Big Belly Breath
When I would wake up in the morning, my belly is the first thing I used to look at in the mirror. “Am I going to be bloated today?” “If I could only get rid of that lower belly fat, then I’d be perfectly skinny!” “Maybe I should really try to go to the gym today.”
What is your relationship with your belly? Because the new year is here so many ads have been popping up encouraging us to try this diet or that workout plan. It just feels so shallow! Yet those ads mirrored my own relationship to my belly. I would often buy into what they were selling: 1) I needed to get fit to be beautiful 2) my body wasn’t right the way it was and 3) their product might be worth trying.
As a society, we are often taught that God lives “up there.” God has always existed far above and far away in heaven. We have learned to separate ourselves from God because God is too good, too sacred for us. As women, we are taught by others what God thinks of our bellies: your belly should only expand if there is a baby inside. We learned to think of ourselves as bad and even sinful. Our bodies are warped. Our belly is too big, too small. We are not good like God and the bodies we inhabit are the exact opposite of sacred.
But God came “down” as a human. His sacredness was encapsulated in the skin and bones we are now quick to dismiss. God’s first vessel into humanity was a woman. His sacredness was grown in the same area we try to suppress.
It took me years into my yoga practice to learn what it meant to fully breathe into the belly. “I need to keep my belly in! I can’t look fat!” Finally, I let that lie go during my children’s yoga teacher training. I was listening to our trainer who specializes in teen yoga. We were laying on our backs with the soles of feet on the mat and our knees together. She called this the “belly breathing pose” when she taught it to other teens. I remember placing my hands on my belly, fingers interlaced, and just listening to her cues without second guessing. “Breathe in so deep that your fingers separate.” That was the moment belly breathing transformed my practice. I was able to fully breathe.
(inhale) you are good (exhale) just the way you are.
Society wants us to suck in while simultaneously our faith in God becomes sucked out. By allowing the belly to soften as a breath comes in so the lungs can fill more fully, we become full of God and full of life. The Holy Spirit is often referred to as a gust of wind. God is in the air we breathe. The oxygen that flows through our veins is the very Spirit of God. Once the center of our bodies is full, the rest of our body can move. From the center we can be called into action.
When looking at Indian philosophy we encounter the chakra theory. Many people have different expressions of what it means. In the most common chakra theory, the belly is the location of the solar plexus. This is the center of our determination, will power, confidence, motivation, and self-esteem. The sun is often associated with this area because of its color, yellow. The more we hide our belly, the more we shadow our confidence.
When we draw a full, deep breath into the lungs and allow the belly to respond with fullness, we are fully inviting the Holy Spirit to access every curve of our being. We are opening the door into the physiological counterpart of our will and purpose. How beautiful is it that every time breath reaches our belly the Holy Spirit guides our determination? Our breath is the physical manifestation of asking God to pave our path alongside the work we perform. As we draw a full breath in, we pull in the realization that God is already present in the very depths of our center. All we need to recreate the beauty of a full, big belly is to give ourselves permission to recognize our God nourishing us from the inside out.
With my hands on my belly, breathing so fully my belly expanded the way it was designed to and meditating on my relationship with my belly, a thought kept popping up: (inhale) you are good (exhale) just the way you are.
