BREAKING FREE FROM ANXIETY: UNDERSTANDING THE GUT-BRAIN CONNECTION

This gut of yours, it is literally a second brain. Many, many receptor sites of various different origins are gathered here collecting chemistries and collecting energies in a combination that allows an entirely different output. Then we would ever imagine it is truly miraculous. Hello and welcome to the Art of Awakening podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Sue Mortar. And today we're talking about a fascinating and deeply transformative topic, the gut brain connection. Now I'm going to talk about it from a different perspective than what you might think of when you talk about gut health and how to shift and change your dietary regime in order to improve your gut function. And of course that's part of the picture. But I also want to speak to you about something that is even bigger than that, that eclipses all of our efforts in the world in terms of the foods that we eat and the actions that we take in terms of exercise and rest and breathing and all of the things that we do to try to improve our health and vitality in all ways. Your gut is so much more than just a digestive organ. It's a representation of truly an intelligence, a communication system, an infoldment of who and what we truly are as quantum and energy beings. It plays a much bigger role than what we might be aware of. So I want to share some of those things with you today so that you can be enhancing your ability to digest life more easily, more readily, and to be able to glean from the intelligence that the gut is actually trying to present to your awareness. And a byproduct of that is we end up feeling so much less anxiety, so much more of a grounded sense of self and a capacity in the world to move forward because we know that we know, that we know. And it's not an intellectual knowing. This intelligence is deeper than that. It is the intelligence that built the intellect. It is the intelligence that built the brain. And the gut actually is translating the intelligence that built itself. It's pretty amazing when we start to recognize the power of the human body and what it is truly representing for us in terms of illumination and awakening to the power that we truly are in this world. We belong. We are made to handle and manage all circumstances that come our way. We're made for this. We're made to transmute circumstances of dissonant energies into those of resonant and coherent energies thereby taking something that is stressful and turning it into something beautiful. And if we don't have the proper gut brain connection going on, we have a really hard time knowing that now is my moment where I can do that. Now is a moment where I could interpret things differently. I could translate my life completely differently and shape shift the outcomes that I'm experiencing on a daily basis. Now is my moment. And if we're not in touch with that connection between the brain and the gut, then we lose so much support every single day. When we lose that support, we become afraid. We start looking to the outer world to tell us what to do, to tell us who we are, or how we should be, or even feel. And it's criminal. It's the worst thing we could possibly do when trying to get a foothold on improving my life, changing my relationships, feeling more confident about asking for what I want in the world and pursuing my life the way that I could dream of. We don't have the wherewithal to even begin to unpack that. And so by establishing this connection, you can assume that those things will become easier for you because they do. Over the years, I've worked with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people now and worked with them one-on-one, worked with them in large groups in all sorts of settings. And I've gotten to know a lot of them over a period of 20, 30 years for some people that I'm working with. And what happens as a byproduct is I get to see how they transform, how they change, how they shift. I get to watch how they begin to turn their lives in inside out, truly in a way that they love and they want because they're now becoming empowered and trusting the universe is not an effort. They start to recognize that they can land in their true wisdom and power and love and have that be expressing in their lives in a consistent basis. They start healing on every level in their lives because they begin to put these pieces together and you can too. You know, that's the point. That's why we're here today. So this system of intelligence and communication that I'm talking about, it bridges the physical and the emotional and even the spiritual and quantum realms, this invisible energy that is actually at play here. It's actually the truth of who you are. You are this invisible energy that has built a body and brought yourself into this physical dimension and the physical body has everything to do to give you as a dashboard on your car gives you information about, you know, how the vehicles running and how things are going and how we're managing ourselves down the road. The body is built in the same way for the same purpose. It's built as a communication between the invisible you and your visible tangible life. It's built as a reference realm, a layer of you that can translate the energy from the intellect, the energy from the deep soulful self to translate those gut feelings and those nuances and those ways that you just have a hunch. You just know something's true or you just know something's not true and you can operate and move forward in your life accordingly. So when we begin to establish this connection, what happens is we start to have answers in different ways. So let me just ask you this question. I want you to just sit with this for a second. Now what if the wisdom that I am searching for, this is you talking inside, what if the wisdom that I am searching for is already right here. What if it is quietly stored deeply in this intricate ecosystem deep within the body? What if it's really is here? So once you just kind of play with that