The blasted whatdyacallit CORE

What does it mean to be in your core. I teach this. I am constantly, ad nauseum telling my students and any person who will listen to pull their pubic bone up to their belly button and move the tailbone down toward the floor. So what's the point of this other than yammering?

It is the best gift I can give. It's the kind of thing that makes me worked up to share.

When I draw myself in, in this way, I am inside myself. I have the structure to move in. I am connected from the tips of my feet, (that I am also yammering about--lifting up inner and outer arches) all the way up my legs, through my center to the tip top of my head. I am connected to the earth beneath me. I feel the earth, feet and feet below me pushing up into my own feet and through my body. I picture what lies below the floor, the dirt, the cement, and how it clings to the bottom of me. I think if I "see" deep enough below this earth, I can end up on the other side of the globe. Possibility.

And then there is this sense of the center point of my head. I picture a hole there, (feels like there's one a lot!) and that this opens up to the sky, to the heavens. To possibility and to expansiveness. All this through thinking about this little center point on the top of my head.

I tend to find the most safety, feel the weight of gravity best when I can feel where my body begins and ends. I don't have problems connecting with beyond, in the elusive, where things are indefinite and murky. (Well, I am problematic with everything, but this sort of abstract is comfy.) But when I get to feeling my breath tight in my chest, and looking around me for some kind of answer or sureness, I go to the core. The core is more than tight abs. More than a flat stomach. Fine. That is nice if your belly doesn't bulge. Good for you. Good for me.

But the core is what keeps me safe and sane. It keeps me feeling that I am a body that has a place "here" as an earthling, and somewhere to fit. If I can feel myself from the top to the bottom, and hold myself in, with this core, then I am centered. Then I can begin. And life leads me forward as I hold this. From top to bottom.