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October 18, 2008

Boredom: A Golden Door Or Block?

Posted by Amyra under Addictions, Boredom, Channah Thailand, Fear of Success, Full Immersion, Passion, Presence, Unworthiness
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In my work to help people get off drugs and alcohol, I keep hearing “boredom” cited as a reason for substance abuse.  A lot of self-destructive behaviours are motivated by boredom - when life seems meaningless and no longer interesting, we seek out ways to inject more fun, danger, madness into our lives. 

Why do our lives become so boring?  The question we need to ask first is, why do we become bored with life? 

Human beings by nature seek stimulation, because we seek to grow.  Without stimulation, there can be no growth.  Stimulation implies movement, and growth is a movement.  Our deepest core is made up of a vibrant and creative energy that is alive all the time.  This is the core of who we really are.  Stagnation of any kind dampens our spirit and kills the passion in us.  We feel bored so we seek new experiences and in the process we enrich our lives and grow through the experiences. 

Life does not always become interesting for you, you have to look for the interesting bits.  And when you do look, you will likely discover an abundance of those bits.  One of the marvels of life is that we can make it the way we choose - if we look at it as boring, we will find evidence of it being boring; if we look at it as a treasure map and look enthusiastically for the treasures, we will find them. 

Life has the potential to be interesting, stimulating, exciting, enriching and fun.  Since our deepest being is also all of those, we only need to open our hearts and bridge to that potential.  When life seems boring, we are to push past that boredom and get to joy and beauty.  Boredom is often an illusion. 

A lot of people give up too quickly when faced with boredom.  They resign to the idea that life cannot be any more interesting, so they turn to using drugs.  Drugs is a quick fix.  But when the drugs wear off, the boredom is still there.  So it drives them to take more drugs to get more excitement, but that excitement is an illusion.  We can only trick ourselves momentarily and we quickly realise this, so we also quickly become addicted to drugs to maintain that illusion. 

People in recovery from drug addiction often start discovering that life can be exciting without drugs.  One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is to facilitate that process and witness someone’s discovery of joy when they peel the layers of their existence.  Often, that discovery comes when they allow themselves to slow down and deepen into the moment - which means becoming more present in the experience. 

Sometimes, after we’ve deepened into an experience, we realise that it really isn’t for us and then we opt for something else.  But if we don’t give ourselves the chance to find out, we might miss out on what might be an enriching experience.  Seek to deepen rather than to constantly move laterally.  Doing the latter tends to leave a trail of unfinished projects and a less-than-fulfilling life.  When we give ourselves the chance to find out more about an experience we are already in, we’re more likely to create more joy in our lives.  Even if an experience isn’t good for us, we’d only find the clarity to make changes after we’ve deepened into it. 

The word “flat” is sometimes used to imply boredom.  It’s an apt description because boredom makes our existence feel like a flat sheet that lies in front of us.  It is not that our existence has become flat, it’s that we have been cruising along life with a flat attitude - just passing time and not deepening into our experience.  If we gave ourselves the chance to find out by participating fully in life, looking beyond the apparent boredom, we would open a door which opens to more doors exponentially. 

Boredom a resistance to feeling

Sometimes boredom is a resistance to feeling uncomfortable feelings.  In terms of resistance, boredom falls into the same category as numbness (when we cannot feel), detachment and laziness.  If we feel bored, we’d want to stop what it is we’re doing and do something else, so we don’t stay in one place long enough to experience what is going to come.  Fear of experiencing discomfort should we stayed long enough can motivate us to manufacture boredom to get us to escape from feeling that discomfort.  Boredom can gives us the excuse to not participate in life. 

We may also manufacture boredom as a defence against feeling good feelings.  If we have a fear of success or grapple with feelings of unworthiness, the onset of opening up to a space of expansiveness where positive feelings and outcomes are possible can be a scary prospect.  So we put a block to it to stop ourselves from going into that space, and we manifest among other things boredom.  When we feel boredom, we can then tell ourselves that we’ve hit a wall and so we need to change our route. 

People who are addicted to drugs are prone to feeling bored easily (or people who get bored easily often become addicted to drugs).  In recovery, the responsible approach is to be honest about the emotions we feel and raise our awareness around our behaviours.  We stay with what is happening inside of us, address our conflicts and grieve our losses.  Drugs and alcohol allow us to escape from all these processes which are very scary to a lot of people, so instead of confronting what is happening, they create boredom to get out of it.  (This, of course, is often done without their conscious awareness - our fears often play out from the depths of our psyche.)          