question while we go along today because I remember the first time that someone told me all of the answers that you seek are inside of you, right? So here I am sitting with questions and that's the answer I get. All of the answers are inside of you. Sort of like, you know, grass upper, you know, it's all inside of you. And then I'm thinking, oh great, now I have this question. I'm looking inside. I don't feel any answers. I don't hear any answers. I don't see anything. So now I've got two problems. I've got this question and now apparently I'm supposed to have an answer that I can't access. So you know, that led me into meditation and it led me into a deeper inquiry of life and and pointed it on pack that as a truth beyond anything I had dreamt of. And it is available to all of us. It is what we're actually here to access. We're here to discover that. That is why we come. We come as this cutting edge of consciousness coming into this physical dimension and landing and we sort of splat. And in the splat we lose sight of who we are. We don't remember so that this whole journey can become a journey of reawakening to it because as we do that we contribute to the evolution of consciousness, the furthering of the solution, the furthering of forgiveness, the furthering of revelation or a haz or recognizing remembering that empowerment. And as we do we turn this whole bandwidth of human consciousness in our own way with our own tiny little healings, we're actually making a difference in the consciousness of the whole of humanity in circling the planet. You are making a difference on the other side of the planet every single time you connect the dots when we get together and we have these conversations that you have these little haz you literally are changing the bandwidth in which all of us are living. It's pretty amazing. So because of a connection that you make today someone on the other side of the planet is walking along finding it easier to forgive something and having no idea why. Finding it easier to accept their passion and their purpose and instead of being lost and confused and anxiety and wondering what why they're even here. Suddenly they feel uplifted and it's because you're creating a ripple, you know this thing called the butterfly effect many of you might have become aware of several years ago and basically what it's saying is that everything affects everything. And so when we are aligned and empowered as in the analogy of the butterfly effect when a butterfly flaps its wings on one corner of the universe it can it can cause an entire storm to brew on the other side. It's movement of energy that is happening and and we as a species are awakening to this as a our reality, our quantum reality, and it is causing us to use our senses differently and to perceive and to grow and to evolve in ways that are bigger and more enticing. And if you're not thinking and feeling and bigger and enticing ways right now, I get it. And it doesn't make it untrue that it's meant to be for you. It just makes you aware that there's more for you to allow. There's more for you to awaken to so we begin, right? So this gut of yours, it is literally a second brain. It actually should be called the first brain in my opinion because in this gut there are many, many connections happening. Many, many receptor sites of various different origins are gathered here, collecting chemistries and collecting energies in a combination that allows an entirely different output than we would ever imagine. And one that we, more so than we could ever create if we were trying to intellectually figure out how this body needs to work and to build it. It is truly miraculous, meaning it's beyond logic. It's a quantum connection that is happening here. It is the infoldment of the quantum field itself that even builds this body and by design, it has landed in something that we can describe through epigenetics as this constant communication, this access that connects physical and mental and emotional health altogether. There are microbes inside our system that literally shape our thoughts and our emotions and our perceptions. It's amazing to think about this. And so I mentioned epigenetics. So let's just talk about that for a second. On the surface of every cell in your gut are these little antennas, not just in your gut, but everywhere in your body. But in your gut, it's also true on these little cells of the endocrin glands and the entire system of digestion and their relationship between each other with the chemicals that are produced and the byproducts that are generated and the neurotransmitters that come up and out of this whole orchestration, all sorts of miraculous happenings are happening inside your gut all the time and they contribute to what rises to your awareness in terms of impressions and then the thoughts that follow from those impressions. We are thought into existence from this very aspect of our being. This is phenomenal what happens. So picture this, little cell has little antennas on the outer surface of it, the outer surface of the cell wall, little antennas that are picking up on nuances and infructuations of the energy field and the environment around it. And so when we are generating a field of loving presence, we are truly generating an environment where these little antennas can pick up on a signal that says all is well, all is good. What are we going to create today? What do we want to do? Instead of those little antennas picking up on because your mind is constantly running and grilling into worst case scenarios and what if and writing stories and pontificating about things or ruminating about some begrudged thing that has happened in your past and as this continues and continues and continues, those little antennas are picking up on an environment that says, you know, it's not such a good day, not such a safe moment. And so there's a wobble, a distortion, a ripple in the field and those little antennas pick up on it. They then report inside the cell that they are a part of what's going on in the outer environment, what's going on out here so that we can prepare and respond and be generative of the proper ability to react and survive and do all the things that we need to do. The problem is over time we exhaust because we're not built to be doing that all of the time without any reprieve, without any rejuvenation. