02/04/2026
I often think of the abdomen as a tidal basin.
Not the open ocean, not the crashing edge of the shore, but that wide, receptive place where rivers meet the sea. Everything that moves through the body eventually passes here. Nourishment. Stress. Emotion. Memory. It is where currents slow enough to be felt, and where what has been carried finally has a place to settle.
When life moves too fast, this basin silts over, and the water grows thick and unmoving. Our organs lose their natural glide, and fascia densifies. Breath begins to skim the surface instead of dropping downward into the belly. You can feel the heaviness and resistance.
Each organ brings its own weather system. The liver holds heat and pressure, like an unbreakable storm. The stomach churns with doubt and uncertainty, its waves turning in on themselves. The intestines have a tide of looping stories, unfinished conversations rolling in and out. And the diaphragm hovers above all of it like a tide gate, deciding what is allowed to pass.
This all becomes poetry written into tissue.
When we place our hands here, we are not digging or forcing or fixing; we are dropping a pebble into still water and waiting to see what ripples. The contact is slow, the pause intentional, the hand listening rather than leading, inviting movement instead of demanding it. And the body responds the way water always does, not all at once, but in widening circles that travel outward, softening what they touch, carrying ease from the center to the edges.
Within abdominal work, we must wade slowly into these waters. This is not solid ground but a living basin, warm and responsive, where organs float, and emotions gather like shifting weather. The nervous system listens closely here, reading every change in pace and pressure. When we arrive with patience, our touch becomes a kind of climate. Rushed hands churn the silt and cloud the current, while a steady presence settles like rain after heat, restoring movement and clarity.
Sometimes, nothing dramatic happens in this work. No big release. No story. Just a subtle shift, like water beginning to move again where it had gone quiet. That is enough. When movement returns here, the body follows.
Remember, the body does not need to be convinced to heal. When we meet the abdomen with patience and care, the storms soften, the tides return, and the basin remembers its own flow.