In this case, we would stop feeling bored easily once the real issues are dealt with, our inner conflicts reconciled and our pains healed.  Boredom would no longer have a place in our lives, and suddenly, life becomes a whole lot more interesting - in a more stable, calmer way. 

Ultimately, passion and excitement are found within us.  We may seek something outside of us to feel stimulated but we can feel stimulated whether or not we encounter anything new in our external world.  When we are able to feel inspired and joyful without any external stimulus, our behaviours change to become more loving and self-loving.  Our external world instantly transforms into a playground full of fun and vibrancy.  But we’ve got to give ourselves that chance of finding this out.

 

August 10, 2008

The Need To Rebel

Posted by Amyra under Addictions, All-Or-Nothing, Channah Thailand, Rebelliousness, Self-Expression
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In the rehab centre where I work, it’s been pointed out to me that I tend to leave my coffee cups all over the place instead of putting them from where I’d taken them.  I started putting them back to their appropriate places, but then found myself wanting to leave cups at the pool, common bathrooms, etc.  I caught myself thinking it a few times, which prompted me to look closer behind it. 

Clearly, it comes from a rebellious streak to do something that is considered a breach of what is acceptable to the authority or within an institution.  A minor thing to leave my cup where it doesn’t belong, perhaps, but it comes from the same place as someone who expresses their rebelliousness through substance abuse.  I believe that everyone has a rebellious tendency in them; it’s a self-balancing mechanism to correct any imbalance arising from suppressing our expression in some area of our life. 

In working with clients, we often find that there’s an element of rebelliousness behind their addiction - how might their behaviours be an expression of some message they strongly want expressed?  Usually, I would isolate the aspect of the client that is driven to rebel, help the client understand its motivations, and work to reconcile the differences between this and other aspects in that person.  For a person in addiction, telling them off or threatening them with punishments or any other forms of assertion of authority is not likely to get them off the habit.  Instead, this would feed right into the part of the person that wants to rebel, fueling its intent.  If a part of you wants to rebel, it is not enough to tell this part to “shut up, sit down and be quiet”. 

When we engage in addiction or other “fuck you” behaviours, we often end up hurting ourselves.  For instance, if the issues behind our need to rebel aren’t dealt with, we may neglect a physical illness in ourselves just to say “fuck you”, with detrimental consequences to our health. 

We rebel because there’s some area of our life in which we’ve held back in our expression.  Our natural state is one of balance, and when something in us is off-balanced, we are driven to correct that imbalance.  If we don’t have a clear awareness of that imbalance, something in us would drive us to achieve balance haphazardly.  This can easily lead to an explosion of expression elsewhere as we naturally seek to even out the energies within ourselves. 

In this article, I am dealing with the rebellious tendency which is in all of us rather than the pent-up energy from unprocessed emotions.  Rather than trying to kill off this aspect in us, we need to find non-destructive ways to satisfy our rebelliousness.  Behind rebelliousness is a desire to assert our identity - what we like and dislike, what we value and condemn, what we want to create and no longer tolerate.  Therefore, it is not necessarily a destructive mechanism, only when we let it run itself, without our awareness. 

The way to get a handle on our rebelliousness is by remembering that it is acting out because our self-expression has been stifled in some way or other.  Habits such as using illegal substances, engaging in dangerous activities and run-in’s with the law are extreme ways in which we’ve allowed our rebellious aspect to operate.  We can replace these habits with those that do not hurt ourselves or other people. 

Since we tend to operate from an “all or nothing” mentality, we may not see that there are non-destructive ways of allowing our rebellious nature to express itself.  How might you express yourself, in less dramatic ways, that won’t harm yourself or others?  What do you want to be more of, in the eyes of others and yourself?  What small ways can you find to express this feeling, belief or idea? 

Most importantly, how are you going to channel it to express your creativity?  Rebelliousness is a passionate force that can be used either to create havoc and destruction, or to push ourselves out of our shell where we allow our true selves to see the light of day.  Since healthy self-expression involves some amount of our taking risk to step into unfamiliar territory, we can use the force of rebelliousness to bring out more authentic parts of ourselves. 

