For the last twelve years, I’ve been bringing forth “Honoring Your Belly,” a ritual of 23 movement and breathing exercises drawn from yoga and other movement arts. My initial motivation was to find some relief from a long-term eating disorder. Little did I know that this belly-energizing practice would give me the relief I was seeking...and much more.

During these same twelve years, I’ve been tracking the traces of our ancestors’ woman-affirming, Goddess-revering cultures. As I’ve studied the archeological evidence—figurines in clay and bone, rock paintings and engravings, ceramic designs—I’ve found an intimate association between the ritual’s belly-energizing gestures and our ancestors’ images of the Sacred Feminine.

Amazingly, the body’s configuration in each gesture replicates an ancient image of the Feminine Divine. When we move through a gesture, we’re animating the corresponding emblem, giving it breath, bringing it to life.

Embedded within each image is a seed symbol, a glyph. This glyph is a graphic archetype, a schematic rendering, a sign pointing toward the Goddess and telling us where she may be found. The glyph is her signature, her mark.

The glyphs corresponding to the practice’s gestures are also phosphenes. Phosphenes are the geometric shapes we see when there’s nothing to be seen, when our eyes receive no external stimulation—for example, in the darkness of a sweat lodge or in a bank of featureless clouds. Phosphenes are the shapes our nervous system produces internally, on its own; the shapes themselves reflect the geometry of our neural organization. When we see phosphenes within the scope of our inner vision, we are seeing the process of seeing.

What does it mean, then, that these images of the Sacred Feminine incorporate glyphs that are also phosphenes? When we can gaze upon these images without distraction or hurry, when we can see clearly and simply, we experience the identity of who is seeing, what is seen, and the process of seeing. We experience the unity of knower, knowing, and the known. Separation dissolves and we merge seamlessly into union with the Divine. We enter into the truth that the Mother of the Universe proclaims in an ancient scripture of India, the Tripura Rahasa, as given by Linda Johnsen: “Know that even now, in this very moment, there is absolutely no difference between us.”

In addition to animating ancient images of the Sacred Feminine, the belly-energizing gestures enact a myth of creation and the story of the heroine’s journey. The initial gesture in the “Honoring Your Belly” ritual is Side Stretches; the portion of the myth that narrates this gesture is:

As you move through the Side Stretches (see instructions and illustrations), feel yourself stretching as fully and luxuriously as the Mother of the Universe might as she’s awakening from a deep sleep to begin her creative play.

As you move through the Side Stretches, bring your awareness fully and distinctly into the right and left sides of your body. Feel the opposing sides of your body as Twin Pillars, gateposts marking the entrance to the temple. In moving through the Side Stretches, you’re preparing to cross over the threshold, pass through the gate, take the essential step—the quantum leap—that is initiation.

The image of the Twin Pillars occurs in ancient times as the gateposts marking the entry to Inanna’s temple. Inanna was known in Sumer as the Great Goddess, also as the Queen of Heaven and Earth and as the Goddess of the Morning and Evening Star. As glyphs, her gateposts occur in the region’s earliest pictographic writing and art.

The emblem of Inanna’s temple shown here replicates an artifact found in Tell Agrab dating to 3000 BCE. The image is the impression made by rolling out a carved cylindrical seal.

The posts gating the entrance to Inanna’s temple consist of reeds, rolled and bundled; the people of Iraq frame the doorways to their homes in much the same way to this day. Notice the similarity in shape between the pair of Inanna’s gateposts and the phosphene.

The image of the Twin Pillars occurs in artifacts dated as early as 13,000 BCE. Prehistoric paintings, engravings, and ceramics display pairs of parallel lines to signify the power of doubling. The pair of parallel lines and the space between them portray the mystery of creation. Again, the parallel lines serve as gateposts. When you pass between them, you move into the field of procreative power that generates new forms and suffuses them with life.

What are the gateposts in your life? How do you cross over the threshold? How do you find your path through the gateway?

I often find myself banging sideways from one gatepost to the other, reeling between extremes, alternating between the opposing elements in an apparent duality.

Or, fearing one side, I’ll clamp onto the other. Can you relate? Fearing uncertainty, for example, I’ll wrap my arms around predictability. Fearing sickness, I’ll try to hang onto health. Fearing failure, I’ll squeeze on success.

I may get a measure of predictability, or health, or success this way, but mostly what I experience is fear. Whatever predictability, health, or success I achieve feels empty, dry, vapid.

Because what I really want is the juiciness, the vitality, that’s only found within the cauldron of creation. What I really want is the experience of the Sacred Feminine. As she advises in Starhawk’s rendering of an ancient incantation, the “Charge of the Star Goddess”:

She is that which is attained not by clinging to either gatepost but by taking the path between the twin pillars and crossing the threshold. She says to us, “What is success, what is failure? Put them both aside and move forward: step into the central mystery.”

Practicing “Honoring Your Belly” has become a way to step forward into the experience of my body’s center as the dwelling place of the Sacred Feminine. The process of energizing my belly, moving my awareness into my core, has become in all manners a journey to meet the Goddess.

Love your belly—that’s where she lives! Stretch your sides, mark the twin pillars, step through the gateway. You’re on your journey home.