Your Health Destiny by Eva Selhub M.D

Author:Eva Selhub, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

What Wisdom Traditions Say About Digestion

According to wisdom traditions, a strong body and a healthy digestive system represent your ability to be in harmony and agreeability with the earth, your surroundings, others, and yourself. In the five-element system of traditional Chinese medicine, your spleen is the organ mainly responsible for digestion and nourishment and is associated with the element of earth, or Mother Earth, if you will. To best understand this concept, think about what Mother Earth does. She is responsible for ingesting, digesting, and assimilating the earth’s materials so they can be used to support new life, like taking the dead leaves that fall from the trees to fertilize the soil for new growth.

Your spleen, according to traditional Chinese medicine (not Western medicine), provides nourishment and warmth to your body. It regulates your metabolism and supports the integrity of the body, while providing you with energy. Your spleen is also involved in the digestion of your ideas and the extraction of new information from your experiences. It influences your ability to reflect, think creatively, innovate, concentrate, and assimilate stressful experiences into opportunities for self-growth. According to this wisdom tradition, when your gastrointestinal system is not in balance, you might experience digestive problems, but you may also incur other symptoms such as worry, feelings of being overwhelmed, poor concentration, rigid thinking, lack of creativity, or a poor sense of self or self-worth.

The Vedic tradition has a similar approach. The third, or solar plexus, chakra (recall that chakras are energy centers responsible for transforming spiritual energy into physical energy) is associated with digestion and the corresponding organs. This chakra is located between the rib cage and navel and governs the upper abdomen, stomach, spleen, intestine, liver, pancreas, and gallbladder. It is believed that this energy center governs creative and intuitive abilities as well as the rational side of the mind, assimilation of thoughts, the ego, and experiences that help you define yourself. A healthy third chakra represents a healthy digestive system, whereby you know who you are, what is nourishing for you and what is not, and are able to absorb and assimilate life’s experiences in a healthy way, without losing yourself or being destroyed; you are able to let go and be rid of whatever it is that does not serve, help, or better you.

Can you see the correlation now between Jessie’s story or my story and the circumstances or emotions that added to the symptoms? In my case, feeling threatened for my beliefs and not really believing in myself led to stomach distress, while acceptance allowed me to feel better. When the functions of the digestive system—ingestion, discrimination and protection, absorption and integration, and elimination—are healthy, they manifest as a healthy sense of self, the ability to digest and assimilate information and life’s lessons, and being able to let go of whatever doesn’t serve you. In turn, when these character traits, attitudes, or behaviors are strong, your digestive system benefits.

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