Stick Your Belly out if you want Good Digestion

There is probably no bodily function we have some influence over that is more critical to our personal success than digestion. We all agree that digestion is the foundation of good health which we are now beginning to link to beauty and ability to succeed.

In Skincare, poor digestion is usually one of the main causes of acne, inflammation and dull wrinkled skin. For more information on causes of skin problems refer past blogs.

During my visit to New York City, I had the serendipitous opportunity to attend the seminars at the New Life Expo (http://www.newlifemag.com/ ).

“Yoga for Healthy Digestion” with Dedee Benrey ( http://www.dedeebenrey.com/ ) was of great interest to me both personally and professionally. I am a longtime sufferer of poor digestion with food allergies and food intolerance and the bad skin that is the result of it.

I had attended a “Yoga for Digestion” workshop at the Yoga Studio at Yonge and Eglinton (http://www.yogastudio.net/home.html ) a couple of years ago with a very supportive Yoga Teacher, named Cat. It was a great 2 hour class that took us through yoga poses that improved different digestive issues. But except for the “Reclined Cobblers Pose” ( a reclining pose I take when my digestive system disagrees with what I had chosen to eat) I have not practiced the many poses Cat showed us. Like many people, I wanted better digestion, I just did not invest the time to achieve it.

So why do we have to bring more energy to our belly’s so we can be relieved of digestive problems? Because we gave the bulk of our body’s energy to our passions and achievements.

Dedee’s seminar demonstrated some convenient poses (Dedee is in the photo above doing the Pigeon pose that extends out our abdomen) that we can do at work or infront of a computer like Spinal Twists done on a chair. – to get more energy to our stomachs to help with digestion.

The big take away here is to do twists and to do poses like “The Bridge” to open up the area of our abdomen so that there is more blood flow to our stomachs.

So if Yoga is not your thing think of other exercises you can incorporate movements that focus on the belly. Concentrate on the belly movements from your favourite activities like dance or floor exercises. Why not take up belly dancing. Most of us type A’s want more from our exercise than physical movement. The great thing about Yoga, Tai Chi and Primal Dance is you can derive spiritual, emotional and mental growth along with physical health.

Physically giving our bellys more bloodflow and energy is just part of the story. Where are taking that energy from? We will discuss this next week.