Ep. 9 Your Digestion Isn't Broken — It's Communicating

If your body has been whispering that something feels off — in your digestion, energy, or emotional rhythm — this episode will help you understand what it might be trying to say.

Why is your digestion still off? Take the quiz 

Digestion is often the first place we notice when life shifts.

If you're experiencing burnout, digestion changes, or feeling depleted, your body isn't failing you — it needs a different kind of support.

The Spring Reset is a guided experience designed to calm your nervous system, restore your digestive rhythm, and help you transition into spring with more ease — no pushing, no overriding, just coming back to yourself. LEARN MORE

Stress, uncertainty, disrupted sleep, caregiving, grief, illness, or simple exhaustion can quietly change how the body receives nourishment — long before we realize what’s happening.

In Ayurveda, digestion isn’t just about food. It’s about the body’s capacity to take in life — emotions, experiences, nourishment — and wisely use what it needs while letting go of the rest.

So when bloating, gas, heaviness, low appetite, heartburn, or constipation appear, it isn’t always a sign that something is wrong or that you need more discipline. Often, it’s a sign that your nervous system is asking for safety, simplicity, and rhythm.

In this episode, we explore how gentle shifts — warm and nourishing foods, less stimulation, simpler meals, and moments of pause — can support digestion in a way that feels sustainable instead of restrictive.

You’ll also hear how listening to your current season of life (instead of forcing old routines) can actually be an act of deep intelligence and self-trust.

Simple rituals like pausing before meals, inhaling the aroma of your food, expressing gratitude, or placing a hand over your heart can help guide the body out of fight-or-flight and back into rest-and-digest.

Because your body isn’t broken.
 It’s communicating — and learning to listen with curiosity changes everything.

If your body is asking for a softer reset this spring, the Spring Reset is designed to meet you there. MORE INFO HERE

00:00 — Why Your Body Feels “Off”: Digestion as the First Signal
01:09 — Ayurveda 101: Digestive Capacity, Rhythm & Safety
03:09 — Simple Shifts That Help: Warmth, Presence & Less Multitasking
04:16 — Why Diet Rules & Supplements Often Miss the Point
05:44 — My Current Season: Low Appetite & Choosing Simpler Meals
08:16 — Digestion Isn’t a Problem to Fix — It’s a Request for Rhythm
09:56 — Stress Physiology: How Fight-or-Flight Affects Digestion
12:09 — Spot Your Patterns: When Stress Shows Up in the Gut
13:39 — Curiosity Over Correction: Supporting Agni with Softness
14:28 — Pre-Meal Nervous System Reset (Smell, Gratitude, Hand-to-Heart)
16:29 — Key Takeaway + Next Meal Practice + Free Guide + Closing

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Chelsea Johnson Ayurveda / The Body Rhythm

