Becoming Belly-Proud
by La Zorra Feliz

I've heard many women say that their bellies are or have been the focus of their self-loathing. But that self-loathing is a personal response to a cultural process of invalidation. Our culture, I learned, has been devaluing women and demeaning our bellies for five thousand years…. The problem, I realized, is not with our bellies. The problem is with our culture…. If I agree to be ashamed of my belly, then I'm cooperating with my own oppression, giving away my own power. (p. 106)

I resist books that lay down the law, tell you what's what and how to live your life. They provoke something like an allergic reaction in me, caused by an early exposure to fundamentalism that sensitized me to any sort of preaching. Just a whiff of expert advice causes antibodies like "Sez who?" and "Who died and made you Goddess?" to rush in and attack the foreign body of someone else's wisdom.

I don't do well with self-help books—can't go near 'em without taking an antihistamine and a hit on my inhaler. I'm much better with fiction and life-writing, where you can pull your own lessons without having them predigested, processed and purified for your consumption.

So when Lisa Sarasohn tells me at the beginning of her recently released The Woman's Belly Book, "I'm not asking you to engage in a self-improvement program," I'm relieved, though a tad suspicious. But by the end of the book, she earned my trust. She kept faith with her promise.

Sarasohn is the self-crowned Belly Queen of Asheville, North Carolina. (If we don't crown ourselves, who else is going to?) She has the grounds to claim expert standing, if she chooses, with more than 20 years as a yoga teacher, health educator and yoga therapist.

She also has personal experience of shame-based eating disorders and of helping women to heal their relationships with their despised bodies. But instead of speaking ex cathedra from her belly button, she has written a book that in form as well as content honors the wisdom of women.

Her tone is conversational and inquiring rather than authoritarian as she explores the roots, effects and solutions to our estrangement from our bellies. She addresses questions to her readers, inviting them to feel inside for their own answers, sounding like she would be genuinely glad if you sent her a note telling her your thoughts on the matter.

She includes quotations from many women about their body image oppressions and liberations. She tells about her own experiences. She shares her take on myths and patterns of language. Mostly she speaks in terms of "we" instead of telling "you" what to do.

Her book is written in small, bite-sized pieces, like a recipe book, a how-to book for putting into practice the decision to love ourselves in our bodies. You get a sense that her words are grounded in deep study of physiology, psychology, gender issues, cross-cultural spirituality, mythology and exercise, but her book is not theoretical. Many of us already have a theoretical appreciation for the female belly as the source of life on both literal and metaphysical levels.

We have round-bellied figures on our altars, and we vow to protect our daughters from the tide of brain-wash in which we all swim. But what can we do for ourselves, in the culture we actually live in, with the upbringing we've actually had? What can we do to make ourselves, in Sarasohn's useful word, more "belly-proud"?

This book offers a menu of simple gifts to enrich our appreciation for and connection with our bellies, which she sees as the seat of our passion and the hope of the world. Ranging from breathing exercises to art projects, visualizations, life inventories, laughter coaching and writing prompts, the activities add up to a multi-media return to worship of the manifest source of life.

Sarasohn clearly did not mean this book to be a quick read to set on a shelf somewhere for reference; she really means us to do these things, alone if we must, but with friends if we can. (One of my favorites is meditatively painting a pair of cotton undies in a way that "honors your belly in style.")

The book was published in 2003, following her 2000 videotape, which centers on a 12-minute ritual that combines exercise, breath and the accompanying lovely guided meditation and prayer. I have a cheerful image of Sarasohn's ritual—which looks a lot like an exercise routine—insinuating itself into health spas, assisting in the subversion of the beauty parlors that once oppressed us, as they evolve into temples of health and sensual body pleasures like massage and yoga.

Women who are working with body image issues or with making physical their devotion to the great feminine Mystery will be glad to have both the book and the video. Though both book and video are self-produced, both are immaculately edited, professional and a good value for their prices. Now I'm just wondering when the author will tackle the subject of our sacred thighs.