One of the teachers at the RAJ school (Tada) is Japanese-Canadian and the course material is mainly coming from traditional Japanese somatics that they have, in a sense gone back and reclaimed through their personal journey healing white supremacy and cultural trauma. So we did some harra breathing. Here is the link, highly recommend it, really helpful exercise you can do anywhere. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, since I am not always into guided mediations.
https://ritualasjustice.school/lesson/exercise-hara-cultivation/
Then there was a lecture where we were talking about how in western european culture there really is not much attention on the belly. Or if there is, it is a negative quality that the belly is given. It is something to slim down, or hide, filled with shame, the lower body is something to over come. The western european (white supremacist) culture gives much more emphasis to the heart and the head, and has basically severed off the lower body, and called it base, taking its power away.
Tada was offering their perspective, going back to their roots and sharing their ancestral wisdom where the belly was known to be really important. They were saying that you can even see this in how traditional Japanese clothing is designed. It was designed to be loose around the belly allowing energy to flow. The belt and the sleeves also give a powerful focus around abdomen, drawing in the eyes to this place. The power of the belly was worked with in every part in daily life and ceremony, even flower arranging! (which I was like wow, I never thought of that) But through western colonization of this culture, the cultural soma of japan began to shift, and started taking on some of this western trauma around the belly. Wearing tighter clothing, maybe being forced to adapt to new ways of orienting to their bodies, shifting the life style to lose connection to this center of power. So we talked a lot about that, and compassionately talked about how awful white supremacy is and the importance of "the 3 brains."
There is a head, heart and a belly, which in this class we called the 3 brains that need to work in cooperation. They all have different functions, and in order to be well and in balance there needs to be coordination, and fluidity between all three. It was hitting me hard, hitting my ancestors hard when it was brought up that this connection to the belly has been severed for so long in european culture. It is rare to find any mention of the power of the belly. It is absent in art history, in medicine, in spirituality. One would have to go back all the way to ancient celtic culture to find writing about the importance of the 3 brains, and Tada shared this poem. Which Alia maybe you would be interested in. It is old celtic wisdom about the 3 cauldrons, brains or centers in the body.
http://www.obsidianmagazine.com/Pages/cauldronpoesy.html
Sure, in the 90's there was a belly shirt, belly ring fad. Sure there may be few individuals who know the power of their bellies, or wxmen's circles here and there but there is not really a cultural awareness of the intelligence that the lower body has right? We do not have lifestyles frameworks modeled to us to know the wisdom of our bodies, and bellies. And it is something I complain about and think about all of the time, and have to work through, especially because I have a big belly. I got the "muffin top," we all know about and apparently is unattractive and something to feel bad about.
Anyway, we continued to talk about this wound that western culture has with the belly and how it is connected to colonialism just in the way in which the european culture started it's colonial project buy trying to secure stimulants like coffee, sugar and tobacco for itself. There was a need to fill something with these stimulants, gain power through these stimulants. The belly is connected to power, if one is severed from this grounded power, then yeah it makes sense that you are trying to keep going with the need of these stimulants, and obviously we can see this today, even in advertisements like "America runs on Dunken." Our fuel does not come from rest, knowing our needs and inner power, it comes from over powering others and our bodies with the help of external stimulants. So it goes to show how trauma is embodied in a cultural system. This inherited cultural wound with the lower body further shows up as sexual misery, and misogyny. Slut shaming, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, any experience where one is feeling pleasure, in opposition to the cultural system's norms. Someone brought up a good point about how this belly severance white culture passes on, harms black people, by putting it on them to be more in connection with their bellies through tropes about how black people can dance, have big dicks, etc...while still having to live within a white supremacist culture that hates the lower body. A lot to think about. Even the colonial project of severing the land away from the indigenous people, no respect for their roots. The food that nourished and sustained their bodies, forcibly replaced with foods high in refined sugar, processed foods that do harm to the belly, and the micro-biome. So we just really explored how western colonialism-imperialism is just an attack on the belly in many ways. (Which I cannot wait to share how I see this connected to the moon chain but that is a different post)
