I’m sure by now you know about looking after your gut for wellness, and about keeping your mind in check. You’ve probably heard about the gut-brain connection – a lot.  You probably know that most of your hormones and neurotransmitters are produced in your gut.  There’s a lot that goes into great gut health. We all know about the many options to help us with our thinking patterns.

But what do you do when, despite eating all the right things, thinking all the right thoughts and drinking plenty of water, you just don’t FEEL better?  And why does this happen?

Did you know that you actually have 3 brains?

You have your cephalic brain, which we know as the brain.  This brain has up to 100 billion neurons, and controls all the things that we know about – thought, learning, cognitive ability, language, and so on.  Basically, the “I think” and “I understand” brain.

Then you have your enteric brain, which we know as the gut.  Your gut has about 100 million neurons.  It has a very obvious role in the processing of food, it houses our microbiome, and has a role in our survival and responding to challenges.  It’s also very important in our development of our core sense of self. This brain is about your “gut feelings” and “digesting information”.

Then you have your cardiac brain, or your heart.  This brain is your feeling centre – “I feel, My heart says”. This brain has only 40,000 neurons, yet this tiny little powerhouse literally controls your whole body.  Think about it, when your heart stops, that’s it.  In Chinese medicine, the heart is seen as the ruler, or the emperor, and the brain as the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister can make good decisions, but doesn’t always.  But the Emperor knows what it wants.  It doesn’t have to think about the right response like the brain, it doesn’t have to digest the information like the gut, it just….knows. Think of it as your innate intelligence, or intuition.

Your feelings and those 40,000 neurons literally control what happens in your gut, and what happens in your mind.  How you think about things, how you perceive things is filtered through the lens of how you feel.  And your feelings affect how hormones and neurotransmitters function in your body.  Your gut might produce most of them, but your feelings are the ruler of how they work.

So with this in mind, when you are focusing on your wellness, it is really important to support your heart just as much as your gut and your brain.  Who can help you with wellness that supports your brain, gut and heart?

Kinesiology and mind body medicine therapies focus on the whole of you – mind body and soul – in one.  They delve into your thought processes, what you are putting into your body (or not) and also your feelings on different levels as well.  You have your conscious feelings which you’re aware of, your subconscious feelings which are your underlying patterns, and then your unconscious feelings which are the drivers of the patterns, which make you think and act the way that you do.

You can see from this that even within the 3 brains, there are many layers and patterns within each of them that make up what is uniquely you.  Your kinesiologist, while delving into these patterns and layers, taps into your body’s innate healing wisdom through the art of muscle monitoring combined with a series of tools such as acupressure, crystals, oils, sound, essences and more.  We then interpret what your body is telling us, and help you to connect with what is going on for you and why.

There is great healing ability in this, as when you have a conscious connection with the subconscious patterns and the unconscious drivers, then you have the ability to make huge change in your life.  You become aware of the actual issue for you, coming from your heart, and then you can see where and how that plays out in your life.  By meeting your actual needs, working through any layers of stress that have built up over the years, and changing your patterns, then you can add the layers of fuelling your body well and creating great mental health and have wellness on all levels.

An example of this is someone who has an underlying driver of being accepted.  When they don’t feel accepted, then they feel like they’re not good enough.  So they often will work really hard, people please, try to achieve a lot, and over time stress builds up more and more.  Then they get headaches, sore eyes, tiredness.  They reach for coffee, sugar, alcohol and all the things that people do for stress relief.  It helps in the immediate term.  Then they get angry, migraines, reflux, waking in the middle of the night.

Hopefully they realise at this point that things aren’t working for them.  They might change their diet, reduce stress levels a bit and work out some sort of lifestyle that keeps the symptoms at bay.  For a while.  And so the pattern repeats.  But they haven’t uncovered the core of this, which is about not feeling accepted, so they keep repeating the pattern of seeking acceptance.

When they uncover the driver of acceptance with the assistance of kinesiology, and actually work on accepting themselves, the stress patterns around It disappear, and their health and wellness on all levels improves.

In this pattern, you can see how the heart controls this situation, and how it affects the gut and the brain, as well as overall health.

Your heart really is your emperor!  It rules everything in your body.  True wellness is the innate balance of healthy feelings, healthy food and a healthy mind. If you are seeking true wellness, I would encourage you to seek out your local kinesiologist and work from the inside out to achieve balance on all levels of your being.