Hi everyone, welcome back to another video with R’s Koso. My name is Keren Chen and I am a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Nutritionist.
It’s not secret I am a massive fan of all the research behind the brain-gut connection. That is why I use R’s Koso on a weekly basis to replenish the probiotics, prebiotics, and post-biotics to support my digestive system and my diet is comprised of minimally processed whole foods, like veggies, meats, nuts and seeds. My digestion has come a long way from having chronic IBS systems to now being much more manageable.
I am at a point in my life where I can eat my favourite foods like pizza a couple of times a month without any flare ups or negative reactions. This is so valuable to my quality of life because I love food. So I’m really taking care of the gut part of the brain-gut connection.
The other part of that connection is the brain! This is something I have studied through my cognitive behaviour therapy training. It is arguably the most important organ because it controls our perception of reality.
So many people have perfect physical health, lots of materialistic success, so many people who love and care about them, but their mental dysregulation causes them to overlook all of that and experience pain.
Personally, I have been there. I still deal with major depression disorder and work with a therapist regularly. Outside of therapy, one of the tools I employ is mindfulness meditation.
I won’t pretend to be someone who is super zen or wise, which I think is often associated with meditation. In fact it was so hard for me to get into it at first.
Meditation, for the purpose of this video, is the practice of focusing the mind to train attention and awareness. Over time, you can observe thoughts without judgement and attachment and attain mental clarity and inner stability.
Mindfulness meditation is clinically proven to reduce inflammatory response in the body by decreasing the experience of stress. When you feel less stressed, conditions that are stress-triggered are also lessened, such as IBS and poor sleep and poor recovery.
As someone who is prone to anxiety, not judging my thoughts seemed impossible at first. However, I gave it a chance and started small. I started with 3min meditations and worked my way up to 10-30mins per day depending on how I feel that day.
There are studies that suggest the benefits of meditation for people with generalized anxiety disorder and depression because it downregulates the production of cytokines that contribute to mental disorders.
I noticed more and more distance between my thoughts and my subsequent reactions. Instead of immediately reacting to an emotion or thought, I discovered so much space to INTENTIONALLY choose my reaction. Slowly, I was able to weaken habits that no longer served me like emotional eating, with new habits that are more aligned with my goals.
These new habits helped me feel more calm, less anxious, which also promotes healthy hormones and digestive function due to the brain-gut connection.
From pain management to lowering high blood pressure, meditation’s applications and health benefits are being widely researched right now. It clearly changes more than psychoemotional wellness and can alter physiological pathways, too.
There are so many tools and books and apps out there to teach you more about mindfulness meditation. You can also learn more about the brain-gut connection on the R’s Koso website!
If you are interested in trying meditation with KOSO. Check the following the link.
