoga Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Traditional Yogic Views in a Modern World
• Part Two: A Journey Around the Digestive Tract and Its Functions
• Part Three: Physical and Subtle Anatomy of the Digestive Tract and all Its Connections
• Part Four: Modern Psychology Within Yoga and the Gut
• Part Five: The Practices
• Part Six: Considerations for Specific Conditions
• Yoga and Yoga Therapy Course Recommendations
• References
• Further Reading
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• About the Author
• Join our mailing list
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• Of Related Interest
• Endorsement