Breaking The GI Stress Cycle: How Stress Impacts Digestive Symptoms - by Scott Rower PhD

COURSE

Breaking The GI Stress Cycle: How Stress Impacts Digestive Symptoms

With Scott Rower PhD

This course is for anyone living with persistent digestive issues (like IBS, reflux, IBD, etc.). It’s especially helpful if you’ve tried everything from diet changes to supplements and still feel stuck. If you’ve ever sensed that stress plays a role in your symptoms but no one’s explained how or why, this course is for you. You’ll learn a science-backed framework called the GI Stress Cycle: a loop where stress, nervous system activation, and gut symptoms feed into each other through the gut-brain connection. Across six short lessons, you’ll explore: - How the mind-body connection impacts digestion, even when you don’t “feel” stressed - What happens in your nervous system & gut when stress becomes chronic - Your stress reaction style (Control, Submit, or Avoid) and how it shapes your symptoms - Simple, nervous-system-friendly ways to break the cycle & support gut healing By the end of the course, you’ll understand why symptoms flare even during calm periods, recognize how your unique stress patterns influence your gut-brain connection, and gain practical tools to help you calm your gut and shift your system toward healing.


Meet your Teacher

Dr. Scott Rower is a clinical psychologist specializing in the connection between stress, trauma, and chronic health conditions—particularly digestive disorders. Drawing on both professional expertise and personal experience with Crohn’s disease, he helps individuals understand how their nervous system patterns can influence physical symptoms. His work integrates evidence-based approaches from health psychology, neuroscience, and mind-body medicine to support lasting change from the inside out.

read more

6 Days

244 students

4.9 stars

11 min / day

Health & Happiness

English


Lesson 1

The Cycle That Keeps GI Symptoms Stuck

In this first lesson, you’ll learn why digestive symptoms can stay stuck even when you’re doing everything “right.” We’ll introduce the GI Stress Cycle — a loop where stress, nervous system activation, gut-brain dysregulation, and emotional reactions feed into each other. You’ll see how the mind-body connection explains why stress so strongly impacts digestion & why understanding this cycle can become the missing piece in your healing puzzle.

read more

Lesson 2

Stress | What Starts The Cycle

Stress isn’t just a feeling. It’s a shift in your nervous system that can quietly disrupt digestion, even when life feels calm. We’ll unpack how your body’s “gas pedal” triggers the GI Stress Cycle and explore three stress reaction styles (Control, Submit, Avoid) to help you recognize your hidden patterns.

read more

Lesson 3

Activation | How Everyday Stress Keeps Digestion Stuck

In this lesson, you’ll explore ACTIVATION - the moment your body shifts into high alert & digestion takes a back seat. You’ll learn how your nervous system’s ‘gas pedal’ can quietly stay pressed, disrupting digestion without you realizing it. We’ll also look further into the 3 stress reaction styles (Control, Submit, Avoid) that can keep you stuck in “threat mode” and make it harder for your body to return to rest-and-digest.”

read more

Lesson 4

Dysregulation | The Gut-Brain Connection Out Of Sync

In this lesson, you’ll learn what happens when the gut-brain connection gets scrambled. Dysregulation creates real, measurable changes in both the gut and the brain, driving many of the most common digestive symptoms. Understanding these underlying roots is a key step toward calming your system and regaining control.

read more

Lesson 5

Reactivity | How Emotions Keep The Cycle Going

In this lesson, you’ll explore REACTIVITY — the emotional layer of the GI Stress Cycle. You’ll learn how symptom flare-ups can trigger automatic emotional responses shaped by your stress reaction style (Control, Submit, Avoid), and how these patterns can quietly keep your nervous system stuck in “threat mode.” Recognizing these reactions is a powerful step toward shifting from automatic reaction to intentional response & breaking the cycle.

read more

Lesson 6

Breaking The Cycle

In this final lesson, you’ll learn how to break the GI Stress Cycle by recognizing your patterns & activating your parasympathetic “brake pedal” (the Rest & Digest state). We’ll introduce a simple, science-backed breathwork practice to help reset your nervous system & make symptom flares easier to manage.

read more


4.9 (37)

Recent Reviews

Ellen

February 1, 2026

So helpful. It gives me hope. Thank you!

Paola

January 19, 2026

Fantastic course to help you understand the brain-gut connection and how emotional responses impact you

Juanita

January 17, 2026

This is an invaluable insight into how we can empower of healing when GI symptoms, which include anxiety and depression, control the quality of our lives. For me, this also helped to explain how I could work with healing neuro long covid too. Awesome course!

Lee

December 14, 2025

This course was exceptional in helping me unravel the patterns of the gastritis I have been experiencing.

Kate

December 8, 2025

Thank you 🙏❤️🕊️

Rachel

November 25, 2025

Very helpful. New stuff here. I need to listen to it all again now. 🙏

Lisa

September 18, 2025

What a fantastic and helpful course! Very informative and professional, I highly recommend for anyone who experiences these issues.

Ann

September 11, 2025

As soon as I saw the word “cycle” in the title of this course, it grabbed my attention. My symptoms were cyclical and I immediately got hope. This course is amazing and just listening has interrupted the cycle for me. I highly recommend this course for anyone with GI issues. I’m so excited to implement everything I learned from here so that I can become whole again. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and insights. Please know that your work has changed my life in a way that I didn’t think was possible. Thank you so much!

Shivaji

August 23, 2025

Masterpiece to understand the complex problems of GI

Trusted by 34 million people. It's free.

Insight Timer

Get the app