What does it mean to practice and teach the center in yoga? Moving and breathing from center gathers me into the bodily experience of wholeness. I feel myself umbilically connected to the earth and to the ocean of energy surrounding me. Moving and breathing from center, my students and I make a soul connection to life.

What and where is the center in yoga?

I find center in the center of my body: a point within the interior volume of my belly, nestled in front of my spine a few inches below the level of my navel. In a dimension deeper than the second chakra, this point is known as the tanden in Japanese, the tan tien in Chinese.

The spiritual traditions of Japan, China, and other cultures of East Asia recognize this belly center to be our sourcepoint, our very center of being. Practices such as Qi Gong and Tai Chi realize this one-point to be pivotal to our total well-being. As Kripalu Yoga has evolved we've borrowed the Japanese term hara (the belly as the body's central region and the site of our soul-power), and we've incorporated aspects of Masahiro Oki's hara-energizing yoga into our practice.

Yoga is said to be the ancestor of the East Asian traditions which focus on the center of the body as the gateway to our center of being. Such a focus is missing in the way yoga is typically presented. As we usually hear about it, yoga's intention is to raise energy upward along the Sushumna nadi through the chakras and out the crown of the head. While the image for practices such as Tai Chi might be a revolving spiral centered in the belly, the popular image for yoga might be the upward pointing arrow: yoga as rocket-launch.

Here's my confession. Raising energy doesn't much interest me.

Yearning for ascension feels irrelevant to who I am and what I want. Such a striving feels like so much else in our phallic culture: prizing mind over matter and spirit over soul, racing to climb the ladder of success, straining for self-improvement, valuing what's high and light while denigrating what's down and dark, glorifying the head honcho at the peak of the pyramid. While yoga purportedly intends to balance and unite the pairs of opposites, including feminine and masculine, the fascination with the vertical scale of chakras seems to reinforce our culture's patriarchal values.

However: Yoga's map of energy anatomy does chart the body's center, the one-point counterpart to the Japanese tanden. This largely overlooked subtle energy structure is called the kanda.

The kanda (meaning knot or bulbous root) is described in various writings as a white or golden sphere or egg-shape located a few inches below the navel. It is the origin of the fourteen major nadis (energy pathways) including the Sushumna, Ida, and Pingala-also named as the river goddesses Sarasvati, Ganga, and Jumna.

In his hymns praising the Great Goddess, 18th-century Bengali poet Ramprasad refers to the kanda as her dwelling place, the ultimate place of pilgrimage:

Do not become obsessed with seeking. Bathe at the sacred confluence of great rivers found deep within the human body where three subtle nerve channels meet.

Again he writes:

What splendid joy to discover that she alone abides in the central chamber of your house.

In a portion of the Vidya Gita called The Mystery of the Triune Goddess, as phrased by Linda Johnsen, the Mother of the Universe similarly gives us her address:

The wise experience Me as the true Self within themselves Abide in the core of your being-you will find Me there. Abide in Me as I abide in you.

Although I never expected this to happen, as I've focused my yoga my practice and teaching on cultivating the center, I've come to experience this center of being to be the tangible presence of the Sacred Feminine.

How do I experience her? When my belly is active and alive, I feel warmth and vitality radiating from my one-point. I feel a pulsing, a stirring or spinning sensation, as if a small world is turning there. I feel spaciousness and satisfaction in my belly, a sensation of being full and whole.

When my belly is awake and energized, I feel resonance with the center of the earth, as if an invisible cord extends from the center of my body to the planet's center. From my belly center I feel linked to the loving, protecting, nurturing, guiding energy that surrounds us. I feel that I belong, that I'm welcome in this world.

Sometimes my belly feels as if a big beautiful black woman is in residence; she's like a volcano rumbling down deep in my soul. Provoking my gut feelings and gut instincts, she delivers wisdom and guidance in down-to-earth, practical terms. She's feisty, and she's infinitely compassionate. She reminds me: "Love your belly! That's where I live!"

As I've explored the significance of the body's center, I've studied how different cultures have valued the belly. I've found stark contrasts. While many Asian, African, Australian, Native American, and indigenous European traditions have recognized the belly as sheltering the body's sacred center, Western culture has designated the belly as a target for abuse. The culture's violence works through epidemics of rape, incest, and unnecessary hysterectomies and Cesarians; restrictions on women's authority in pregnancy and childbirth; and belly-belittling fashions, exercise gadgets, and diet regimes. My research reveals that Western culture has degraded belly, woman, soul, the Sacred Feminine, the feminine sensibility in both men and women, nature, and native peoples in a single process of devaluation.

The conflicts we experience personally and the violence which endangers humankind's survival follow from our denying the Sacred Feminine. Restoring the Sacred Feminine to our experience by honoring and enlivening our bellies offers us healing, both personally and culturally. When practiced with the intention to cultivate the center of our bodies as the abode of the Sacred Feminine, yoga becomes a path with heart and with guts-an ever-more powerful way to generate a healthy human community upon this planet.

Teaching the Center in Yoga "I've just had a revelation!" a woman exclaims with delight. "I've been taking yoga classes and doing the Cat Stretch for years. This is the first time that I've felt what it's like to do the Cat moving from center. Until now I've been leading the movement with my head." "What's the difference?" I ask. "When I let my belly lead the movement, I feel flexible, fluid. I can bend more deeply and arch more fully. I feel that my head is connected with the rest of my body. I feel my body's all of one piece, rather than fragmented into separate chunks. I move with greater ease. I feel integrated. I don't have to work as hard, it's almost effortless." The other students in the class are nodding as she speaks, confirming that their experience has been similar. This experience can be a metaphor for our lives. So often we want to get "a-head." We lead with our heads, figuratively and literally. We lead ourselves around by our ideas of who we should be, what we should want, where we should be in the future. Those concepts, which we've absorbed from our families and from the culture at large, are often irrelevant to the truth of who we are. As a result, we often feel empty, directionless, exhausted. What would it be to live our lives leading not with our heads but from the center, from our bellies, from our gut wisdom and gut feelings and gut instincts? What would it be to place ourselves at the center of our lives, rather than always hoping to find ourselves somewhere out there? We might live in the flow of life, with body and mind in unison, in yoga, already satisfied with who we are, already feeling full-filled. Here's one way to teach and practice Bidalasana, the Cat Stretch, with your focus on moving from center: Bidalasana, the Cat Stretch Move into the all-fours "table position" on the ground, placing your palms on the ground directly under your shoulders with your fingers pointing forward; place your knees on the ground directly under your hips. Align your neck and head with your spine. Keep your arms straight and your neck relaxed, and breathe the Belly-Centering Breath throughout. As you come to an exhalation, press your belly up toward your spine and up toward the sky. Allow your back to round and your chin to roll in toward your chest as a result. Then as you come to an inhalation, expand your belly away from your spine and down toward the ground. Allow your back to arch and your chin to stretch away from your chest as a result. Repeat slowly several times, allowing the spine to round and then arch only as a result of your belly pressing upward and then expanding downward. Your belly is what moves first; your belly is what initiates the movement. Your belly is the origin, the source of the movement; your belly is the "prime mover." As you're ready, return to table position. For the sake of comparison, notice what happens when you initiate the movement of your spine not with your belly but with your head: In table position, lower your head toward the ground to round your back. Then lift your head toward the ceiling to arch your back. Repeat several times and then return to table position. Notice the difference that leading with your head rather than with your belly makes in the quality of your breathing, your movement, your feeling. Which style do you prefer?

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