About

If Belly is a story for your soul, then Beyond is wisdom for your spirit.   Like rivers and streams filled with fragments of gold, there are nuggets of wisdom in the stories we hear. Beyond is that wisdom distilled to pure gold; simply listen and you'll put it into action in your life journey.   This inaugural episode unearths the origin story of Belly with our advisor, Artie Wu of Preside Life (http://bit.ly/presidelife).   EPISODE SUMMARY Artie Wu describes the origin of Belly of the Beast Life Stories from his perspective as a longtime friend and advisor to David All The meaning behind the term, “Belly of the Beast” Discussing the overall pattern of transformation using the metaphor of a caterpillar, down into her cocoon, and climbing up a butterfly Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale Modern examples of the Belly story pattern include Star Wars and The Matrix (films) The difference between grief and depression and why accepting the meaning of your pain matters   QUOTABLES “Belly of the Beast really is an allusion to some call it ‘hero’s journey.’ Some call it sort of transformations people go through over the course of their life cycles. And there are many ways to describe that.”   “There’s a natural shape of the transformation process in a person’s life in a phase they go through in nature. And, you know, one metaphor that comes up a lot is that of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.”   “And I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a video of a butterfly coming out of cocoon, it doesn’t look like fun. It comes out. It’s slimy, it’s struggling. Sometimes a wing breaks. And it needs to sit there totally vulnerable for some period of time for its wings to dry out before it can even fly away. It’s very precarious, dangerous, terrifying process.”   “And we always put our attention on the rainbows and unicorns aspect of being this butterfly.”   “It wasn’t a metaphor that the caterpillar died, the caterpillar did die because it is gone.”   “In the Bible story, [Belly of the Beast is] an allusion to Jonah and the whale.”   “And one day, Jonah is standing on the shore. And this whale, this leviathan, comes up from the depths and swallows him. And so he’s in the Belly of the Beast. But then the whale dives down underwater. Right. And the idea here is that when Jonah is down literally in the Belly of the Beast, he undergoes transformation. He’s like, well, I’m gonna die anyway here. I don’t know what happened. Everything I was afraid of losing — I’ve basically already lost.”   “And metaphorically speaking, at some point along your journey, a whale comes up and just literally takes you down. And the idea here from classical times is that You know, you get the call, and if you refuse the call, something will come up, grab you and drag you down anyway.”   “And what’s beautiful about hearing people’s individual stories from Martha Sternbach (Season 1, Ep.1)  to like everyone else is that even though we all have a fingerprint, each fingerprint is unique. And to hear that, you know, the incredible stories that you’ve brought out in this first season, it helps us see the shape of our own fingerprint.”   “In classic Star Wars, the belly of the beast is the trash compactor in the belly of the Death Star. In The Matrix, for instance, the belly of the beast is when Neo actually physically dies and then comes back completely transformed, knowing he has his powers.”   “Like for instance, when we talk about the difference between grief and depression. Grief is when you’ve had a loss and you actively, willingly sit with it and just sit with the pain of a loss and you don’t run away from the pain. You actively go down into the belly of the beast. You go down into grief, you go down into your cocoon phase. Depression is where you say, no, no, run away. Get away. Get away. Numb it with alcohol, numb it with drugs, with sex or whatever. And you keep running from this pain you know is coming. And eventually a hand comes up, grabs you and drags you down anyway. That’s the difference.” GUEST RESOURCES Artie Wu’s healing center: http://bit.ly/presidelife Facebook community: http://bit.ly/PresideFB On Instagram: http://bit.ly/artieIG   LISTENER COMMUNITY RESOURCES Write a fair review about this show: https://bit.ly/bellyapple Our website: https://inourbelly.com David’s personal email: david@inourbelly.com Submit your story to the show: https://bit.ly/bellypre Social Media (we’re open to help in these areas if you’d like to volunteer): Instagram.com/inourbelly  Twitter.com/inourbelly Linkedin.com/company/belly-of-the-beast-life-stories Facebook.com/inourbelly   GROWTH STORYTELLING ALLSTAY Group: Growth storytelling for business and organizations: https://allstaygroup.com