Science Says: Listen to Your Gut

Science Says: Listen to Your Gut

Article by Dr. Dan Siegel | Featured on drdansiegel.com

Many leaders think the best way to make a decision is to focus on the logical, reasoning part of their minds. Actually, what neuroscience tells us is that there’s more to our brain than the gray matter that rests between our ears. Other parts of our body do essential work processing information. And, the best leaders know how to analyze and use that information.

The Science Behind Gut Feelings

I explained the science behind gut feelings to my colleague, Daniel Goleman, for his  Leadership: A Master Class series.

“We now know that the intestines, our gut, has a set of neural net processors that function like sophisticated computers. The computers we have at home are linear processors, and they can do all sorts of fancy things quickly, but the really sophisticated computers are those that are in a spider-web-like network called parallel distributed processing. We have these parallel processors called PDP models that are in our intestines and also around our heart. So the heartfelt feelings that we have are not just poetic metaphors of the ‘gut instinct’ and ‘heartfelt feelings’ but instead are really sophisticated processors. Now, it’s not rational—meaning it’s not a logical thing where you could say, ‘A went to B went to C.’ But it is a very important way in which our whole being is processing information, and often this source of bodily wisdom is very useful when contemplating an organization’s direction.”

We now know that the intestines, our gut, has a set of neural net processors that function like sophisticated computers.

How Does the Gut Connect to the Brain?

The information processors of the internal organs, called viscera, process information and send signals from the body to the spinal cord in a layer called Lamina 1. Lamina 1 carries information from the intestines, heart, muscles, and bones upward through the spinal cord. Part of this information goes to the deepest part of the brain, the brainstem, and influences heart rate, respiration, and other processes like that.

Another portion goes to the hypothalamus and influences the endocrine system and hormones. A different branch goes to the prefrontal cortex. The frontal region of the cortex is right behind your forehead. The front most area of that is called prefrontal. Lamina 1 data goes to two aspects of the prefrontal cortex. One twig is a very important area called the insula. Another branch goes to the anterior cingulate, the front part of a loopy kind of area.

What’s fascinating is that people who are aware of their interior (called interoception, or perception of the interior) tend to be more empathic. More interoceptive ability equals greater activity of the right insula and greater self-awareness, at least of emotions.

One view of emotions is that they’re generated from subcortical areas of our brain. The cortex is the higher part of the brain; beneath the cortex is the limbic area, the brainstem, and the body proper. Everything below the cortex in the brain mixes together to form emotions. The emotions are driven up through the insula to the cortex, where we become aware of them. When you say, “This person is aware of his or her emotional state,” the insula is usually involved.

Using Your Whole Body to Make Decisions

There are related areas of the pre-frontal brain that communicate rapidly with each other, assessing “Should I go toward or move away from this thing in front of me?” All of these prefrontal areas work together in decision making. When leaders say they listened to their guts, they’re really saying, “I don’t just base my decisions on logic; I actually use my whole self, which includes my gut and my heartfelt sense with reasoning.” They’re not just responding to their gut feeling, but they’re using their gut to give them an ultimate summation of where they should go.

Gut Feelings and Self-Awareness

Given that the body plays an important role in decision-making, how does this relate to self-awareness? Although there is disagreement among neuroscientists about whether there is a significant difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the signals from our guts have their primary input to the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is also a primary site for making maps of an autobiographical self.

Body awareness and awareness of raw, spontaneous non-rational input mostly involves the right hemisphere. The left, in contrast, is more distant from the body and analyzes data it perceives. It cuts it into pieces, creates categories, does “digital analysis,” looking for binary distinctions, such as up and down, yes and no.

Realizing the left is digital and the right is analog, leaders need to understand both are important. The left sees the details; the right sees the big picture. Both are really significant, so self-aware leaders know the difference in these two ways of processing, honor the importance of both, and integrate them together.

The left sees the details; the right sees the big picture.

What to Do with Your Gut Feelings?

