Irritable bowel syndrome and our digestion of life.

Our digestive tract is a very delicate bodily system that is continually processing what needs to be absorbed by the body and what is to be discarded, which extends way beyond its physical job description of discerning what water, minerals and nutrients are needed to maintain our health and wellbeing to its wider energetic role of processing what energy we have absorbed/taken on from our day.

Energy is not something we tangibly digest like eating an apple or a slice of pizza but is no less impactful on the body than eating something that doesn’t agree with us. When we don’t observe life and the energy at play in any given situation, we absorb it and no different to swallowing food, the digestive system is left to process what we haven’t dealt with.

To give a simple example we can all relate to - if someone around us is stressed out such as running late or working to a tight deadline if we don’t observe the situation it is easy to get caught in their whirlwind of intensity and take that energy on where you soon find yourself also feeling stressed and doing things faster than you usually would.

We could say in this example that the stress isn’t ours because it came from reaction to someone else being stressed yet like them it also ends up affecting our mood where we can quickly change from feeling relatively settled and relaxed to stressed, not to mention the physical changes we can experience to our breathing, heart rate and how tense our muscles and connective tissue are.

 The burning question is how does this happen so easily? How do we go from watching someone else be stressed around us to enjoining them in it?

 It comes down acceptance or our lack thereof.

 If we want life and people to be a certain way such as the example of wanting them to be calm and relaxed around us, the instant they are stressed there will be an inevitable reaction to the unmet expectation which is then worsened if we take it on as our job to fix or make the situation better for them such as jumping in and trying to help. This has an immediate impact on our digestive system which fundamentally reflects our acceptance of life, other people and also ourselves.

When we don’t accept things as they are by reading more deeply into what momentum is allowing things to occur such as a pattern of self-sabotage leading to running late and want them to be different because we don’t want to deal with the energy at play then we have created instant tension, constriction and dis-ease in the digestive system.

This may show itself quickly in short-term symptoms that we can recognise are associated with our reaction such as constipation, diarrhoea, bloating, gas etc or more gradually develop into a chronic condition such as irritable bowel syndrome where there can be a significant build-up of things we have not resolved ie accepted and let go of. Our digestion can then become very sensitive and reactive to anything we eat no matter how healthy and clean it is because it simply cannot handle more.

This is not to suggest that we don’t seek medical advice and treatment for our physical symptoms as this is very important to do so, but rather to point out that if we don’t also address the energetic side of things and how well we are ‘digesting life’ or not we will not get to the root energetic cause of the dis-ease and will miss out on the immense learning and evolution on offer.

 In complement to medicine, as a counsellor and practitioner of energy healing therapies I offer a wholistic approach to the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome and other digestive conditions such as leaky gut syndrome, exploring what a client is having difficulty accepting in their life which could be specific to themselves such as not feeling good enough or a situation with others and working the energy healing therapies to support them to let go and clear from the body what is creating tension and disharmony.

As part of Esoteric Massage I specifically offer digestive massage which is a very gentle technique to support in clearing stagnant energy from the digestive tract.

If you would like to know more about the treatments that I offer please click here.