A holistic approach for healing trauma stored in the gut

• Explains how and why emotions and trauma are stored in the gut, causing digestive issues and visceral tensions

• Presents recent research that enriches our understanding of the gut as a center of emotional and spiritual growth

• Shares a hands-on process of listening to the gut layer by layer to help heal gut issues, renew the microbiome, and release intergenerational trauma

A healthy gut is fundamental to a healthy life. Embedded within our digestive system is the enteric nervous system, our “second brain,” which serves to protect us from the external world of adversity, including not only viruses and bacteria but also traumatic events. As Nikki Kenward, CST-D, MCSS, explains, past challenges and traumas, whether emotional or physical, are held in the enteric nervous system in many ways, including fascial tension, cellular changes, and unhelpful “default settings.”

Exploring in depth what she calls the “Post-Traumatic Gut,” Kenward describes the anatomy and physiology of the enteric nervous system, including the polyvagal system, and the many ways that our emotional history and current emotional state can impact our digestive system.
Sharing recent research, she describes the science behind the emotional gut and how to apply it to chronic digestive issues like IBS and Crohn’s disease as well as mental health issues such as anorexia, bulimia, anxiety, and depression. She explains how and why the digestive gut absorbs emotions and what you can do to heal its functions by addressing psychosomatic stressors, rather than just nutrition. Presenting case studies from her 25 years in clinical practice as well as her own healing journey, she reveals the synchronicity between digestive/metabolic functions and psychological/perceptual insight and how allowing the cells to “speak” through bodywork such as CranioSacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release can help renew the microbiome of the second brain, release intergenerational trauma and illness, and restore one’s psychospiritual life.

Sharing visualization exercises and a hands-on process of listening to the gut layer by layer, the author helps readers unwind stagnant cellular patterns, discover the dynamic intelligence in every cell, and transform Post-Traumatic Gut into Post-Traumatic growth.

Foreword by Eric Moya, RMT, CST-D, MS/Mfct

Acknowledgments

Preface

About Upledger CranioSacral Therapy

1 Why Are We Here?

2 Our Life in Our Body

3 Searching for Stories in the Second Brain

4 Finding Compassion for Your Gut’s History

5 Container for Shame

6 SomatoEmotional Release and Safety

7 The Black Hole

8 Still Frozen? Cells and Our Family Trees

9 Torn and Battered: My Heart’s Clothes and the Complexities of Grief

10 Peering down the Microscope

11 Post-Traumatic Gut Disorder Lives

12 So, What Now? How to Go from Dis-ease to Ease in the Gut

Appendix: Tummy Tracker

References

Index

About the Author

“Overcoming Chronic Digestive Conditions is a brilliant read. It’s engaging, insightful, educational, and accessible. I would highly recommend it to anyone grappling with their own gut challenges or working in a therapeutic capacity treating those with gut-related health issues. Nikki brings to life through her own experiences how gut health problems are linked to our emotional and physical health, both now and earlier in our lives. The book helps us understand the vicious cycle of cause and effect: how challenges in our emotional and physical health have a knock-on effect on our gut health and how, in turn, the resultant gut challenges further negatively impact us emotionally and physically. I found the practical guidance and strategies immensely powerful as well as the new scientific research. And for those providing hands-on therapy, it will expand their capacity to treat patients, not just with gut disorders but also those with PTSD and neurodegenerative illness, such as Alzheimer’s and Dementia. This book never promises to deliver the silver bullet but instead offers a new lens through which to view this complex and fascinating subject.”

“In recent years, our awareness of the importance of the gut—its structures and the mysteries it contains—has been raised by the arrival of numerous texts on the subject. Most are really useful for reference purposes and for a greater sense of the map and features of the territory within us. Knowledge is useful, but to accelerate our understanding of these mysteries, it is important to have a resource that takes us into the reality rather than simply the theory. Nikki’s personal story takes us into that lived reality. It helps to bring the anatomy of the gut to life and, more importantly, to gain some understanding of its relationship to our deepest levels of health and well-being. There are also valuable insights into the potentially long-lasting effects of PTSD and its link to the function of our gut. This book provokes questions and encourages us to look further into this dynamic and fast-evolving area of research and study.”

“This book arose out of Nikki’s personal journey toward recovery from PTSD following a diving accident. Along the way, her journey took her into an exploration of her own ‘gut feeling.’ Her personal journey has become a professional focus. Nikki is using her gathered knowledge to help her own patients as well as educate colleagues and students of many hands-on treatment modalities about this rapidly changing and exciting new area of medical science—the gut/ brain connection.”