Coming into my final year of Graduate School, I am having to research and think about what I want to write my final thesis paper about. I am currently doing a lot of research on the enteric nervous system (basically our gut). Our gut has its entirely own nervous system, its own way of working, basically its own brain. It can run entirely separate and on its own without any input from the brain and the spinal cord. In one research study they took out the colon of animals who had already died and kept their guts in a saline solution. When blown into the colon it blew back because of the increase pressure and still engaged in peristaltic action.
I find this fascinating. Why you may ask? We put such emphasis on the brain in our head, the right and left hemispheres, how to utilize the brain, how to try and keep it quiet, but we often don't ask the question what brain are we talking about? When you tune into your body when you are hungry, your mind could be telling you "I really want to some ice cream" and your gut could say "I think we need more protein today." Both have some truths, both are giving a message, and neither is wrong to choose. Yet the fact that we have a whole different system telling us something else goes unrecognized. Our body is giving us useful information and perhaps we should be listening to our guts much more often than we do.
Yet, I will further contradict myself. Think about the old saying "gut intuition." I would like to reframe and redefine what intuition is. I truly don't believe in it anymore. Intuition is nothing until you check it out. Because we have two different brains, our brain in our head can be triggered with fear and then we feel fear in our body and our central nervous system is activated and the gut is affected and then we think that we are having a gut intuition about something when really we are triggered over past events or just having a human response to a situation.
I would like to explore perhaps not listening to one brain more than another, but how do we integrate these two parts of ourselves? If every symptom, feeling, illness, is a message from the body then can we slow down enough to listen to the message trying to be relayed and where is it coming from? I will continue to update in my progress and musings about my thesis and would love input as I try to create a new paradigm of bodily integration.
I find this fascinating. Why you may ask? We put such emphasis on the brain in our head, the right and left hemispheres, how to utilize the brain, how to try and keep it quiet, but we often don't ask the question what brain are we talking about? When you tune into your body when you are hungry, your mind could be telling you "I really want to some ice cream" and your gut could say "I think we need more protein today." Both have some truths, both are giving a message, and neither is wrong to choose. Yet the fact that we have a whole different system telling us something else goes unrecognized. Our body is giving us useful information and perhaps we should be listening to our guts much more often than we do.
Yet, I will further contradict myself. Think about the old saying "gut intuition." I would like to reframe and redefine what intuition is. I truly don't believe in it anymore. Intuition is nothing until you check it out. Because we have two different brains, our brain in our head can be triggered with fear and then we feel fear in our body and our central nervous system is activated and the gut is affected and then we think that we are having a gut intuition about something when really we are triggered over past events or just having a human response to a situation.
I would like to explore perhaps not listening to one brain more than another, but how do we integrate these two parts of ourselves? If every symptom, feeling, illness, is a message from the body then can we slow down enough to listen to the message trying to be relayed and where is it coming from? I will continue to update in my progress and musings about my thesis and would love input as I try to create a new paradigm of bodily integration.
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