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to take a vacation to rejuvenate, although that's always a great idea, but it does mean that you have to give your thoughts a vacation, that you have to allow something to begin to take place here on a consistent enough basis that I can consistently produce the chemistries in my body that allow for something to rise that is of beauty and creativity and innovation. And I can feel like I'm in command of my circumstances that I'm not controlling them, but I'm a way-shower. I'm demonstrating how life can look, how people can think, how transformation can occur. And when we start to tap into that, everything changes. Everything changes. So yes, we have this biofield that is filled with tiny organisms that are basically digesting and maneuvering and shape shifting all of the chemicals that we're putting in on a nutritional level, and they're also at this cellular level, also translating this energy that is coming in from this environmental fashion. Our job is to create an environment that allows for that energy to generate a chemistry that is supportive of our creativity, which comes with not worrying so much. It comes with dreaming and creating. It comes with imagining. It comes with allowing your mind to be occupied in ways that are delightful and playful. It means that you take things a little less seriously from time to time and allow it to truly be humorous, how intense you get at times, or how afraid you get at times, that you allow love and beauty to rush in in moments like that. And when you do the environment changes, and when that happens, your chemistry changes, and when your chemistry changes, you begin to allow for this trap door between your conscious and your subconscious to open up. And when it opens up, what's happening in your dreaming, desiring, visioning, self gets to translate into your digesting and filtering and cleansing and healing self. And they talk to each other in a fashion that supports one another. And the higher brain function now starts to deliver an opportunity for higher thoughts to be generated. And then when the higher thoughts are generated, then the higher brain function comes along. And so incrementally, they support each other in your own evolution and your own elevation, raising your own vibrational frequency, which we all know in this quantum world is essential. It happens because we ground and deepen our roots more. It happens because we have a greater sense of self and acceptance going on. It happens because we allow love to matter more than the fears that would run through our mind, the moment that we stop loving, the moment that we get distracted or splattered or dispersed in some way. So we're here to pull it all back together again. One thing that we can start to implement, which is surprising to many people when I share this with people there, there's a huge, oh, oh my gosh, oh, so bad engine, okay. So here's what happens. When we recognize that we are built for a constant communication between the unified field of consciousness, the quantum field and all the way through the series of compressions that have landed us here in a physical body, we are here to constantly be both and meaning. There needs to be a constant communication system that allows us to translate this cosmic intelligence, this universal mind of the quantum field into our own thoughts and translations of life and of self and what we want to be and do in the world. And so the body is kind of a medium in between. It is translating. It's a filtering system that allows us to take this universal intelligence and step it down enough that we can feel it and utilize it and train our minds to perceive it through the body. But we have to keep the mind on the body to be able to do that. Otherwise, the mind floats off onto itself and is out there in the cosmos and dreaming and desiring and wanting, but we can't seem to make those things manifest. We can't even keep our health in such a consistent alignment that we would have the energy and the continued desire to pursue those dreams and to ever manifest them is nearly impossible when we don't have that vital force plugged in. So when we are plugged in, it's because our mind is on the body and the body is translating through this constant influx of information, the truth of what is, a greater picture of what is possible, a greater version of you and what your life could look like. But we have to learn the language that it's speaking. We have to learn to train ourselves to sense and feel into that energy in a way that we can make decisions based upon it, that we can fill our minds with that truth that is here sustainably, encouraging us, nurturing us, allowing us to access this vitality that is unending and unwavering if we let it be. So here's one of the main ways that we miss the boat on that. We forget that that's what's going on, and we feel things happening in our body, and they actually are sensations supporting everything I'm saying, but we misinterpret them. We misinterpret them and think that they are problems, and then we try to solve the problem or get away from the problem. We try to outrun the problem. So you know this, it shows up like a knot in your stomach. It shows up like a fluttering in your gut. It shows up like a heaviness in your body. It shows up like you thinking you're not enough. Now let me just back up on that. That knot in your stomach is trying to guide you toward your own solar plexus. Your solar plexus is where a lot of the mental body of your entire system is anchored. Believe it or not, it's in the solar plexus. The power of a thousand sons is considered right there, where your rib cage displays apart, and it's where if you got punched, it would