When I say it is important to listen to your gut, I don’t necessarily mean you should respond to it directly. Gut feelings or a heartfelt sense provide crucial wisdom. Other times, our gut feelings can lead us astray. As with any data source, it’s important to analyze bodily input, not just to respond to it blindly. Just because you were once bitten by a dog doesn’t mean every time you see a dog and your gut says “alert, alert, alert” you should expect to be bitten.

A great research study would be to look at leaders who said “I followed my gut” when creating companies that failed or succeeded. What determines a gut feeling that makes an incredibly successful company versus a gut feeling that doesn’t? My sense is that a key difference would be how the leaders analyzed and used their gut sense. Working with a coach is an effective way to learn how to listen to and analyze your gut feelings. Here’s an article that suggests an exercise for developing your skill at making sense of the messages your body gives you.

For more on this great program I’m teaching along with Dan Goleman, here’s a short video about the importance of brain science in leadership development.


Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in it’s relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.

Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Women’s Health and Lymphedema.

physical therapy, pearl district, bodywise

New Research Indicates Cycling To Work Has Extraordinary Health Benefits

Article written by Kevin Murnane | Found on Forbes

It should come as a surprise to no one that physical activity and exercise is good for you. What may come as a surprise to many is just how good it can be. Research reported in the British Medical Journal last week indicates that cycling to work has extraordinary health benefits.

The research was carried out by a team of investigators at the University of Glasgow. They tracked 263,450 people for five years who traveled to work and lived in England, Scotland or Wales. Read more

bodywise, physical therapy, portland

7 Things No One Understands About Chronic Pain

Article by Marion Cunningham | Found on MindBodyGreen

In 2016, one in three Americans suffers from chronic pain. That’s more than 100 million Americans, more people than those who have diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined. It costs our medical system billions of dollars and no one’s getting better. Over the years I’ve met many folks suffering from chronic pain as I’ve worked on my documentary, This Might Hurt. Here are a few of the surprising things I’ve learned along the way: Read more

physical therapy, pearl district, bodywise

Develop a Mind Like Sky

Article by Jack Kornfield | Found on LionsRoar

Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. Read more

bodywise, physical therapy, portland

What is Ergonomics and Could it Make You a Happier Worker?

Article by Stefni Herbert | Found on Health24.com

Most people haven’t heard of the science of ergonomics, and many who have think it only applies to office-based employees.

The word “ergonomics” comes from the Greek words érgo, which means work, and nómoi, which means laws. You would think it only applies to work, but it has a much wider application as one doesn’t only “work” at work. Read more

bodywise, physical therapy, pearl district

The Healing Power of Mindfulness

Article by Barry Boyce | Featured on LionsRoar

When we think of mindfulness or meditation, the words conjure images of a quiet, private time of tranquility and peace. When we think of hospitals and doctors’ offices, we think of the anxiety, pain, and chaos we might experience there, and presume that mindfulness doesn’t have a place in health care. Read more

physical therapy, pearl district, pdx

Brains Are More Plastic Than We Thought

Article Featured on NeuroscienceNews

Researchers train brains to use different regions for same task.

Practice might not always make perfect, but it’s essential for learning a sport or a musical instrument. It’s also the basis of brain training, an approach that holds potential as a non-invasive therapy to overcome disabilities caused by neurological disease or trauma.

Research at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University (The Neuro) has shown just how adaptive the brain can be, knowledge that could one day be applied to recovery from conditions such as stroke. Read more

Meditation’s Calming Effects Pinpointed in the Brain

Meditation’s Calming Effects Pinpointed in the Brain

Article by Diana Kwon | Featured on Scientific American

A new mouse study reveals a set of neurons that may point to physiological roots for the benefits of breathing control

Read more

physical therapy, pearl district, bodywise

Leave the Red Zone

Article by Rick Hanson | Found on RickHanson.net

Are you stressed or upset?

The Practice:
Leave the Red Zone.

Why?

