Stop holding your belly so tight.
Holding your belly tight, may make you look thinner, but it doesn’t make you more beautiful.
Maybe it makes you feel strong, but it actually weakens the important muscles that keep you strong for years to come.
It may make you feel safe, but true safety comes from your heart not your brawn.
Maybe you don’t even realize you are doing it, like me for so many years. Clenching my belly tight without the slightest awareness of the nearly constant contraction.
Until I found myself waking up every morning in terrible pain. Not in my belly, of course, but in my mid back. The place between and below my shoulder blades.
I would strain and grit my teeth as I rolled out of bed in those early mornings. Light yoga and stretching would help and loosen things up for the day, but the following morning the same pain would return to greet me as I awoke.
The bizarre situation was that the more I tried to move and stretch my back to prevent stiffness, the more pain I had. Leading me to somewhat curse Carl Jung and his observation that, “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
I eventually gave up on trying to fix my back and stumbled upon an understanding of how the mind works. As I explored this new understanding and began to observe my thinking and my body without judgement, I saw how my belly would tighten up with every “negative” thought.
I presume you know some of these thoughts:
- Thoughts of urgency
- Thoughts of not being enough
- Thoughts of wondering if someone else will like what I did
- Thoughts of judgement towards myself and my actions
- Thoughts of judgement towards others
- Fearful thinking
It didn’t seem to matter what the thoughts were specifically about, if they were indicating a problem my belly would contract and tighten.
At first, I judged myself for this, remembering being a young teenage girl practicing how to draw in and tighten my belly in my bedroom mirror so I looked “better” in my jeans.
Shouldn’t I have figured it out by now not to do this? And my goodness, I should know better. I’m a physical therapist for crying out loud – I know how the body works!
Then I realized that all of those judgements were just thoughts too. As I continued to notice with compassion and without curiosity, I could actually see clearly how each of these thoughts were contributing to my belly tightness.
The more clearly I saw how I was innocently and inadvertently hurting myself, I began to do it less. Then only when I did certain activities, like cooking (seems like a weird one, I know, but I put a lot of pressure on cooking healthy and tasty meals). Then I only really noticed it once or twice a day. Until it really didn’t happen very much at all.
And you know what?
My back pain went away. I didn’t wake up with the severe tightness that felt like a vice grip along my spine anymore. It was so gradual and simple, that to be honest, I didn’t even realize it was gone until months later.
It turns out that the mind/body connection is real and so much more simple than it is often shared or talked about.
Are you aware of how your thoughts are impacting your body?
Instead of you being the one to stop holding your belly tight, you can actually just stop thinking the thoughts that are causing your body to tighten up.
I promise, it’s so much simpler.