Spiritual Activism

Just returned from a life-changing conference at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY -- Enlightened Power: How Women Are Changing the Way We Live. The speakers were fabulous -- Yolanda King, Marcia Ann Gillespie, Loung Ung, Marianne Williamson, and more. Twenty-three women joined me for a 90-minute Gutsy Women workshop. Their comments were enthusiastic!

Marianne Williamson closed the conference with an inspirational talk on spiritual activism. She presented a shining example of an articulate, self-validating, no-apologies woman.

One comment she made particularly piqued my interest. I believe she referred to the Course in Miracles in saying something like "seek power not in the body but in the spirit."

I'm not familiar with the text of the Course in Miracles, so I may have missed the full meaning of this line. As I heard it, the line seems to enforce a distinction between body and spirit, highlighting the spirit and denigrating the body.

But denigrating the body does not serve us. Rather, we must acknowledge and value the power we actually embody. It's an enormous power, a magnificent power.

As women and men around the world have known -- as the witches and pagans of pre-Christian Europe knew -- the life force concentrated in our body's center links us to the Power of Being that creates, sustains, and transforms the world.

The power within women's bellies is procreative, giving birth to new generations of humans. At the same time, to the extent we claim it, our belly-centered power is pro-creative: it's the power to promote creation in any dimension we choose, according to our intention.

In this light, the history of Western civilization is the attempt first to participate in and then to control, usurp, and exploit women's pro-creative power.

In Asian traditions, the body's center is known as Energy Garden, Sea of Vitality, Luminous Pearl, the Gate of the Mysterious Female. The Hopi call it Throne of the Creator. Although Western culture has shamed women's bellies and nearly banished our awareness from the body's center, this one-point remains the meeting place of body and soul. This one-point is the fusion of body and spirit. As we live through the consciousness implicit in our body's center -- expressed as authenticity, creativity, instinctive wisdom -- the distinction between "doing" and "being" disappears. Living through our center of being, we are spirit in action.

Over the years, I've developed a practice of dynamic yoga moves that activates and directs the life force concentrated in our body's center. The practice concludes with a body prayer aligning our belly-centered power to promote creation -- our Source Energy -- with our soul's purpose, with Universal Spirit, and with the planet's center.

Moving through this prayer, we become a conduit between Heaven & Earth, inviting Spirit to accomplish its purpose through us. Our core life force aligns with and participates in the Power of Being that animates the world. What greater power could we wish to realize?

Perhaps "seek power not in the body but in the spirit" means to direct our attention away from the force we might apply to dominate others. Perhaps these words point us toward the energy we can cultivate to revitalize our own domains, making them expanding realms of acceptance and affirmation, beauty and truth. As we live through our body's center, the union of body and spirit, each of our domains becomes a palace of creation.

In Appreciation

by Elizabeth Hall

"Perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts."
--Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

It all started around puberty. Until then, I viewed my body strictly in terms of what it could do. It could do backbends on gymnastics mats, flips on trampolines, and cannonballs off diving boards. It ran tan-lined and naked through backyard sprinklers with my younger sister and cousins. Then I turned eleven and started thinking that running through the sprinkler naked might not be such a good idea....

This was also the time that I began accumulating more fat around my hips and waist. My mother had said this was normal when we had "The Talk." But Teen and Seventeen and YM and every other girl in the sixth grade didn't think it was normal. Fat was an excess and a nuisance, boys didn't like it, and we had to do everything in our power to get rid of it. So we did. Some of us were more successful than others, but, by golly, we tried. And so began fifteen years of tortuous yo-yo dieting....

Finally, about a year ago, I was in the dressing room at a department store and discovered that I had gone up a size. My first impulse was to crumple up into a ball and sob. Here we go again, I thought. Here comes another diet. So long, chocolate! So long, cheese! But, suddenly, a little voice popped into my head. I would like to think it was the voice of the true goddess that dwells within every woman. She said, "This is crazy! Stop seeing what they want you to see. See yourself as I see you: a Wonder of Creation."

Reluctantly, I took another look. Much to my surprise I saw, not the superimposed "flaws" of a fucked-up society, but a radiant, opulent, curvaceous body that was healthy and fit and oozing with sensuality. I saw my body. And I fell in love with it.

Fast-forward to the present. I am fresh on the heels of quite possibly the most intensely pleasurable sexual encounter of my life. Incredible sex, incredible because I can barely believe I could let myself go that fully....

