Holidays, Yoga, Digestion and Sudoku
By Karen Rigsby, Inner Fire Yoga Teacher
Pick up any magazine or journal, or scroll through your feed, and the stress of the holidays will indubitably be a hot topic. This stress sneaks up on us earlier and earlier each year, and we try to fit an incredibly increasing number of events in between the months of November and January. To that stress, add the additional decadent meals, the extra cocktails, and the more than occasional sweet treat.
It is no wonder, then, that we have the sense of over-doing and over-indulging. Our digestive systems finally throw up a penalty flag with the penalty being hours of discomfort from overfull stomachs, overworked kidneys (and adrenals), overwhelmed livers, uncomfortable bloat, irritable bowels, chronic heartburn, and lack of sleep. Our systems become overloaded, and we continue to stuff our systems’ “inboxes” without giving our bodies a chance to work it all out in their natural processes.
Those of us with a yoga practice believe in the gospel of yoga, so when we are in discomfort or pain, we choose yoga shapes that address the issue; asanas that unstick the locked, that rinse the congested, and that stretch the tight. We want to know what specific postures will help reduce the holiday bloat and improve digestion after those abundant meals. That’s why you are reading this, right?
The good news, though, is that while certain yoga asanas do target the digestive system, ANY yoga – any mindful meditation (with or without movement) -- will help your digestion. Yes, there are certain asanas that stretch and compress areas surrounding our digestive organs. But the intelligence of yoga asanas is that each asana – just by being present in it -- will help upregulate your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), directing and aiding the focus of all your systems toward the digestion process.
Yoga and The Nervous System
We have all heard the over-simplified job description of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) as the command center for the “rest and digest” response, while the sympathetic nervous system controls the “flight and/or flight” response. Often, the latter is vilified for its role in our overproduction of cortisol and our adrenal fatigue.
The truth, however, is that both systems are necessary as we grapple with our everyday stresses, tasks, demands, and needs, and try to rest and recover only in an effort to do more of it, again, more efficiently, faster, and with more distraction.
We do not exist solely in one system or the other. Rather, we are constantly sliding back and forth on the spectrum between the two systems depending on our sensory input and how our brains (and our hearts) interpret this data. By intentionally unrolling our yoga mat, and taking deep breaths on purpose, we are cerebrally AND somatically telling our body which operating system should have the controls while we practice our yoga.
And yet, we are still so cerebrally programmed to silo everything and somatically target the obvious system or area where our discomfort is most palpable. So yes, we sometimes miss the point. The whole yoga concept of connection – not of “uniting” our parts, but of recognizing they ARE one -- would guide us to a different approach. None of our somatic systems exist in a vacuum. This would suggest that our digestive system is intricately connected within the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and within our body’s metasystem.
So yes, this piece will suggest a few sequences (of various durations) including postures that are believed to reset peristalsis (the natural cadence of the contractions in your colon) and reboot the organs that aid in digestion.
But before we get to that, let’s zoom out and look at our bodies and minds as yolked entities, intimately connected to each other and made up of other microsystems that are also connected to each other. Within THAT paradigm, ANY yoga is good yoga for our digestion -- even if there is no push/pull, no stretch/compress, or no twisting happening specifically on our abdomen. Lying in corpse pose is a good digestion pose if we are focusing breath to breath on the breath. It is the relaxing, unclenching, undoing, non-doing, and de-stressing that has the best and most profound effect on our digestion.
The Vagus Nerve
The vagus nerve is the biggest cranial nerve in the body and runs from the lowest part of the brain to the large intestine, passing the heart, lungs and liver on the way. It is a major component of the PNS and the primary interface between the organs and the brain. Science tells us that this nerve is responsible for the regulation of internal organ functions, including digestion, heart rate, and respiratory rate among other things. Stimulating the vagus nerve can send a chemical message to your body that it's time to destress, relax, and catch up on recovery, nutrition absorption and sleep.
Yoga asana, the deep breathing, the bringing the mind and body together, and the mindful movement between the asanas are all modalities that help to increase vagal tone and therefore help lower our resting heart rate, improve digestion, and govern the coherence between our respiratory rate and our heart rate.