This is also to say that when we become aware of wanting to rebel in ways that don’t really serve us, it’s indicative of an area of our life where our expression has been stifled.  We need to examine ourselves calmly, take steps to find expression in the appropriate area while indulging our rebellious tendency in ways that move us forward in lovingly expressing ourselves.

 

August 10, 2008

The Joy Of Doing Meaningful Work

Posted by Amyra under Channah Thailand, Gratitude, Self-Actualisation
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I sent two clients who had completed our four-week programme to the airport yesterday.  As I said goodbye to them, I felt a surge of emotions well up inside me.  I walked away from the departure hall blinking back tears, overcome by a poignancy that moved me on a deep level.  When you’ve had four weeks of caring and watching the personal battles of a client who’d been residential with you, you can’t help but feel a little sad when they leave.  But it was sadness tinged with an admiration for their courage in pushing through some issues that are quite painful to deal with and coming out more whole that moved me. 

I was reminded of my fortunate position to help facilitate personal shifts in people and by extension, of my place in life where opportunities abound for every individual to make meaningful contributions to one another.  Just as I’ve contributed to our clients by virtue of my job, they have made unplanned contributions to my life.  Such moments of recognising the abundance of life and the greatness of our spiritual role often infuse me with a deep sense of gratitude for being simply alive, being participant in the universal cosmos. 

More and more, I believe that to find work that enables us to make meaningful contributions in a way that fulfills us is what makes living in this world joyful.  The road to recovery from our painful habits is paved with signs that guide us to our real place in life.  Our journey on the road to recovery must be taken to lead us closer to that place, where the gifts of our healing, the “what’s behind the door” of our pains, are transferred to help others get more happiness, inspiration, hope, peace and joy. 

If your journey seems all too overwhelming to you right now, you could perhaps be consoled by the idea that every painful moment you move through courageously now will help shape a strong, positive future.  Nothing will go to waste unless we make it so.  Behind every pain, there is a gift that will make itself apparent to you as long as you move ahead with a sense of adventure, openness and discovery.  We need not force ourselves to love our pain but to approach our pain with a certain expectancy in discovering something positive which we cannot yet see will give you the drive to move forward in your journey. 

Not that the journey will ever end.  Our ego-based personas may not recognise this but on the soul level we are constantly seeking out more situations that push us to recover yet another piece of who we are beyond our identity.  To strive for that point of an ultimate victory over life is to defeat the whole purpose of life.  We win the game when we’ve looked at ourselves at every challenge we faced and as such the game is never over until we cease to exist.     

True fulfilment, then, is when we grow out of pleasing our ego through thoughts and actions that come out of a desperate need to be liked/loved/admired and of hurting our enemies, to feeling profoundly grateful from observing the growth of those around us.  This is not to say that we must kill our ego but to find ways to transcend our ego at times to get to a place of seeing the bigger picture which can be a very beautiful thing for us. 

 

 

May 22, 2008

Three Inspiring Messages

Posted by Amyra under Channah Thailand, Dreams Signs & Synchronicities, Intention, Presence, Self-Healing
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It’s interesting how messages get received, grasped and absorbed over countless times, each time reaching a deeper level of our awareness.  A bit like reading the same book or watching the same movie again - we see something different the second time around.  A sentence or a scene may open a new door by provoking a thought, evoking an emotion or triggering a memory.  All these stimulus may take us to a new realisation, a fresh insight which changes the way we perceive ourselves or our world. 

We may hear a message 10 times before we derive any real meaning from it, even though we can comprehend the message conceptually.  Depending on how open we are, that same message can bring on a major internal shift which bridges us to a point of profound healing and growth. 

Messages can come from spoken words, written words, song lyrics, words whispered by the wind, etc.  I usually recognise a message when it stops me in my tracks.  I’d like to share three messages that have helped me in the past week:  

“You get out of it what you put in.”

One of our clients remarked at the end of a Body Renew class that we do indeed “get out of it what we put in” - referring to how as they got more used to the breathing and movements, they were able to apply more of themselves into the sessions and get increasingly more enjoyment out of them. 

