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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
People with reflux, irritable bowels or years of unexplained stomach pain are often told the two things are unrelated, or that it is stress in the dismissive sense. Neither is quite right. Working on settling, a longer breath out, eating without a screen, a short walk after a meal, is a reasonable thing to try alongside proper medical care, and for some people it makes a real difference.
God 'sent water down from it and with that water produced things for your sustenance' (Quran 2:22). Feeding a body is part of the design, and so is the calm it takes to do it.
البقرة
ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ فِرَٰشࣰ ا وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بِنَآءࣰ وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ فَأَخۡرَجَ بِهِۦ مِنَ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ رِزۡقࣰ ا لَّكُمۡۖ فَلَا تَجۡعَلُواْ لِلَّهِ أَندَادࣰ ا وَأَنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
who spread out the earth for you and built the sky; who sent water down from it and with that water produced things for your sustenance. Do not, knowing this, set up rivals to God
Qur’an 2:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An experimental crossover study found that deep slow breathing and transcutaneous vagal stimulation both increased vagal tone, improved gut motility and reduced sensitivity to pain. That is a direct demonstration that changing the breath changes autonomic state, and the gut along with it. It was a small experimental study rather than a trial of treatment for any gut condition.
Frøkjaer JB, Bergmann S, Brock C, Madzak A, Farmer AD, Ellrich J, Drewes AM. (2016). Modulation of vagal tone enhances gastroduodenal motility and reduces somatic pain sensitivity.. Neurogastroenterology and motility doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The nerve that helps you settle also runs your digestion, so the two tend to move together.
Persistent gut symptoms should be investigated medically, with breathing practices sitting alongside that rather than instead of it.
The calm and connected part of this system speaks through your face, your voice, your ears and your heart. That is why those are the places to work.
You do not need other people to reach a settled state. Breath, a slow walk somewhere green, a cat asleep on your lap: all of them get you there.
Roughly four fifths of the traffic on the vagus nerve is heading up from your body to your brain. Your brain is largely reading a report from your body.