Beyond The Belly: What’s Really Happening

Beyond The Belly:  What’s Really Happening

By: Jennifer Lisa Way,  Soul Way Frequencies

Soul Way Thoughts is where I get to share my own perspectives, thoughts and opinion. These are only my thoughts and opinions from observations and information I have gathered through research.

Beyond The Belly was written for those who are carrying fullness in their midsection that is not responding to “doing everything right” for your belly aka mid-section aka meno belly.

What Is Meno Belly?

Visceral Fat accumulation is what people often call “Meno Belly.”  It is the term used to describe the thickening around the waist that often happens during perimenopause and menopause.  Visceral Fat is actually the fat stored in the abdominal cavity, surrounding organs like the liver, pancreas and intestines. You can think of visceral fat as “emotional storage fat.” It holds unprocessed survival energy – stress, grief, shame and suppressed emotions. Visceral fat feels firmer, more “bloated” or “inflamed.” This is probably why women say: It doesn’t feel like normal weight gain.

During perimenopause and menopause, lower estrogen levels change where fat is stored.  Chronic stress equals high cortisol and causes the body to store more fat centrally (visceral fat) giving us the meno belly.

What Is Really Happening To Us?

Many women enter their midlife stage with life experience, more wisdom, stability and clarity than they ever had before.

We have at this stage of life:

• Raised children
• Survived loss and love
• Built businesses, homes and dreams

Most women entering the midlife stage are no longer in survival.  Yet, the body holds survival imprints from decades of chronic over giving, self-denial, stress and unresolved emotions.

By midlife, the belly has become what I call the body’s sacred vault- an archive for everything unspoken and unfelt.  This is where the body has tucked away all the pain endured through life.  The place where survival energy, stress and unprocessed emotions have been kept until it was finally safe enough to release:

• Grief that was pushed down so you could keep functioning
• Anger that had no outlet
• Fear that stayed in the body long after the threat was gone
• Shame or guilt absorbed from other people’s words and behaviors
• Emotional “weight” from caretaking everyone else’s needs before your own

All of this lands in the woman’s womb space – a place that once created life – and is now asking to create something new: this older, healed, wiser, experienced, and empowered you.

I also see something deeper happening. The nervous system is now softening.  You are softening in your midlife years.  When the nervous system stops bracing for “attacks”…. the gut – your sacred vault- begins to speak to your brain.

The Gut-Brain-Chakra Connection

Your gut is sometimes called the “Second Brain” because it has it’s own nervous system called the Enteric Nervous System.  The gut is directly linked to the brain and communicates through the Vagus Nerve.  Brain one and brain two shape your mood, inflammation, digestion and how your body stores or releases stress.

Energetically, the gut and the brain are also housed in chakra centers.

The lower centers (sacral+ solar plexus) are more than just space for tissue.

Solar Plexus Chakra (Manipura) – upper abdomen, just above the navel.

• Governs personal power, confidence, boundaries, digestion and metabolism.
• When burdened by chronic stress or shame, it loses “fire” and that leads to poor digestion, inflammation, a sense of powerlessness.

Sacral Chakra (Svadhisthana) – lower abdomen, below the navel.

• Governs creativity, sexuality, relationships, emotions, flow.
• Holds suppressed grief, sexual shame, the creativity you never allowed yourself.

Why it matters:  the belly literally holds both emotion (sacral) and power (solar plexus).  When perimenopause gives you space, these centers ask to be felt, healed and integrated – and the body often responds with expansion while it does that work.

The higher centers (thrid eye +crown) is where the brain-gut axis becomes spiritual.

Third Eye (Ajna) – between the brows.

• Governs intuition, inner vision, perception, clarity and wisdom.
• When the gut (sacral + solar plexus) is inflamed with unprocessed emotions, the third eye can feel foggy.  Intuition is clouded because the body is still signaling danger.  As the belly clears and integrates old survival weight, the third eye opens wider.  Insight sharpens.  Dreams, visions and inner knowing become clearer because the nervous system is no longer hijacked by stored trauma.
• The third eye thrives when the belly feels safe.  When gut and brain harmonize, intuition becomes trustable and sharp again.

Crown Chakra (Sahasrara) – at the top of the head.

