Your Second Brain
Mary Taylor
Graphic representation of intestinal-villus
Sometimes you know what to do. Not so much because all the information is in, and signs point to this direction over that. You just know. The intuitive signal in that particular moment is so strong that there is no doubt. Trusting your gut, you move forward. It may turn out to be a great decision, or not. You can never really know for sure if it’s exactly what is needed when you take that first step toward any kind of action, but when you trust your intuitive sense, you are at least acting in a way that feels right.
For thousands of years philosophers, scientists, and mystics have danced around definitions and understandings of what exactly are gut instincts and the actions they inspire. Both are clearly important aspects of human perception and behavior, yet since messages we get from our gut do not originate as mental constructs, they cannot always be expressed in words that makes sense to others—which has led some to think they are anything from insignificant or irrelevant to supernatural.
By the mid nineteenth century, however, the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) had been identified as a part of our physiology that might have something to do with intuition. The ENS is a highly complex web of ganglia and nerve fibers that stretch from the esophagus throughout the entire digestive tract. Due to the high number of neurons in the ENS (200-600 million), and the fact that the ENS communicates directly back and forth with the Central Nervous System (and therefore the brain) it is often called the second brain.
Over the past few decades comprehensive study of the ENS by neuroscientists, microbiologists, and others has shed fascinating new light on the role of the gut in overall homeostasis, emotional states, and also in the process of decision making. Finally! There’s vindication for those of us who, when asked for advice, bore our friends and relatives to tears by saying, “Trust your gut.” An increasing body of research points directly to the wisdom contained in the embodied gut sense of intelligence.
As we practice yoga and become ever more sensitive to our feelings, sensations and thoughts, we begin to recognize subtle cues—like those from the gut—that seem to be telling us clearly what to do. Meanwhile our studies of the Yoga Sūtra remind us of the necessity of adding discriminating awareness (vivekakhyāteḥ) or discernment into these subtle perceptions of body, breath and mind as guidance through life’s complexities. Discriminating awareness is the ability to take things in context, to perceive more clearly and to see through the tendency of mind to confuse that which is permanent or solid with that which is not. Discriminating awareness allows us to contextualize the gut feeling so that it does not override other cues as to what is going on, but also so that it is not ignored. Events, feedback, our thought process alongside disturbances in our breathing or muscular patterns impact and are informed by our ENS. The gut feeling, when couched in discernment, becomes an essential and trustworthy aspect of perception and decision making.
Stacy in Mysore, India
Stacy Plaske is one person who’s never doubted the importance of trusting her gut sense of what to do. In fact, she eagerly recalls how many of the most important decisions in her life have come to her seemingly out of the blue. Intuition not only determined where she’s living but has also guided her in what to study and how to connect dots that to others might not even seem related by studying a myriad of topics she finds fascinating.
Stacy grew up in Albany, New York and after graduating from university with a BA in criminal justice and a dual minor in business and sociology, she moved to Long Island. Though she loved it there she was also extremely anxious and stressed to the point that she was somewhat at loose ends. Her usual solution of burning off extra energy and working things out by running or spending time in the gym just didn’t do it for her anymore. She consulted an acupuncturist who encouraged her to try yoga. Stacy went “kicking and screaming” (her words, not mine) to her first yoga class which happened to be Bikram style and knew right off that this yoga thing was the right path for her. She continued with Bikram yoga for a couple of years until, again she had an intuitive sense about yoga, but this time it was that something was missing.
So, she explored other forms of yoga, studying Iyengar and Vinyasa as well, then one day venturing into a Power Yoga class. The teacher required new students to sit and watch the first class, which happened to be a group of women, all in their 50’s, practicing the full Primary Series. Stacy was blown away by the rhythm, the fluidity and the sense of focus students had. Though she was half the age of everyone in the room, she was not nearly as strong, nor as flexible as those she observed that day. After watching that one class Stacy knew she needed to take yoga a little more seriously and for the next couple of years, she’d practice Primary Series on Tuesdays, work with a well-known Iyengar teacher, Jeffrey Logan, once or twice a week and practice vinyasa and other forms on other days. In 2002 she opened a yoga studio of her own and continued to study intensely.
