MY BODY CARTOGRAPHY

I can’t strengthen a muscle dynamically if my goal is to limit, reject or make invisible the part I need to move. If I hold tension in the muscle, fascia and skin, I’m going to speak and move with that tension. It’s about learning a new way of movement. It’s about inhibiting the movement that’s already engraved on me to give myself more choices. It’s about a pause; an internal preparation of movement. In this Pilates-based series, we will investigate a specific body part which is involved in personal, social, cultural narratives by using body parts to create a portfolio for exploration and movement. The goal is not to build muscle and tension, but to release it.

Gut Response

“To stomach something” means to bear it. “My stomach is in knots” or “butterflies in my stomach” means nervousness or anxiety. “I feel sick to my stomach” speaks to nausea and a state of mind This is only a few idioms we use that relate to our stomach. When we look at “guts” in our language, it usually refers to bravery (no guts, no glory) or courage (to have the guts to), or revealing everything (spew your guts). Whatever word you identify with that central part of your body, that’s what our focus is today. There is a lot of ideas around the stomach/gut/core. We tend to use core when we workout, but core is also the center of the apple. Core in movement is central to everything else. When we move and gesture from our core, we are saying that it is important to us - it’s central to who we are. When we hold our stomach in, we not only impact our organ system (by binding and squishing them), but we also block our movement potential by stopping movement from traveling through the core. We are indeed preventing ourselves from truly embodying what is important to us.

What relationship do you have with your stomach? Do you feel like it’s out of control, or well disciplined? If you look outside, what reminds you of your gut/stomach/core. What image do you have in your head? Sometimes abdominal surgeries create trauma in and around our core that we’d rather just forget, or we can’t forget. For centuries, healthy, young men have been portrayed with six-pack abs and women with soft, plump stomachs. Underneath these images lies ideas about masculinity and femininity that we carry with us. Maybe we think that soft bellies suggest characteristics like lazy, childish, careless, weak while hard abs reveal a character of strength, discipline and competence. These associations create biases in us that transcend into all areas of our lives - exercise, diet, skinny, fat, hunger, fullness etc. The ramifications are endless. Our gut is connected to our digestion, how we nourish ourselves. Our gut is also intrinsically connected to our central nervous system. It offers a balance between flight, fight, freeze (and now new research suggests that women commune) and becoming withdrawn, calm or turning into self. I encourage you to allow yourself to let go of your core, reveal its softness and allow movement to flow through it. How might this translate into your life? What is core to you have you don’t share? What might happen if you allowed yourself to reveal it?