The Belly's Body-Mind Connection | Yoga: The First Three Chakras | Japan: Hara Training
The Cultural Significance of Strengthening the Belly

Slide the word "belly" into a conversation, and prepare yourself to receive a variety of giggles, grimaces, smirks, and sniggers.

The belly is not a neutral part of the anatomy, the way an elbow or wrist might be. For many of us, our bellies are commonly a source of embarrassment and shame.

And no wonder. Consider Western culture's prescription for displaying masculine vigor and feminine grace: stick out the chest and hold the belly in—as if we were all marine sergeants or beauty pageant contestants on parade.

Popular magazines exhort both women and men to "keep your stomach firm and flat." They ask, "Is your belly going to pot?" and tell us to "redesign your belly from flabby to flat and hard." They present the "get-flat facts" and injunctions to "pancake your stomach" with "tummy trimmers" and other exercises for whipping the abdominal muscles into "legendary" shape.

Fashions in women's clothing attempt to banish the belly from sight. Straight skirts, tight jeans, shoulder pads, and "tummy control" panels in underwear and pantyhose are some of the devices designed to accomplish this disappearing act.

Culture such as those of India, China, Japan, and Africa acknowledge the belly as the point of physical access to spiritual power. Such cultures offer practical ways (yoga, hara training, traditions of dance, rituals of healing, martial arts) to develop the belly as a source of spiritual strength.

Whatever Western culture does to devalue the belly, though, our language retains a hint of the belly's inherent power.

Consider the word "gut" and how we use it.

A "gutsy" person is spirited and brave. To "have the guts" to do something is to display courage. To "gut it out" is to demonstrate endurance. A "gut-level" feeling is a signal of intuitive knowing.

Indeed, these phrases echo the recognition that the belly situates the soul.

The Belly's Body-Mind Connection

In the language of body metaphors, "gut feelings" attempt to direct our mental attention to the messages of our inner wisdom. Accordingly, the health, shape, and size of the belly reflect the quality of the attention we give to these messages as well as the kind of relationship we have with our instinctive nature.

The belly also materializes our issues about being nurtured and receiving nourishment—taking in physical, emotional, and spiritual food. And it embodies whatever conflicts we may have about our creative abilities on all levels.

As a bodyworker and yoga therapist for thirteen years, I've come to appreciate the variety of ways in which men and women relate to their bellies.

While men may consciously aspire to rippling "abs" and a tight, hard belly as signs of masculine vigor, many actually prefer the "pot belly" which manifests their worldly prestige and power. A substantial belly is often part of the equipment a man needs to "throw his weight around."

(This metaphor has become a literal reality in at least one case of spouse abuse: a man would repeatedly send his wife careening across the room by thrusting his belly against hers.)

A large belly may also provide a man with a sense of protection, shielding him in skirmishes occurring in the corporate suite, on the factory floor, and in the barroom. In this sense, a man's sizable belly is the psychic equivalent of a knight's armor plating, designed to deflect his vulnerable visceral organs from attack.

For some men, the belly seems to function like the prow of a ship, entering in advance and providing a buffer in face-to-face interactions. For others, bearing a large belly may indicate that they're "pregnant with feeling," incorporating nurturing qualities and affirming the aspects of human personality which our culture usually projects as feminine.

I find that the condition of a woman's belly often corresponds to issues regarding creativity, anger, sexuality, and nurturance. An excessively bloated belly, for example, is like an overstuffed warehouse which stores a woman's life-affirming, self-affirming energy at times when expressing that energy seems impossible. This repression of a woman's impulse to assert her identity—for example, through the fire of her rage and the fertility of her imagination—may manifest in the belly not only as bloating but also as congestion and diminished vitality.

Congestion in the belly may also serve to deaden intense, difficult feelings regarding sexual harassment, rape, incest, abortion, pregnancy, and childbirth. And excessive tension in abdominal muscles may indicate a woman's conflicts about receiving nurturance: she may be hardening herself to survive in the perceived absence of nourishment, or fortifying herself against nourishment which might take a toxic form.

Modern Western culture's ideal of the female form would have a woman's belly be invisible to the eye, eliminating any sign of unrestrained, earthy sensuality. Attempting to comply with this expectation, many women have tried to shrink their bellies through rigid dieting, self-starvation, and purging—giving rise to the current epidemic of eating disorders.

Many women report feeling great relief when they're obviously pregnant: now they have some justification for bearing a large belly beyond simply "letting themselves go." And yet others may feel exposed to an expanded sense of shame.

Indeed, the ambivalence which both men and women feel about their bellies may reflect our culture's ambivalence about pregnancy. A large belly and the pregnancy it symbolizes remind us of sexual energy's enormous power, a power which defies political and religious dictate. The pregnant-seeming belly also challenges the primacy our culture has given to the mind—to abstract, conceptual, rational, mental control and logical thought—rather than to the body and our earthy, sensuous nature.

The sizable belly further reminds us that as infants we were helpless with respect to our mothers, and that as adults we are largely helpless with respect to nature—which we experience as the tide of our feelings and instincts as well as the movements of earth, air, water, and fire. The large belly reminds us of the inscrutable power over life and death to which we are subject, and which remains beyond our control.

