Guided Meditation for Loving Your Belly

Our guts are fascinating places. They digest our food, manufacture mood-balancing hormones, and maintain an intimate relationship with our brains and our nervous systems. Most of our emotions tend to be felt in the belly, somewhere between the heart and the pelvic floor. This soft, changeable place is often where we store our stress, our fear, our love, and our strength. And in our culture, we tend to want our bellies to be small and hard when they really should be soft and supple, able to move and flow with us as we go through our lives. This meditation will help you to explore your own belly, offering it thanks, appreciation, and perhaps a little bit of healing.

I recommend a very comfortable supported position for this meditation. A seat is fine if your back is supported, or you could lie down with your knees bent and your feet on the floor, a little wider than your hips so your knees can fall in towards each other. This pose, called Constructive Rest Pose, is especially useful because it can encourage the belly muscles to completely relax.