When I first began the conversation with writer and educator Lisa Sarasohn about power, particularly women's power, I was looking for different perspectives on the world and our future. I wanted fresh visions of possibility and potential and the insight that comes with experience. I also wanted a viewpoint that included a measure of consciousness of the human spirit and the impact that concept has on human constructs. That conversation, a portion of which is included in this interview, gave me all of that and more.

Sarasohn, who in addition to working for more than 25 years as a health educator specializing in yoga and bodywork therapy, has authored The Woman's Belly Book. Dr. Margo Maine has called this book "a soulful antidote to the cultural indoctrination into body hatred.... Many other books inspire us to 'talk the talk' of making peace with our bodies, but The Woman's Belly Book shows us how to 'walk the walk.'"

Sarasohn, through her book, articles, workshops, and speaking engagements, presents a feminine perspective on power, politics and personal responsibility, and change.

Stewart: You have been a strong advocate for women's health and empowerment for many years. Your work has given you a great insight, I think, into the cultural violence directed against women.

Sarasohn: On the way to addressing questions of women, peace, and war, let's create a context. Let's consider: Who are women? What is women's power? What are women called to do at this turning point in the story of being human?

Who are women? We are beings who embody the feminine principle.

The feminine principle isn't necessarily about gender. In our times, the feminine principle is about establishing balance.

To a great extent, we perceive our world through duality. We understand the world in terms of pairs of elements that seem to oppose each other. Actually, as a whole, these elements complement each other: one could not exist without the other. The Chinese language expresses this elemental balancing act as yin/yang.

The feminine principle is yin: lunar, expansive, inclusive, flowing, cyclical, feeling, reflective, subjective, allowing, integrating, unifying, descending, yielding; the valley. The masculine principle is yang: solar, contracting, selective, differentiating, linear, logical, objective, directive, analytical, unitizing, rising, penetrating; the mountain.

In our times, crisis upon crisis - social, economic, political, and environmental - signals that yin and yang are seriously out of balance. Unchecked, the masculine principle has intensified injustice and elaborated conflict to the point of jeopardizing humankind's survival. The feminine principle has largely remained repressed.

Bringing yin and yang into balance is the key to our individual and collective survival. Such rebalancing requires bringing forth and expressing the feminine principle in every arena of human awareness and activity.

What is women's power? It's exactly this: the capacity to bring the feminine principle into the world. In our times, we're called to translate the feminine principle into tangible experience, leading humankind beyond a mentality of conquest to a consciousness of our interconnection. The survival of our species and of many others on the planet seems to depend on this evolution of human awareness.

We usually encounter "power" as top-down domination. Someone wins and someone loses. Domination enforces ranking, inequality, oppression, injustice.

Women's power is dominion. Sovereign within our own realms, we see to the well-being of who and what lives within our circle. Dominion implies responsibility, relationship, partnering.

What are women called to do?

The question reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's comparative analysis of Western civilization's most influential philosophers:

"To be is to do." — Socrates

"To do is to be." — Sartre

"Do be do be do." — Sinatra

At this time of crisis - equal parts danger and opportunity - we're called to do our being and be our doing. None of us has arrived on this planet by accident. We've each received an engraved invitation to be here now, to add our gifts to the mix of being human. We're each here to enact the purpose that ignites our soul power.

As women validate ourselves, speak our truth, and act upon our deep soul guidance, we bring the feminine principle into the world. We, in all our authenticity, are exactly what the world needs for healing.

In The Chalice and The Blade, Riane Eisler characterizes contemporary culture and the last 5,000 years of Western civilization as displaying a dominator pattern of social and political organization. This pattern of culture enforces competition, ranking, and exploitation through a mentality of coercion and conquest. Fear of death is the coin of the realm. In multiple expressions of a single impulse, the dominator culture devalues women, degrades indigenous peoples, debases nature, and denigrates the feminine sensibility within men. It makes women's bodies - particularly women's bellies, both the emblem and locus of women's power - the target of assault.

Dominator culture has attempted to suppress and appropriate women's pro-creative power through overt and covert violence. These forms of violence range from belly-flattening fashions to epidemics of unnecessary hysterectomies and C-sections. They range from rape and incest to laws limiting women's authority regarding contraception and childbirth.

The statistics are grim. In the United States, a woman is raped every six minutes. Nearly four out of ten percent of pregnant women are subject to their partners' violence. Among pregnant women, murder is the leading cause of death. In recent and ongoing conflicts around the world, soldiers and civilians have used rape as a weapon of war.

