My grandmother kept a small clay pot of cream on the highest shelf of her kitchen, behind the salt. She made it herself, every full moon, with argan oil and orange blossom and something she called roḥ el-warda — the soul of the rose. As a girl I was not allowed to touch it. As a young woman I forgot it existed. As a teacher of yoga, I now keep one of my own.
At the end of every class, after the final savasana, I ask the women to place both hands on their lower bellies. Then I pass the small bowl. They warm a little of the cream between their palms, and they anoint themselves — slowly, in silence, in the soft circular motion my grandmother used to draw on my forehead when I had a fever.
The first time I did this with a circle, three women cried. The second time, four. By the tenth class I had stopped pretending to be surprised.
What the body remembers
It is a small thing — a teaspoon of cream, a minute of silence — and yet it undoes something none of the postures had reached. I have thought about why for a long time. The closest I have come to an answer is this: most of us were not touched gently as adults. Most of us, perhaps, were not touched gently as girls.
To anoint your own belly with care is to become, for one minute, the grandmother you needed.
The lower belly is where we hold the things we do not have words for. The shame of being too much, or not enough. The grief of cycles that did not bring children, or that brought too many. The exhaustion of being available to everyone, all the time, for years on end. The body has filed all of it there, behind the navel, in the soft basket of the pelvis. And it has been waiting.
How I make the cream
I do not have a recipe to give you, exactly — every batch is a little different, depending on what the season is offering. But this is roughly what I do.
Three tablespoons of cold-pressed argan oil. One tablespoon of beeswax, melted gently. A few drops of rose absolute, if I have it; a drop of neroli, always. I stir it in a clean glass jar with a wooden spoon while it cools. I do not stir clockwise or counterclockwise — I stir slowly. That is the only rule.
I store it in a small clay pot on a high shelf, away from light, and I pass it to my students in a smaller bowl. There is something in the act of receiving the cream from another woman's hands that completes the ritual. If you are doing this alone, place the bowl in front of you on a low table, and pause before you reach for it. Receive it as if from your grandmother.
✦
A small instruction
You do not need argan oil. You do not need a clay pot. A teaspoon of any unscented oil — almond, jojoba, even good olive oil — is enough. What matters is the slowness of the gesture, and the fact that you have given yourself permission to be tended to.
Place both palms together. Warm the oil between them. Place them on the lower belly. Make small circles. Do not think about what you are doing. Do not narrate it. Do not photograph it. Do it for sixty seconds, and notice what arrives.
If you cry, that is the ritual working.
— Ghizlan