 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Creative
Ways to Transform Challenges: Honoring
Your Belly: Jane
and Francie meet for lunch. After ordering, Jane leans in toward Francie and
confesses: “I shouldn’t be eating. I feel so fat. My belly’s so big.” How often
do you hear a statement like that? As you read these words, one out of every
two American women is dieting. The reason? To “trim the tummy.” Most of us experience our bellies as shameful. Our culture bids us
to battle belly bulge with diet pills, weight loss regimens, exercise gadgets,
girdles, liposuction, and tummy tucks. We’ve bankrolled multi-million dollar
industries with the notion there’s something wrong with our bellies as they
are. We’ve injured ourselves with eating and body image disorders. We’ve made
ourselves miserable attempting to make our bellies invisible. I can speak for myself: When I was seventeen I started to diet
strictly (between periods of out-of-control overeating) in the effort to look like
stick-thin fashion model Twiggy. In twenty years of alternate starving and
stuffing, I gained and lost more than 2,000 pounds. Exactly what is so shameful about a woman’s nicely rounded belly?
Advertising for girdles — a.k.a. “shapewear” — reads like an FBI directive for
suppressing foreign insurgents. Using phrases like “achieve firm control” and
“obtain total control,” the hangtags on these stomach-shrinking devices
announce that they are in fact instruments of social restraint. During some periods of American culture an ample belly was
actually the fashion standard. But, since women gained the right to vote in the
1920’s, the most fashionable belly for a woman has become the one that you
cannot see. Apparently, if women are allowed to wield some measure of political
and economic power, they must deny the power inherent in their body’s center. As I’ve moved beyond what was an all-consuming eating disorder,
I’ve learned: The belly is a woman’s power center, both as a symbol and in
physical fact. I suspect our culture labels a woman’s belly as shameful because
it can’t stomach the full expression of women’s body-centered power. Looking beyond contemporary Western culture, we can see that
cultures native to every continent have recognized the belly as the site of our
soul-power. They have developed patterns of movement and breath, traditions of
dance, rites of healing, spiritual practices that honor and energize the belly
as sacred, not shameful. In the process of my own healing, I trained as a yoga teacher and later as a yoga therapist. As part
of my continuing training, I learned movement and breathing exercises derived
from a Japanese style of yoga developed by Masahiro Oki. This approach to yoga
focused on developing hara — the
Japanese word for the belly, as the body’s physical and spiritual center, the
source of our spiritual power. The belly
as the source of our spiritual power? Who knew? Here was a totally new take on
the belly. Intrigued,
I developed a hara-strengthening
practice of movement and breathing exercises. As I moved through this
belly-energizing practice daily, I began to experience the benefits of
developing hara that I craved —more
confidence, creativity, and sense of connection. I no longer felt the need to
stuff or starve myself. The eating disorder diminished and then disappeared. Learning
to revalue my belly essentially saved my life. Over the past fifteen years, as
I’ve shared this practice with thousands of women, I’ve witnessed the profound
benefits the practice can bring. The power centered in a woman’s belly is
indeed pro-creative power, kin to the Power of Being that promotes creation
throughout the universe. This pro-creative power generates new human life; it
also brings forth new ideas, images, systems, institutions, organizations.
Activating this power, we can direct it into any dimension we choose: personal
healing, intuition, creative expression, family relationships, our work, our
communities, our world. Choosing
to honor our bellies takes courage — yes, guts. Our culture bombards us with
instructions to belittle our bellies and cut ourselves off from our bellies’
pro-creative power. Many of us have internalized the culture’s devaluation of
women, unwittingly working its violence upon ourselves. We’ve made our bellies
the focus of our culturally imposed self-hate. But unless we grew up without
the influence of family, school, friends, advertising, television, movies,
books, newspapers, magazines, and toys how could we have done otherwise? The
good news is: We don’t have to torture ourselves any longer. We can choose to
support ourselves and each other in honoring our bellies as the site of our
soul-power, the home of our soul-knowing. Instead of complaining to each other
about the size of our stomachs, we can encourage each other to use our
belly-centered power in ways that create a life-affirming world. We can enter
into a new conversation. When we
do so, we restore sanity and self-respect to our lives: At lunch, Francie
listened respectfully as Jane confessed, “I shouldn’t be eating. I feel so
fat-my belly’s so big.” And she replied: “Yes, your belly is soft and round. If
you found a precious jewel — something so precious it had the power to create life — wouldn’t you place it in a
container that’s soft and round, to protect and nurture it?” Lisa
Sarasohn is the author of The Woman’s
Belly Book: Finding Your | Loving and Nurturing
Yourself | Creative Ways to Transform
Challenges |
Copyright © 2000-2006 Life Challenges |