Underbelly is term used to describe the side which is not normally seen. Figuratively it means a vulnerable or weak part, similar to the term, Achilles' heel. What is the soft underbelly of where you are at this moment? If you stop and breathe, what is the feeling you might not want anyone else to know about? Can you, at least let yourself know?  What is your deepest longing?  Can you hold yourself with compassion, here? So much of our day to day is blind to our own soft underbelly.  Knowing our vulnerabilities is where our true strength lies.  The work of Core Energetics is often about being able to stand in our naked (figuratively) vulnerability, as a means to deepening our connection to self, Spirit, and others.  There in the underbelly lies our deepest truth, our connection to the Core.  Blessings to you.

These are simple and you can pretty much do them anywhere.  Enjoy!
1.) Sit in a chair with your back straight, feet flat on the floor, hands in your lap. Become aware of how the chair and the floor are supporting you. Hold the awareness for a minute or two.
2.) Breathe in to the count of eight, breathe out to the count of eight.  Try to make the flow of breath a steady stream in and out.
Try this for about three minutes, at first.  You may decide to go longer, later.  If eight feels too difficult, start with a count of five and work your way up.
3.) Gently, put your pinky fingers in your ears and listen to the sound of your own breath for about 10 breaths. Be sure to rest your elbows on your desk or somewhere, while you do this.
4.) Kick off your shoes and use the toes of one foot to rub the sole of the other foot and then switch. Feel the difference when you put your shoes back on.
5.) Use two hands to tap your whole body  Start with one foot and work your way up the leg, then tap the other side.  Get to every part you can reach.
5.) Drink 12 ounces of water, all at once.
6.) Sitting or standing, gently drop your chin to your chest, then slowly gently sweep your chin across your chest all the way to the right and then all the way to the left.  Go back and forth, steadily and continuously, as if you are drawing a smile on your chest with your chin.
7.) Arch your back and then curl your back, several times, using a slow, steady continuous movement, notice how your breath flows with the movement.

That was my Facebook status today. I stayed in my pajamas all day, too!  Doing so gave me a chance to let feelings flow and to honor my real need to slow down.  It also inspired the topic for my next workshop, "Be Still and Know."  See events calendar.  I realize that may sound like I was working rather than breathing.  But the truth is when ideas and plans arise from my still inner voice, as opposed to my head, it doesn't feel like work at all. The weekend of October 3 and 4 was slated for a grief workshop "Mourning Out Loud" in NYC.  But many factors have led me to provide a workshop closer to home.  Serendipitously, I discovered "Yoga for Living,"  a beautiful yoga studio right nearby that is ideal for a Core Energetics workshop.  I stopped in to see the place last week to check it out. The energy there was so clear and calm, I decided to stay for Rhonda Clarke's Svaroopa class.  I practice Svaroopa on my own pretty regularly, but quickly realized how much more effective the practice is when done in a class led by a gentle, skilled teacher.  Thank you, Rhonda!  I'll be back.  So here is the workshop description.  You're invited! BE STILL AND KNOW: a Core Energetics workshop October 3 &4 Saturday, 11 a.m. -6 p.m, Sunday, 1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.    Remember what it’s like to just BE? Many of us do not.  You want to settle in and listen to your inner voice, but there is so much life to keep up with.  Even when you find time to relax, negative thoughts, worry, and angst interfere.  Are you tired of hearing yourself talk about how busy everyone is or how overwhelming life is these days?  Too much technology?  Too much information?  Too many bills? Too much to do?    Come and get reconnected with your inner voice.  Get some negativity out of your system through work with your body and your energy.  Feel the feelings you haven’t had time to feel. Reacquaint yourself with your playful, joyous self.  Open to receive.  Juice up your creativity. Connect deeply with yourself and others in this powerful workshop.  Spend an autumn weekend rekindling your most important relationship… your relationship with yourself.   (Sleeping in on Sunday is strongly suggested, or if you have a Spiritual practice that supports your connection, do that.)   Investment in your most valuable asset, you:  $125 by 9/23. $150 after 9/23. Kate Holt is a Core Energetics Practitioner in Marlton, NJ.  In addition to individual and couples sessions, Kate offers process groups and workshops on many topics.  Kate is on the Faculty of the Institute of Core Energetics, New York and trains practitioners, locally.  Call 856/261-4900 to register. www.kateholt.info kateholt@verizon.net      

The following newlsetter excerpt comes my my teachers, Brian and Marcia Gleason, who developed the Exceptional Marriage model for couples.  I have been blessed to be able to participate in their training for practitioners.  You can sign up to receive their wonderful newsletter by visiting their beautiful webiste Exceptional Marriage. 

