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How To Love Your Belly |
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• Prize Your Powerhouse Cultures around the world have incorporated an energetic understanding of the body into their healing arts for centuries. Yoga, tai chi, shiatsu, and acupuncture, for example, each provide systematic ways to map the flow of vitality through the body. What moves this life force through your body? Where is its source? Your belly contains your life-energy battery. It's your powerhouse, the origin of the energy that streams through your whole body. But this powerhouse needs an abundant flow of breath to generate your vitality. Constrict your belly with tight pants or rigid abdominal muscles and you significantly reduce the supply of breath to your energy generator. Your physical health and emotional well-being depend on your capacity
to breathe deeply. Letting your belly move with the breath allows your
powerhouse to work at its peak. Words that refer to the belly reveal its role as our vital center. The Japanese, for example, use the word hara to mean both the belly and the source of life energy. Yoga's counterpart to hara is the Sanskrit word kanda. Similarly, the English words "gut" and "gutsy" refer to both the belly and the soul-qualities of courage, determination, and instinctive knowing. If something is "gutted" it has become powerless. When we say "Trust your gut," we're saying there's something in our bellies that we can draw upon for guidance. When we say "She's a gutsy woman," we're saying that our bellies contain an inner source of strength. Your belly is your powerhouse, giving you the guts to live a life you love. •
• How To Love Your Belly No matter how skinny or shapely your belly might be, viewing it with a critical eye will only make you miserable. The key to loving your belly, and yourself, is changing your channel of perception. Shift from sight to sensation—from criticizing how your belly looks to appreciating how it feels. The sensations occurring in your belly certainly deserve your attention. Your hara is your instinct for self-preservation, active in all the circumstances of your life. Your "gut feelings" are your best guide to living with integrity amid the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges you encounter. Still, the feelings stirring in your belly may seem vague, even uncomfortable at times. You can put words to those feelings, using images to name your belly sensations. Here's how—
• You can introduce this awareness exercise to your students as a meditation that deepens the experience of abdominal breathing. You might say, for example: Come to a comfortable sitting or lying position; place your palms gently upon your lower abdomen. Allow your breath to deepen into your belly and enter into abdominal breathing. Notice how your belly expands away from your spine with the incoming breath, how it sinks back toward your spine with the outgoing breath. Experience the movement of your belly in rhythm with your breathing. Follow the path of the breath. As you inhale, see and feel your belly receiving the breath. As you exhale, see and feel your belly releasing the breath. Experience the stream of breath flowing into and out from the core of your body. As you breathe, become aware of sensations within your belly—sensations of temperature … density … vibration … texture. Letting the image come to you naturally, spontaneously, the way your belly is feeling right now, if your belly were a color, what color would it be? Continue, as you wish, posing two or three similar queries, using categories such as "flowers," "animals," and "fruits." Once you've drawn the meditation to a close, invite your students to share their experience. • Excerpts adapted from The Woman's Belly Book: Finding Your Treasure Within. |
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