The Constipation Diaries #3 - Movement + Breath = Less Stress

Although i could talk about breathing and movement separately, they go together and furthermore, breathing is a form of movement.

You’ve probably noticed that when you sit for hours on end you start to feel sluggish and tired. Sometimes the tiredness is legitimate if you’ve been using your brain intensely. But in general, this sluggishness is due to the slowing down of your metabolism, and the tiredness signalling that there is less oxygen circulating through your body. Peristalsis (the muscle movement of your gut), and the movement of lymph (fluid containing white blood cells that have swept pathogens and toxins out of the cells) through the body slows down, and thus, our rate of detoxification.

Movement, however, kick starts all these processes once again…

It stimulates breathing, lifts our heart rate, which in turn increases oxygen throughout the body. The action of a full breath even massages our internal organs.

By movement, I don’t mean punishing exercise regimes. I’m talking about a brisk walk outside - or even a slow one could boost your mood, which is also good for gut motility - perhaps a moderate jog, a swim, a half hour bike ride, a yoga class, going dancing…dancing through your house with Shakira blasting from your phone…perhaps.

Movement that incorporates mindful breathing is especially beneficial for our physiology. It encourages the body into a state of relaxation, out of a state of chronic stress, and gives the monkey mind a rest. Sometimes our guts don’t relax and let go because WE can’t relax and let go. Stress can wind us up emotionally and physically. You’ve probably heard that stress creates response in our nervous system that slows down processes that aren’t crucial to our short term survival, i.e. digesting our food and excreting waste. Yoga, ti chi, Qi Gong all incorporate movement with breath. I recommend trying a practice for the sake of letting the movement and the breath bring you to present moment. Be gentle with your body - especially if you have never done yoga before. The goal is not to look amazing or be able to tuck your legs behind your ears. It is to move, breathe, and find what feels good. If it brings you out of crazy monkey mind mode, and into your amazing body, you’ve succeeded! And things start to flow much easier…

Practicing breathing techniques is a profound way to achieve more flow and peace, and consequently, a happier gut. Yet, I suspect most of us would experience a happier gut if we simply practiced breathing properly. Breathe through your nose, letting your ribs expand AND your abdomen. Your shoulders don’t need to lift. Rather than drawing your belly in when you inhale, let it balloon out. If you’re feeling anxious or stressed, start to notice how you are breathing. Are you holding in you stomach? Are you lifting your shoulders when you inhale? Are your inhales and exhales short or long? Even starting to notice, will help regulate your breathing. Making the exhale longer than the inhale is the easiest way to bring your body back to calm.

One caveat to this post is that many people find that their gut has the opposite reaction to stress: they have to set up camp by a bathroom. This might have been very adaptive in our evolutionary history. If you’re anticipating a life-threatening event, or a cue to a threat in the environment causes your subconscious to raise a red flag, it is a good idea to have evacuated bowels, so that this wouldn’t need to happen whilst on the run. And perhaps so that the gut is free from undigested or toxic waste products, just in case a long frantic run raises intestinal permeability. In which case, toxic material could leak into the rest of the system .

I digress into a possible theory here: where constipation is a reaction to stress, it may be that the individual is experiencing some degree of a fight/flight/freeze reaction in the present moment. Whereas, having diarrhea or constant loose motions happens when an individual is anticipating a stressful event in the future, or worried about events that may or may not happen.

That was my Psychology training making an appearance!

In both cases, breathing and gentle movement are a good idea. Although maybe do a little slow dance next to the bathroom if taking a walk outside is seems too risky.

Related to my speal about the anticipation of stressful events. Often these events never actually happen, and one of the best ways to calm our gut is to progressively increase self-awareness. To be able to hear our own thoughts, catch worry and anxiety before they spiral into fearful thought patterns. Then we can start to see them for what they are and that they don’t need to drive our existence. The less we interpret life events as a threat, the less likely our bodies are to fly into stress mode and…send us to the commode (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist rhyming that!)

Easier said than done, right? So this is a topic for a future post!