Inclusion and Diversity (from May Newsletter)      Inclusion and diversity are powerful words that I have been coming across lately, both in my Core Energetics community and my Essential Experience (EE) community.  For me, these words carry a lovely vibration. "Inclusion" feels warm and inviting.  As I say it, I can feel the vibration in my heart and diaphragm and it feels grounding.  "Diversity" is brimming with excitement and charge, very alive.  But why do we even need these words?  We need them because we have been consciously or unconsciously creating "exclusion" and have somehow kept things pretty "homegeneous".  While the words, inclusion and diversity, are positive and expansive, I must admit there is some fear just under the surface.  I think this fear is what needs exploration.  Fear is negative and it needs to be clearly defined in order to be brought to light. Very often fear is born out of misconceptions.  Sometimes fear is about expansion and letting go of previously accepted boundaries.  Every time I expand my previously defined boundaries, I experience fear.  It becomes problematic if I allow the fear to take me to contraction.  For example, if I fear the expenses and maintenance of moving into a larger space, I can allow the fear to be there, pray for courage, and rise to meet the new expectations, anyway.  Or I can allow the fear to rule me and chose to stay in the tight space. The pain in this is not so much about the tight space but about the unwillingness to risk.  There is pain when we hold ourselves back.  We may be conscious of it and find ways to justify it.  More often, we will keep ourselves numb to it; protect ourselves from even knowing about it.  Whatever we do to numb ourselves is simultaneously deadening our life force energy.     The work of Core Energetics is in part about examining our hidden (unconscious) negativity, releasing that energy and transforming it, on a very personal level.  We look at the ways we block love and intimacy.  We look at the ways we disempower or sabotage ourselves.  In the looking, we often discover our woundedness and bring light and healing.  We find our personal power and our will to love and be loved is strengthened. The process is enlivening and it takes courage.     The following quote comes from the Q&A section following the Pathwork Guide Lecture #25. The question asked about the spiritual significance of different races: You may wonder why certain races do not suffer from being different from others.  Then you might ask, "What can they learn from that?"  Indeed, they, too, have something to learn.  Perhaps they need to learn the responsibility that arises from being spared sufferings that other peoples may have.  Besides, this angle is not the only one to be considered.  A spirit can be born into a race or nation because spiritually, emotionally, character-wise and psychologically it belongs to this group and therefore has the best opportunity to unfold there.  Differences will exist as long as disunity exists on earth and humanity has not learned to overcome it.  As any difficulty or apparent disadvantage can be a cure, which it must be if the person is on the right path, advantage can be a cure, too.  Through differences of race, religion, nationality, or various other categories, humanity can become stronger and advance faster in spiritual development precisely because frictions exist.  Without friction, development can never proceed.  It is only a question of how the difficulty is met, always; how is it met individually and collectively.      I am making a commitment to use the Core Energetics process to examine my fear around this issue of inclusion.  I want to continue to expand toward unification within myself and with those in the world.  At this time, I don’t feel I have a lot of answers but I am willing to be with the questions.  What am I afraid of?  What I am protecting? What don’t I want to see in myself? What don't I want to see in the other?

The following is reprinted with permission. 

Medicating for Inconvenient Emotions
Pamela L Chubbuck PhD © September 2008

There's An Elephant in Our Living Room
There's an "Elephant in the Living Room" of our country and he's taking Zoloft! Poor Jumbo is depressed because he was moved to a different circus and had to leave his lover behind. His boss wanted him back on the job pronto since after all - you know - the show must go on!  Jumbo wasn't given a chance work out his own feelings and now he is chronically depressed. His body hurts and he is miserable.
 
Medicating inconvenient emotions is in epidemic proportions: something that we do in this country out of our own fear. Adults and children are being medicated because most people don't know how to help them deal with strong emotions. Parents, friends, family members and frankly most professionals don't know what else to do. And if someone, family member or professional, has not dealt with their own emotions they can be deathly afraid of someone else's. Most often they are unconscious about their fear. 
 
Money Makes the World go Around
Taking advantage of this fear for profit, are government agencies, drug companies, pharmacies, and physicians. We used to worry about illegal drugs and drug pushers lurking around school to sell drugs to kids and street corners to sell illicit drugs to adults. Now we must be concerned about drug company drug pushers and complicit physicians prescribing medications when they should not be. Even parents, not knowing how to deal with normal emotions push drugs on their kids to make them behave, be quiet, don't bother me. But all this is another story to explore later. (See references at end of article).  Meanwhile, everyone is afraid.
 
What Are We afraid Of?
We are afraid to let go of our ego and allow our body to express its natural life. We are afraid of deep emotions because when we were kids and were deeply injured, we moved up into our heads, our egos, to feel safe. Now we don't know how to release the ego and allow the streams of our life force, our pleasurable energies, to take over. We are afraid if we let them flow we will be deeply hurt again. Or worse, we'll be annihilated. So we "bottle them up", try to stop the flow at all costs.
 