This is an important message for anyone who’s on a journey of healing and growth.  It would be far easier for us to be passive while our issues get fixed for us.  Unfortunately, there is no short-cut in overcoming the emotional or psychological blocks that hinder our expression as self-loving beings.  Nobody can do it for us.  The first step in healing and growth is Responsibility.  What stops us from getting well, ending destructive patterns and becoming happier isn’t the lack of tools but a lack of responsibility, usually triggered by a fear of facing our truth and the ensuing outcomes of doing so.  And so the preferred route is escapism. 

In our rehab centre, I see evidence of this often.  People finding all sorts of excuses to not participate or not look at all their issues, failing to see that they are all and the same issues that had driven them to addictions and to the brink of destruction.  It’s the same theme - escapism - whether it is escaping by drugs, alchohol, or choosing to avoid dealing with the pains behind their issues.  These different manifestations of escapism must be looked at and dealt with responsibly if addictive tendencies are to be healed.       

Nothing works without our putting in the work.  We can be given tools, but tools are just that - we need to use the tools to make them work for us.  Three basic elements that help determine the success of a programme:  

  • a) Commitment gets you to approach something with discipline - e.g. turning up to a scheduled session and sticking to a programme until you reach your goal. Your vision of your final destination must be strong enough for you to stay motivated.
  • b) Presence of mind, heart and spirit determines how much you’ll get out of a session you participate in. How present are you in the session? If you are only participating with your physical body but your mind and everything else are floating off elsewhere, you will gain little benefit.
  • c) Openness of your heart and mind is important while you are participating on every level of your being. This allows you to relax your defences so that real healing and re-learning can take place.

 “You do the right thing, the right thing will come to you.”

My colleague and head therapist at the centre Steve Wyer said he often told his clients this during his many years of working with hardcore criminal and drug abuse cases (by the way, Steve’s personal story of healing and redemption is very inspiring and I hope to share some aspects of his voyage in later posts). 

This message struck me as a simple and effective way to approach a dilemma, conundrum or any conflicting situation. 

First of all, I believe there isn’t such a thing as “the right thing” as such.  The “right thing” here simply means what we know to be our deepest truth in that situation - doing the right thing means acting in response to that truth.  It’s a matter of Intention.  In other words, “doing the right thing” means “having a positive intention” behind your action.  The same action can be inspired by two different intentions - one can set us back in our spiritual growth while the other can elevate us to a more evolved state. 

Making a choice based on a positive intention is important because it recognises the imperfection of being human: that we cannot know everything on a conscious level.  But that imperfection is balanced by the perfection of everything being in flow to a natural order kept by a force that governs all life. 

In other words, when you do the right thing, you can relax into the knowledge that what is coming back to you will be the best for you, no matter what form it manifests.  That trust and acceptance can be very healing in that it allows you to move from a situation in which you’ve been stuck and set forth in a new direction.    

“Always onward, going forward without a regret.”

A very close friend who is writing an autobiography described his block to me recently: 

“It is a block in myself that prevents me from writing, lack of commitment which slows my words to a trickle and makes me study them carefully, over and over, until it renders me voiceless.”

I can relate to this well.  This kind of mental self-abuse - the constant, obsessive worrying and judgement of what we’ve done and the output we’ve expressed - is often what cripples us, stops our progress and hinders our self-expression. 

If we weren’t so judgemental about ourselves, we’d be less bothered by what we’ve said or done; and if we were able to accept and let go of our past actions, we’d be less judgemental about ourselves.  Constantly analysing and judging our actions is a form of self-punishment.  It may be worthwhile to ask, “What am I punishing myself for?  What am I judging myself for?”  Stopping for a moment of self-inquiry can transform an automatic, unconscious response into a well-considered action that moves us forward from stagnation to greater happiness. 

My friend went on to say:    

“I’m tackling this now by not allowing myself to look back, always onward with the narrative going forward without a regret.” 

Sometimes we need to take a deliberate step to drive a stake through our fear to free up our resistance to moving forward.  A mustering of guts, will power and determination without too much thinking can quickly build up internal fuel and allow us to release a concentrated burst of energy to break out of stagnation.  If we allow ourselves to think too much, we’d find every reason to stop ourselves and stay in stagnation.  A lot of our thinking is irrational, fear-based, and holds little truth.  Such thinking can be seen in its true light once we’ve pushed ourselves out of a state in which it imprisons us.