Then in the fall of 2004 Pattabhi Jois was teaching in NYC, and Stacy drove into the city to attend. The class was packed. Being in an environment with so many people practicing together, breathing in unison, and working to their limit was remarkable and once more, something inside shifted for Stacy. Though she’d been doing yoga for several years by this point and had experienced some relief from her anxiety, when she was really honest with herself, she had to admit that still, something was missing and that there must be more to yoga than she’s originally presumed. Stacy felt an indescribable and deep connection to the ashtanga form of working in silence with an internal focus and after that weekend had a sense of being completely connected to yoga. It was as if a switch had flipped, and her concept of yoga morphed from something she did for physical relief or exercise to a practice and path toward meaning.
On the drive back to Long Island, Stacy called her mom and told her that after the weekend she knew that this form of yoga would be transformative for her and that she felt compelled to go to Mysore, India to learn more of this system and its context--the roots of yogic tradition. Fortunately, Stacy’s mother (like Stacy herself) valued the intuitive gut feelings and encouraged her to go. Soon thereafter, Stacy found herself in India for the first time and, indeed, a profound shift occurred. Not only did her asana practice take on new depth, but she felt a change deep in the core of her very existence, as if she was returning home to who she knew, but had forgotten, herself to be. For the next nine years Stacy traveled annually to Mysore, gradually working her way through the Primary and Intermediate Series and eventually becoming authorized to teach.
Her yoga studio in Huntington, Long Island was doing well and Stacy continued to study yoga philosophy and Vedic chanting with (Danielle Tarantola from the Krishnamacharya Lineage). On the side—almost as if for fun, but really because she’d always thought about going into medicine—she took pre-med courses such as biochemistry.
This time in her life running the studio was incredibly rewarding on many levels. Students would find their way to class for all sorts of reasons, but always with some note of searching for something that would make them feel more healthy, stronger, better or in some way more whole. It was amazing to Stacy to watch students transform, not so much because they were trying to change, but more so because, for those who stuck with it, the yoga seemed to work in whatever way and on whatever level they needed. The downside was that she was spread way too thin. In order to keep the studio afloat financially and still have enough residual income to pay for trips to India, Stacy’s schedule was virtually non-stop; a full time Mysore program plus teaching hatha, vinyasa and guided ashtanga classes each week.
After about ten years the routine was wearing Stacy down. Her once stiff body had loosened up, but she’d also been attempting many postures from the external perspective of trying to duplicate an ideal form rather than moving in a way that took into account the internal signals she was getting from her body of how she might need to move slowly or modify postures. She also didn’t have time to allow herself to recuperate between the rigors of running the studio and the ever-building intensity of the practice. She’d found her way to yoga for healing, yet the routine and approach she’d wound up with, though still remarkable, was no longer feeling transformative and healing. Instead, it felt rigid and dogmatic. Once more, something in her gut booted Stacy in a new direction.
She’d heard that Richard Freeman taught ashtanga from a more internal perspective. Some within the ashtanga world have thought for years that Richard’s approach to teaching is not traditional or that he’s not really teaching ashtanga at all. Yet Stacy decided to give it a try and in 2012 came to Boulder for an introductory course. The first class with him, in which he took two hours to guide people through just a tiny portion of the Primary Series, was eye opening. Not only was he giving her the invitation to go deeply into her internal feelings and sensations and to work the edge there, but the class was physically demanding even though it was just a portion of a series! The approach fit. Developing a more internal sense of awareness, Stacy was able to relieve pain she’d been experiencing from practicing with alignment that didn’t work for her body. She found that by addressing subtleties she could drop to a level of healing she’d known all along to be what yoga was about.
