It’s time you got to know your gut; that’s the sixth step in the process of brain mastery. There’s a lot of folk wisdom about the gut, and how you should trust it sometimes and be smarter than it at other times, but the reality is far more complicated and surprising.
We have something like 100 million neurons in our gut – it’s a little brain, as big as a cat’s – and it is the only part of our body not stage managed by the big brain in our heads. It’s capable of autonomous action, and that’s a good thing, because it takes care of the all-important task of converting food into the energy that keeps our system going.
The two brains communicate in a variety of ways that we’re still determining in Western science. Chinese medicine has connected the two brains for centuries via “chi,” and current research into the functioning of the vagus nerve suggests that it may be one of the prime pathways of communication between the two brains.
Why should you care about your second brain? Because the communication is two-way. The little brain can communicate misery or harmony to the big brain, and vice-versa. So the old way of thinking, that it’s your job to control your thoughts to help with nerves, say, when you’re about to perform in an important meeting or presentation, is too simplistic.
The bottom line is that if you’re only working on your brain to send signals down to your gut, you’re doing half the job. And that perhaps is why most efforts to control nerves in that way are so ineffectual.
Instead, you want to start a new, more sophisticated dialogue, not just between brain and body, but between big brain, little brain, and body. You want to ensure that your gut is supporting your big brain and body, and the other way around.
The dialogue you have currently is mostly unmanaged, and a collection of old thoughts, both conscious and unconscious, (mostly unconscious) fears, compulsive behavior, things that worked well once upon a time, and so on. The result is that your conscious mind is beset by essentially random directives, some of which help you succeed in your larger purposes in life, and most of which don’t.
It’s as if an athlete training for a big race found herself occasionally running sideways or flailing her arms in random ways, just because she did that once as a kid.
The good news is that you can take charge of all of your minds, and learn to manage your unconscious mind as well as the mind in your gut. It takes some time, but it will allow you to shed a good deal of the misinformation sloshing around in your head and body currently and become a better-focused human dynamo capable of sustained achievement. Athletes have been harnessing a little bit of the power of their unconscious minds by practicing mental imaging of their races and games. The results are extraordinary, beginning with the gold medal counts the Soviets achieved back in the era of the Cold War, and spreading around the world in subsequent years.
Now it’s time for the rest of us to get with the program, clean up our mental attics, and start living up to our true potential.
Nick, this is a very interesting series! There is something I didn’t understand though. Does envisioning a positive outcome enables the dialog between big brain, little brain and body? What are the scientific references the gut brain?
Hi, Juan — thanks for your comment. The short answer to your question is yes, but there’s of course much more to it than that — stay tuned for my book. For more on the gut, check Heribert Watzke, The Brain in Your Gut — he’s been on TED, has written Scientific American articles, and so on, and Michael Gershon, The Second Brain, who’s been in Psychology Today and even on the Colbert Report.