Love, Awe, and Wonder: How High-Intensity Positive Emotions Support Gut Health
Generating feelings of love through practices like HeartMath is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve gut health.
Introduction
Our emotions do more than just shape our thoughts—they also directly influence our physical health. We’ve been hearing a lot in the last few years about the harmful effects that stress and negative emotions have on our health. But what about positive emotions? High-intensity emotions like love, awe, and wonder are equally powerful in shaping our well-being. These emotions don’t just make us feel good; they create measurable changes in the nervous system that impact gut function, immune regulation, and overall digestive health.
Central to this connection is the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which plays a key role in regulating digestion and inflammation. The enteric nervous system (ENS) is a branch of the ANS often called the "second brain". It directly controls gut function, but (surprise, surprise) it doesn’t act in isolation! Signals from the brain and body influence it. These systems create a communication loop between the mind and gut, determining how well we digest food, absorb nutrients, and maintain a balanced microbiome.
In this article, we’ll be exploring how emotions like love and awe activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting gut healing and resilience. We’ll also look at the immune-regulating effects of the gut-brain connection. I’ll also provide some practical steps to harness these emotions for better digestive and overall health.
The Gut-Brain Axis: How Emotions Influence Digestion
The gut and brain are in constant communication through a complex network known as the gut-brain axis. This two-way connection allows emotional states to directly influence digestion, gut motility, and even the composition of the microbiome. Meanwhile, the state of the gut can also influence your emotion states.
At the heart of this system is the ANS, which regulates involuntary bodily functions, including digestion.
The ANS has two primary branches that play opposing roles in gut function:
Parasympathetic Nervous System (Rest & Digest, PNS): Activates digestion by increasing gut motility, enhancing nutrient absorption, and reducing inflammation. This state supports microbiome balance and promotes gut barrier integrity.
Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight or Flight, SNS): When activated by stress or threat, it slows digestion, reduces blood flow to the gut, and increases gut permeability (which can contribute to leaky gut). It can also alter microbial balance, leading to dysbiosis, when stimulated long-term.
The enteric nervous system (ENS)—often referred to as the “second brain”—is often considered to be sub-branch of the Parasympathetic Nervous System and plays a crucial role in gut regulation. The ENS is a network of neurons embedded in the gastrointestinal tract that can function independently of the brain but is still influenced by ANS signalling. It regulates peristalsis (the rhythmic contractions that move food through the gut), enzyme secretion, and immune function within the digestive system.
By understanding how emotions shape these nervous system responses, we can see how cultivating high-intensity positive emotions like love, awe, and wonder can shift the nervous system into a parasympathetic-dominant state, optimising gut health. And that’s exactly where we’re heading next.
The Role of High-Intensity Positive Emotions
High-intensity positive emotions—such as love, awe, wonder, gratitude, and joy—have profound effects on both the brain and the gut. These emotions, classified as “positive valence emotions”, create physiological changes that enhance gut health by shifting the nervous system into a more balanced and healing state. Here are some of the biochemical changes that happen in the gut when we experience them.
Increase vagal tone: These emotions activate the PNS via the vagus nerve, promoting digestion, reducing gut inflammation, and improving motility.
Boost oxytocin and serotonin: Oxytocin, often called the “love hormone,” plays a role in reducing gut inflammation and supporting gut barrier integrity. Serotonin, the majority of which is produced in the gut, helps regulate peristalsis and microbiome composition.
Regulate cortisol levels: Chronic stress leads to elevated cortisol, which can damage the gut lining, increase its permeability (leaky gut), and disrupt the microbiome balance. Positive emotions, on the other hand, are associated with low cortisol levels - meaning that we can lierally decrease cortisol production by feeling these kinds of emotions more often.
By actively cultivating these emotions, we can harness their biological effects to enhance digestion, restore gut integrity, and support a healthier microbiome.
The ANS, Immune Function, and the Gut
Chronic stress, driven by excessive SNS activation, disrupts gut function in several ways. It increases intestinal permeability, colloquially known as leaky gut, allowing inflammatory molecules like lipopolysaccharides (LPS) to enter your bloodstream. Stress also alters the microbiome by promoting the growth of pro-inflammatory bacteria and triggering mast cell degranulation. This results in the release of histamine, cytokines, and other inflammatory mediators that further disrupt gut balance. You end up in a situation where stress impacts the immune system in your gut - but then the activity of the immune system in your gut makes you feel more stressed.
