The Gift of the Stomach

The gift of the Stomach is digestion--and I’m not talking about just food. I’m talking about breaking down and understanding all of life’s experiences. You’ve heard of “rest and digest”? That’s the function of the parasympathetic nervous system, and that’s the state in which healing happens (and the state your body gets into during acupuncture). Do you have time to rest and digest? Or is fight and flight your default mode setting? Can you give yourself the gift of the Stomach, which is digestion. Here’s the secret--you don’t have to “do” anything for your body to digest, except to give it space and rest to do so. Same thing with experiences. Been through a stressful one lately? Take a little more time for sleep, for laying low, for tending to. That’s digestion. And tending to digestion now, in the  moment, prevents so many problems down the line. Rest. Digest. It really can be that easy.