• Governs connection to Source, higher consciousness, universal truth and divine guidance.
• Heavy survival in the lower centers “block” the channel. Connection to divine energy is muffled.
• As survival weight in the belly is cleared, the whole channel opens.  The crown reconnects you to Source, allowing wisdom and guidance to flow.

Why it matters:  You not only feel safe in your body, but supported in your soul.  The Crown Chakra lights up when the belly is honored.  Clearing the belly is clearing the bridge between lower chakras and upper chakras.

The solar plexus (fire, will, confidence) and the sacral (emotion, creativity, sexuality) both live in the gut. When life demanded survival, these centers stored what we could not process: fear, grief, shame and the weight of others’ experiences.  In perimenopause, the belly begins to expand not to punish, but to integrate- to metabolize years of stored energy and emotions.

Here’s where the brain-gut connection goes deeper:  the belly’s release is tied to the third eye (clarity, intuition) and the crown (divine connection).  When the gut is inflamed with unprocessed emotions, the higher chakras grow cloudy.  As we clear and honor the belly, the whole system realigns – lower centers releasing survival stories, upper centers opening vision and source connection.

The belly, then, is not making you suffer or punishing you.  Your belly is acting as the bridge for the brain-gut.  The belly is translating between body and soul; between earth and sky.

Your Belly Tells Your Story

Your belly is one of the most honest parts of you. The belly speaks in fullness, bloating and swelling. The gut reveals what is in it’s sacred vault when it feels safe enough to. The belly is asking if you are ready to hear what the gut (your sacral + solar plexus) has been holding in tight for decades. The meno belly is asking if you are ready to address and heal what has been kept in for years. The belly is translating your story.

She holds:

• Every moment you silenced your truth
• The stress you held for your family
• The grief you didn’t have time to feel
• The inner child who felt unsafe
• The pleasure you never allowed yourself to fully receive
• The control patterns over food, people or emotions that were never allowed to rest
• The survivor of marriages, losses, expectations, physical emotional verbal abuse, and exhaustion

This isn’t just fat to “burn.”

It is energy – emotions – to transmute.

The belly never forgot your story. The belly protected you. The belly padded you. The belly kept you going while you were in survival mode.

Now that you are safe enough to feel all that your stomach has held in tight…

She’s letting it all out.

She’s speaking in bloating, tightness, inflammation and fullness – not to punish you, but to say:

“You’re finally safe enough to feel all of your unprocessed emotions now. Let’s deal with what has been stored here.”

The belly is becoming a living transcript of all that was never spoken aloud until you were out of survival mode and felt safe.

And that, my friends, is amazing!!!

The Sacred Shift For Women and Men

In survival, the belly was storing what you could not feel in order to get you through those days.  When you are out of survival later in life, the body is ready to shift, release and heal once it feels safe to do so. The belly begins to expand for different reasons.  The expansion is not for defense. The expansion begins for re-balancing.

You are calling parts of yourself back home:

• The girl who dimmed her light
• The girl who felt unsafe
• The woman who disconnected from pleasure
• The dreams you buried under responsibility
• The softness you suppressed to stay strong

This is not just a woman’s journey.

Men are going through their own version of this midlife change as well.  The man, who is also subconsciously feeling safe enough to heal because he, too, is no longer in survival mode.  The man becoming conscious – the healing man- he feels his belly shifting also.

He may call his expanding belly his “Dad Bod” but, beneath it lies:

• Rage at the father who didn’t stick around
• Pressure to perform without space to feel
• Suppressed tears and survival stress
• A heart that is only now learning how to open later in his life
• Grief for what he could never say
• Anger from a lineage of stoicism and silence
• Exhaustion from being the provider, protector, fixer
• Unworthiness from not being taught how to be a man, a father or a leader

Now that he is safe enough to slow down, to soften, to feel….. his belly is also speaking.

He’s not just gaining weight. When you are surviving, the belly is storing what you cannot face. What if when the soul feels he is safe enough to heal, the belly expands to integrate what is ready to come out.

He is making room for his next evolution as well.

