I’ve been immersed in the world of the Biome and the vagus nerve for the last couple of months. Researching and designing a fabulous yoga retreat which is on at the end of this month. And these trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in the warm cavities of our bodies rule us with an interconnected wisdom. Our health, our mental health and happiness is dependent on their robustness and diversity. We are the product of a bottom up intelligence (gut to brain), not just a top down (brain to gut) intelligence.

And a big part of the health of your microbiome is what you eat. If you’ve ever watched the movie Supersize Me, Morgan Spurlock spent a month eating large portions of McDonalds for the purposes of his documentary. During this period he gained weight, damaged his liver and suffered addictive withdrawal symptoms. What was interesting for me, a yogi and always a big plant eater, was that he said he was momentarily satisfied for about 30 minutes on this horrible non-food, and then he was ravenously hungry, all over again. The real Morgan, his biome bacteria, were not happy or nourished on this junk diet.
More recently a researcher, studying the effect of junk food on the microbiome, persuaded his son Tom to eat all his meals at the local McDonald’s for 10 days. Tom was able to eat either a Big Mac or chicken nuggets, plus fries and Coke and have beer and crisps in the evening. Tom collected stool samples before, during and after his diet and 3 different labs analysed his gut microbes. Tom stated that: “I felt good for 3 days and then I became more lethargic, and by the end I had gone a strange grey colour. I felt really sick and when I finished, I rushed to the shops to get some salad and fruit.”
Before Tom started the fast food diet, there were about 3500 bacterial species in his gut. On the diet, Tom rapidly lost 1,300 species of bacteria and he changed his microbiome ratios. Loss of diversity is a universal signal of ill health in the guts of obese and diabetic people. Tom’s junk diet wiped out 40% of his good bacteria and replaced it with obese-inducing bacteria and his gut was still not balanced two weeks later, on real food.
So how do we nourish our ruling bacteria? Well, cut the junk, eat organic, eat plants, eat fermented foods, add anti-inflammatory spices and join us in yoga! Yoga massages our guts with twists, we calm our vagus nerve with breathwork, we happy-drug our biomes with laughter yoga and community and we connect to the biome of Mother Earth through our meditations. Happy guts equate to a happy life.
Margot Wagner
Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree
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