The Solar Plexus and Push

Well, it happened again yesterday: I said to another beautiful human, “You need to not-do for a while.”

I’ve said this different ways at different times, but it comes down to the solar plexus and push. The solar plexus chakra is this fascinating energetic complex that lies in the body in the V between the ribs along with the stomach and the diaphragm. Being as it is between the pelvic bones and the ribs along the verticle axis, there are no bones here except the spine. So what holds us up through here? Will and drive and inertia.

Remember that inertia is the force that keeps us moving if we’re moving and keeps us stationary if we’re stationary, and to change that state, we need a brake or a push of some sort in the opposite direction.

When we speak of our bodies and our lives, there are always multiple forces at work. When I speak of not-doing, I am speaking to those of us who push and push to keep moving and doing and achieving long past the point where the body has said “no”. In fact, the body has probably said no in about a dozen different ways by now, increasing in intensity from subtle to alarm-pitch. We use caffeine and sugar and the mind to push. “No Pain No Gain”? No thank you.

So we will ourselves to keep going until we start to crash in any number of ways. You know that thing where people finally get time off and immediately get sick? That’s here in how much push our daily lives ask of us.

Not-doing is not apathy. Not-doing is a conscious softening of our demands on our minds and bodies. How much can we let go of that we previously considered critical? How much can we ease up the inner-taskmaster? If we can’t slow down and not-do on a fairly regular basis, we will be stopped in some other way. One of my teachers called this “the frying pan to the face”: the health scare, the freak accident, the crisis.

So, how is your body between your ribs and your pelvis? Is it soft or hard? Is it sucked in or distended? Are you bloated? Can you breathe? Is there pain?

We are so weird in this culture when it comes to bellies, holding flatness and tightness as a pinnacle, sucking in our tummies and holding them there. Or at least trying to. But where is the space, there? Where is the softness and give?

We can’t always push. We must make space for new instructions, direction and action to grow within. How can we make space when we hold ourselves to such tightness here, such drive? Sometimes we get to not know, not be right and not have it all together. We get to be messy and let our edges hang over. And in that softness, perhaps we get to see more clearly what it is that we actually want and can then aim our lives forward with greater clarity and direction. This is when we apply push with beautiful, self-honouring results.