One of the sources of this type of thinking is what we perceive to be our mistakes - having done something that’s caused ourselves and/or other people unhappiness.  But making mistakes is one way of growing as it provides us with a reference of how to do things differently.  Yet we can only grow out of a mistake if we look forward from that mistake, only looking back to reinforce our lesson and focusing on being healed and renewed as a result of it. 

 

May 3, 2008

Intuitive Eating

Posted by Amyra under Body Image, Channah Thailand, Eating Disorders, Presence
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Last night, I watched a film in the centre’s movie room.  As I settled on the couch, I proceeded to eat a Mars Bar and buttered popcorn.  Halfway through the movie, I was struck by how relaxed and free I am about my eating now.  It’s been years since I’d thought anything about it, since I’d obsessed about everything I ate. 

Eating a Mars Bar without calculating the kind of ‘damage’ it could have on my body is so liberating.  I have been on countless diets in the past, obsessively counting calories, carb portions, fat grams, weighing myself, measuring myself, scaring myself with the imagined effects food could have on my body shape - wrecking my sense of self-worth with massive guilt and self-beating, and then neutralising the effects with diet pills, stimulants and appetite suppresants. 

I now allow myself to eat whatever I want, and have found great freedom.  When I was trying to control what and how much I ate, I became out-of-control.  Now I have the most liberating relationship with food where I am able to enjoy the pleasures of eating without feeling guilty or getting out-of-control.  My weight is healthy and stable, and I am totally rid of all stresses around food and eating. 

I call the way I now eat “intuitive eating”.  It requires one to develop the practice of being fully present in the body.  When we’re present in our body, we would intuitively know what our body wants.  The body has an intelligence, and it is giving us information about ourselves all the time.  If we were to tune in to what it is saying to us, we would gain a lot of self-awareness. 

To get to the point of intuitive eating, however, we need to first address the issues that drive us to have an unhealthy relationship with food (see below).  Throughout my struggles with eating disorders, I’d measured my entire self-worth by how I looked.  Since my image of my body was so bad, my self-worth was virtually zero.    

Food was a scapegoat.  If I didn’t have food to focus on and blame for all my insecurities, I’d have to turn my attention onto myself and examine what exactly was going on in me.  That is why attempting to change our habits around food without examining our deeper issues rarely works in the long run. 

My way of intuitive eating extends to the rest of my life.  When we are present and attuned to the needs of our body, that strong connection to ourselves enables us to be guided by our own innate wisdom - through our bodily responses, emotions, inspired thoughts, knowingness, premonitions, visions and spiritual insights.  By relaxing into and trusting the wisdom of our body, life becomes a joyful experience where we are simultaneously in control and in surrender to a greater intelligence.    

An excerpt from my book which examines the psychological motivations behind eating disorders: 

Food is sustenance and nurturance.  As babies, we could not feed ourselves and depended on our parents to feed us.  Feeding times were the times when our parents held us close to their bodies and showed us affection, so we learned to associate food with love.  If by the time we were able to feed ourselves our parents neglected us, we would feel deprived of love and turn to food to evoke feelings of being loved by our parents.  Food has becomes a source of comfort. 

 

Sometimes, as we grew up, our parents continued to use food to express their love.  In some cases, food is used as a substitute for love, especially when the parents have problems expressing their love.  If food is a central theme in the household, it would be assumed that everyone understood that love is being shown when food is shared.  This is fine if it is balanced by some expression of love and affection.  But when the parents show no love and keep shoving food at us, we can develop an unbalanced view of food.   

 

Those who grew up in poor families may end up seeing food as a scarce commodity, and end up either having an inflated value for food or a resentful attitude to food.  If they have an inflated value for food, they may later use food as a substitute for love or eat excessively to make up for not having enough in the past.  If they have a resentful attitude to food, they may later ‘take revenge’ on food by being extremely choosy about the kind of food they would eat, or reject food by undereating, or use food to punish another. 

 

All these dynamics can give rise to eating disorders.  For those who suffer from eating disorders, food is often a shameful subject.  They know they have an abusive relationship with food and feel ashamed of themselves around food.  To begin healing the eating disorders, their relationship with food needs to be explored deeper. 

 

Awareness

 

1.      Begin by asking yourself, what’s your truth?  This is your truth on a conscious level.  What are your eating habits?  

 

Examples: 

My truth is, I don’t want to be overweight anymore.  I love to eat fatty foods and then I neutralise it with stimulants and laxatives. 

