Think With Your Belly

This week in Conscious Dancer Magazine, an article that caught my attention by Philip Shepherd, author of New Self New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-first Century.  Educated in a Somatic tradition similar to my own, the author described the benefits of dropping from your head down into to your “Hara,” the Japanese word for the center of gravity located in the belly area of the human body, just below the navel.

The principle of centering the body in the belly is one of the foundations of Strozzi Somatics, and a topic I can never come back to often enough.

What are some of the benefits of bringing our attention into the belly?

Purely physically, we can create a lot of healing by generating more natural movement through the center part of our bodies. For example, allowing the pelvis to move freely can serve as incredible medicine for the lower back.  All too often we sit still at work for hours on end, creating stiffness and tension in the body that fails to release when we later walk with frozen hip joints from one meeting to the next. The rhythmic swing of the hips is a natural way to restore the flexibility and mobility of your spine.

Not to mention, it does wonders for your sex appeal (think of a sexy Salsa hip sway)!

Energetically, when you “move from your belly” you may notice that a whole new set of sensations are present in your body, and a whole new range of possibilities are present in your action. For example, moving from your belly allows you to move very quickly, while still experiencing the sensation of moving slowly. Day to day, when the tension ramps up, do you ever find yourself leaning forward, straining to stay ahead of the busy hours as they unfold? Dropping your energy and attention to your belly can bring you back into connection with the ground and prevent you from getting ahead of yourself.

Furthermore, in life, moving from the belly is a way of connecting with intuition and making authentic choices.

A couple of years ago I was experiencing an ongoing sharp pain in my belly, below my navel on the right hand side. At that point in my life, I was wading through the drama of a challenging intimate relationship and decided to attend a workshop to help me find a new way forward. At a key moment in the session, I raised the question about my physical belly-ache to the workshop facilitator (who is now an important mentor in my life). Without missing a beat, he avoided dissecting physical symptoms and went straight for the metaphor: “Where in your life are you not listening to your gut?”

The question floored me. For a moment my brain shut down and all that was left was the voice in my belly. I heard myself answer: “It’s time to leave this relationship, I’ve known it for a long time.”  There was no denying it. The wiser of my two brains was the one in my belly. Nonetheless, I was even further surprised that the pain, which had worried me enough to look into appendix surgery only a month before, completely resolved itself shortly after I made the decision to leave.

This week I invite you to focus on moving from your belly.

Physically, practice dropping your weight and your attention to just below your navel as you walk. Notice when you’re pitching forward in a hurry to get to your next destination. Notice too when your energy and your shoulders have risen up around your ears, instigated by the stress of day-to-day life. Drop back down into yourself and imagine your hips are gliding forward on a smooth track, while your upper body is simply, effortlessly going along for the ride.

Metaphorically, are you able to bypass your thinking mind and let your actions be guided directly by your inner belly-voice. What would you stop? What would you start? What would you continue?

From both of my brains,

LeeAnn