Do you have a difficult time trusting your gut? Do you also have what some may call a “sensitive stomach” when it comes to food? Do you get a “nervous belly” when you’re feeling anxious? Do you know that those two sensations are deeply linked and not by accident? While many people have separate anxiety disorder diagnoses and/or gastrointestinal issues, when your feelings manifest as unpleasant sensations in your body, it’s time to look at how the two are linked in order to work in harmony with your body to heal.

You can always treat the symptoms in the ways that you’ve usually been handling them, but until you address what’s causing your health problems in the first place, this will always be an uphill battle. Truly, everything is connected, and using Intuitive Shiatsu as a tool to help you feel well again will be massively helpful if it feels like you’re fated to be stuck with a wonky digestive system forever.

Intuitive Shiatsu tells us that the stomach is directly connected to the Earth element as well as the season of Indian summer. If you are unfamiliar with the phrase, Indian summer refers to that time in autumn when it’s unseasonably warm and a little less chilly than a typical fall day. This connection to the digestive system feels obvious when you think about this season corresponding with a typical harvest season. This is when farmers routinely reap their crops. There’s a bountiful amount of food to be had and activities to indulge. Food is great! Why not indulge and overstuff yourself beyond your comfort level? (If you’ve ever overdone it, you’ll know why not.)

Now, think about your life. During the warmer months of fall – or, Indian summer – what’s going on with you? Maybe it signals the back to school season. For many businesses, it signals the last quarter of the year; a time to hustle to make your goals. It’s the most popular time of the year to have a birthday. It’s also the preamble to the holiday season and signals the end of a carefree summer. Sounds stressful, doesn’t it? Now, mix that with what you just learned about the Earth element.  Did you feel it in your stomach? That’s no coincidence.

The digestive system can be thought of in two different ways: literally and figuratively. It’s how your body processes food and eliminates waste. Everybody requires food to fuel their body and give it energy to thrive in life. The body is not designed to hold on to everything, so it takes what it needs and eliminates what it does not require at the moment. Figuratively, this is where bad feelings go to churn. How are you doing when it comes to digesting your feelings? Do you hold on to everything or do you take what you need and get rid of the rest? Do you notice that you don’t feel good after eating certain foods or that it feels tight or like a weight is pressing on your stomach when heavy feelings are present?

Everything on this planet is connected physically as well as metaphysically. Working in harmony with these energies to achieve balance through Intuitive Shiatsu will improve your overall health. Oftentimes, you don’t even need to have an allergy present to trigger what feels like an allergic reaction in your stomach. Inflammation is a sign that you’re thinking too much about life, marinating in your emotions, or fixating on that which you cannot control. The first step to wellness with your sensitive stomach is to begin by balancing your diet. Take inventory of what you’ve been eating. Moving forward, try not to overdo it in one area; too much sugar, spice, salt, or fat indicate that you’re utilizing food for comfort, not fuel, and it’s actually negatively impacting your feelings. First, try to incorporate more colors into your diet and bring about different varieties of foods. Balancing your diet is a crucial step when it comes to balancing your life. Don’t take on too much when it comes to your food and watch as it becomes a catalyst for taking on less stress in your life.

The expression “go with the flow” actually fits perfectly with using Intuitive Shiatsu to heal your sensitive stomach. When the Earth element is being activated too aggressively, it’s time to incorporate more of the water element into your system. What helps with digestion? Water. What goes into the soil to help plants grow? Water. When things feel stagnant, whether it be feelings or food and too much irritation is present, add in water to help everything flow more smoothly. Keep your feelings and your food moving through your body to regain energetic and spiritual balance.

This especially applies if your sensitive stomach correlates to issues in eliminating waste. Water is the key here. Of course, there are health benefits to it that your general practitioner would co-sign, but embracing the spiritual aspects of adding water into your life will undoubtedly boost your overall wellness.

Through Intuitive Shiatsu, you can look at what at first appears to be a surface level detail in life – a feeling, a health quirk, a cycle or pattern you can’t quite put your finger on – find the root cause of your issue, then begin to untangle that troublesome knot while improving your connectivity to the universal energy present in everyone and everything. By working in this modality, wellness can go beyond temporarily feeling better and move into the realm of achieving a higher overall quality of life for a more sustained amount of time.