Can Yoga Support Gut Health? Part 1

By Imogen North for Om Yoga & Lifestyle Magazine.

Nurturing Gut Health Through Yoga

I am someone who has suffered with digestive issues since I was a kid but it is something that, until relatively recently, I didn’t really understand.  Gut-health has been a hot topic in recent years especially since Michael Gershon coined the term ‘the second brain’ and more recently Emeran Mayer helped us unpack more deeply how the microbes in the gut control just about everything!

Yoga has, since I started practicing, helped me not only befriend my body (the body that I used to judge and criticise for not being this way or that) but also help me maintain mobility in my gut, allowing it to function properly.

With modern life the way it is both posture and stress influence our guts. They have a significant part to play for many of us in our gut health and why our guts aren’t functioning the way it should.

Of course we can work with diet and nutrition to help to support the gut microbes – but as a dynamic system we also need to support both movement and stillness in the body.  And this is where yoga can help.  Let’s look first a posture.

Many of us spend a large amount of time very sedentary, either sitting at desks in front of screens, sitting in cars travelling from A to B, or sitting in front of the TV in the evenings.  When you look at the bodies placement at these times, it is most likely slouched or slumped, the head is forced forward of shoulders, the shoulders are hunched over, closing off the chest so the rib cage can’t move easily.

If the ribcage can’t move easily, nor can the diaphragm and what often happens then is the scalene muscles in the neck take the work of the diaphragm.  These hunched tendencies put pressure on the digestive organs preventing them from having much opportunity for twisting or stretching.

As animals that are built to stand vertically, our digestive system follows a similar vertical path.  Starting at the mouth and ending at the rectum it relies on this vertical length in our posture, gravity, space and movement to function properly.

It we are not moving and spend too much time curled up in these slumped shapes everything is going to be restricted.

So from a yoga perspective one of the key things we can do to support the function of our gut is to open up this central column; our vertical path where our oesophagus runs down to the stomach and then on to the intestines.  If we open up from center and create movement in that body line, we are going to provide an ideal environment for the food substances we injest to glide easily through the digestive pathway.

All our digestive organs are held within fascial bags and the fascial chain that meets all the digestive organs and the muscles that impact our digestion is known as the DFL (the Deep Front Line).  The DFL is our deepest facial line and is really key to our body wide internal stabilisation it elongates us from the center and lifestyle i.e. creates space for the digestive organs to function.

It runs from the inner lower legs, pelvic floor, abdomen, back of the diaphragm, inner chest, scalenes in the neck and the side of the jaw.

If this fascial chain is fluid in nature then everything that needs to slide and glide down the digestive tract can.  Tightness or stress in the viscera and its surrounding fascial support can not only contribute to limited joint mobility but also breathing difficulties and circulatory issues.  (More about that in article 2 of this series).