The power in your belly

Take a moment now and bring your awareness to your stomach.

Notice if you’re clenching your tummy muscles… perhaps habitually squeezing your gut in with the silent wish of a ‘washboard’ stomach.

Maybe you naturally have a flat stomach and you’re still clenching anyway?

I’ve recently noticed that I’ve spent decades tensing my stomach, desperately trying to hold my gut ‘in’ having consciously, and then habitually and unconsciously, strived for an ever-elusive ‘flat’ stomach. Impacted by years of marketing and societal conditioning that tell me that flat, tight stomachs are sexy and attractive and that rounded, soft tummies are not.

What I’ve come to realise is by constantly being in this state of tension around my stomach, not only have I subconsciously been telling myself that there’s this beautiful, important part of my body that is not ‘good enough’, but I’ve also restricted my feeling and sensitivity to the delicate nerves, sensations and messages that get stimulated in my gut and belly and carried up through the vagus nerve to help my brain decide if something is right for me or not.

The ‘gut instinct’.

The source of feeling that helps us decide if something or someone is safe or not, to know our boundaries, to know when to say yes and when to say no.

Our amazing gut-brain

Scientific research now tells us that the microbiome in our gut plays a huge part in our mental health. There are strains of bacteria in the gut that ‘tickle’ nerve endings that communicate through the vagus nerve to areas of the brain that are associated with anxiety.  This is called the gut-brain axis.

What we put in our gut is crucial to how we feel mentally and emotionally, (there’s also important research that shows that early life trauma and on-going systemic oppression has an impact on our gut as children and, if unaddressed, our overall well-being as adults), and connected to that is our ability to really feel our gut, to have a positive, loving relationship with our tummy in order to connect with our energy and sense of self-originated power.

Connect with your power centre

In Japanese Zen philosophy and martial arts, it’s called the ‘Hara’, in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Taoist marital arts, it’s the ‘Lower Dantian’ (the origins of our Qi, energy or life force), in the Vedic traditions, it’s the ‘Solar Plexus’ Chakra (energy centre), and in the Ayurvedic system, the gut is the centre of all mind-body health and dis-ease. Ayurveda sees ‘Agni’ (the ‘fire’ of the gut) as the very source of life.

For me, holding my stomach so tightly in this way, not only keeps my body in a mild state of hyper vigilance, but also numbs my ability to feel the nerves in my belly, this crucial area of my body that is literally my own energy and power resource!

So if you notice you’re doing the same, practice letting the belly soften, noticing when you’re unnecessarily ‘holding on’ tightly, and seeing if you can bring a more present awareness to the nerves in and around your stomach.

A simple but powerful practice that helps us connect with this incredible source of power and energy that we all have in our very own bodies!