The Soul Needs Time Feel
Professionals generally don't understand the positive results of allowing the feeling and bodily energy to flow.  Here in this westernized country, we medicate people for feeling deeply. Don't get me wrong, psychotropic meds are clearly needed in some cases. I'm not talking about withholding medication from people with schizophrenia, psychosis, or true bi-polar disorders; I'm talking about medicating anger, sadness, and anxiety that come from normal events of life. Normal events of life include losing a partner of many years, losing a parent, having a series of disappointments, feeling anger at things that cannot be controlled. Life happens: Parents get Alzheimer's, a child becomes ill. We could sit in these experiences. We could use them for our growth. 
 
Wisdom Keepers Know
Wisdom keepers, master therapists and many holistic physicians know that these difficult things of life must be felt and experienced to heal. Medicating someone under normal life circumstances creates a numbing of normal emotions and ultimately prolongs the painful process. Asclepius, the early Greek God of medicine, was the founder of what we now call "alternative medicine", except it was considered traditional medicine then. What Ancient Greeks and Indigenous Healers understood was that any illness comes from disconnecting somehow from ones' Soul or Spirit. Healing therefore must be attained by reconnecting to ones' soul/spirit/core and embodying it. 
 
To heal, we must become more conscious not less. Many medications render us less able to be conscious, therefore less able to heal. Indigenous healers knew, ancient Greeks knew, my great grandmother knew, that bringing Spirit into the physical body was accomplished by dancing, drawing, writing, wailing, kicking, dreaming, crying, laughing, acting out your story - as in theatre, sweating and story telling.

Not Their Fault
In defense of those fearful professionals, they are/were not taught in their MD, MA or PhD programs what to do with strong emotions - so unless they sought their own therapy or had further training they are stumped. I worked at Georgetown University Hospital in the 70s and talked with a physician who literally ran out of the hospital because he could not deal with his own feelings after delivering a still born child. I have worked with therapists who are terrified of their clients' feelings so much that they unconsciously do not allow the client to deal with emotions that mirror their own unresolved conflict. This is of course Counter Transference, and it happens all the time...

So, when Cognitive Behavioral strategies fail and they often do fail when strong emotions are involved, medical professionals are likely called in and medication is prescribed. In this day of informational technology, many people walk into their Drs offices and demand Prozac, Zoloft or Wellbutrin,(etc.) having diagnosed themselves by reading a newspaper, magazine article or seeing an ad on TV. Because god knows, they are afraid to feel. And more shocking is that they usually receive the medication without real diagnosis to determine what is deeply wrong or given guidance by professionals as to how to truly heal. Because most professionals they seek out have not learned to feel deeply and are educated by drug companies who make billions on their psychotropic drugs.
 
We Must Feel, We Must Move Our Bodies
Core Energetics teaches us that we as energetic beings have emotions that are energy - and we must allow that energy to m o v e. When we get scared we hold our energy, it gets stuck, we feel bad, become depressed, anxious, and if we hold the "stuff" long enough, we become physically ill, taught Wilhelm Reich MD, Alexander Lowen MD, and John Pierrakos MD.
 
Most people who go to therapy experience what we call "talk therapy" and when that doesn't work for them, meaning they still feel bad, angry, guilty, scared, are on medication that numbs them and they are not happy about it, etc - some show up in my office.  

For more articles by Pam, visit http://www.core-energetics-south.com/

Paraphrased from Core Energetics by John Pierrakos, M.D.:

Core Energetics centers on the person's innate health and aims to restore the functioning of the whole, so that the injured parts may also thrive.  The holistic orientation has radical implications for the process of healing, the suffering person, and the practitioner.  Core Energetics builds on releasing the right energy of the core rather than correcting specific distortions or aliments.  The sufferer marshals that energy and in actuality evolves the path of the work.  The practitioner casts a searchlight into the sufferer's core to illuminate that innermost truth, which the path will reach.  The process of clearing the way for the higher self...is an education in inner reality, helping the person perceive from and act through the core.  The course of learning leads the sufferer to open and invigorate the center of life, to stand aligned wth it, and to take his or her existential perspective from it... An educator knows that every person possesses unique gifts and will utilize a learning program in unique ways to further a unique life plan.  The educator offers neither the gifts, nor the plan.  These are the student's.  The same is true in Core Energetics.  The sufferer's own vital forces are what heals, not the practitioner's actions or antidotes.  These are important but only supportive.  The client is conducting the search for his or her own truth, his or her unique path.

Whenever, I read any of John's writing, I feel his love coming through the page.  I love that John called his clients, "sufferers".  It is indicative of the compassion he felt toward those with whom he worked.  John believed that as a practitioner you can only touch the core of your client when reaching  from your own core.  As a Core Energetics Practitioner, doing my own work is a critical element in my ability to reach from my own core.  I am eternally grateful to John for the beautiful work he created.