Once more, Stacy’s instincts had pointed her in the direction she needed to go and this time gradually she began shifting away from a more rigid approach to ashtanga while learning to listen to her body. She’d originally come to yoga as part of her process of healing and she was circling back to that. Over the next five years Stacy gave her body space to heal on a deep level within the practice. Yet still, a nagging feeling that something was missing became increasingly present. Through yoga, Stacy had experienced a profound level of healing and she’d witnessed it in many of her students as well. She’d also seen that healing wasn’t formulaic. What might work for her was not necessarily what worked for another. It was clear that yoga as a healing art embraces not only the traditional Indian approach to yoga, and wholistic methodologies, such as subtle body work or acupuncture that had first brought her to yoga. But the logical intuitive leap was that for many modern Western practitioners the healing impact of yoga could be increased tremendously by interfacing it with Western medicine as well.
So, true to form, Stacy trusted her intuition and in 2018, after 17 years of holding healing space for the community, sold her studio to pursue her dream of studying medicine. She was accepted into a rigorous accelerated nursing program at Stonybrook University (finally all those seemingly peripheral pre-med courses she’d taken over the years came in handy) and began the program in the fall of 2019. Just before the pandemic hit!
Working in a surgery center now, Stacy is still teaching yoga!
The rigors of the program fit with Stacy’s limitless energy, and she benefited from having practiced yoga all those years. It was easy for her to get up at 4am to squeeze in yoga before the long days of studying. She smiles that now at 45 she was the “older one,” amazing the youngsters half her age who were in the program with her by her stamina and good health. (Which she, of course attributes to yoga). She graduated with flying colors and is now working in a surgery center on Long Island. Immediately she’s experienced the overlap she knew was there between medicine and yoga.
When I spoke with Stacy recently, she was reflecting on how grateful she is for all the years of practice and insight that she’s absorbed through yoga over the years. How they are coming off the mat and into the world in practical and beneficial ways she hadn’t imagined possible. For instance, when the inevitable pressures of caregiving become extreme, she finds she can more easily than some at work take a step back to pause, ground and find a path through. Teaching Mysore showed her the value of staying present with her patients, listening and meeting them where they are. It’s second nature for her to know how to help make her patients feel comfortable—keeping their legs at a 90-degree angle in the chair while tipping them back to release the diaphragm.
Stacy is entering a new phase in life with enthusiasm and an open mind. The merging together of yoga and healing is turning into more than a pipe dream or a gut feeling and she’s considering how with her new skills she may begin to help bridge the gap between traditional Western medicine’s approach to healing and yogic practices that support wellbeing. How she might work to help make medical institutions more wholistic—incorporating not only knowledge of asana but also the yamas and niyamas. It’s likely too that even her intimate understanding of and trust in the enteric nervous system will come in handy!
“For modern Western practitioners the healing impact of yoga could be increased tremendously by its interfacing with Western medicine.”
Stacy Plaske
I thought Stacy Plaske’s journey—being a devoted ashtangi for so long and then shifting to add a health care profession into the mix—might be inspiring for many in our sangha. Interviewing her I was struck by how many times she said, “I just knew I had to do” such and such. Which led me to take the ENS angle on this piece about Stacy.
When I sent her the first draft for corrections she was blown away because we hadn’t mentioned gut feelings when we talked. BUT in the days between our interview and me sending her the draft she’d trusted her gut again and decided to open a new business with a friend from nursing school. This fall she will be partnering in a a holistic health center focusing on "gut" (Gastrointestinal) health! Their aim will be to help clients bolster their microbiome to enhance whole body wellness. The business is located in the heart of Huntington Village, NY. and will offer Colonic Irrigation using FDA approved Angel of Water Colon Hydrotherapy System, Physical Therapy focusing on visceral massage, myofacial release and craniosacral therapy. A Nurse Practitioner treating Lyme Disease and Mold Toxicity using Functional, Integrative Medicine, and an MD who will also be part of the team be providing ITA (Integrated Therapeutic Alignment), which is a form of energy medicine.