First published in Western North Carolina Woman

My Rights as a Woman at ANY Size

From Fatima Parker, President, with credit to Laurie Richards
International Size Acceptance Association
Middle East and North Africa

I have the right to love and be loved.
I have the right to move freely and express myself in my own ways.
I have the right to feel sexy.
I have the right to feel beautiful.
I have the right to move with dignity and grace.
I have the right to take up all the space my body needs.
I have the right to be treated with respect.
I have the right to love myself as I am NOW--not as I wish I was, or as I was at another time in my life, or as others want me to be.
I have the right to feel successful and fulfilled in all aspects of my life.
I have the right to live joyfully and fully.
I have the right to be a diva, a Beauty Queen in body heart and soul.

Honour my belly?

What a concept! No one has encouraged me to do that before. In fact, our culture wants to me to hide my belly. No longer! Belly bold: belly beautiful.

I attended Lisa Sarasohn's one-day workshop held in Thunder Bay just recently.... She tells her own story and the stories of other women. Her book surprises me. Her book makes me chuckle. Her book gives me belly laughs. Her book sobers me. Her book makes me realize that my problem is not with my belly but with my culture.

The Woman's Belly Book is a real gem. I encourage you to begin what Lisa calls "a belly-celebrating adventure." What we do to our bellies we do to ourselves. What we do to ourselves we do to the earth.

--Marjut Vahtola
Resting Frog Yoga Studio
first published in the Chronicle Journal
Thunder Bay, Ontario, June 2006

Body, Beautiful

I was avoiding the mirror as usual one day as I was getting out of the
shower. My daughter, who had magically grown to be a tall, long-limbed
six-year-old, came into the bathroom and considered my familiar
hulking form. As I was toweling off, she pointed to my stretch marks,
now mostly faded to a silvery white, but just as plentiful as ever.
"What's that?" she wanted to know. I explained how she had grown in my
tummy and stretched the skin, leaving those marks.

She gave me one of those I-am-your-amazing-guru looks and said, "I'm so
glad I was born. I love this life!"

Yes indeed. And I hope with all my heart that her body treats her as
well as mine has treated me. I know, all too well, that many women are
not so lucky. That 95-pound figure I had in college is long gone now,
but I have gained an appreciation for what my body can do and all it
has given me. My children's strong beautiful bodies are a reflection of
the beauty and grace that are still mine, and always will be.

--Elizabeth M. Browne

Excerpt from "Body, Beautiful," first published in the July 2006 issue
of Western North Carolina Woman, used by permission.

The only Bush I can trust...

...is my own.

(Seen on a bumpersticker in Asheville, NC)

What's Your Story?

What's a "belly story"? It's a story about how we're valuing and revaluing our body's center. Here are a couple of examples:

In The Serpent and the Wave, Jalaja Bonheim writes that while she was shopping in a local market, a toddler approached her. Proudly patting his belly, he declared "I am me!"

Did you watch Wonder Woman on television back in the '70s? I missed that. But according to Michael Sims in Adam’s Navel, when Diana Prince changed into her Wonder Woman wardrobe, special effects showed a "cosmic force seeming to radiate outward from the vicinity of her navel."

What's your story?

Dinner for the Earth

Did you hear Terry Gross' April 11 interview on Fresh Air with Michael Pollan? He's the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

I'm especially moved by his statement that eating is "our most profound engagement with the natural world." Pollan titles the introduction to his book "Our National Eating Disorder."

I'm preparing to lead a ritual with therapists working to prevent and treat eating disorders, especially among women. I'll be telling the story of grain goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone as the story of our relationship with our bodies, with earth's body.

NASA's telerobotics program has developed a robot to automate "terrestrial agricultural operations," naming the machine "Demeter." How great do you think the grain goddess' fury might be?

The Goddess On My Desktop...

I've been revamping my loveyourbelly.com website in preparation for the release of the new and expanded edition of The Woman's Belly Book, all about reclaiming our body's center as sacred, not shameful.

I've been working long hours, my belly rumbling its own comments from time to time. As I prepared to call it quits last night, I noticed that one of the web pages had made its way to my desktop. It's an excerpt from an ancient Indian scripture called The Mystery of the Triune Goddess. The Mother of the Universe tells us where she is and how to connect with her:

"Abide in the core of your being — you will find Me there."

What a timely reminder!