Connect with Yourself

I’d like to offer a somatic practice for connecting with yourself. When we are in the womb, as we know, our umbilical cord enters through what is now our belly button. This is our center of nourishment for those months. This connection brings in all of the oxygen and nutrients that we need. In the womb we don’t eat, excrete or breath through our lungs. I invite you to feel, and also to remember, this experience of your cells and tissues:

Place your hands on your belly, or lay face down, and feel what it would feel like to have this pulse of blood and life enter here at your naval.
Imagine you are floating in amniotic fluid.
The soft curve of your spine cradles this center of nourishment.
Subtle movements emanate out from your naval.
Feel for this pulse, a condensing and expanding, from core to periphery.
Let your breathing be effortless, diminish all effort, seek comfort.
You have never known hunger or thirst.
Throughout development you are curved around this center of nourishment, protecting this most yin place, where your vital organs bloomed into being.
The organs of digestion developed so that now you can break down what you take in from the outside world to nourish yourself.
Because you are here reading this, you were fed in this way, regardless of any experiences afterwards, your earth role models or lack thereof.
So you might practice this again later, laying in bed, or on the ground, maybe face down or curled on one side, and feel this pulse of breath and life emanating from your naval.
And be nourished.