Or

I want to be able to enjoy food more.  I cannot seem to put on any weight and I feel sick when I think of food.    

 

2.  Explore the belief you have behind your habits.  Your habits are either to avoid something or to gain something.  Is there anything you are running away from that your habits help to mask?  What do you think you’ll gain from it? 

 

Examples:

Why do I eat foods that make me fat, and why do I tend not to be able to stop eating?  I’m afraid it will run out, so I’m taking in as much as possible while it’s still there. 

Or

Deep down, I feel bad for eating.  If I eat, I’d deprive my siblings of their share. 

 

3.  What does food mean to you?  What does it represent? 

 

Examples:

Abundance, comfort.  As I eat, I’m hating myself, and feeling lonelier and lonelier. 

Or

Food to me is a source of unhappiness.  I hate it. 

 

4.  What thoughts go through your mind as you’re eating?  What emotions go along with those thoughts?

 

Examples:

Inadequacies.  As I’m eating, I’m replaying scenes from the past where I’d been rejected, judged, looked down upon, etc.  Feelings of being unloved and low self-esteem.  These feelings drive me to eat more, and the more I eat the worse I feel. 

Or

Guilt, bitterness.  I’m judging myself angrily as I’m eating.  I feel I shouldn’t need to eat and feel angry that I am eating. 

 

5.  Sum up your relationship with food. 

 

Examples:

I eat to get love.  Food is a substitute for love.

Or

I equate eating with putting unhappiness inside me.    

 

Overeating, Bingeing

 

When we eat more than our body needs to function healthily, we are overeating.  When we overeat excessively and obssessively, we are bingeing on food.  In these cases, food is being used to numb our pain like a drug, or to counter an emptiness inside. 

 

If deep down we feel deprived of love, we may eat as if this is the last time we get to eat, to try to take in as much as we can this time because we hold a belief that there is not enough food, or love, to go around.  We become greedy around food, hoarding food in our body.  Except our body can take only a certain amount of food before we feel uncomfortable or get sick.  If we do this repeatedly, we will likely manifest a variety of symptoms in our body, such as obesity and heart problems. 

 

No matter how much we eat, it won’t leave us satiated.  Our appetite is for something less tangible.  What is it that you need?  When you can see that food is a substitute for something else and understand the irrationality of stuffing yourself with food, you can begin to reverse your habits. 

 

What is the emptiness inside?  What are you deprived of?  People often stuff themselves to fill an emptiness inside – a feeling of loneliness and disconnectedness that creates a vacuum inside.  Food is solid and grounding; it gives us an immediate sensation of being full and the flavours of food stimulate our senses so that we feel more connected to ourselves.  But it cannot fill the emptiness inside, and so we eat more and more.  The more we eat, the more we feel the emptiness, which drives us to eat even more.  This vicious cycle spins with increasing intensity and we become out of control, until our body cannot take any more food. 

 

At the end of a bingeing session, we are often left feeling guilty and shameful.  In an attempt to neutralise the effects of our bingeing, we may make ours throw up or take laxatives to purge what we’ve taken in.  We may isolate ourselves in shame or engage in destructive activities to distract ourselves from our guilt. 

 

Overeating can be a form of self-abuse.  We may know the negative effects overeating can have on our body and somehow want to bring those effects onto ourselves.  Was food used as a punishment in your household when you were growing up?  When food was used as punishment and the person has also been conditioned to feel shameful about himself, it is likely that he will develop the habit of abusing himself with food.  In such cases, we stuff ourselves to get to the pain of having eaten too much, believing that we deserve to have pain inflicted upon us. 

 

In all the cases mentioned, the relationship with food needs to be changed; our attitude towards food and our beliefs around food need to change.  There is nothing wrong with seeing food as love, but not as a substitute for love.  As food is sustenance, when we give sustenance to someone it is an act of love.  So when we feed ourselves, we are loving ourselves.  But when we are operating from a scarce mentality, we may see the value of food in general but unable to appreciate its true value.  Hence, we stuff ourselves with huge amounts of food without deriving its true value.  This is one reason why we are unable to feel truly satiated no matter how much we eat. 

 

The key to changing our attitude to food is to apply the concept of full immersion to eating.  Slow down and appreciate every morsel you take in with more depth.  Instead of putting huge amounts of food quickly into your mouth (stretching across on a two-dimensional platform), increase the depth of the experience by opening up to the depth of the taste and flavours of the food. 

