SIDEBAR: Healing into Wholeness

The nights are lengthening. We’re approaching the solstice. December 21st gives us the longest night of the year, then the days lengthen and daylight increases. The solstice marks the rebirth of light into the world.
Myth and image spin the solstice story into the fabric of many cultures. The Egyptian story of Isis giving birth to Horus, the story of Mary giving birth to Jesus are just two examples: A woman bears the Divine Child in her womb; she births a new and healing consciousness into the world.
Whatever your faith, as we move into the holiday season you can’t help but notice all the images of Mary, pregnant, her belly big and round with child. In a culture that makes board-flat abdomens the standard for women’s beauty, big-bellied Mary is one remaining image of woman’s sacred power, our belly-centered power to promote creation.
The solstice story is a parable of coming into wholeness. It’s a holy story in the sense that “holy,” “wholeness,” “hale,” and “healing” are words stemming from the same root.

The story tells us that healing occurs through the encounter of opposites: day and night, light and dark, this and that. When polarities meet and move through each other, their union generates a more encompassing awareness, an expanded sense of self, an evolution of consciousness: rebirth.

What are these polarities? In the Christmas story, Mary’s womb is the meeting place of human and divine, masculine and feminine, heaven and earth. Embracing these polarities within her body’s center, Mary bears the Divine Child, a consciousness of peace, love, justice, unity.

We tell the solstice story in our own lives as we identify the polarities, the conflicting needs and desires, that give rise to our own distress and dis-ease. As we distinguish these apparent opposites and allow them to meet, and then integrate, through breath, image, and gesture, we can facilitate our own healing. Like Isis and Mary, we can bear a new and healing consciousness within our core and birth it into the world.

Healing into Wholeness
1. Take a few moments--through journal-writing, meditation, or reflection--to identify some of the apparently conflicting needs and desires operating in your life at this time. Part of you may want to have or do “this” and at the same time another part of you may want to have or do “that.” Distinguish these polarities as clearly as you can.

2. Sitting comfortably, your back straight and your feet flat on the floor, place your hands upon your knees, palms facing upward. Deepen your breath, allowing your belly to move out and in with your inhalation and exhalation. Let your eyes close to focus your inner awareness.

3. Choose one of the polarities and, focusing on your right hand, imagine you’re holding its essence in your right palm. What does this polarity look like? See its shape, color, degree of gloss. What does this polarity feel like? Feel its weight, density, texture, temperature, degree of stillness. What does this polarity sound like? Listen for its music, its voice. Thoroughly immerse yourself in the sights, sensations, and sounds of this polarity.

4. As you’re ready, shift your attention into your left hand and imagine you’re holding the essence of the other polarity in your left palm. Repeat the same process as you did above in step four.

5. Now shift your awareness so that you can see and feel both hands, and what they each contain, at once. Still breathing deeply, letting your belly move with your breath, slowly lift your hands from your knees. Gradually bring your hands toward each other, watching and feeling the images and sensations in both hands.

6. Very slowly and gradually, bring your palms together so that their surfaces come entirely into contact with each other. Continue to breathe deeply and relax as you wait and watch, without expectation or demand, for whatever new images and sensations may emerge. (If no new image emerges immediately, that’s fine; it may become apparent to you in the next few days, perhaps when you least expect it.)

7. With your palms in firm contact with each other, rotate your hands to bring your thumbs to your chest, your fingers pointing upward. Bring whatever new images and sensations that have emerged into your heart of compassion, surrounding them with your love.

8. With your palms still in firm contact with each other, rotate your hands to point your fingers downward and bring the heels of your hands to your belly center, a point about two inches below your navel. Bring whatever new images and sensations that have emerged into your belly--your heart of creation--infusing them with your pro-creative power.

9. Then rest, absorbing and appreciating your experience of uniting polarities into a greater whole.

Lisa Sarasohn is the author of The Woman’s Belly Book: Finding Your Treasure Within and creator of Honoring Your Belly, a project supporting women in developing our body-centered soul-power. For more information, visit loveyourbelly.com or email lisa@loveyourbelly.com

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