Getting out of our Heads - exploring the Brain in the Belly

In Philip Shepherd’s book New Self, New World he posits that our sense of disconnection and anxiety stems from an underlying misconception of what it is to be human. While Western culture predominantly recognises the head as the centre of our thought, other cultures through history have valued the belly our most profound centre. Philip suggests that reconnecting to this ‘brain in the belly’ will bring us to a place of calm and clarity, and allow us to connect to the world in a very different way. Philip spoke to us about this on a recent trip to Dublin.
‘I would like to look at three assumptions that we grow up with. These are so deep within the fabric of our culture that they are almost invisible, but they have a profound effect on what we think, how we think, and how we are in the world. One assumption is that the world is made up of things with fixed boundaries. The second assumption is that knowledge will save us. And the third assumption is that our real thinking happens in the head.’
Fixed Boundaries
‘One of my most enjoyable meals was in the south of India, I was with a theatre company and I ate with them before the performance. You sit on the ground, the food was in the middle of the room, your plate was a palm leaf, and you reached in and got some food and everyone jostled and there were no boundaries, there was just an easy sense of congress. In our eating customs in the West, my placemat is there to show me where my space is, and if the salt is beyond your reach, then god forbid you reach through my space to get it. We have delineated boundaries that keep order.’
‘We see the same expression of boundaries in how we design our homes. We have rooms that are divided each from the other and each has its purpose and function and many have locked doors to keep them separate from the other rooms. That is ultimately how we live in our bodies, we have compartmentalized them – this is the part of me that is activated when I see my mother, this another part of me that is activated when I see my boss, and things are kept apart, so that's why we feel comfortable in a house that is compartmentalised.’
‘Again, you just need to look at other cultures and see how it is done differently. In Japan, if you need a room, they’ll slide some paper walls in to create the room. The walls often open to the outside. So what is outside what is inside, what is the bedroom, what is another room – it is all permeable. It is a different way of inhabiting the space.’
Knowledge Saves
‘As long as you believe that knowledge will save you, you don’t need to feel the world, you just need to know it. You can cut it open, you can test it, you can analyse it – and that is pretty much our cultural agenda. The more knowledge we have, the more power we have to change the world – but when the knowledge is not counterbalanced with self-knowledge, the way we change the world will push it further and further into imbalance.’
‘Self-knowledge differs from objective knowledge. It comes from being experientially connected to the world. When you are eating a meal and that little click happens – I have had enough - without that self-knowledge you keep eating. But look at the larger picture, the concept of ‘enough’ has been obliterated from our culture. We are in an economic system that depends on infinite growth. If the economy stops growing it is a disaster - that is the way it is designed. We seek infinite growth on a finite planet, so at some point something is going to clash.’
‘I think we have lost our sense of ‘enough’ because we have lost touch of our own being, when we connect to our own being - that is enough. When you dissociate from your own being nothing will be enough because there is a sense of emptiness inside and you become obsessed with trying to fill it, but that will never happen. What we crave is that connection to the world, and knowledge alone can never take us there. We can only achieve that by allowing ourselves to come into relationship with the world in a holistic way.’
All in the head
‘The idea that our real thinking happens in the head is embedded deep in our culture. You only need to look at the language we use. We don’t say two hearts are better than one, potent though that image might be, because when two people cooperate on a problem their heads are naturally in charge. Similarly our symbol for our ultimate power of kingship is a crown that sits of course atop the head, adorning it with jewels. A sharp contrast to karate for instance, where mastery is symbolised with a cloth belt that is knotted just below the belly-button. We might also notice that head office would naturally choose someone whose level-headed to head up its operations. If the company did really well though the success might go to his head, and he could end up with a swelled head. Such an individual is likely to butt heads with board members who might then accuse his decisions of being wrong-headed. Eventually someone would advise the board to keep their heads and look around for a new leader, hopefully someone with a good head on their shoulders who could put corporate headquarters back on track and help everyone get ahead. It is funny how those most stuck in the head are most desperate to get ahead.’
‘We have created an absolute fiction when we speak of the body being separate from the mind. We set up a kind of body that nobody would ever want to submit their brilliant intelligence into – a mess of sensations and mindless plumbing. When we talk about ‘listening to the body’ we entertain the idea that it is separate from the mind. So even the metaphors we have developed are more deeply entrenching the divide we experience. So I don’t talk about listening to the body, I talk about listening to the world through the body, because the reality is that there is a flood of thinking going on through the body.’
The Brain in the Belly
‘For us, the belly is this slightly embarrassing area prone to acting up and gaining more weight than we would like it to, but the belly shows up in so many cultures as a thinking centre. Our thinking centre is now the head. We started to take control of our world in a new way when we discovered agriculture and domestication of animals. Our whole world started to change, and we started to change too. The centre of our consciousness migrated up from our belly to our head. These two thinking centres have two different functions. The brain in the head is where we consciously think. The brain in the belly is where you can consciously be and experience. If you have split from your being then you are heading towards feelings of being unsettled and disconnected. The head cuts us off and diminishes our awareness of the bodily sensations, and your body is your connection to the world around you. So you lose your sense of connectedness.’
‘From the head we gain perspective on things, because you need to have that distance in order to have perspective. When astronauts first went to space and took a picture of our planet, bringing it back to earth offered us a revolutionary new perspective. To enjoy the full fruit of a new perspective we need to bring it back to the body and integrate it.’
‘We think intelligence is the ability to reason in an abstract manner, but that is just one element of intelligence. Intelligence is grounded sensitivity. As long as the perspectives are only in our heads, they stand between us and the world. They become abstracted symbols of the world and we think that we don’t need to pay attention to the world, we just need to pay attention to our ideas about the world. By feeling your thoughts, rather than just having your thoughts, you are allowing them to integrate and engage with the wholeness of your being.’
‘It is important to realise that the three assumptions that we talked about are not arbitrary. They arise from our relationship to the body. The way we relate to our body is the template for how we relate to the world. Where your consciousness is situated in your body largely determines what you see when you look out into the world. If you are in your head, you see a world of fixed boundaries; if you centre yourself in the body you see a world of unified energy. When you are in the head you see a world that needs to be known; deep in the body you see a world that is a mystery that can felt. In the head you look out and see a system that needs to be controlled; in the belly you see the possibility of coming into harmony with the world.’
‘The fundamental challenge we face isn’t to save the world, it is to change our story and change our way of being. And it is difficult because our kneejerk reaction is to want to change everything around us but not ourselves. But in my experience it feels so much better to come back to the wholeness of our being, instead of living with this agenda of control and abstraction.’
About the author: 
Best known as the author of ‘New Self, New World: Recovering Our Senses in the 21st Century’, Philip has worked as a writer, actor, workshop leader, director, editor, personal coach, house builder, dance dramaturge, and teacher. Since the publication of his book, he has earned an international reputation as a workshop leader, lecturer and coach. Philip will be hosting workshops in Dublin on November 1st/2nd and in Galway on November 8th/9th. You can find out more about these workshops and Philip’s book at
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