Belly Love: Why Do We Need It?
Do you know how important our bellies are to our overall health, strength, and well-being as women?
Briefly, in the video I share a few reasons why our bellies are so wonderful and why they are essential to our fundamental wellness. They need and deserve our love.
Why is your belly so important? It's your center of power.
It’s literally the center of our bodies. Safe and effective movement comes from our core. It's our center of digestion and helps regulate our nervous systems and even our emotions via the vagus nerve, our internal organs, and our energy centers and channels including the chakras, nadis, and meridians.
Have you ever had a gut feeling or butterflies in your stomach?
It helps us to digest our food and drink but also helps us to process our emotions.
Our uterus and reproductive organs house our deep emotions and attitudes about ourselves as women and our female body parts.
Our issues are in our tissues.
So many women feel disconnected from their bellies and even dislike or hate and put them down. This often happens when we have experienced trauma and abuse or after surgeries and/or birth or menopause when there may be little support or education for healing and recovery.
Society’s harsh and ever-changing beauty standards have also taught us to base our self-value on outside, arbitrary opinions and seeking the approval of others over our own sense of well-being, peace, and function, even our own health and safety.
Do you avoid looking at or touching your belly, especially if you have any scarring?
If so, you are not alone. Our bellies can be a sensitive area, emotionally and physically. Many women feel this disconnection and avoid their bellies, especially in life after abdominal & pelvic surgery such as c-section (which is birth first), tummy tuck-gone-wrong, hysterectomy, hip replacement, pelvic floor trauma, to name a few. It can also be a symptom of unhealed sexual abuse where we separate or dissociate from our bodies in order to cope emotionally.
In my experience in healing movement and bodywork and my own recovery, I know this after speaking with women for the past 25+ years and hearing their stories. We often don’t talk about this with others but just quietly struggle alone, not even discussing it with partners and husbands which can lead to other issues in the relationship.
Our caregivers and medical professionals often disregard these concerns about “not feeling right” after surgeries or birth or during menopause. This can result in women avoiding connecting with their bellies altogether. Because it’s so taboo and undervalued, I once mentioned it to a male marketing coach as one of the niches I feel called to serve. He promptly replied, “That’s not an issue. Women don’t have that issue.” This made me even more determined to acknowledge its existence.
Some gentle ways to consider building that bridge back to your body & belly…
Acknowledging your feelings
Considering that you can heal this
Journaling, praying about it
Discussing it with a trusted confidante
Talking to your belly as if to a dear friend who is in distress (self-compassion, self-love)
Listening to the messages from your body in this conversation
Allowing yourself to feel & release the feelings: ex. crying, anger, frustration, nervous laughter, fear, shame
This release can lead to opening of the heart, increase in self-confidence, empowerment, joy, sense of freedom, inspiration to make positive changes
Once or if you feel ready, looking at your belly and even touching it
Breathwork-deep, slow breathing into your low belly, diaphragm
Self-massage, even just gentle touch on your belly
Scar tissue therapies: dry brushing, self-massage, professional massage, aromatherapy, warm epsom salt bath soaks with deep breathing & gentle light/music, warm castor oil packs
Lovingly moving your hips & breathing to music that makes you feel good
Loving nicknames & gentle self-talk: ex, tummy, tum-tum, belly, etc.
Our Inner Child lives in the belly-sacral area: creativity, joy, playfulness, sensuality, sexuality, life force, deep emotions
We discuss these issues and work with healing any disconnection from the belly and body-soul in my “Love Your Belly” Workshop series and when needed, in my customized 1:1 coaching program, “Reclaim Your Creative Center”.
As a somatic-spiritual recovery coach and trauma recovery mentor/advocate, I specialize in women’s holistic core/pelvic recovery & strength, dance therapy, and divine feminine healing.