We did emerge hopeful lol, (despite going down the cultural trauma rabbit hole), by noticing how we can start to shift our perspectives inside of ourselves. When we start to rebuild the culture in our own bodies, we start to change the cultural soma we are apart of as well. So even just by recognizing that we may relate to our bellies as some other part of us we can start to shift it. We still may be in some ways living with a mind/body dichotomy orientation. When we heal that separation from our bellies, and from our bodies, the belly becomes less like an other to relate to, and more of a center we can see, and experience from. I loved hearing this. Because I was hearing someone basically teach the work I do, helping people re-orient into their body wisdom, and to really act from it. And not just from their gut, or intuition the belly is said to be connected with but from an integrated mind, heart and belly. You know I get mad at every esoteric text I find where there is so much emphasis on the mind, the heart but never on the belly and the body wisdom. And obviously this severance from the belly is also severance from the Mother and from our embodied wisdom, and that is also a big part of why white people culturally appropriate. Because that wisdom has been severed and there is a sick cultural soma we are born into, it hurts everyone, we see other cultures connected, we do what we were taught, we steal, not seeing the underlaying patterns trying to over ride this disconnection. Which is harmful. Trying to fill a loss and a gap without healing the underlaying disconnection becomes an oppressive behavior. These patterns show up in our personal body systems, and also in larger cultural systems as you know.
We ended with a beautiful mediation though of breathing into the belly, imagining a seed in our bellies taking root, roots moving down our legs, nourishing the soil of our ancestors, and the land we exist on. From whenever we each were, reclaiming that connection with our bellies. And it was nice. Gave me a lot of inspiration for restorying the root. And just brought it back to my awareness how important it is to do that. Connect with our roots. And also how scary it can be, to feel into our bellies, and face the cultural root traumas, childhood trauma, past life trauma that can be held in the lower body, held separate from our awareness.
So I wanted to share some of the inner work that I do relating to what I have just written about. I actually wrote this out before I knew about this class. It a glimpse of how I work with my body and soul sometimes during a PTSD episode. So it is my bodies' own somatic wisdom I guess, but now I am seeing how connected it is to all bodies' wisdom. I also invite you to check in with yourself, do what you need to do to feel well, take a break if you need, make some tea, just because this next piece of writing is in a different flow. I invite you to get comfortable as I am about to take you into a soul oriented journey.
This is a story about being activated, moving through PTSD fragments, experiencing glamour (not knowing whether what I am feeling/experiencing is true or not), feeling really overwhelmed, and working it out somatically though the imagination. During a crisis in which I could not stop receiving really upsetting involuntary flashbacks, feeling panicked, I called on my soul to help me, and felt this story come up, guiding me through centering with the "three brains" to calm my nervous system down. The story is an example of how body soul wisdom can creatively come into play and help resolve a crisis situation.
We will start with the eyes. These eyes saw everything it came across, sucked it in, bent it, and thought it was true. Receiving it all, eyes, looking, searching, and seeing, never wanted to blink.
These eyes were connected to a mind that was hungry, thrilled, wanting to know and question everything. They felt so connected to mind and didn’t always know mind was limited.
Then something happened, something clicked, activated, the eyes opened to the unknown, the unconscious. They couldn’t stop seeing. They lost sight of everything around them. Images arose from body, fragments, and sensations, visions that the eyes wanted to run away from. It all felt too much! Swimming in visions, exposed to too much, the eyes panicked with the mind. Realizing that everything they see is powerful, true or not, it was shaping their reality. Real, or unreal, the visions and symbols kept coming. Eyes just wanted it all to go away.
“Oh body, why,” cried eyes. “Let me be!”
Then came heart, saying, “Hi, I am your gift. I invite you to see as I see. If you are so troubled, I am here for you.”
