The Bowels

"Keep your mouth closed and your bowels open and you will never need a lawyer or a doctor" Wilton Herz.

These are words of wisdom. And so much of our health resides in the bowels. The bowels are the lower part of our digestive tract. This is the tubular structure from mouth to anus and the bowels are the small intestine and large intestine. Included in the large intestine are the ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon, sigmoid colon, rectum and anus. These structures perform the final stages of digestion and elimination.

The function of the bowel is to extract water from the fecal matter making a solid stool that is easy to pass. As this water is extracted final digestion is accomplished by the many microbes present in the bowels. Most of our immune response takes place here. Useful bacteria compete with unfriendly bacteria to maintain a healthy balance. Completing the digestion process we then have a normal bowel movement to expel the waste from our system. This process from mouth to anus allows us to consume food and extract nutrients necessary for our survival.

The food we consume is very important for our entire being. We are what we eat. We need to be mindful more than ever with the amount of toxins, pesticides, herbicides and non-food genetics in our food. GMO's have changed the way we need to look at what we consume. Since their arrival in our food supply there are more digestive diseases affecting people.

As a metaphor for life's experiences we digest the morsel of food to extract nutrients just as we digest our experiences and extract meaning from them. The main idea of the function of our bowels is to digest this morsel. When we have experiences that create a mental/emotional conflict, the bowels can reflect this conflict with symptoms.

Common symptoms of the bowels are constipation and diarrhea. Chronic conditions of these are Crohne's disease, Inflammatory bowel disease, Colitis, Diverticulosis, Diverticulitis, Hemorrhoids, Fissures or Fistula, Polyps and Tumors. Associated with any of these conditions can be pain and bleeding with blood in the stool.

Every physical expression of disease has a mental/emotional component. Sometimes it is very helpful to bring understanding of the conflict aiding the person to make sense of their suffering. We all want to know why we get sick the way we do. Here are a few ideas for the main bowel diseases that we are discussing;

• Constipation - Conflict of Identity in ones territory. "Who am I and where do I defecate. " or "I am separated and I want to hold on. "
• Diarrhea - Conflict of an inability to digest something. An indigestible discord. To cleanse quickly. "I want to speed things up." "I can't digest the morsel in a climate of powerlessness."
• Colitis - Indigestible irritations in life.
• Diverticulitis - Powerless to move the experience forward in a climate of anger.
• Hemorrhoids - Conflict of identity related to father. Cannot say no.
• Colon Polyps - I have to forgive about an issue of separation.
• Colon Cancer - Conflict about an act that is vile, disgusting, or filthy. Something nasty that can't be expelled. The farther down the colon the more serious the conflict.

These ideas come from New German Medicine and Recall Healing by Gilbert Renaud. I highly suggest one study this amazing information. These descriptions are brief and require interpretation. When you ask your client open-ended questions in these regards you will be surprised at how there will be a story that relates to the issue. Once the client has the information, they can then make sense of their illness. This helps turn off the programming of the illness and re-establishes equilibrium and healing. This is a great adjunct to homeopathy.