… destress and sleep deeply. Learn to jump off the treadmill of modern life and properly ‘rest and digest’.
How often do you *properly* relax?
I don’t just mean sitting watching Netflix in the evening, I mean reaching a state of true, deep relaxation where you are truly unwound and feeling zero pressure – even if it’s only short term.
For many of us, we only really reach this state around 10 days into a two-week holiday…
But slowing down, reaching that deeply unwound state is absolutely crucial for achieving your best digestive health – and for our wellbeing generally.
Rest and digest…
Why ‘rest and digest’?
If you think of how we evolved, humans would either be feeling safe (where they could focus on enjoyment and fun) or in danger (where they needed to defend themselves against danger). Our bodies tend to be in one of two states: ‘safe and relaxed’ [parasympathetic nervous system activated] or ‘fight or flight’ [sympathetic nervous system activated].
Crucially, these two systems are like two sides of an old-fashioned weighing scale: when one is more active, the other becomes less active.
In other words, if we’re in fight or flight, we’re not in ‘rest and digest’.
It can leave us exhausted!
Perpetual treadmill
Many of have chronic, low level stress or tension caused by the ‘busy-ness’ of our lives, work, home, etc. This means that we’re always slightly in ‘fight or flight’, and this means our digestion is never allowed to work as freely as it should.
There are simple breath techniques that can calm the fight/flight/freeze processes and activate our rest and digest systems.
In the Zenith Method Program for optimal digestive health, we work with Anandi – The Sleep Guru, a breath and sleep specialist.
Anandi has developed a brilliant virtual breath workshop where she uses breath techniques to quickly bring about a sense of deep calm and relaxation – thus promoting efficient digestion.
