Folklore is certainly not science. But it’s not hogwash either. Thousands of generations of people stretching back many centuries have developed healing wisdom that resonates, wrapped in stories designed to help everyone in a culture absorb and remember the knowledge that is crucial to their healing practices.
The model describes health and wellbeing as a ‘wharenui’, or meeting house, with four walls
These walls represent:
1. Taha wairua/spiritual wellbeing;
2. Taha hinengaro/mental and emotional wellbeing;
3. Taha tinana/physical wellbeing; and,
4. Taha whānau/family and social wellbeing
Our connection with the whenua/land forms the foundation.
So, if we use this analogy to represent gut heath, we can create a ‘gut-brain house’.
The foundation, or floor, is what you learned growing up.
The walls are what you have to build and make strong:
1. Physically sort the imbalance of your gut bugs — targeted anti-microbial and prescriptive meal plans are 25% of your healing;
2. Emotionally adjust how you live — to rebalance learnt behaviours, trauma and triggers — which contributes to the next 25% of your healing;
3. Genomically how the gut makeup contributes to your issues — the next 25% ; and,
4. Socially, managing loneliness (a common theme for many), your dealings with family, their expectations, and societal expectations that often lead to gut stress.
Mindset. It’s a conscious choice we make every day. It’s not about having a perfect life, but about finding joy in the little things, cultivating gratitude, and focusing on the positives, even in challenging times.
While circumstances can influence our mood, true happiness comes from within — it’s an attitude that allows us to see the beauty in imperfections and to appreciate what we have, rather than what we lack.
By choosing to embrace a mindset of happiness, we empower ourselves to live more fulfilling lives, regardless of the ups and downs that come our way.
It is not something to chase; it’s something to create from the inside out.
This is the roof of the gut-brain house. Are you being your medicine? Or are you being your poison?
As a society, we are trapped in a widespread convention of ‘woundology’. I am ‘wounded’ because he or she or they did this or that to me. I am a victim, so I need help, counselling, compensation, recompense.
As a society, we are trapped in a widespread convention of ‘woundology’. I am ‘wounded’ because he or she or they did this or that to me. I am a victim, so I need help, counselling, compensation, recompense.
We don’t often see setbacks or challenges as gifts or lessons to learn from — which prompts us to consider how our mindset is affecting us in this way.
If you can show gratitude for discovering your limitations, problems, conditions or weaknesses, you can maintain a completely different mindset that positively affects your mental — and, thereby, physical — wellbeing.
The gut-brain connection has shown us that a positive mindset can improve gut health, and thus overall wellbeing.
— Rumi, 13th Century Persian mystic, philosopher and poet
Awareness comes from gratitude and learning. Gut Brain Science can help you bring out part of that awareness, by giving you tools to build the foundation and the walls.
When you have prepared the foundation and the walls, you can put your roof on.
Gut Brain Science acts as the architects of your personalised health journey, by looking under the hood and taking a systems approach.
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