in your life that culminate as intestinal distress.
The idea that healing comes from finding a proper balance in your life is nothing new. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek known as the father of Western medicine, wrote that health depends on a balance between diet and other aspects of life, including interaction with the environment. By diet, he didn't mean a “weight-loss program.” The original meaning of diet included all aspects of life under human control—one's relationship with air and water, food and drink, motion and rest, sleep and wakefulness, and feelings and passions as well as one's elimination of bodily waste.
Our culture seems to have lost the sense for the importance of nutrition and lifestyle. However, these are central to the CORE program, which, like ancient Greek medicine, emphasizes observation for self-knowledge. From awareness, you can turn to self-healing in Part III, “Restore” and Part IV, “Ensure.”
Part II consists of these chapters:
2 Observe Your Gut
3 Observe Your Stresses
4 Observe Your Diet
5 Observe Your Sleep
6 Observe Your Life: Your Health and Wellness Autobiography
2
Observe Your Gut
You ever notice when your stomach begins a conversation with you, you're always in a silent place like the dentist's office … it even starts talking in complete sentences.
—George Carlin, comedian
When your gut starts talking, you need to listen before you react. The very act of paying attention to what your gut is saying helps to break the automatic neurohormonal feedback loop of gut distress. When a person with chronic gut issues is running on automatic, each intestinal gurgle or twinge sets off alarm bells in the brain. When the main brain is in alarm mode, stress hormones are sent to the gut, prompting all the symptoms you dread: cramps, pain, bloating, and diarrhea. Now your gut is not just talking to you, it is shouting—but you still don't understand. It's like a foreigner who is trying to tell you something important, but he doesn't speak your language. He tries speaking louder as if that will help you understand. It doesn't work to ignore him; he just gets more agitated because he truly has something important to tell you, but you don't know how to listen!
As a gut sufferer, you are in this very position. Your gut is trying to speak, but you can't understand what it's trying to say; the messages are garbled. But your gut keeps trying to be heard. Each cry is louder and more urgent than the last. Finally the messages become too obnoxious and painful to bear. You become frustrated and anxious and just want to stop all the belly aching. You look for pills and other remedies to silence the beast within you. You just want it to shut up and quit bothering you.
Learn the language of the gut.
However, you have learned by now that the belly aching never stops because your gut insists on being heard. Ignoring the pain doesn't make it go away. Instead, we want you to learn the language of the gut. Gut distress symptoms are like emails tagged “urgent” that your body sends to your conscious mind.
Bill Learns to Listen
Bill was a manufacturer's rep in his twenties who suffered from abdominal cramping, bloating, pain, and constipation for at least eight years. His symptoms made his work very difficult because he was on the road several days a week traveling over a five-state area. The long hours in his car, the quick stops for fast food, and the uncomfortable motel beds all made his intestinal discomfort worse.
Like many gut sufferers, Bill had run the gamut of doctors and clinics trying to find answers and relief for his distress. After taking all the tests and seeing all the specialists, Bill was told that he had IBS. The physicians tried to help, but ultimately they encouraged him to learn to live with it.
This advice backfired. Bill's frustration only made his symptoms worse. He'd cancel sales calls and break dates with his girlfriend. He just felt too lousy. Bill was at the end of his rope. Finally he went to Dr. Weisberg, who asked him, “How often do you actually observe your gut distress?”
Bill said, “Are you kidding me? I observe this distress 24/7! It's always with me, never leaves me alone!”
“Yes,” Dr. Weisberg responded, “but how much of that time do you actually just sit and notice the sensations? If you're like most of our patients, when you feel a spike of pain, bloating, or pressure, you probably notice the feeling of it for about five seconds. This annoys you and makes you anxious, and then you probably start thinking things like, Oh no, not this again. How long is it going to last this time? What happens if the pain and bloating interfere with my sleep tonight?
Bill thought about it for a minute, smiled slightly, and said, “Now that you mention it, I think you're right! How did you know?”
“These are very natural responses. I see this all the time.”
Dr. Weisberg told Bill to point to where he felt the pain and bloating. Bill pointed to an area about six inches long in the center of his lower abdomen. He rated the intensity of the discomfort at five out of ten.
“Good,” said Dr. Weisberg. “Now focus on the sensations in that area you just showed me. Imagine you're just going to pull up a chair and sit right next to those sensations exactly the way they are, without changing them or trying to make them relax in any way.”
Bill looked puzzled. “But I do want to change them—I want those bad feelings to go away as quickly as possible.”
“Of course you do, but the way that you've been trying to make them go away hasn't been working very well, has it? So let's experiment on a new way of working with all of this, okay?”
Bill nodded and settled more fully into the chair. As he sat with the sensations and focused on them, he looked puzzled, almost surprised, as if he had never really paid such close attention to his sensations before. “It's interesting,” he said. “There's actually a lot of movement going on there. The left side of it feels now like a slight throbbing sensation, and the right side feels kind of dull.”
“Very good,” Dr. Weisberg replied. “Just make room for the left side of it to throb and the right side to feel the way it does. All you have to do is keep observing it and make room for it to do whatever it's doing.”
Bill watched his intestinal show unfold for six or seven minutes and then looked up with a pleasant, yet surprised, expression. “It's really something!” he exclaimed. “The left side throbbed more, and then the throbbing moved over to the other side. The area of bloating seemed to get bigger, and then smaller. I was really amazed to see how much everything was moving and changing. That fact was comforting to me because it meant my gut wasn't stuck and could actually change. It seemed like the more I made room for all those different sensations to be there, the less noticeable they became.”