“Oh,” said eyes, “ok.”
And heart said, “take a look through my eyes and see how I see!”
So eye’s moved into heart’s vision to try it out.
Heart said, “Ok so it’s not what you may have expected, did you expect it to all go away? No, this is not how I see, but look how everything is held, and look how everything is a little softer, and look I feel myself growing as I see all of this.”
This gave eyes something to think about. “Ok,” eyes thought, “I grow with whatever I see, my vision grows, and my awareness grows.” The eye’s felt comforted by heart’s vision. Heart was so confident in their perspective just because they loved to grow.
So, eyes settled down.
But, then eyes started to sense another presence, and since they had a nice time connecting with heart they felt, “Oh, maybe it is ok to become aware of something else. I like growing in awareness”. And eyes felt inspired to invite the new presence that was felt to come into view. And then they met belly.
And belly said, “Come to me.”
And belly said, “Sit with me…and bring heart too!”
Heart agreed to go. So, eyes and heart travelled down to sit with belly and see what they had to offer.
Belly said, “Look at this!” Splayed out on a giant dark void, was a deck of cards. Belly was inviting play in vision and inviting wisdom.
“Take a card, flip it over, it is just a picture, just a symbol, just a possibility right?” Belly smiled in a curious way, feeling wise. Eyes felt innocent, and heart, feeling brave, said, “Ok, let me draw a card.”
Heart flipped a card. Turning it over revealed the image of a heart broken in half. Heart gulped and put the card back down.
“Maybe I should draw another one,” said heart.
Belly smiled, and said, “No, come sit with me in the center.” Eyes watched as belly took in heart and watched as heart aligned with belly, witnessing heart sigh in relief. A shutter went through body.
“Oh something nice happened,” said body! And eyes suddenly became aware and thought, “Wow, there is even more than I thought was possible.” And belly smiled.
Heart, in a new cheerful mood, went back to their place. Heart felt in order, peaceful and connected now.
But, eyes still wondered, “What did the belly just do? In fact, what happened? Because heart was upset and then heart moved, and everything changed. In fact, I changed,” thought eyes, “and grew in awareness.”
Eyes were timid, but belly invited the eyes to pick a card.
“Hmmm…well…” In that moment the eyes realized all that they were “I am connected to heart,” they thought, “and heart helps me grow, and then I found belly, and realized I am connected to belly. Centering with belly, I am aware that body feels good. I am connected to body. And being connected to body, I feel held by something more, something even bigger than me, so I must be more than what I see, and believe”
“Ah, ok,” thought the eyes, “I feel held, and would like to know what heart experienced with you, belly. I will center with belly and see for myself.”
Belly smiled, and said, “Ok, then see for yourself,” and nudged a card at eyes.
Eyes took the card, flipped it over to reveal the image of death. Eyes associated death with all that they could see, all of the images, feelings, they were aware of.
But before they had time to react belly said “would you like to come into the center with your card?”
Eyes said, “Ok,” and holding the insight of heart, and feeling held with the openness of belly, they moved into center with belly.
“Wow,” felt eyes, “I thought I knew when I received my card, but, I did not really feel.” Eyes felt now, what heart knew to be true, that in heartbreak, heart felt its gift of growth, opening heart up to expand. Centering with belly, heart expanded in trust and peace. And when eyes felt death while centering in belly, they felt life resurrected. Maybe before they had ideas of what this meant. Every symbol has its many meanings we know. But, what mind had known was not this moment of feeling in center with belly.
Eyes sitting in the center of belly looked up, and experienced transformative love, a feeling of love, that impressed eyes, changing their held perspectives and dissolving those limited terrofying visions.
And belly said, “Aha, you see me, you saw me, saw through my eyes, and welcomed my vision. I am the organ of rebirth, my gift is renewal, and I am your connection to grounded transformative power.”
