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Are You Ready To Consider Honoring Your
Belly?
The women who participate in my "Honoring
Your Belly" workshops, and who write to me after having
read my magazine articles, tell me the needs they have—and the
possibilities they envision—for healing. Listen to the concerns
that these women have voiced. Are any of them similar to your
own?
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As a child, I had a lot of stomach aches when
family tensions were high. I'm wondering if these belly-energizing
exercises will help relieve the indigestion I still get periodically.
I was anorexic, then bulimic. I spent many years
with my head in the toilet.
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I work out, I go to the gym, I play sports. My
abdominal muscles are strong. Now I'd like to build my inner strength.
I was chubby as a girl. My father would grab
my belly and hold me by the roll of my flesh. He'd poke me in
the belly as if I were the Pillsbury Doughboy. Now I'm protective
of this area. I know I'm cringing and contracting around it.
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I've always been embarrassed about my "wub"—that's
what we called our bellies in high school if they stuck out at
all.
I've made my belly the focus of my self-hate.
Honoring my belly? That sounds absurd to me after what I've put
my belly through, but maybe there's some hope for me here.
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| I was in an abusive marriage
for fifteen years. My first step getting out of that situation was
breathing from my belly, staying centered while my husband went
on the rampage, assaulting me verbally and threatening me physically.
That one thing I did led to the next step, and then the next. If
breathing from my belly gave me the strength to get out of an abusive
marriage, I'm ready to see where else it can take me. |
I started being bulimic when I was seventeen,
gorging on food then taking laxatives to purge. Now, after fifteen
years, I'm over the bulimia, but I'm still addicted to laxatives.
I've got chronic constipation, can't go without them.
As a massage therapist, I often hear comments
like "Please, massage the fat away," or "My stomach
feels dead" while working on the abs. I see women struggling
to "conquer" their bellies. I hope I can help my clients
respect their bellies instead.
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I need to get a new take on what it means to
be a woman. At home and at work I've been feeling like a second-class
citizen. I need to do something differently. I don't want to feel
this way the rest of my life.
I feel like I've got a knife in my gut. My mother
and grandmother had colon cancer.
The doctors delivered my baby by Caesarean section,
and it was such a devastating, invasive experience. I'd like to
get my body back.
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I've had a hysterectomy. I've never felt right
in my belly since that operation. I've felt a split separating
the right and left sides of my belly. I'd like to find a way to
feel whole there.
At 65 years of age I have finally recognized
that my "gut" isn't all "bad"! I have many
years of old beliefs and behaviors to change. The idea of "honoring
my belly" inspires me to take charge.
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I've come to acknowledge that I'm an incest survivor.
I'm in a new relationship now and I'd like to be more sexually
responsive to my partner.
I've had ovarian cancer. I've got a clean bill
of health now. I know something was going on with me and my belly
at more than a physical level. I want to sort out whatever issues
still need to be addressed so I can stay healthy.
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I feel that I still haven't forgiven myself for
having a C-section and I might be holding my belly partially responsible.
I want to forgive and go on.
My mother made me wear a girdle when I was a
teenager, even though I was pencil thin. "Nothing should
shake!" she'd say. "Ladies don't shake." I think
that if women didn't waste our energy worrying about our size
and shape, or dieting, we could move the world!
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Many women and girls consistently feel shame,
embarrassment, pain, and dis-ease with regard to their bellies.
Many of us may have assumed that these feelings are an inevitable
part of being female. I'm here to say that the hatred we've directed
toward our bellies is nothing more than an artifact of the culture
in which we currently live. We've internalized culturally-imposed
contempt and directed it against ourselves. But there's nothing
about this self-hatred which is either true or necessary.
The women who practice the "Honoring
Your Belly" program of belly-energizing exercises know that
you, too, can move beyond self-hatred and recognize the life-affirming
power your belly contains, feeling deep appreciation and even
awe. They know that, as you honor your belly, you can experience
new dimensions of self-esteem, health, vitality, and ease.
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