There I was recently, my mind darting in different directions about projects in process, frazzled about little tasks backing up, uneasy about a tax record from 2010 we couldn’t find, feeling irritated about being irritable, hurrying to get to work, body keyed up, internal sense of pressure. Not freaked out, not running from an attacker, not suffering a grievous loss, my own troubles tiny in comparison to those of so many others – but still, the needle on my personal stress-o-meter was pegged in the Red Zone.  Read more

bodywise, physical therapy, portland

The Connection between Mindfulness and Pain

By Penney Cowan | Featured on TheACPA.org

People with pain struggle far too often to validate their pain. Physical pain brings life to a screeching halt and prevents us from going about our daily lives or making future plans. It is the physical pain that is the root cause and controlling factor—pain and nothing else. Right? Certainly pain has an impact on our physical being. We struggle to complete the simplest of tasks, hampered by a reduced energy level that is limited to small bursts of time, sometimes not more than a few minutes. We hesitate to plan for tomorrow, let alone the future. Activities with friends and family diminish and far too often disappear as we find ourselves isolated and alone . . . and in pain. It is the pain that restricts our ability to function, right? But once you begin your journey from patient to person, working with an interdisciplinary health care team, your doctors and providers will talk about stress management, biofeedback, counseling, group therapy, and other ways to explore your emotions. You may react by thinking that your problem isn’t emotional, it’s physical. You may think, “My pain is real. I’m not exaggerating this suffering.” That is how I felt when I heard about depression, emotions, and counseling. I was not crazy, just in pain! Who wouldn’t be depressed if his life was controlled by pain?

However, I have learned a great deal since I left the pain program at the Cleveland Clinic 32 years ago. As I began my journey back to a person I realized that, although my pain is real, it controls my emotional being as much as it does my physical being. They are connected in so many ways. Listen to Your Body One of the most important skills I learned in pain management was to listen to my body. Before that, I would ignore the little signs of increased stress, tension, and pain and not hear my body’s voice until it was screaming at me. When this happens, we give in to the pain and avoid doing that pain inducing activity again. Over time, we realize that we have eliminated many activities in our life.

“Pain made me stop my rush through life and focus on individual things,” said Amanda Ford, a composer, teacher, singer, and musician in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “Because I am hypersensitive to the ebb and flow of my pain, I have also experienced an increase in my empathy for others. When I am with someone, I am present in that moment, an active listener.” Ford believes that people with pain are more aware of the value of the present moment because they know that at any instant, their ability to use their time as they want can be taken away by a flareup of pain. “So I use my time wisely and do things that are important to me. And I have a very low tolerance for those who want to waste my time in trivial matters,” she said. She remembers well a time in a hospital, between appointments, when she heard a harpist playing in the lobby. “That music was a light in the darkness, so appreciated because it took me away from that place, and all those worries,” she said. Ford suggests that people with pain find the music that inspires joy for them. “Everyone has their own; it doesn’t have to be classical,” she said. Dr. Jensen agreed, noting that music stimulates the sensory cortex. The rhythmic patterns in music can also be a focus, like biking, walking, or swimming, that helps us tune out the chatter and find a peaceful, mindful place.

If only we had heard that little voice when it said, “I’m not comfortable. Take a five-minute break, please.” By taking a break before the pain is overwhelming, we can pace our activities and control the pain. It is very difficult when you are in pain to believe that it is not all physical. The more we think about our pain the more we suffer. But, how can we stop thinking about pain when it is screaming at us and controlling our lives?

Mindfulness Helps You Gain Control

That is where mindfulness enters the picture as a significant component to living with pain as a person. Not only can you learn to listen to your body, you can—with practice—tell your body how you want it to feel. You can regain control, something everyone with pain wants: to control your life again and put pain in the back seat. Mindfulness is one of the top techniques required to manage pain. In this issue, we will explore what mindfulness is, how to listen to our bodies, and use mindful meditation and self-hypnosis to reduce stress and tension. Most importantly, by being mindful of our bodies and emotions, we can manage the fear of being out of control, put pain in its place, and be in command of our own lives.


Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in it’s relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.

Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Women’s Health and Lymphedema.