Riane Eisler suggests an alternative to the dominator pattern of society: partnership. Archeological evidence indicates that our earliest ancestors created life-affirming cultures of cooperation, equality, and mutual respect. As we bring forth the feminine principle into the world, women will have the opportunity to organize social, economic, and political patterns of human interaction that celebrate life in all its diversity.

Stewart: How do you think the war in Iraq and the war on terror have impacted the welfare of women in this country?

Sarasohn: I've been leading workshops guiding women to revalue and reclaim our body-centered, pro-creative power for more than two decades. Aside from teaching a series of belly-energizing movement and breathing exercises, my main job is to create the setting, an environment of warmth and safety and mutual respect. Once that container is created, what emerges is awe-inspiring. In her own timing and in her own way, each woman uncovers and expresses a deep wisdom she may not have articulated before. Relationships build within the circle of women. The group becomes a crucible of insight, affirmation, and empowerment.

Time and again, I see women's wisdom, creativity, and self-validation emerge and flourish. The necessary and sufficient condition is an environment of safety, comfort, and ease. To the extent that the war on terror fails to provide such an environment, it diminishes the expression of the feminine principle and its power.

Both women and men suffer the consequences of soldiers - spouses, sons, daughters - fighting in Iraq. How many soldiers return home from war unharmed and whole in body and mind?

Beyond injuring bodies and souls, the war diverts resources that could otherwise apply to a wide range of women's concerns, human concerns.

Here's a sample of the tradeoffs we're making by funding a war rather than affordable housing or children's education and health.

• By the end of 2007, we taxpayers will have spent more than $450 billion for the war in Iraq.
  
  
• These same taxes could have provided health care for 200 million children, or enrollment in Head Start programs for 62 million children, or 3.5 million homes in which to live (see the National Priorities Project for additional estimates).
  
  
• A recent New York Times article indicates that spending for military operations alone in Iraq is more than $300 million per day.
  
  
• On a yearly basis, the cost of the war - accounting not only for military operations but also for the cost of veterans' medical care, the war-related increase in the cost of oil, and the cost of rebuilding the military - is $200 billion.
  
  
• As an alternative, we could spend $100 billion annually (half of the war's yearly price tag) to provide health care for all the Americans who are currently uninsured.
  
  
• We could spend $35 billion annually (about one-sixth of the war's yearly cost) to provide preschool for 3-year olds and 4-year olds.

As of this writing in November 2007, George W. Bush has vetoed a bill to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the House of Representatives has failed to override his veto. The SCHIP program provides health insurance for children whose families cannot afford to purchase a private plan. In some states, the program also covers the parents of children receiving SCHIP benefits and women who are pregnant.

The bill that the President vetoed would have increased federal spending to insure children's health by $7 billion per year for a period of five years. Seven billion dollars. That's less than 4 percent of the annual cost of the war in Iraq. That's less than the cost of 24 days of military operations in Iraq.

Stewart: Women have traditionally been at the forefront of social change. I find it troubling that so many women in politics today actually align themselves with war and violence. Do you think it would be possible for a woman who advocated peace to rise to the political status of Hillary Clinton?

Sarasohn: "Peace" is a word that needs to be unpacked. A situation in which a group of people is disempowered, their needs neglected, their voices repressed, may appear to be "peaceful." What we need is justice. And to bring forth justice, women may need to act as warriors.

Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," "The Good Body," and other provocative plays, has sparked a global movement to end violence against girls and women. Through the V-Day organization, she's mobilized thousands of women as activists addressing rape, domestic violence, and genital mutilation. She recognizes the women who are taking risks to achieve remarkable results as "Vagina Warriors."

Frankly, I think what we see happening in the political arena is largely a distraction. Political decisions seem to be effect, not cause. They seem to be shaped by other forces - for example, by the images that the media choose to distribute and by the selective coverage that the media provide. As Eve Ensler has done, women might do well to exert our influence on politics through the theater, television, film, magazines, the internet, and other communication channels. Women who own production companies - Oprah Winfrey and Tyra Banks, for example - might well be in a position to organize women for political action.

The impact of the war on terror may extend to the ways in which the media select images of women to display. The war on terror may serve as only one element of a comprehensive conservative agenda; some media corporations may be unwilling to risk offending conservative values regarding women and their proper place.

Here's a case in point: Photographer Frank Cordelle has created a series of stunning nude portraits of women, presented along with their personal statements, that reveal both the challenges and the hard-won triumphs of being female in our culture. Brought together as a book titled Bodies and Souls, these photographs reveal real women - not airbrushed models - as subject, not object. They display the embodiment of women's power. (See The Century Project for a sampling of portraits.)