 

Every morsel of food can sustain and nourish us more than we’ve allowed ourselves to recognise.  Reflect on the true value of every morsel - the sensory stimulation from the flavours, its nutritional value and spiritual nourishment.  This way, you can train yourself to derive more out of smaller amounts of food, and eventually cut down the amount of food it takes to satiate you.  Stretch the process of eating by slowing down the time between picking up the food and putting it into your mouth, and between chewing and swallowing. 

 

When you eat mindfully this way, you become more grounded in your body and have body awareness.  With body awareness, you’ll begin to hear what your body is telling you and eat according to what your body needs.  Tune in by noticing the energy of the food in your body as you eat.  This way, you’ll cultivate a habit of listening to your body and knowing intuitively what to feed it.  You’ll begin to choose healthier foods that nourish your body and a balance of various foods that feed your soul.     

 

Undereating, Anorexia, Bullimia

 

People who tend to eat less than their body needs to be strong and healthy do so due to a variety of reasons.  In one of the examples in the awareness exercise above, food was associated with pain.  It triggered unhappy feelings for the person and was therefore a source of pain for her.  She might’ve had been abused around food as a child and developed shame, guilt or anger around food.  On the other hand, a person who associates food with love might be rejecting love by rejecting food.  The underlying issue is a strong belief that he is unworthy and undeserving of love. 

 

Another issue behind undereating is fear of losing control.  Firstly, if you tend to over-eat, you may go to the other extreme in an attempt to control your over-eating: you believe that if you allowed yourself to eat, you would lose control and eat too much; and you end up starving yourself.  Usually, this fear of control goes beyond eating and is prevalent in the person’s life in general.  Not eating, therefore, is a way of gaining control.  This is especially prevalent in those whose childhood environment was chaotic and unpredictable, and the person had no sense of control over his environment.  To counter the fear of losing control, they control the only thing they feel they can, which is eating. 

 

Children who under-eat may do so to manipulate their parents.  They may want attention from their parents, if they’d felt neglected.  It is common for children to ‘act up’ and do things that anger their parents because they don’t feel safe to tell their parents what they really need, which is their love.  They expect that if they caught their parents’ attention, they’d automatically be shown love.  Children may also rebel against eating to get back at their parents.  As kids, we had few options for punishing our parents.  Intuitively though, we knew that our not eating would have an effect.  A lot of our unbringing is centered around being fed and given food – we were constantly reminded to “eat this” or “finish your food’, so much so that we knew how much it mattered to our parents that we ate. 

 

Sometimes, a person avoids eating to avoid facing the feelings she has.  Eating immediately grounds us in our body and make us aware in our body (before we start bingeing, in which case we become numb to our feelings).  The person may have stored a lot of pain inside which she is afraid to face.  She may feel that putting food inside her would rock the boat of ignorance and open a pandora’s box of horrible feelings she would then have to deal with.  At times, a person is simply terrified of gaining weight due to issues with body image. 

 

When undereating is taken to the extreme, a person may develop anorexia, a condition which is also a body image disorder.  People with anorexia see themselves as overweight even when they are obviously underweight.  Somewhere along the process of undereating, we might have developed a distorted image of our bodies – we fear eating so much that we’ve convinced our minds that we don’t need to eat by believing that we are fat.  We wanted to believe this so much that we’ve created a distortion so that we won’t ever see it any other way. 

 

Another form of eating disorder is bullimia, in which a person forces himself to regurgitate the food he had just eaten.  Superficially, it is done to avoid putting on weight, but it has deeper psychological motivations.  It is often preceded by bingeing, which suggests that a bullimic person may be driven by two opposing sets of fears – for example, a desperation for love as well as unworthiness.  Control is a common issue behind bullimia – a person who fears losing control manifests that fear through eating uncontrollably and then ‘proving’ to herself that she can control matters by making herself throw up.  

 

Doing the exercise of applying the concept of full immersion to eating as described in the previous section would change your attitude towards food and help heal your relationship with food.  By recognising the true value of food, you learn to see food as sustenance, nurturance, nourishment and love.  The act of eating mindfully and lovingly would begin to heal feelings of unworthiness that caused you to reject food.  As you heal yourself, you’ll begin to eat more healthfully and adequately.