Activating the PNS—especially through high-intensity positive emotions like love and awe—helps regulate gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), the immune system’s largest hub. The vagus nerve plays a key role in this process by suppressing excessive immune activation and promoting anti-inflammatory pathways, including the release of acetylcholine, which inhibits overactive mast cells. This shift also supports microbiome diversity, reduces gut inflammation, and strengthens the gut barrier, helping to restore optimal digestive and immune function.
Practical Steps: How to Cultivate These Emotions for Gut Health
Awe & Wonder
Experiencing awe and wonder can shift the nervous system into a parasympathetic state, supporting gut function and immune regulation. To cultivate these emotions:
Spend time in nature and observe vast landscapes, starry skies, or intricate details of plants and wildlife. Open all your senses and immerse yourself in the experience.
Engage with art, music, or literature that evokes deep appreciation and curiosity. The research on the connection here is in its early days, but it has been shown that listening to music positively increased body weight and microbiome composition in rats. Definitely a space to watch.
Explore intellectual challenges that inspire a sense of discovery and expansion. Believe it or not, oxytocin and vasopressin, both hormones associated with improved microbiome health AND positive emotion states, are also important to learning and memory. And, as with everything in the body, they’re part of a bidirectional feedback loop. Having more of either of them can potentially improve learning - but learning can also stimulate their release.
Love & Connection
Social connection is a powerful regulator of the autonomic nervous system, influencing gut health through oxytocin release and vagal activation. We’re meant to live in groups and communities for the simple reason that it’s good for us. Strengthen this pathway by:
Prioritising meaningful relationships and quality time with loved ones. This shouldn’t be just occasionally but constantly - even if it’s with pets rather than people. Research shows this is key to long-term health, including the health of the microbiome and immune regulation.
Engaging in physical touch (hugs, massage) to stimulate oxytocin production. This is super important from an early age, with evidence showing that babies who receive less touch (and therefore produce less oxytocin) have a lower microbiome weight than those who do. In addition, the gut microbiome goes through a “critical period” early in life, suggesting that touch may be essential from the get-go.
Cultivating a sense of belonging through community support, group activities, or shared experiences. Activities that enhance a sense of social well-being and belonging can be so uplifting because they induce a rush of peptides that enhance vagus nerve function and push us into a more parasympathetic state. There’s no research looking at the direct effects on the microbiome but, based on what we know so far about the different branches of the ANS work, it’s highly likely that people in close-knit communities and social groups might experience better gut health.
Mindfulness & Gratitude Practices
No doubt you know by now that mindfulness and gratitude enhance vagal tone but they can also reduce stress-induced gut inflammation and promote a balanced microbiome. Incorporate:
Meditation – Focused breathing and body scans are really useful for establishing presence but you can really level up your meditation practice by trying loving-kindness meditation. If you struggle to meditate, then you might find HeartMath Quick Coherence more useful as it’s typically performed for as little as two minutes. I also have a simplifed version available here.
Journaling – Daily gratitude reflections to reframe stress and increase positive emotional states. The Positive Pscyhology movement has gotten a bit of a bad rap over the last few years but there is evidence that cultivating gratitude and awareness of the good things that happen throughout your day can help with reframing. Pay attention to little things like how delicious your morning coffee was, celebrate your small wins at work, or even just the way your cat looks at you. Journaling can help draw your attention to these things and solidify them in your memory.
By integrating these practices into daily life, you can harness the power of high-intensity positive emotions to improve gut health, immune function, and overall well-being.
Conclusion
So, as you can see, high-intensity positive emotions, such as joy, love, and gratitude, have a profound impact on gut health. These emotions can stimulate the release of neuropeptides like oxytocin and vasopressin while reducing stress-related hormones, which in turn support healthy gut microbiota. They do this by modulating the autonomic nervous system, shifting it from an SNS-dominant state to a PNS-dominant state, and promoting digestion and nutrient absorption. As a result, cultivating positive emotions not only enhances mental well-being but also contributes to a healthier gut.
This means emotional well-being isn’t just important for mental health; it plays a vital role in overall health, including immune function and the regulation of gut microbiota. Looking after your emotional well-being is truly one of the most powerful things you can do for your health - especially for your gut.
Want to learn how to support your nervous system fully? Check out my online self-paced course, Nourish Your Nervous System. It presents the most up-to-date research on nervous system function and what can help or hinder it. Full of practical strategies and advice, it’s guaranteed to be life-changing.