knock the wind out of you. Right there is a power center that is immense. In ancient Eastern cultures, they would say that this is the power of a thousand sons. It's the power that will generate your entire reality. If it's contracted, you'll think in a contracted way. If it's open and breathing, you'll think in open and breathing manners. It has an influence on how the energy rises up through your system, and how you're going to translate that energy into thoughts and ideas and a sense of okness. You've felt this. If you've ever just gotten out of bed one day, and you're just like, I don't know what's going on today, but something's not right. And you just feel it. You feel it. You even put your hand on your stomach. I don't know. Maybe I just got up on the wrong side of the bed. All these kinds of ideas run through our head, but all that's happening is you've spent enough days in a row worrying in a contracted fashion and not trusting and not believing in yourself and you're doing all that thing so that eventually your body is reporting to you. And it's saying, you know, you need to bring your loving attention right here, more. Right here to that place where if you got punched it would knock the wind out of you. If you bring your loving attention there and start breathing with it and softening the solar plexus and dropping it down a little deeper into your deep wisdom in your body below the navel even. Just imagine with every breath that you're connecting the dots there, deep inside, behind your belly button right up to your stomach. Just breathe a little connection right there all the time. That alone will start to shift some things for you. You'll be amazed. And so what happens also when we feel this fluttering inside we think, oh my gosh, I've got, I'm anxious today. I'm nervous. But that fluttering is when the solar plexus starts to soften. It flutters. It shakes and quakes and moves in ways that are different than how it was even when it was locked down. And so as it starts to open you let it. When you're fluttering and you are of calling it anxious, take a breath in that area of your body instead of letting it just chalk up to anxiety. It isn't that unless you make it so. It's you trying to awaken to a bigger version of you. It's you on your frontier. Stretch that open and breathe in it and allow it to take you there. And also I mentioned about feeling heaviness under stress. That heaviness is not against you. It's in your favor because when you're under stress you're going to move up into your head because you're trying to figure out what do I need to do to get through this? How am I going to be safe? How's this going to work? What, you know, what, what's next? We're trying to control things. And so we start to feel heavy and we call that a burden. But what's actually happening is your system is trying to say, hey, don't forget groundedness is the key. Don't forget. Let gravity help you be heavy while you're up here in your head. Be heavy. So I want to invite you to just follow the heaviness the next time that's happening. Follow it down into your deep core. Follow it down into the earth because it's trying to take you there. Everything is in your favor. Everything. There are no exceptions. There's only one thing happening here. And it's you as source energy pouring in presenting that source energy all the way into the physical dimension. You're made of that. And as such, when you open and allow it to pour from you and out into your life, everything changes. So why not? Let it. Why decide that stress is a burden? And I feel so heavy and depressed. I can't even get out of bed. I'm so anxious. You know, you can see how it all fits together. And it's all 100% a misperception. You're selling yourself short, truly, my friends. So how do we turn it around? Start breathing in the very area that feels heavy. Start breathing in the very area that feels anxious, not as a means of quelling your anxiety, but rather as a means of utilizing what that flutter is really about. Don't name it anxiety. Just feel it. Lean into it. It shifts your mindset toward listening to these nuances that the body is presenting. Instead of calling them symptoms of your difficult life in this moment, it changes everything. Instead of fighting, we start feeling gratitude for the language that we're learning to speak and how this vehicle is 100% in support of my mind recognizing the magnitude of my being. Now that's huge. And here's how your gut is related. Below the solar plexus, deep below into the naval area between those two areas, it's your gut. In this area is where all of what I'm describing is taking place. And so what if those answers are stored in there? And what if this translational shift that we just spoke about, this way of looking differently at it that we're speaking about right now is enough for you to find those answers that are inside of you. Grasshopper, like you've never known before, I assure you that is happening. And it's waiting for you to translate life differently, starting from the inside out, starting from how this body is truly trying to reveal to your conscious awareness the truth of your magnificence. It is nuancing in all of these ways, showing you, okay, come here, okay, come here, okay, drop in here. Because when you do drop in, when you let go of this judging mind that things, all this is a problem, and I need to take something or take a vacation or get away from here, get away from my stress in order to be okay. We're missing it. We're missing the greatest gift of our lives. It will change everything if you lean in and breathe. And so those answers that we were speaking about and inviting you to contemplate, I want you to just truly lean in, breathe into, and allow for the answers to that contemplation to be, they are here. I am plugged in. I do know. I am fine, a hole in complete. And so when we do, there is a tremendous shift in our emotional well-being. And there becomes a tremendous shift in our chemistry, which helps our gut physically digest our foods more properly. And