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Steps in the Belly Drawing Process
1. Sit comfortably, with a stack
of plain white paper and an array of colors (crayons, markers,
oil pastels) in front of you.
2. Take a few moments to focus
your attention within your belly. Place your palms over your
belly center and let your breath fill your belly, breathing all
the way into your palms.
As you focus your attention within your belly,
simply notice what's here. Notice whatever images—colors, shapes,
lines, pictures—come into your awareness.
Gather impressions. What sensations are here
within this interior volume? Perhaps there are sensations of
temperature, density, texture, vibration.
Listen, too, for sounds. There may be words
or phrases, comments, even messages.
Attend to what's here for you—images, sensations,
sounds—without judging or censoring or screening out.
3. Now, consider that the hand
and arm which will, in a moment, be holding a color and moving
it across the paper, are rooted in your belly. Your hand and
arm are extensions of and agents for your belly. Consider that
whatever images and impressions your belly contains can flow
automatically from your belly, through your arm, into your hand,
moving your hand across the paper, allowing colors and shapes
and lines to spill effortlessly out onto paper.
4. When you're ready, gradually
open your eyes. Regard the colors arrayed before you. Maintaining
your awareness in your belly, let your hand be magnetically drawn
to the color or colors that appeal to you most.
5. Maintaining your awareness in
your belly, let your hand and arm move across the page, effortlessly
spilling out colors, shapes, lines, and images from your belly
onto paper.
6. Continue until you feel the
expression is complete.
7. When you sense that your drawing
is complete, pause and regard it. See if there's a word or phrase
that would serve well as a title or a caption for the drawing.
If there is such a word or phrase, write it on the page in the
color and in the place that feels right to you.
8. You might, however, feel that
you didn't quite capture the sense of your inner knowing, or
that your drawing is incomplete in some way. In this case, take
a new sheet of paper and continue the process.
Maintain your awareness in your belly, let
your arm and hand be channels through which images and forms
can spill up and out from your belly without interference. Allow
your arm and wrist and hand to move with abandon; lose control.
(Sometimes I have to give myself permission to "make it
ugly" or "do it wrong" or "be a bad girl"
in order to get the flow going.)
Allow yourself to be wild and unchained. Allow
yourself to be extravagant with the paper, using additional sheets
until you feel you've come to a completion.
9. When you've completed a Belly
Drawing both before and after you've done the entire movement
ritual, or even just a few of the belly-energizing exercises,
sit quietly with the two pictures in front of you, "before"
on the left and "after" on the right.
Notice the nature of the two pictures, and
how they differ. It's not a question of one being "wrong"
and the other being "right." Simply notice whatever
difference there might be in choice and intensity of color, the
size and interrelationship of shapes, the organization of lines.
Has moving and breathing in a way that energizes your belly made
a difference, not only in the way you feel but also in the pictures
that have emerged?
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