by Lisa Sarasohn

For the last twelve years, I’ve been bringing forth “Honoring Your Belly,” a ritual of 23 movement and breathing exercises drawn from yoga and other movement arts. My initial motivation was to find some relief from a long-term eating disorder. Little did I know that this belly-energizing practice would give me the relief I was seeking...and much more.

During these same twelve years, I’ve been tracking the traces of our ancestors’ woman-affirming, Goddess-revering cultures. As I’ve studied the archeological evidence—figurines in clay and bone, rock paintings and engravings, ceramic designs—I’ve found an intimate association between the ritual’s belly-energizing gestures and our ancestors’ images of the Sacred Feminine.

Amazingly, the body’s configuration in each gesture replicates an ancient image of the Feminine Divine. When we move through a gesture, we’re animating the corresponding emblem, giving it breath, bringing it to life.

Embedded within each image is a seed symbol, a glyph. This glyph is a graphic archetype, a schematic rendering, a sign pointing toward the Goddess and telling us where she may be found. The glyph is her signature, her mark.

The glyphs corresponding to the practice’s gestures are also phosphenes. Phosphenes are the geometric shapes we see when there’s nothing to be seen, when our eyes receive no external stimulation—for example, in the darkness of a sweat lodge or in a bank of featureless clouds. Phosphenes are the shapes our nervous system produces internally, on its own; the shapes themselves reflect the geometry of our neural organization. When we see phosphenes within the scope of our inner vision, we are seeing the process of seeing.

What does it mean, then, that these images of the Sacred Feminine incorporate glyphs that are also phosphenes? When we can gaze upon these images without distraction or hurry, when we can see clearly and simply, we experience the identity of who is seeing, what is seen, and the process of seeing. We experience the unity of knower, knowing, and the known. Separation dissolves and we merge seamlessly into union with the Divine. We enter into the truth that the Mother of the Universe proclaims in an ancient scripture of India, the Tripura Rahasa, as given by Linda Johnsen: “Know that even now, in this very moment, there is absolutely no difference between us.”

In addition to animating ancient images of the Sacred Feminine, the belly-energizing gestures enact a myth of creation and the story of the heroine’s journey. The initial gesture in the “Honoring Your Belly” ritual is Side Stretches; the portion of the myth that narrates this gesture is:

In the beginning, Woman created the world,
and the world was Woman.

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