Research has demonstrated that increased vagal tone is an indicator of psychological resilience which allows us to better cope with stress, anxiety, and discomfort. In contrast, when our vagal tone is dysregulated, our autonomic system is also off balance which means both our physiology and psychology are less capable of handling the challenges of our daily lives. This explains why the excess (of both stress AND food) during the holidays becomes congestion for our digestive systems which then stresses our other systems which upregulates the flight or fight response. When yoga increases vagal tone, this aids the PNS; and the PNS aids digestion.
Yoga Poses for Healthy Digestion
If you are still not convinced, and you are looking for specific asanas to facilitate digestion as the holidays (and their ensuing large meals) descend upon us, here is a template and list of a few combos to get the best bang for your yoga buck on the digestive system and its partner systems. What systems work in partnership with the digestive system? Yes.
The following types of asanas specifically address the motility and function of the digestive organs. They specifically push, pull, tug, and twist the fascial matrix that holds our viscera in place and therefore can help reset and reboot digestive organ function.
Forward Folds
Hip, pelvis, and heart openers
Deep squats
Twists
Supine or Prone corpse
So, you could pick your favorite asana that fits into each category and create your own flow!
Don’t forget to drink a lot of water to help your body take out the trash. And don’t be alarmed if you have some gas to pass. Let it go.
I’ll go first:
Ragdoll, roll up to
Supported standing low back bend, lift up to standing, sit into
Awkward Chair, sit three times and stand, turn toes out and squeeze down to Deep Squat
Twist in Malasana, taking a shoulder to the same inside knee
Savasana
Ok, now you try.
Cool, now try it again, and color outside the lines. It does NOT have to be in that order, (1-5), and maybe your body really likes the forward folds and twists as the medicine and not so much the squats or the heart openers… So maybe your flow looks like this:
Seated forward fold to
Single leg forehead to knee to (opposite knee bent)
Seated spine twist, keeping one leg extended;
Repeat other side
Roll back to supine (on your back)
Wind relieving pose R, then L, then together
Supine twisted figure four, R then L
Happy baby
Corpse pose
Now you try. See?! It’s fun, right? Okay, last one…
This is a video for the sake of demonstration, not for the purpose of following along, so these postures are done more quickly than I’d recommend. If you do follow along, use the pause button often!
There is nothing holy about this sequence (although perhaps familiar), so in the interest of time, you can cut postures out or start in the middle and skip around. Just remember that deep twists and deep heart openers can often need some extra TLC beforehand.
Here’s the list of the asanas in the video:
Crocodile
Open ½ crocodile, switch sides, repeat
Sphynx, tuck toes to
Forearm plank, tiptoe toward elbows for
Dolphin, drop knees,
Extended puppy; rise to palms
Cat cow
Step to ½ kneeling; twist both directions (away from, then toward front leg);
Change sides, repeat; turn toes to long edge
Straddle fold (you can add some soft lateral lunges into one hip crease at a time), shimmy ribs down toward space between feet
Toe heel feet narrower, turn toes out, deep squat (Malasana)
Add twist to deep squat with ½ bind or overhead reach
Table top to kneeling to kneeling ½ moon (away from down knee) to ½ moon on other side to
Camel to
Embryo or child's pose
Supine Corpse (back lying savasana)
Wind relieving R, L, then both
Happy baby
Cobblers
Supine twist
Savasana
Mindset Matters
Remember this is not about punishing yourself because you ate too much. It’s not about burning excess calories. Both of these mindsets ADD to the duress under which your body (and mind) are already suffocating. Digestion is best aided in a state of relaxation.
Drink water
Practice gratitude.
Enjoy your meals.
Enjoy your abundance.
Keep the excess of abundance to a minimum, and then…
Enjoy making up your own post-meal flow.
Let go of the small stuff. And the gas.
Think of it as yoga sudoku where the whole is always greater than the sum of its farts. I mean parts.
Happy Holidays, Yogis!
~Karen Rigsby