đź’ˇ This article explores patient trends and holistic wellness for informational purposes. This content does not constitute medical advice. Please read my certified background on my About Me Page or consult a physician before altering your care.
If you are a woman living with IBS, you already know it is not just about your gut: your emotions (especially frustration, resentment, repression, and depression) are the main culprits. However, what should you do about the main culprits?
I guess you have tried binge eating, watching, or any other kind of quick escape. But have you ever asked yourself: does that really solve the problem? If your answer is positive you probably do not need this post. But if the answer is negative, it may be time to try something different, something new.
To self-manage your IBS, that “something new” means going East to learn from three Japanese.
The practices inspired by them center on one big word: gratitude. And the one-big-word solution comes in three ways: Marie Kondo–style way of folding clothes, a physics professor’s techniques for “purifying” the mind, and a gentle diary method where you write about your future.
Thanking Your Clothes: A Simple Ritual for IBS Women
I don’t know about you. I don’t like folding clothes, but in this part you will find Marie Kondo’s idea helpful for managing your emotions (and IBS), an easy way to ‘soothe’ yourself.
Instead of treating folding clothes as a boring chore (I am sorry that I do), you hold each piece of clothing, saying “thank you” when folding it.
Why do you have to do it? Why do you have to say “thank you? This is what Marie means by expressing gratitude, an attitude that forces you to slow down, to feel the fabric in your hand, and most important of all, to bring your anger out of your head and back into your body.
In the world of Western Medicine, this small act switches your nervous system from “fight mode” into something soft, sometimes as soft as water. And in the universe of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), this grateful attitude helps your Liver Qi move again instead of getting stuck and down to your digestive system (making you suffer from IBS).
However, the big thing about gratitude is: You don’t have to pretend that you are not hurt. Before you soothe your feelings, it helps to give them space and understand what it is trying to tell you.
Looking beneath frustration and resentment
In the last post, you were asked to talk to yourself or write down your feelings. In this process, have you asked yourself the following questions, questions that go deep down into your negative feelings?
Why are you frustrated?
What makes you resentful?
Or let me ‘visit’ your experience, emotion, and feeling! Have you ever wondered why the following happened to you?
- suffering from IBS
- your parents not loving you
- feeling of being looked down upon
- encountering setbacks in your career
- the one you love hurting or leaving you
Healing your heart through gratitude
Having folded your clothes and understood your emotions better, you now move on to the most difficult, if not the toughest, method.
What Professor Tasaka suggests is a special way to treat those who have hurt you, or those who treated you badly, to the point that it leaves a mark, a huge one indeed, in the deeper layers of your mind.
The method sounds illogical and unreasonable, but it is surprisingly practical.
Thank those who hurt your feelings
You may think that this is a joke. Why should you thank the person who hurt you, when instead you want to do the opposite?
And the bigger issue is: the solution is totally impractical. Facing the one who hurt you and saying thank you? How (on earth) is that possible?
Well, it is possible, as Professor Tasaka wants us to do is to say “thank you” in your mind only: without meeting the one who hurt you face to face.
Can thanking the one who hurt you help you heal?
Let me give you an example. Let’s say Mr Wrong leaves you for the wrong reasons; you feel frustrated and resentful, if not depressed.
So with this method, you first picture him (e.g., his face, his voice), then take a few deep breaths.
And here comes one of the most important steps: Think about what emotions you have with him.
And then to Mr Wrong, you say it in your mind, calmly:
Mr Wrong, thank you.
Yes, just say the name and then thank you, no more or no less.
How to heal without an apology
Indeed, what you want is not to thank him, but to receive an apology from him? Well, if you ask for apologies, then you will fall into a trap, the trap of negative emotions, emotions that you are familiar with (anger, frustration, and resentment).
In other words, this solution frees you from your negative emotions, and most important of all, as pointed out by Professor Tasaka, in his book ‘Three Techniques for Improving Luck and Purifying the Mind’:
The reason why you feel pains deep down inside is because of the emotion of blaming.
Simply put, when you begin to feel thankful (even just a little) to the one who hurt you, something important happens to the emotion of blaming.
Instead of pouring your energy into thoughts like “He shouldn’t have done this to me” or “It’s all his fault,” that blaming emotion starts to soften, and your negative feelings slowly move away from you.
As this emotional burden of blame becomes lighter, your IBS also feels the same, because your body is no longer carrying the same level of negative emotion or “dark” energy.
Thank the future, calm your gut
So far you have worked on your past, the one who hurt you most. What about your future? Isn’t that your future more important than your past?
Now we will move on to your future but still focusing on the big word: gratitude.
This gratitude lies in the beautiful Japanese idea called Yoshuku. What does it mean? It means you feel grateful or even celebrate something in advance.
How does the idea relate to you? Azumi Uchitani, author of the book “Yoshuku: The Japanese Art of Manifesting,” explains that we should do something special in the morning when we wake up. Instead of waking up and worrying, we should give thanks for a calm mind or a comfortable gut.
But the core idea is that you must make the thanking specific, meaning “Thank you for my health” is good but not good enough, as it is a bit vague. So, you may thank in advance, saying something like “I am so thankful that I can go out to dinner tonight with a healthy gut.”
Then you try to experience that wonderful moment, imagining the chats and joys of meeting your friends, the scene of the restaurant, and the calm feeling of being able to enjoy the evening without worrying about your stomach.
Sources of digestible wisdom (Japanese)
- Tasaka, Hiroshi, Honorary Professor at the Graduate School of Tama University, author of Three Techniques for Improving Luck and Purifying the Mind (Translated text in Chinese).
- Kondo, Marie. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. 2014.
- Uchitani, Azumi. Yoshuku: The Japanese Art of Manifesting. 2025.