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Body Rhythm Podcast. I'm your host, Chelsea Johnson, talking all things diet, lifestyle, health, and healing with a dose of heart and soul. So, listeners, students, clients, I often hear, I can tell my body needs something different. I just don't know what. And after I shared about life interrupting the practice, I heard from a few people who said something like this. I can feel that my body needs something different, but I don't know what. And that question lives most clearly in our digestion. Because digestion is one of the first places when we feel when our rhythm changes, when life is uncertain, when worry is present, when sleep is disrupted, when we're caregiving, grieving, sick, or simply tired. Digestion is where we can first feel the imbalance begin to emerge. In Ayurveda, our digestion really is our ability to take in emotions and food and have the body transmute it, use what it needs, and then let it go. What our digestive capacity is. It's our ability to take in all of the things, the food, the emotions, the mental strain that's happening. And it's our ability for the body to take what it needs and then let go of the rest. That is our digestive capacity to return back to baseline. It's our emotional and mental capacity to return back to baseline. And this just is not about food, but it's also about our lifestyle. Because our digestion slows when life feels uncertain. Our appetite changes when our safety feels shaky. Think about it. Some people stress eat, some people don't eat at all when they're stressed. So everyone is different, and it's learning what that looks like for you. In Ayurveda, digestion just isn't about what we eat, but it's also about how we live, how do we adapt? What are our patterns? How our digestive fire responds to what life is giving it, responds to our unique rhythm, our regularity, our warmth, our rest, our sense of safety. When our rhythm shifts, our digestion often asks us to shift to. And usually because we're not listening or we're so distracted, it's hard to listen to what the body is telling us that it needs. And it's warmth over cold, it's soups over salads, it's sitting instead of pushing through, it's eating without screens and distraction and multitasking. It is staying present. These aren't things that are holding us back, but they're actually intelligent adaptations that help us live in a way that's balanced, that is most rhythmical with life and physiological processes, and that help us regulate our nervous system the most effectively. And so often people try to fix digestion by more supplements, more rules, more effort. You know, I hear this a lot, uh, especially from women, right? They're having digestive issues like bloating or gas, and so then they go gluten-free or they try SIBO diet or paleo or no dairy. And I have been there myself, and so I know all the things, but usually our digestive issues aren't an issue about discipline, it's actually more about regulation, regulation in our own life experience, regulation in our own daily rhythms, regulation in our seasonal rhythms as well. A nervous system that feels safer allows digestion to soften, to respond, to restore, to send the nutrients to the place where the body needs it most. This is really what our digestive experience should be. Lately, I've been dealing with uncertainty, worry, slowed digestion, quieter appetite. As uncertainty and worry have been present, my digestion has slowed. Food doesn't digest as easily. I've noticed it's sitting in the gut, and nothing really is sitting well. Even what most would consider a clean meal has been really not sitting well. I've had to look and eat even lighter. Make sure I eat more soups, more foods that are warm, wet, and moist. You know, I'm not as hungry right now during this stressful time. My appetite is quieter, and that's okay too. I'm just beginning to notice and listen to the cues that my body is giving me at this moment in time and react to them. And sometimes what used to feel nourishing can suddenly feel like too much. I ate a nice piece of salmon and greens and basmati rice yesterday, and that felt like too much. So my body really is asking for less right now as it's dealing with all the extra stressors that are happening. Instead of forcing myself to eat the way that I normally would, I've just been paying attention to the pattern, to the shifts that are happening toward what my body is actually asking for in this moment, in this practice, which is warmer foods, simpler meals, less stimulation, and more space. That is where the healing comes in when we can begin to look and listen to the body's cues, and then make adjustments that feel good in the body. This is what living in rhythm actually looks like. It's not holding the same routine day after day or through every season, but it's noticing patterns and then responding with care. And if you're in a season where digestion feels off, there's bloating or heaviness or low appetite irregularity, it may not be a problem to solve. It may be a signal of your body asking for rhythm, not rigidity. Maybe it's asking for more softness, more tenderness. Maybe it's not asking you to force yourself into your usual rhythm, but maybe it's asking you to listen a little bit more closely and make some adjustments that would feel really nurturing for you right now. When digestion feels off or it feels heavy, we might have an inclination for more supplements, stricter rules, pushing through. But really, what we need is things that are warm, wet, and moist, soup instead of salads, warm foods over raw foods, rest over productivity. These are not setbacks or things to think that we failed at, but they're actually intelligent responses that the body has adapted over time. When we get into stress mode, when we get into fight or flight mode, our body directs its resources away from digestion to fighting what that stressor is. This is an adaptation of human beings from thousands, millions of years ago. All of the resources are sent to deal with the threat during stress. There's not a lot of resources that the body is directing towards digestion. And so this is why we actually need more regulation that supports digestion more than control, more than being strict, and more than supplements. When we transition from the sympathetic response to fight or flight into parasympathetic, which is rest and digest, and then the body can use its resources again for digestion. These things all help the body transition from sympathetic to parasympathetic response and in return help digestion go a bit easier, help reduce those digestive symptoms like bloating and gas and heartburn. It really is a nervous system regulation issue. And maybe this is the first time that you've thought about this. Maybe you haven't noticed it, or maybe you don't think you are under stress. I've met those people as well when they talk to me about digestion, and I ask what their stressors are, how stressed they are, and the response is, oh, none at all. And then they tell me everything that they go on, and clearly it's a lot, and they haven't recognized really what stressors are happening in the body, what nervous system dysregulation really is happening in the body. And so I invite you to notice when does your digestion shifts? What do you notice when things are happening emotionally or during life, during times of stress or many things going on? Does your digestion slow? Does it feel heavy? Is there more digestive symptoms like bloating and gas and heartburn or constipation? Really looking at these things. Now I think sometimes it can be difficult because maybe you're the type of person like myself who has always been on go, go, go, go, go mode since a young girl. And so as I got older, I'm just continuing to go on go go mode until I can't do it anymore. And then digestion I noticed slows and I continued to push through and it slows even more. More things trigger it. And then one day I had to restrict everything because everything was beginning to set off digestion. My agni, my digestive fire was so low. That really was the medicine for me was to slow down and begin to recognize the patterns in my own life. And this practice really is about curiosity over correction. Because we can't correct if we don't know what's happening, if we're not curious what's happening in our own body, in our own rhythm with our own patterns. This invites a response rather than rigidity, rather than being more strict or staying more on routines. Maybe it's softening a little bit and giving up a little bit of control to notice how we respond to the stressors in our life and notice how it impacts digestion. There's a few simple things to do to calm our nervous system before we partake in a meal. One of the things is perhaps to sit down and inhale the scent of the meal. When we do this, we give the nervous system a moment to shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic, but that smell also tells the digestive system that we're safe enough to eat the food, and we're safe enough to digest it. Also, perhaps giving a prayer, a saying of gratitude or thanks for the meal also tells the body that we're safe enough to eat, helps move from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic response, and tells the digestive system hey, you have the capacity, you have the resources to digest this food effectively. Maybe it's doing some hand over heart and repeating thou art with me a few times in the minutes or hours leading up to the meal. Reassuring the body that you're safe. When we have that connection on our body with the hands, it's another signal that everything is okay. There's no big thing that has to be fought off, that our resources have to be redirected to. To digest everything fully. This is something that takes a little bit of practice to get used to, to ask yourself what you need in this moment to feel really good or to feel more supported or to feel more stable. So for your next meal, I invite you to take a deep breath, inhale the aroma, say a prayer of gratitude or thanks, step away from the screens and all the multitasking, and really just enjoy the food that you have to eat. It really is a blessing. And notice how digestion feels and let me know. I've also created a rhythm, rest, and rituals guide with a few short practices that you can do before you eat. Some of the practices that I talked about today are in there so you can remind yourself of what to do before you eat to make digestion a little bit more simpler. The link to the rest rhythm and rituals guide is in the description and show notes. And let me know how everything goes. I'd love to hear back from you if you've noticed any change in digestion, if you've noticed any patterns, be well and nourished.