Welcome to the intelligence within.
Five-minute morning meditation on the gut-brain hormone connection for women in menopause on their second spring.
So welcome,
Dear sister.
Good morning.
Before the day begins.
Before the lists,
Before the obligations,
And all the noise.
Take this one moment.
Just five minutes for yourself,
For the extraordinary intelligence that lives inside of you.
And has been working on your behalf.
Since the moment you opened your eyes this morning.
So please find a comfortable seat.
Let your spine be tall.
Rest your hands open in your lap.
Close your eyes.
And take one slow breath.
All the way down into your belly.
Feeling it expand softly beneath your hands.
And release.
Do this one more,
Down into the belly,
Release.
Now,
You are here.
So let's place one hand on your belly right now.
Right at the center,
Just below your belly button.
Feel the warmth of your own palm against your own body.
Beneath your hand lives one of the most sophisticated neural networks in our entire human body.
Your gut contains 100 million nerve cells.
More than your spinal cord.
Scientists.
And practitioners call it the enteric nervous system.
And they've given it another name that says everything.
The second brain.
Your gut and your brain are in constant conversation.
Talking to each other through something called the vagus nerve.
Which is a long,
Winding,
Wandering pathway.
That runs from the base of your skull all the way down through your heart.
Your lungs and into the full length of your digestive tract.
Now here's the thing you need to know.
Is that roughly 90% of the signals traveling along that nerve actually move upward.
From the gut to the brain.
Your belly is not receiving instructions,
It's sending them.
Enduring perimenopause and menopause.
This conversation.
Between the gut and the brain is alive.
Estrogen receptors line the entire length of the gut.
As estrogen shifts the gut microbiome,
Which is the vast community of bacteria and organisms that live there.
Are shifting within it.
And this affects not just digestion.
But the production of neurotransmitters.
Serotonin.
The molecule most associated with mood and well-being.
About 90% of it is produced right there in the gut,
Beneath the hand that you have.
Holding your belly.
The anxiety,
The mood shifts,
The brain fog,
The disrupted sleep.
They are happening in a conversation.
Between your gut and your brain.
That is being rewritten.
By this season in your life.
The complexity of it,
The intelligence of it.
Your body.
Recalibrating an extraordinary sophisticated system one minute at a time.
So now with your hand still resting warm on your belly.
Breathe slowly.
And deliberately down into the space.
Imagine the breath traveling all the way down past your lungs,
Past your diaphragm.
All the way into the warm,
Living intelligence that you feel beneath your palm.
And as you inhale,
Imagine that you are sending a signal of safety down through the vagus nerve.
From your calm,
Present,
Wakeful mind downward into the gut.
A message that says,
We are safe.
The day ahead is manageable.
We have everything we need.
And as you exhale,
Imagine the gut sending something back up.
No worry,
No urgency,
No alarm of system on high alert,
But steadiness.
The deep animal steadiness of a body that has been doing this work for decades.
And it knows.
In its oldest intelligence how to meet what comes.
Inhale,
Safety.
Traveling down.
Exhale steadiness rising up.
One more time,
Inhale,
Safety,
Traveling down through the nervous system and the vagus nerve into the belly,
Into that second brain.
Exhale steadiness,
Serotonin,
The body's own deep knowing rising back up to meet your day.
One final breath like this.
All the way down.
All the way back up.
This morning,
Dear sister.
Carry one thing with you into your day.
The symptoms of this season,
Menopause,
The mood shifts,
The cognitive fog,
The anxiety that arrives.
Without any invitation,
That's all data for you.
They're your gut brain axis speaking really loudly about what it needs.
More fiber,
More fermented foods,
More stillness.
Less cortisol.
More of this,
This is deliberate,
Slow,
Downward breath that tells your nervous system it is safe to rest.
Rather than brace.
This morning,
You've already begun that conversation on the very.
Best terms.
With presence,
With curiosity,
With one warm hand on your belly and the willingness to listen to it.
Place both hands now over your heart.
Feel your heart beat.
Daddy?
Faithful and entirely yours.
And set your intention for today.
I will listen to my body as the intelligence,
Communication,
Extraordinary system that it is.
I will feed it well.
I will breathe into it fully.
I trust that it's always,
Always working on my behalf.
So please take one final deep breath all the way down into the belly.
All the way up and through the chest,
Release slowly through the mouth.
Open your eyes.
The day is yours.
And you are ready for it.
Namaste.
