What's Behind Your Belly Button?: A Psychological Perspective of the Intelligence of Human Nature and Gut Instinct

Although numerous books and articles have recently talked about the gut instincts as valuable in giving us useful hunches in the decision-making process, "What's Behind Your Belly Button?" goes much further and explains how gut feelings not only have a psychological intelligence of their own, but are also understandably rational in their functioning. The authors explore how gut feelings are like a gas gauge in our guts indicating through an emotional feeling of emptiness or fullness how well the two instinctive human needs for acceptance (attention from others) and of control of one's own responses (freedom) in our lives are being met and how our behavior attempts to keep these two instinctive needs in balance at all times. They explore how these two instinctive needs motivate nearly all our behaviors all through our lives and that the feeling memory of how well these needs are met from moment-to-moment may be accessed through somatic awareness of our gut feelings of empty and full by using the Somatic Reflection Process the authors have developed."What's Behind Your Belly Button?" explains exactly what your gut feelings are capable of telling you about your inner instinctive needs, how to listen to the voice of your gut, and how to use both of your brains—head and gut—to work together for your optimal health and well-being. This book is recommended for anyone looking for a hopeful view of humankind and a method for getting in touch with gut instincts to reduce stress, cope with fear and anxiety, deal with health issues and make efforts to stay healthy, and to increase optimal problem-solving and life decision-making abilities. In 1998, neurological research at Columbia University published the work of Dr. Michael Gershon that identified the enteric nervous system as a center of feeling-intelligence in the gut, which he called the "Second Brain". The authors carefully examined this material and accepted the research findings as pointing to the same universal feeling intelligence they experienced in counseling with hundreds of people. Utilizing the research of Dr. Gershon, the work of Dr. Lise Eliot who charts the development of children from conception through the first five years of life, recent research of their own in the Psychology Department at Sonoma State University, and their vast clinical experience, the authors have presented an interpretation of recent medical research into a Gut Psychology and a more accurate behavioral understanding of the Self and human nature than has previously been available. They share a complete protocol and results of clinical research findings for the Somatic Reflection Process that they have created and used successfully, with themselves and hundreds of people, to assist the process of getting in touch with the voice of the gut and learning to follow its wisdom toward a healthy life—unifying the body-mind split in the individuation process. The authors suggest that we are at the beginning of a Renaissance in human consciousness and that understanding our true human nature is the way to thrive in this present era. The authors suggest that early in a child's learning process, care be taken to offer the experience of freedom and acceptance to the child to form a positive self-concept and to self-regulate his and her behavior as part of the learning process in becoming a loving, caring person. After careful examination of life's processes, they conclude that of all the mammals in the animal kingdom, humans seem to be the only species that has been denied the open use of their natural instincts. Out of ignorance, fear or wanton control by others—"we are denied the use of the brains we were born with". This awareness is of growing concern since the absence of the use of the feeling intelligence of the body interferes with a major stabilizing force—built into the human system—that can affect human behavior, provide a sense of well-being, and the ability of the body to combat disease.

We wrote this book as a narrative of the maturation of the sciences (Psychology and Neurology) and using our combined experiences, all of which started to take form in the 1960s with the unrest of youth over the Vietnam war--the era of "give peace and love a chance". In the 1970s, we were involved in a college occupational and academic counseling-teaching assignment, dealing with the aftermath of the previous era of changes in society and integration of the Black and White cultures. Having no effective references with which to work, we used a personality inventory (Myers Briggs Type Indicator), based on the theories of Dr. Carl Jung. Experience with groups and individuals soon allowed feelings of the students involved to surface at a variety of levels, which were centered on personal disturbances of their pasts and were not defined by the inventory. Hours of study of what we were learning from students, suggested that we were tapping into genuine universal instinctive feeling intelligence, primarily focused in the gut area of the body. It was at that time that we first developed the Somatic Reflection Process to assist people in accessing their gut feeling memory and gut intelligence. It was also then that we wrote a text for our classes about the gut instinctive responses that we were discovering with people we were working with in career exploration and much of that material has been included in this book.

Since our initial years of working together at Santa Fe College, we both have continued to work and study in the field of psychology and education, as well as to keep up a correspondence comparing notes on our subsequent work in education. In 2005, Martha received her second MA in Depth Psychology and continued her study of the gut instinctive response in a research study at Sonoma State University. Bob continued to work in the educational field as a counselor and college teacher and then as an administrator in a privately funded experimental high school near Gainesville, Florida. With the new medical breakthroughs on gut intelligence, we decided to compile our lives' work in a book and share it with the medical and psychological community as well as the general public.

What's Behind Your Belly Button? explains what your gut feelings are actually capable of telling you about your inner instinctive needs, how to listen to the voice of your gut, and how to use both of your brains--head and gut--to work together for your optimal health and wellness. We have included in this book a complete protocol for the Somatic Reflection Process on gut feelings that we developed to be used with both individuals and in groups. It is our hope that readers will find using this protocol useful in exploring gut intelligence and in uniting the two brains--gut and head--for developing higher intuitive intelligence.