How to treat heartburn naturally – part 1

Most mindfulness techniques have at their heart a simple instruction. Focus on your breath... This is supposed to be simple, but what if it isn't simple for you?  What then? For people struggling with anxiety it may increase the feelings of panic. Mindfulness involves placing our attention on a chosen anchor, noticing when our mind is distracted or wandering and choosing to return it back, with a king and friendly curiosity towards the experience.  You should start simple by focusing 1 - 5 minutes or even do short 30 second bursts a couple of times during the day.  So, I want to introduce you to a few alternatives to using breathing as the anchor focused around our senses. 1. Look & Focus Choose an everyday object in the room to look at and become aware of the colour, shape or light reflections.  I personally like looking at a light candle as its often flickers so there is movement too.    

The basis of our health and wellbeing is our guts ability to digest what we eat and absorb all the nutrients.  However it is common for people to have digestive issues such as gas, bloating, food intolerances and IBS.  Given the guts importance to wellbeing, I would like to focus on digestion and guts in the next few articles which will include tips for healthy stomachs, large intestine and small intestine. Lets start with talking about bowels.  Your bowel movements reflect both your lifestyle and gut health.  So how should you judge your bowel movements:

1. There should be no discomfort or straining when you go to the loo, and no smell of gas.
2. Stools should come out easily, smoothly and all in one piece.
3. Stools should be 10 - 15 cm long, medium brown in colur and shouldn't be smelly, stick to the lavoratory bowl or float.
4. If your stool floats it could be due to too much fat or gas in your diet - usually from excess sugar, fizzy drinks or beans.
5. A very smelly stool can be a sign of undigested food or waster that has been sitting in your bowel for a long time.  It can also be a sign of poor absorbtions or lactose intolerance.  If your stool is smelly and looks greasy it may be a sign of coeliac disease so you need to book a check up with your doctor.
6. Going to the toilet 2 -3 times a day is optimal but anything from 2 - 3 times per day to 2 - 3 times per weeks in normal.
7. Any changes to your normal pattern should be reported to your doctor.

What I want to share with you know is probably the simplest and easiest method of reducing anxiety, you can do it anywhere and it costs nothing.  Its called breathing.  Yes I know we do it all the time.  But when you get anxious we begin to breathe rapidly and shallowly from our upper chest.  This breathing breath from your upper chest is why you get tight neck muscles as they can get overused as they help to move the top rib we breathing. What I am talking about is breathing deeply or calm breathing.