[00:00:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

[00:00:12] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

[00:00:15] Emily Race-Newmark: This grounding practice is an embodiment practice brought to you by Virgie Tovar. 

[00:00:20] Emily Race-Newmark: To listen to our interview, please check out that separate episode wherever you listen to this podcast. You can also sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/thisishowwecare to check out bonus content that didn't make it into the final edit. Without further ado, I'll pass the mic over to Virgie. .

[00:00:37] Virgie Tovar: I invite you to close your eyes. I invite you to slow down your breathing a little bit. I know when we have a lot on our plates, a lot of our breathing can be really centered in our chest and right now we're just encouraging the breath to go down into our bellies. And even one way to help this happen if it's hard for you to do that is when you finish on the inhale, kind of do a big inhale. And the bigger the inhale, the more the belly is going to expand. And then you can hold it for just a second, and then let it go. And that helps bring that breathing deeper into the body.

[00:01:39] Virgie Tovar: So what we're going to be doing right now is focusing on the belly specifically as this really powerful part of our bodies. And a part of our body is that we've been taught to hide. And as I'm speaking, just keep breathing and letting the breath go as deeply as possible. We've been taught to hide this part of our body. We've been taught to suck it in. We've been taught to maybe wear clothes that's too small for us. Really restraining the belly. And we've just been taught that having a visible belly, a big belly, a chubby belly, a wobbly belly, a loose belly, that all these things are really bad. And so what we're going to be focusing on is actually a form of play that's really healing.

[00:02:36] Virgie Tovar: We're going to focus on going back into childhood and remembering a moment when, maybe you were a little kid, maybe you played this game with your friends, I did. Maybe you didn't, but we're going to pretend that we're like four or five year olds. And immediately as I'm thinking of that, my whole body is like starting to just like wiggle and rock a little bit.

[00:02:58] Virgie Tovar: So you can let in the spirit of that four or five year old who's just like wiggly and curious and like, "What's the next thing? And Halloween's coming up, and oh my God, I want to go to recess, and I want to go to the pool." Like all the things. So let that spirit in, and I want you to imagine that I am challenging you. I'm daring you. And my little kid self is daring your little kid self to see who can make the biggest belly. And we're thinking about Santa Claus bellies, we're thinking about big bellies. We're going to push ourselves to make our bellies as big as possible.

[00:03:32] Virgie Tovar: And I think what's amazing is keeping your eyes closed and keeping that breath going. Making our belly as big as possible, it might require that we unbutton our pants, which is fine go ahead and do it. Or unzip them a little bit. It might mean we have a skirt and we have to just pull our belly over it or maybe you're wearing pants or, whatever, like if you're wearing a leotard, I don't know. Like whatever you're wearing, making room for the belly. And I'm like literally unzipping my pants right now as I'm doing this cause I really need you to just let there be. Cause I'm trying to win the contest and you're trying to win the contest. So this is really about making the belly as big as possible because you won't win unless it's the biggest. And so we're going to take some really big breaths in the spirit of that child's play. And we're going to try and make our bellies as big as possible. 

[00:04:23] Virgie Tovar: Let's just do five big, big, big belly breaths. Remember, bigger than Santa Claus, ideally. Maybe one more big breath and really with this one just push it all the way out. Maybe even put your hands behind your back and push out your belly so that you could win the contest of the biggest belly. Oh, that feels good. And keep breathing. I'm just going to walk us in a couple more words and then we'll come back from the child belly place.

[00:05:18] Virgie Tovar: Again, keep trying to keep that belly as big and full of air as possible. And just remember that the belly is the seat of our intuition. That sense that phrase of "trust your gut", when we're talking about the gut or really talking about this kind of belly area, the belly is where we feel things. And I think that in general, we've been taught to ignore it. To both ignore our hunger, our physical, literal hunger for food, but also our intuition, our sense of who we are, our unique purpose in the world. When we want something, when we don't want something, we've been taught to ignore the totality of both the physical, literal, and also the metaphorical belly slash gut. And what that really does to a person, sort of asks them to ignore and reduce this really important part of themselves and their body.

[00:06:28] Virgie Tovar: So just take a moment to really enjoy it and liberate the belly. Maybe like flubble it around a little bit if you've got some flub. Squish it a little bit. And it might be really scary, maybe you don't do that normally, don't do anything that feels too upsetting, but, just be like, "Hey dude, it's okay that you're there, and it's okay that I want to have a relationship with you, and it sucks that the culture is so threatened by you, cause you're pretty cute." And just kinda, after you've done a little bit of appreciation, you can just kinda breathe a little bit more and then open your eyes. [Deep Exhale]

[00:07:15] Virgie Tovar: Depending on what you need to do, you can keep your pants unzipped or whatever your tummy is doing you can keep it there. If you can't have your pants unzipped, that's also okay. 

[00:07:26] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for listening. If you want to continue with us on this journey, please check out the full interview with Virgie. We hope to see you there.