Rebalance your digestion and reclaim your power centre
Do you struggle with chronic digestive issues such as bloating, indigestion or acid reflux? Do you get tired or feel nauseas after eating?
Are you always on the go? Stressed-out or feel like you tinker on the edge of burnout? Are you achievement orientated or overly competitive? Does your perfectionism get in your way? Or, have you lost your drive completely?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be experiencing an imbalance in your Solar Plexus chakra. We have seven primary energy centres where major energy channels intersect and this, our third chakra, is located over the centre of the body around our stomach area.
The fire in your belly
The Sanskrit name for the Solar Plexus “Manipura” translates as “bright jewel”. The fire of this chakra provides us with the energetic fuel we need to sustain our physical, mental, emotional, and bioenergetic functioning. Like the sun, it radiates energy throughout our life and stokes action in our systems including our digestive organs like the stomach, spleen, liver and pancreas.
When our Solar Plexus is balanced, we feel motivated and energised by life but we’re not in overdrive. We have a balanced relationship with our personal power, our thoughts are clear and do not restrict our potential, and we can overcome our fears.
Our digestion also runs smoothly and the transformation of food to energy is efficient. In fact, we will successfully digest and assimilate what we take in from the world, both physically and mentally.
An imbalanced Solar plexus
If the Solar Plexus is not balanced, we may find that stress accumulates in the body. Physical symptoms can occur in the digestive system such as indigestion, bloating or reflux, and we may struggle with blood sugar dysregulation and energy dips.
An imbalance can also manifest as low self-esteem, a dominating personality, aggression, lack of purpose or enthusiasm for life, and feelings of helplessness. A small or single blockage may only influence one aspect of life, however, larger blockages can spread and influence many facets of your day-to-day life including work and relationships.
The Gut-Brain Connection
Whilst the Solar Plexus is situated over our stomach area, it is also the home of the ‘mental body’ and is associated with how we manage our thoughts, our ego and the inner critic that we all develop to protect ourselves. Interestingly, anxiety and depression are often co-expressed with digestive and bowel disorders.
And it is no coincidence that two primary nerve divisions that connect our brains with our gut converge in the area of the body associated with the Solar Plexus chakra. This two-way communication channel, known as the gut-brain axis, is known to affect our overall health, immunity, stress response, mood, memory, and thought processes.
Although science is really only just beginning to understand the many complexities of the interactions between the brain and the gut, the ‘enteric nervous system’ embedded in the lining of the gastrointestinal system has become widely regarded as the second brain, and has been shown to be capable of acting autonomously and co-ordinating digestion, even if the vagus nerve is severed.
The Sun and Moon within us
It may be helpful to think about powerful effects of the two major nervous systems divisions on our bodies and minds in terms of the dualities of the sun and the moon:
The Sun: The solar (enteric-hypogastric) plexus is associated with the sympathetic nervous system. This is the fiery division of the nervous system that is responsible for our stress response and whether we fight, freeze or flee in the face of a major threat or stressor, and other related reactions outside of our voluntary control, such as the inhibition or slowing down digestive and eliminatory functions during a traumatic experience.
The Moon: The vagus nerve is the primary nerve associated with the parasympathetic nervous system – what we know as the “rest, digest, reproduce and heal” or the calming division of the autonomic nervous system. This nerve transmits information regarding the state of the digestive organs from the gut to the brain and, when activated, it mobilises bodily functions such as digestion, assimilation, and immunity.
GUT MICROBIOTA
Working alongside and closely interacting with the gut-brain axis, is the gut microbiome - the vast ecosystem of trillions of microbes that reside inside all of our digestive tracts - that recent science is also showing to be a major influence on our digestive health, stress response and mental wellbeing.
These small but powerful microbes are involved in bidirectional communication with our nervous system, as well as being involved in various signalling pathways with our neuro-endocrine and immune systems too. Our gut bugs also help regulate neurotransmitter production (95% of serotonin is produced in the gut) and play a role in maintaining the integrity of the junctions of the intestinal barrier.
6 practices to rebalance the Solar Plexus
There are multiple things you can do to rebalance your digestion and reclaim your personal power centre. Here are a few ideas to help you get started:
If you experience energy dips between meals, opt for snacks that help keep your blood sugar, energy and mood stable. Some ideas are a banana with nut butter, a smoothie with pineapple and spinach, yoghurt with berries, nuts and seed mixes, a hard boiled egg, and carrots and hummus.
Eating mindfully helps your body make the switch from ‘sun’ to ‘moon’, promoting a state of relaxation and calm which is conducive to good digestion. Giving your full attention to your eating experience may help support the natural production of gastric juices and enzymes required to break down food so it can be absorbed and converted to energy. And, as digestion starts in the mouth, thorough chewing also helps make digestive processes ‘downstream’ easier.
Regularly consume foods with properties know to naturally support digestion. These include apple cider vinegar, ginger, lemons, bitter greens which help stimulate your digestive juices, and fermented foods such as kefir, tempeh sauerkraut and kimchi to help promote a healthy gut microbiome.
Learn one or two techniques or methods to help you embrace your judgemental and critical voice within and manage thoughts and beliefs that might be keeping you stressed. I love mindfulness-based approaches which is why I learned Acceptance & Commitment Therapy to share some of the tools with my clients. It also helps how you respond to challenging life events.
Try calming activities like Yoga. Yoga can help stimulate the vagus nerve to the benefit of your gut, body and mind. Stimulating the vagus nerve through gentle movement and mindful breath may help dial off the inflammatory activity of the sympathetic nervous system and reduce stress. A Yoga teacher can show you poses that specifically support the Solar Plexus, promote healthy digestion and gut motility, as well as help you strengthen the abdominal muscles.
Surround yourself with yellow, the colour associated the Solar Plexus! To benefit from the energy of this transformative colour and strengthen this energy centre try eating more yellow foods such as squash, yellow pepper or turmeric, wear more yellow or buy fresh yellow flowers.
Next steps
If you need more support on your health and wellbeing journey, please do check out my Resilience programme for support with energy-promoting nutrition self-care, and my Rebalance programme for support with digestive concerns and gut healing.
