Thursday, March 24, 2016

Suck It In.

The first thing I noticed when I started meditating was the rock that lives in my stomach, the hard little ball of anxiety that feels like the size of a tennis ball. As I would go through relaxing each part of my body, each time I got to the rock in my stomach, it never relaxed, in fact, it got tighter.

Now, 16 months later, a whole year and a half, that rock in my stomach is still there, as tight and as apparent as ever. Now I don't even try to relax it,  I learn to just let it be there and to know that it's there.

Until I started meditating though, I didn't think about my stomach rock, I'm not even really sure I knew it was there before. But lest we get confused, that is not to say that I wasn't paying attention to my "abs" although, now it's "core." From maybe the time I was 12, I've been aware of my stomach, isn't that the age when that happens? And I see now that since I was 12 years old, I've been holding in my stomach.

It starts because you can hold in your stomach and it looks so much different when you do. I think as young teen girls, we start "sucking it in." The problem is, at 45, I'm still doing it. 

You do it too right? For so many reasons, maybe now it's not teen fear of a tiny bit of tummy hanging, but now, we're engaging our core, firing up our abs, we're doing the good work. Pulling our bellybuttons to our spine, yes? But I still feel like, at least for me, it's still about how it looks physically.

But it wasn't until I read my Nutritional Movement (you guys, she tells you NOT to run, don't you want to check it??) and reading that to hold in your stomach like that is really dangerous. Your organs and all those things in there need that space - that's the whole point! If you're holding in your stomach in one, two, three inches, that is that much more crowded it gets in there.

It's really not good for you. 

And to do weird ab exercises that only work one way your abs work for like, what, 5 minutes a day, 2 or 3 days a week? Not that helpful.

So now my girl Katie is telling me I should relax my fucking abs.

And it is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Seriously, and I quit smoking.

It is frightening to me and to the me that used to be a teenager and a 20-year-old, then 30 then 40, that I literally cannot relax my stomach. I can do it for maybe 30 seconds until I forget and it all clenches back up again. Sometimes I can't even tell if it's relaxed or if I'm just forcing it.

I honestly cannot tell if my stomach is relaxed or not.

And 30 years really, 30 years of actively trying to hold it in. And all of the mental bullshit that comes with that and the fear of "letting my stomach hang out." JESUS CHRIST, I'm so tired of it all.

Relax. Your. Crack. Hixx.

You're hurting yourself now, not helping.

Chill OUT. 

Tell me, can you relax your abs, stomach area, core?

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