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Do you have digestive problems like heartburn, a nervous stomach, trouble digesting oils and fats, or with proteins; bloating after meals? There are so many of my patients that come in taking stomach proton pump inhibitors for their hiatal hernias and GERD. There are valuable nutritional supports that I offer my patients to help them regain digestive health. Keep in mind that more and more studies are showing the way our digestion affects our mental state via the kind of bacteria flora we have in our gut. If you are on a life-renewing journey, changing your diet and improving digestion is important.
As you will discover while working with the 4 Elements, there are four important life-building principles that you can use to regain health and a pain-free existence. Few people today know about these principles. They go back to ancient times, and were called by the wise men (and women), with the names that these principles were seen in Nature – Fire, Air, Water and Earth.
You are about to learn things you can do to bring the power of the four into you for the sake of your stomach.
It is important to note that the stomach and abdominal organs are the forward parts of the lower back. Further, you need to see the legs and feet as the extensions of the lumbar vertebrae. The point: people with stomach issues often improve if they are able to change the way they use their feet to anchor the organs of their abdomen.
Briefly, it is important to focus upon letting your heels – particularly the back ½ inch of them – to engage the ground as you walk. As you work to anchor your torso (with its stomach) backwardly into your heels – particularly as you walk – your stomach as an organ will be put into a better alignment with the rest of your body.
This improved alignment of your stomach helps it to clear out many of the structural strains that have accumulated within the fibers that build the walls of your stomach.
Try this: Drink a tall glass of water 5-15 minutes before you eat. If you can add a ½ tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to it, that’s even better. What this does is “plumps up” the lining of your stomach so it will be more resistant to the acids it produces. Don’t drink too much water with your meal, which will dilute your stomach acids and make the stomach work harder (that extra churning). You can sip water during your meal and have a hot beverage after you eat. In moderation, both will assist in drawing the healing power of the Water Principle into the stomach.
Try this: Three or more times a day focus upon your breath for 10 breaths or more. These breaths are, however, going to take longer to do. You are to slow your breath down by counting the inhale and exhale counts of a single breath. Try to eventually reach 10 more counts of an inhale; you can have lesser exhale counts. Nothing bad will happen to you by slowing your breathing rhythm down to the slowest you might choose to do.
As you do slow it down, your breathing muscles are given a greater chance of learning the way they should get used as you breathed each day. You may be given some 4 Element Yoga maneuvers, which will strengthen important muscle circuits of people with stomach problems as you breathe more fully.
The quicker, shallower breaths that many people have stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. While slow breathing promotes the flow of the body’s innate intelligence to your organs, shallow, fast breathing pushes one’s body into a stress state, toward battle.