A Blessing for Your Belly
by Rebekah Vickery
This concludes a year-long series of blessings offered by Rebekah. Find her other blessings throughout 2023’s issues: “A Blessing for Your Skin”; “A Blessing for Your Face”; and “A Blessing for Your Breath.”
You will need:
Water
A bit of dirt or soil
In this contemplative exercise, we will honor our bellies.
As we start, I’d invite you to place your feet on the floor and take a moment to look around the room. See where the windows are, where the door is.
And then I’d invite you to gently place your hand on your belly. Take a moment and let the weight of your hand rest there, take a breath.
It may be a kindness to gently unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, and place your feet on the ground. Notice if there is resistance or fear within you. It is ok if there is.
I then invite you to take a bit of the dirt and mix it with the water, creating mud. As you do so, consider how your belly, your gut, has held the truth of your experiences. We use language like butterflies in the stomach or gut clenched to express what we intuitively know: that our bellies tell our stories.
I then invite you to gently rub that mud onto your belly. Remember that you are also rooted in the soil of this earth. It may feel kind to speak out loud: I see you. I hear you.
Finally, I invite you, as you continue to place mud and hold your belly, to begin to gently sway from side to side. Let your body rock. When we are soothing babies, we instinctively rock and sway with them. This is what we are doing to care for our own adult bodies now.
And now, take a moment to look around the room once more, recognizing where you find yourself. And one last breath in and exhale.
Thank you for joining me.
Rebekah Vickery is a trauma therapist, group facilitator, and acrylic artist located in the beautiful and wild Pacific Northwest. In all of her work with people, art, and words, she loves engaging themes of grief, transition, and hope.
