We at AmaZe believe in trusting your gut. So with this anniversary issue being a celebration of ‘Daring Yourself’  to be amazed at how your life can be richer with style and substance, I asked author Lisa Sarasohn, who just wrote a fabulous new self-health book: The Woman’s Belly Book: Finding Your True Center for More Energy, Confidence and Pleasure,   some questions...

First of all, a little about Lisa and her book...

We love that Lisa states up front the intention of not “fixing us.” In chapter one she shares:

“This is not a self-improvement program. It’s not about trying to shove yourself from grimy Point A, where you are now, to a glittering Point B, over there where you’ll be perfect.
This book is about discovering, affirming and being true to who you already are. It’s about coming home to yourself and developing the skills to return, again and again, to your center.

…We experiment, we make mistakes, we go overboard, we lose our balance, we leave home and lose our way for a while. We return. We return again and again, to our center. This book provides you with practical ways to do exactly that.

Sure, you may want to change some of the ways you think, feel eat, breathe, value, choose, or move.  That’s fine. The point is to make these changes not to make yourself ‘better’ or ‘different.’  The point is to make such changes because they enhance and nourish, amplify and magnify, illuminate and celebrate who you already are.”

Note: Excerpted from the book The Woman’s Belly Book: Finding Your True Center for More Energy, Confidence, and Pleasure  © 2006 by Lisa Sarasohn. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato,  CA. www.newworldlibrary.com

Now, a conversation with Lisa...

What is contemporary culture’s “best-kept secret” about women’s bellies?

”For many women, the belly has become the focus of our shame and self-hate. And no wonder: The culture urges us to attack our abs and make our bellies board-flat. Actually, there’s nothing shameful about a woman’s belly. Our bellies shelter the source of our life energy, our soul power. Your belly is your power center; it contains your greatest treasure.”

How many American women and girls are dieting, and how much of their dieting has to do with a desire to “trim the tummy”? What, if any, are the dangers of dieting?

”As many as 25 million American women and girls are now struggling with eating disorders — anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating.  In addition to setting women up for eating disorders, dieting puts women at risk for symptoms of starvation: depression, anxiety, diminished interest in sex, irritability, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, impaired memory, reduction in metabolic rate, fatigue — and, of course, obsession with food. Dieting disturbs a woman’s ability to think and feel as it compromises her physical health.”

How do women benefit when they “befriend their bellies”?

“Whatever your belly’s shape or size, it contains your greatest treasure: It’s the site of your soul power, your core life force.

When you start befriending your belly, you discover that the life force focused in your body’s center activates your physical, emotional, and spiritual vitality. It’s the source of your passion and creativity, your courage and confidence, your capacity to love fully. It’s the starting point for your intuition, insight, and sense of purpose.

The vital energy centered in your belly is your release from stress, your guide to good health. It is the origin of your inner strength. It’s your connection to the source of life itself. Whatever you want to be, do, or have — the creative energy concentrated in your body’s center holds the key to it.”

How can women begin to change the ways they think and feel about their bellies?

“Begin by shifting your perception. Rather than critiquing how your belly looks, attend to what your belly is sensing. What’s the texture of your “gut feelings”? What are they telling you? Experiment with breathing deeply into your belly. How does that affect the way you think and feel? Recharge your batteries with the belly-energizing movement and breathing patterns in part 3 of The Woman’s Belly Book. What difference do they make in your life?

Consider what you value most. Is it good health, great sex, freedom from financial stress, creative self-expression, meaningful work, self-confidence, clear inner guidance, a steady sense of direction? The soul power concentrated in your body’s center calls these blessings, your blessings, into being.

If that’s the power your belly contains, is there any point in agonizing over the shape and size of the container?”

What are the components of your belly-honoring, belly-energizing program — and why do you call it “The Gutsy Women’s Workout?”

“The Woman’s Belly Book offers an abundance of activities, opportunities for exploration and experiential learning. Art projects and journal-writing exercises, for example, present playful ways to develop compassionate body awareness and make peace with your body’s center. Specific breathing patterns engage your imagination in developing the life force concentrated in your belly and directing it throughout your body. Belly-energizing moves drawn from yoga and other healing arts provide an invigorating exercise program, The Gutsy Women’s Workout, that you can practice in as little as five to seven minutes.

“The Gutsy Women’s Workout” is a sequence of seven hara-charging moves that kindle the source energy abiding in your body’s core. Hara is the Japanese word that names both the belly and the soul power it contains. In English, we approach the sense of hara with the word “gutsy” — meaning daring, sensuous, brave.

“The Gutsy Women’s Workout” is a practice for cultivating the core life force that you experience as vitality, pleasure, confidence, creativity, compassion, intuition, and sense of purpose. It equips you to express yourself all the more as the gutsy woman you already are.“

Given the amount of time, attention, and money women invest in dieting, tummy-trimming products, and cosmetic surgery — estimated at more than $40 billion each year — what would happen if women decided they didn’t have to flatten their stomachs and hide their bellies from sight?

“As women revalue our bellies as sacred, not shameful, we realize that we carry an enormous power to promote creation within our body’s center. We know, in our guts, that our bodies are the earth’s body. We know that whatever degrades the earth damages us. Whatever nourishes the earth nurtures us.

We take charge of our pro-creative power and claim it as our own. Doing so, we discover that we already possess the courage, confidence, passion, compassion, creativity, and insight we need to act on behalf of the earth and all her creatures.”

Now this is a woman who is AmaZing!!!

Lisa Sarasohn is a seasoned Kripalu yoga teacher and bodywork therapist. Certified as an instructor in 1979, she served on staff at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox, Massachusetts, from 1981 to 1988. During this time, she shared yoga with thousands of guests, led workshops on a variety of approaches to holistic health, and trained yoga teachers and bodyworkers. A graduate of Brown University and an award-winning essayist and poet, she has presented workshops on themes expressed in The Woman's Belly Book at conferences, colleges, and learning centers, including Omega Institute, Harvard University, the Renfrew Center, and the Sufi School of Healing.. Lisa lives in Ashville, NC and her website is www.loveyourbelly.com.