With that eyes naturally settled back to the face, feeling refreshed, welcoming a peaceful heart, and a trusted connection with belly. The eyes now filled with an awareness of always being able to connect to this sense of renewal. We are always connected to belly, the gift of rebirth and transformation, always connected to heart the gift of growing interconnectivity, and our vision's may always be renewed. Everything settled in coordination, body felt relaxed, body felt safe, and welcomed the next thing to be received from the unknown to come in trust.
And that was when feet chimed in and said, “Don’t forget about me, I will always help you move, thank you for discovering you are so much more, thank you for moving!”
Process notes
That story just came out of me and it helps me trust that I am connected to love/wisdom expanding and that is it is a constant renewal process in my embodied experience. I am so much more than the visions and stories I see and hear that come up from these traumatized places in me, stored in my body, that often feel too overwhelming to receive. Sometimes when I am activated these streams of flashbacks come to me, heartbreaking stories come to me and I get caught in spiraling feelings of of hopelessness and loss. I can't see anything else. I feel trapped in a loop of not wanting to see it nor feel it, and wanting to escape these visions. And this is also a pattern of being afraid of the unknown, and what is unknown is our unresolved trauma trying to communicate. But moving through this story helped me break out of that loop, gave my mind something to move through in a way that felt easier to welcome and face what my body was communicating to me through imagery. I was picking up sensations from my nervous system, and translating them into symbols. But I was not feeling able to resolve the tension from a state of feeling dissociated and in panic. And this is a good example of the way In which I dissociated. I start having a lot of astral visions and start going for a ride trying to escape, and run away from the body. So this story helped me move from that disembodied state to connect to these various centers in my body and feel their functions, which lead me to become aware that my body is connected to larger bodies that I can feel and I can depend on. Larger somas of wisdom I am held within, I can depend on. Through storying with my body centers I was able to open up to their gifts and move into a space of integration. Resolving the feelings of fear, letting my body move into a state of safety. I also am learning more how story is medicine, and a very somatic experience. Again imagination is great tool to orient into the bodies wisdom and work with it. In this story I let heart speak and take over, and then belly spoke and took over, so I started orienting in a way that broke up that mind over body, severance from belly pattern. And got to feel how that really shifted from that crisis response into resolution, and integration.
This is the time of the belly, the love for the belly, the love of our embodied wisdom. This is the time for the integrated heart, mind, body and soul. We may have inherited patterns of disconnection, but because of that, and through that we get to also redeem this connection. And create a culture that is a little wiser, that is a little more caring, because we need that right now. These patterns of severance, and separation they wont win because that is not how cycles work. These patterns are obviously not sustainable and we see this right now, as these systems crumble. We can learn from our mistakes, even the ones we have taken on blindly from our ancestors through reconnecting to our lower bodies, and forgiving ourselves from feeling disconnected. Respecting the time, rest, healing it takes to restore this connect and receive the wisdom from our ancestral mistakes and conditions. We can respect what our bodies have had to go through, have had to do to carry these patterns and maybe start to, when we are ready, respect what the larger cultural body has gone through, and had to do, to keep going. And then little by little we can help the Earth belly move, through our own bellies letting go of all of these patterns held in the shadow. All of these distortions within the collective consciousness we can allow to evolve and we can Restory the Roots!
Just wanted to say that I see this beautiful work you are doing and that there is so much wisdom in restorying the misrecognition of the belly. It makes so much sense that the colonial conditioning around bodies, movement, and work all have to do with this deeply ungrounded disconnection from the belly, which is also the root of where life comes from. We all started in big beautiful bellies!
ReplyDeleteI could really see you sharing your process like the story above in a more public way sometime. Goddard advisors might not have gotten your work but I think there are people out there who will be so, so into it. I think about how Havi at fluentself.com does her inner work, in a way that's almost inpenetrable for those who aren't her people, but for people who are, they've literally followed her work for 10+ years on the Internet, which is an eon. Anyway... just wanted to plant that seed of what I see :)
Love you Isabella! <3 <3 <3