the next thing you know, it's establishing harmony in the system, where the system can now replenish and rejuvenate and build all of the components that are required for a healthy digestive system and immune system. And even the function of our nervous system, where it does not become so inflamed and irritated that we are locked in a fight or flight station, where we can't get out. And we start feeling breakdowns and we call it aging. But all the while, it's just that we've been going too long without using the system the way the system was built to be used. That's the only thing that's going on. We have to drop in and allow this supportive idea of breathing in my belly and connecting that not in my stomach or where it would be even, right where my ribs play a part. There's a place in there, the solar plexus, that is this energy center that is so potent and so powerful and so beautiful in terms of being able to turn on the healer within and to turn on and turn up the volume on the creative genius that is trying to rise up through this system. You are made of universal intelligence and the universal mind is supposed to be your mind. And if you've been edging it out by being contracted in this solar plexus, that's exactly why we have a tendency to translate these things as anxiety and heaviness and being disconnected. So we're here to breathe in this way and stretch open this solar plexus and ground yourself, follow the heaviness and see where it takes you. I assure you it will take you into the earth and into the earth you go because if you will, your mind becomes grounded in alpha-freight. frequency, you become capable of seeing clearly instead of reacting and having a knee-jerk reaction to things and hearing yourself say on a regular basis that life is not in your favor and that you have to just buck up and do what it takes to be okay. That kind of language isn't your true native language and it isn't a language that you should continue to speak. What we need to do instead is to realize that it's all in my favor. I am so supported and all of the things that I've been misinterpreting as against me are actually for me. And when we begin, we begin to see an entirely different reality before us. Also what happens is we happen to be then attracted to foods that are affirming of that. We happen to be attracted to foods that are as close to as nature prepared them and we're interested in a balanced diet that allows for enough of an alkalizing ash to be present, meaning that we're eating foods that once we digest them, they're already in support of our well-being and we don't have to further do more to them using up our reserves to get our system capable of managing what we're consuming all the while, making ourselves older and older all the time. Instead, we're attracted to foods that bring more life force into our lives. But I wanted you to know in our conversation today that it isn't just about what you eat. I've seen people be perfect in their consumption of food and suffer from leaky gut and poor digestion and poor immunity and depression and anxiety and everything that we're speaking about. We know that there is a bigger component and we should be approaching it from all directions so that we can offer up the support that our system needs in the proportion that it needs to create a shift. The shift is here. The transformation is meant to be for you. So I know it's a lot and I know that I speak about these things in a very comprehensive manner because I want you to know all of the facets of your being and I hope that you join me often inside of this podcast so that you can, over time, put the pieces together for yourself. And if you'd like to crash course on putting those pieces together for yourself, I have an idea for you. Something that I am very excited that I do every year begin to pull into a lot of these ideas all at once. From all over the world and I start from start to finish, you're an energy being, you're a quantum presence. Here's how you get here into physical form. Here's how you start listening and learning what this physical form is trying to reveal to you and here's how you express it out into your life to heal every aspect of your life on every level in your body and out in your relationships and your dynamics and the ways that you perceive yourselves in the world. And so if you're interested in doing that, one way in is to plug into a webinar series that I am also offering to you right in your own home that is called the Three Secrets to Activate Your Self Healing Superpowers. And they are superpowers because most people aren't tapping into them at all. And so I offer it several times. You can find a timing that works for you in these sessions we build on what we've talked about today and I take things even deeper of course because that's what I do when we have a little bit more time to do so. I give you practical tools in real time and give you conversations about how to engage in the world differently so that you can start building this for yourself and offer up powerful insights to support your entire healing journey so that it eventually becomes a journey of the expression of your own magnificence in this world. So I'd love for you to join me. But check out the show notes and you can sign up for a webinar and choose a time as I mentioned that works for you so that we can start really developing this for ourselves in real time. There are multiple opportunities to tune in live so you can be a part of the experience. There's Q&A and an opportunity to really delve in more deeply. So I look forward to seeing you there. I always look forward to seeing you here to being present with you and I know that together we are more and the art of awakening is about bringing all of our aspects together because together those aspects are more as well. They create a life that we love living. So also remember to share this episode with your friends and families and until next time I so look forward to living a life together more awake. Okay, blessings to you all. Namaste. [Music]