The photographs receive enthusiastic responses from the women and men who view them as a traveling exhibit. Yet, even after indicating initial interest, several media outlets have refused coverage. Is this refusal an example of self-censorship in a time of tacit repression? According to Frank Cordelle, it may well be.

Along with the media, economic forces shape political decisions. Women can wield significant economic power - if we're willing to do so. For example:

• Women make more than 85% of consumer purchases. Women make 50% or more of purchases in categories such as cars, electronics, computers, and health care.
  
  
• Women's annual consumer spending is $3.7 trillion. Women's annual business spending is $1.5 trillion. Women influence the purchase of more than 95% of total goods and services. Women's choices determine two-thirds of the $3 trillion spent in the United States each year.
  
  
• Nearly 40% of women have household annual incomes ranging between $50,000 and $100,000. More than 10% of women have household annual incomes exceeding $100,000.
  
  
• Women own more than 40% of the nation's small businesses. Women employ 35% more people in the United States alone than the Fortune 500 companies do worldwide.
  
  
• Women control or influence 67% of household investments. Women control more than 50% of the private wealth in the United States. Women's wealth will increase as they outlive their husbands by an average of 15 years and inherit their assets.

Stewart: You stood for a while with Women in Black. Tell me about that organization and that experience. What prompted you to stand with them?

Sarasohn: As I understand it, Women in Black began in 1988 in Jerusalem in response to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Now, in many places throughout the world, women dress in black and stand silently in a public place on a regular basis - same time, same place, whatever the weather. The intent, plain and simple, is to mourn violence. (For more information, see Women In Black.)

I chose to join the silent vigils that Women in Black convene because I wished to take a stand in a way that had nothing to do with ideology or partisanship. I wished to participate in a visible, unadorned act of bearing witness.

From time to time I wonder what would happen if we all did nothing for a while. How much trouble do we make for ourselves and each other by being so busy, even when we're busy trying to fix something? Here was a chance to do nothing in a telling way.

As unglamorous as it was, standing at the edge of the downtown traffic circle on a Friday afternoon in the midst of windblown grime and diesel fumes, the experience was very much an expression of the feminine principle. We created a context for awareness and inclusiveness.

As I was there bearing witness, I wore a black t-shirt with a photograph of two Iraqi girls, dolls in hand, emblazoned across the front. The photo was taken at the start of the war. Would the girls survive? Would our bombs destroy their homes? Standing with their photo spread across my chest made the act of mourning violence all the more personal.

Stewart: How do you see the peace movement in the US today? Do you think we can affect our government's warring in Iraq and the move toward war with Iran?

I believe we can use state-of-the-art media technologies and economic strategies, as well as neighbor-to-neighbor community organizing, to build demand for peace and justice at home and abroad. I call my three-point program for voicing such a demand, NS3.

Stewart: Mahatma Gandhi established non-violence as a strategy for generating political change. What lessons could we take from Gandhi today?

Three lessons we can learn from Gandhi's example are setting limits to another's abusive behavior within a moral framework, refusing to cooperate with another's abuse, and all this while still embracing the other.

Much of what we learn from Gandhi is what Gandhi learned from his wife, Kasturbai.

As revealed in Gandhi, the Man, by Eknath Easwaran, Gandhi declared: "I learned the lesson of non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will, on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved, on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity.... In the end, she became my teacher in non-violence."

Kasturbai countered Gandhi's abusive behavior with unflinching dignity: She challenged her husband: "Have you no sense of shame? Because I am your wife, do you think I have to put up with your abuse? For heaven's sake, behave yourself."

With these words, Kasturbai 1) named the other's behavior as both abusive and shameful, 2) refused to be the target of abuse, and 3) set limits on the other's actions: "Behave yourself." These are steps in a non-violent process for creating political and social change that we might well apply today.

In challenging the British Empire's rule in India, Gandhi expanded non-cooperation to the scale of a general strike. But he wisely termed the action a national day of prayer and fasting. I doubt fasting would have much appeal in modern-day America. Still, a national day of prayer and renewal, a day in which we refuse to cooperate with injustice of any kind, might begin to broadcast Americans' desire for the nation to find a saner way of being in the world.

He also extended non-cooperation to not-shopping. Gandhi organized Indians to boycott fabric imported from Britain and, instead, to spin their own cotton. They made their own clothes from homespun.