The healing man is no longer numbing. He’s feeling, and in feeling, his sacred masculine is rising. The man in midlife ready to heal is now integrating:

• Feelings that were once frozen
• Pieces of himself he is now ready to call back
• Soul fragments ready to anchor into the body
• A whole becoming

When the belly grows in midlife, it is growing with intentions to no longer store trauma.  The belly is now expanding to bring his healing soul out because it feels safe to do so now.

Sacred Tools For Healing

This is not about weight loss.  This is about liberation of all that you have subconsciously held in tightly.

Sacred tools to work with the body, not against it:

• Fascial maneuvers to free stored trauma
• Lymphatic drainage to move emotionally charged cells and stagnation
• Vagus Nerve activation to signal safety in the body
• Womb and belly massage to soften protection
• Sound Bowls & frequencies to recalibrate cellular memory
• Breath, voice & movement to reconnect to power
• Sunrise light and cyclical living to restore circadian rhythm
• Inner child work to give yourself what your inner child needed
• Chakra Balancing to restore energy flow and support the body’s systems

These are sacred tools used to clear out the emotions first, and as those clear, the inflammation and stored visceral fat follows. Through sacred work, not restriction, these stored emotions and trauma can be cleared out.  The swelling, the pain, the stored grief clear out.  This isn’t from eating less, but from healing more.  When we address what the body is bringing up – with the right tools, at the right time- we can empty the vault of trauma and emotions that have been held in tight.

Thriving Frequencies Await

Midlife is not decline.

It is a sacred initiation.

Midlife is becoming wholeness.

Midlife is proof you survived trauma(s), stress, pressures and life thus far, and, this expanding belly aka “meno belly” or “dad bod” is inviting you to heal everything you’ve survived now that it is safe enough to deal with.

Now, in midlife, through all the shifts and changes, is the time for us to clear the trauma from the cells.

Now is the time to listen to the story our body held quietly and address those unresolved feelings.

Now is the time to embrace our empowered, wiser and  more experienced selves.

This is the work.

This is the way forward.

This is where your Soul Way Frequencies meet Thriving lives.

The belly was never the problem.  It was the messenger, the memory keeper and now the liberator.

 

Note:

This midlife experience is not universal.  Not all men in midlife and women in perimenopause or menopause experience the “meno belly” or “dad bod.”  This message is for those who are noticing changes in their midsection and that their bodies are not responding to clean eating, exercise, or discipline. In my opinion, the root is not just in food or fitness.  It’s in the cortisol patterns, hormonal shifts and stored emotional weight held in visceral fat.

If this is you, I invite you to join my upcoming Soul Way Circle Time.

We were taught how to enter womanhood with an elementary class about our changing bodies.  We were never taught or prepared for this stage of life.  Midlife deserves it’s own initiation, it’s own circle to share our lessons and wisdom with each other.  Soul Way Circle Time is a safe space to share our stories, explore the life changes happening, pass along wisdom and knowledge and remember what it means to thrive in this next stage of life.

If you feel the call, I invite you to join us in circle.  To share.  To release.  To reclaim.

 

With love and thriving frequencies,

Jennifer Lisa Way

Founder of Soul Way Frequencies

Ordained Minster

Licensed Massage Therapist| Licensed Lymphatic Drainage Therapist

Certified Quantum Healer| Intuitive Bodyworker

Sacred Retreat & Workshop Leader| Women’s Circles

Email:

Jennifer@soulwayfrequencies.com

Phone:

512-983-4758

If you are ready to explore your own midlife transformation or join the upcoming women’s circle on perimenopause, meno belly and body wisdom, I would love to welcome you.  You can connect with me at

Jennifer@soulwayfrequencies.com or

visit www.soulwayfrequencies.com

Resources & Further Reading

• Cleveland Clinic – Perimenopause: Age, Stages, Signs, Symptoms & Treatment
• Harvard Health Publishing – Abdominal Fat and What To Do About It
• Mayo Clinic – Belly Fat in Women: Taking- and Keeping – It Off
• Harvard Gazette – How Trauma and Stress Affect the Body
• National Library of Medicine – The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and The Evolving Psychobiology of Post-traumatic Stress
• Cleveland Clinic – What is the Gut-Brain Connection
• Transcending Trauma – Integrating Chakras with Evidence-Based and Holistic Interventions