Yet our bellies also embody our species' life-renewing power.

We can cultivate this creative power, even in the context of cultural denial, through physical practices which strengthen and energize the belly. By intensifying contact with our spiritual source, making this contact tangible and immediate, such practices increase our inner sense of vitality, security, satisfaction, and confidence. Such practices also generate an undeniable sense of unity with nature.

Yoga: The First Three Chakras

The tradition of yoga associates the belly with the first three of seven chakras arising along the body's core. These chakras are muladhara at the base of the spine, linked with the sacral nerve plexus; swadhisthana, associated with the reproductive organs and linked with the parastatic nerve plexus; and manipura at the navel, linked with the solar plexus.

Yoga asanas stimulate life energy to move up through the core pathway from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. Thus they clear and energize the first three chakras as an initial stage in this process.

As each of these chakras become energized and free from congestion, qualities typically emerge which indeed characterize a "gutsy" person.

A healthy first chakra replaces fear, worry, and anxiety with a sense of trust, security, and confidence. In its clear expression, the second chakra dispels frustration, boredom, and disappointment, promoting creative imagination, discernment, and sensual delight. As the energy of the third chakra flows freely, feelings of jealousy, anger, resentment, hostility, and greed give way to a secure sense of personal empowerment.

In order to perfect any pose, holding it in alignment with minimum effort and maximum relaxation, we must discover how to intensify and use our belly strength. Holding yoga asanas, especially balancing poses, in proper alignment over time can be a vehicle both for strengthening the belly and intensifying awareness of the belly's spiritual significance.

Poses such as Dandayamana-Dhanurasana (Standing Bow Pulling) and Tuladandasana (Balancing Stick), for example, require standing and balancing on one leg while raising the other. Performing them elicits a sense of the belly as the pivot point around which the body turns. In order to maintain balance for more than a few seconds, we must compress the belly in toward the spine, increasing the belly's density.

When practicing poses such as Bhujangasana (Cobra), Poorna-Salabhasana (Full Locust), and Dhanurasana (Bow), we must press the belly into the floor, grounding it securely.

Given this firm central pressure directed downward, the upper and lower portions of the body lift almost effortlessly. Literally and figuratively, pressing the belly home into the earth allows the spirit to soar.

We can perceive each asana as bringing the body into a configuration which demonstrates a relationship among upper body, lower body, and belly. In this perspective, the practice of yoga is our process of discovering, in the context of our own bodies, how to sustain the integrity of our center. Literally and figuratively, in each asana we demonstrate the condition of being human—stretching between the poles of heaven and earth from a center, a stillpoint, which remains at rest.

Japan: Hara Training

The Japanese term for the belly and its transpersonal power is hara. The value which the Japanese culture places upon developing hara ("hara wo neru") shows up in the way the word occurs in idioms of common usage.

The fully mature person, for example, is known as "hara no okii hito"—the one who has finished his belly. "Haragei" literally means "belly art"—any activity which a person, having attained maturity, accomplishes perfectly yet without effort.

"Hara de kangaenasai" means "please think with your belly": go to a source deeper than the rational intellect, the essence of your whole being. And "hara-goe" denotes "belly voice," the kind of voice whose volume and depth express integrated wholeness and total presence.

Based on his studies in Japan, Karlfried Graf Von Durckheim describes the person with hara as having "an inner calm from which springs the greatest possible presence of mind and the greatest possible capacity for endurance." Further, a person developing hara "joyously experiences a new closeness to himself and to the world, to people and things, to nature...."

In Hara: The vital centre of man, Durckheim asserts that these and other qualities of hara—discernment, creativity, flexibility, generosity, confidence, serenity, patience, and security—derive from sensing a steady, tangible connection with the universal life force. He writes: "Hara is the very embodiment of man's contact with the fundamental powers of the Greater Life manifested in him."

In others words, people who demonstrate hara know themselves to be infused by the life force which permeates nature as a whole. There is no separation; there is intimate connection.

The Cultural Significance of Strengthening the Belly

Myths of nearly all times and places have accorded the belly a central role in stories of the world's creation. The belly appears as the place from which the world is initially born and from which, as the social order disintegrates, it must be born again.

Western culture has assaulted the belly and its inherent power in many ways and on many levels. The values which restrict the belly and the expression of its power in our individual lives appear again in the larger cultural context as violence directed against women and native peoples, together with the degradation of nature.

Consequently, to honor and energize our bellies is to engage in a sacred act—one which is either culturally subversive or restorative, depending upon your point of view.

As we energize our bellies we strengthen our physical connection to our spiritual source. Doing so, we equip ourselves to step aside from patterns of individual, social, and environmental violence—such as addiction, domination, and exploitation. By creating attractive alternatives to such patterns, we may bring forth the transformation our culture requires for personal, community, and planetary healing.

The Belly's Body-Mind Connection | Yoga: The First Three Chakras | Japan: Hara Training | The Cultural Significance of Strengthening the Belly

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