Winter Bellies

Phoebe Wahl's Winter Queen, nourishing the bellies of the forest

Winter is a time of quieting, moving inward, and softening: doing less and dreaming more. Many of you are probably feeling tingles of your animal instinct - a desire to get into bed earlier, a lack of motivation to do too much. Winter is a time where we are invited to connect more deeply to our felt senses and intuitive knowings. For us modern mammals winter can feel discordant because something within us knows we need to dive inwards but the world around us has never allowed this nor shown us how.

Something I think about often as a devoted practitioner of somatic experiencing is where in the body our intuition lives.

For many of us, it's the belly - where we get those "gut feelings." Especially as wombbearers this is also a space that we are taught to hide, shrink, or, at best, ignore. Postpartum women are especially inundated with the toxic messaging of "bounce back culture" which can severely disconnect them from their intuitions. It's no coincidence (and also no fault of their own) that so many modern mothers seem unable to find their "mother's knowing."

This winter season I invite all of you to spend some time growing more connected to your belly. How can you be in reverence to your belly? And, when you establish that reverent relationship, what other voices show up?

Here are a few ways that I try to worship my belly, especially on days when I'm feeling hard on myself:

• Child’s Pose Belly Breathing: Exactly what it sounds like. Find your way into a wide knee child's pose and let your belly HANG. Let your inhales make your belly even bigger. Let your exhales soften it. Luxuriate.

• Belly Oiling: Warm up your favorite herbal body oil or whatever you’ve got in the kitchen (olive, sesame, and coconut oil all work well) between your hands. Take a deep breath, tell your belly one thing you love about her, then rub in your warmed oil in a clockwise direction.

• No Sucking In! Sucking in your belly, which so many of us have been doing for so many years, is not only emotionally loaded - it can be physically damaging. The wonderful Lauren Ohayon just posted a video all about this