I came across this article I wrote six years ago when I was a fourth year student of the Core Energetics Practitioner Training Program.  It reminds me of how much this work has continually changed my life for the better.  Enjoy!  I knew two things when I started working with a Core Energetics therapist. I was very unhappy and I had many physical syndromes. “Syndrome”: a euphemism for “we don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you or how you got it.” I had lots of labels with three initials, TMJ, PMS, CFS, chronic LBP (low back pain) and PIA (pain in ass.) In addition, I had migraine headaches, and all kinds of diagnoses that end in “itis”: plantar fascitis, bursitis, maybe even, arthritis. Every morning I woke up in pain and every night I went to bed feeling hopeless. I joke about it now, but I was having real symptoms and real pain. Was it psychosomatic? Yes! Was it real? You betcha! At the time, I was searching for answers. I didn’t want to go the “anti-inflammatory” drug route. I tried chiropractic, vitamin supplements, energy work, all of which helped to one degree or another, at least for a time. But I was still suffering and I knew on a very deep level that it was related to emotional pain. I wanted relief! I first discovered Core Energetics, while reading Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light. I saw a drawing of a client working on a roller, (a piece of equipment used in CE therapy.) The drawing showed a gray energy being released as the client worked. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was what I needed. I found a Core therapist in Philadelphia, Karyne Wilner, who is the Director of Education at the Institute of Core Energetics East, as well as an International Director. I started working with her regularly. Within six months, most of my symptoms were relieved. I was beginning to become conscious of defenses I had created both physically and behaviorally to protect myself from deeper pain. Of course, I still get occasional aches and pains, but they usually are a signal that I need to become more conscious of my inner dynamics. Now, I have many tools and support with which to do that. Sometimes they are simply a signal to rest, and take loving care of myself. Two years into therapy, I started training as a Core therapist myself, at the Institute of Core Energetics East in New York. It was a natural progression in my healing career as a nurse and hypnosis counselor. I had the pleasure of working with and studying under founder, John Pierrakos, M.D., before his death in February 2001. I am now in the fourth and final year of my training, and working with clients and groups, with supervision. I have found my passion! It is using Core in my life to bring me closer and closer to my authentic self, experiencing pleasure and fulfillment, and helping others do the same. The more I learn about the Core process, the more I want to share it with others. Core Energetic addresses the individual on five levels: body, emotions, mind, will, and spirit. Though we begin with the body, the levels overlap at various stages of therapy. Based on some of the work of Wilhelm Reich, Core presupposes that feelings flow on energy, carried through the body on the breath. That energy, which is meant to flow in the healthy person, is sometimes blocked, split, or leaky in an effort to prevent the feelings. This process of blocking energy and the flow of feelings starts very early in life, when the child perceives needs not being met. It may be created to stop the flow of painful or “parentally unacceptable” feelings, but in turn, it blocks the flow of the creative life force within the individual. The child finds many ways to block this flow: breathing shallowly, or holding the breath, chronic muscular contractions, along with psychological defense mechanisms, all of which become unconscious. Much of the body-therapy consists of breathing and physical exercises designed to release these blocks, or charge and contain energy. Supportive counseling helps to process and integrate what the body reveals, bringing greater consciousness. There are spiritual presuppositions as well, based on the Pathwork, a body of material, channeled through Eva Pierrakos, by an entity known as “the Guide.” The child comes into the world as pure light, the Core, the Higher Self. The child brings needs into the world, as well. When these needs are not met, there is an organismic reaction of terror and rage. This is the development of the Lower Self. The child learns quickly that this Lower Self reaction is unacceptable and must negate this part of himself, in order to survive and keep parental love. A third layer, the Mask, develops to hide both the Lower Self and the need. The Mask consists of the defenses the child uses to protect himself. The Mask blocks the flow of the child’s true essence, both Lower Self and Higher Self. It goes unconscious, leaving the individual cut off from his true essence and identifying himself with the Mask. The work of Core Energetics is to confront and penetrate the Mask, energize and release the Lower Self in ways that are harmless. The goal here is to free up the flow of energy into and out of the Core, which is the connection to God and all that is. The vast amount of energy that is released enhances the ability to experience pleasure, creativity, connection, and fulfillment. It’s important to honor the creation of the elaborate defense system that helped you survive. This work requires a willingness to look courageously and gently at parts of yourself, you may not want to see. It also encourages and empowers you to claim your higher-self qualities and align with your higher purpose. The benefits are great, as you work through your body, bringing greater energy, consciousness, and choice to the life you are creating. Core Energetics is about accessing your deepest truth, moment by moment.

Cindy Michel, a colleague of mine in California, gives a great description of what a session is like.
Check it out.
http://www.cindymichel.com/what_is_a_session_like/what_a_session_like.html