The little book of Hara
Science now recognises that the guts contain as many nerve cells as the brain. Yet people still assume we think with our heads or brains – something that is seen as a sign of gross immaturity in traditional Japanese culture, in contrast to thinking and feeling with the ‘belly’ or hara.
Yet aside from sex, in our globalised Western culture people’s very sense of self is identified with their heads, hearts and upper body alone. Not being grounded in lower-body awareness, they are unable to centre themselves in hara – that region of the lower abdomen that has long been recognised in East-Asian culture as both the physical and spiritual centre of gravity of the human being.
The Little Book of Hara presents a variety of simple meditational practices teaching you how to find and act from your true centre or core – by seating your breathing, awareness and very sense of self in hara – and in this way overcoming the dualism of thought and feeling, reason and emotion, head and heart.