After India gained independence from Britain, violence erupted between Hindus and Muslims. Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, screenplay by John Briley, shows this exchange between Gandhi and Nahari, an anguished Hindu man who's been rioting against the Muslims:

Nahari: I am going to hell. I killed a child.... I smashed his head against a wall.

Gandhi: Why? Why?

Nahari: The Muslims killed my son...they killed him.

Gandhi: I know a way out of hell. Find a child - a child whose mother and father have been killed. A little boy...and raise him - as your own.

Nahari listens.

Gandhi: Only be sure...that he is a Muslim. And that you raise him as one.

In this scene, Gandhi provides an exquisite teaching on embracing the other and points to the healing that may follow. Imagine a Christian fundamentalist raising an Iraqi child orphaned by American soldiers, fully affirming the child's ethnicity and religion.

Gandhi affirmed, "If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women." But is non-violence in fact the law of our being?

Confirmation comes from a surprising source: General Douglas MacArthur, one of the American heroes of World War II, the man who was Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. Following Gandhi's assassination in 1948, General MacArthur said: "If civilization is to survive, all men cannot fail to adopt Gandhi's belief that the use of force to resolve conflict is not only wrong but contains within itself the germ of our own self-destruction."

Stewart: You try to incorporate your personal philosophy about peace, personal power, and change into your daily life. It is very difficult to live a peaceful life in our culture yet it seems important that those who work for peace also live it. How do you go about learning to live peace?

Sarasohn: I keep learning - remembering, forgetting, and hopefully remembering a bit more quickly - that my own and others' aggravating behavior has its roots in woundedness. In that case, compassion is at least one part of a reasonable response. Blessing is another.

Likewise, I keep learning what it means to practice forgiveness. I'm understanding that forgiveness is allowing myself and others to move beyond what have been our limitations. Holding a grudge keeps us both stuck in attitudes and behaviors that don't work for any of us.

Taking the long, karmic view helps, too. When I consider that I've probably irritated someone in exactly the same way that someone seems to be irritating me now, I lighten up a few degrees.

Another key is to realize that the difficulty I'm having with others reflects the difficulty I'm having with myself. How much of my personal pain am I projecting onto the situation? That's a useful question to ask. Then the external tension becomes a chance to resolve my internal conflict.

I'm also practicing a way to squint, so to speak, that produces an image of our oneness. However fuzzy that image may be, I can be as glad for your triumphs as I am for mine. What's the difference, really?

And it's always a plus to practice gratitude.

Stewart: What are some steps women can take to begin, using Gandhi's words, to be the change they want to see?

Sarasohn: We can cultivate our connection consciousness, our visceral sense of kinship with all creation. We can envision and actualize new patterns of social, economic, and political organization.

We can be the change we want to see happening around us by living in alignment with our soul's purpose. We connect with allies and opportunities we could barely have imagined. We move out of a competitive framework and into a mode of creative collaboration.

The Asian healing arts identify a point in the body that encodes, holds the energy of, our soul's purpose. Called Zigong in Chinese and translated as "Purple Palace," you find the point on the front of your body along the midline, just about at heart level. I call it the home of your heart's desires.

When we honor and energize the body's center, we can live more and more through our deep wisdom, our intuitive knowing. While our analytical thinking compares, contrasts, and judges, this body-centered awareness enables us to sense wholeness, perceive networks of relationship, participate in mutuality. This body-centered awareness engenders a visceral sense of kinship with all creation. Developing this connection consciousness can only help us on the way to being peace.

As I envision a world of peace and justice, I imagine people treating each other, and all creatures, as sacred beings.

Reconsecrating our body's center may seem like an odd place to start. Yet it's a law of nature: What happens to the center happens to the whole.

When we invest our compassionate awareness in our body's center, when we activate the life force concentrated in our bellies, we're on the fast track to befriending our whole bodies and celebrating our whole selves. As we do this act of cultural pioneering, we can revel in the bliss of coming home to ourselves - and at the same time set the stage for humankind's survival.

Ultimately, honoring and energizing our bellies is an act of cultural renewal. In every moment that we honor our body's center, we are revaluing ourselves and reconsecrating our womanhood. We are bringing forth the feminine principle. We are actively creating a world that affirms and cherishes life.

As women move beyond body shame and step into our capacity for leadership, we stop wasting and instead mobilize enormous energy, wisdom, and creativity for manifesting personal vitality, social justice, and global renewal.

We, in all our authenticity, are exactly what the world needs for healing.