Hunger Hope and Healing

As you take an action related to your Body Dashboard, infuse it with your personal mantra (phrase). When you hydrate, also say silently to yourself [ your phrase ]. Drink it in. When you take those moments of deep rest (such as an afternoon restorative pose), repeat your phrase to yourself, allowing it to infuse your resting. When you walk out into nature, welcome this phrase to go with you. As alive as the Evergreen is. When you raise your heart rate, raise it with the joy or determination or commitment to your phrase (and your recovery). Let us know how this unfolds for you. We are enthused by your courage and will be tender about your challenges too.

Back in my eating disorder years, when my behaviors were out of control, and I knew so little about how to care for myself at all, days off, weekends, holidays, school breaks were sometimes periods of vast unknown, unstructured time that would lead to numbing, bingeing, or trying to control my life with compulsive exercise. I say this with full honesty and celebration – it is possible to be completely free from food obsession, food fear, self-harm, and chronic anxiety. It requires dedication and practice and the right kinds of tools and skills. It also greatly benefits from mentoring, coaching, camaraderie and support. That's why Hunger, Hope & Healing is a group support program. Of course, individualized support is always offered, but a group that allows us to learn about all the ways in which others are healing, becoming stronger, more clear, and more free, shows us the possibilities for each and every one of us.

Remembering that all small steps matter, some days we must pace ourselves slower than on other days. At times, we might experience ourselves making a bigger leap... like when hiking and climbing up to a vista. At no time does your pace need to be made scary for you. Little by little and celebration by celebration, we proceed. When challenges arise, may they be smaller diversions or tenderness rather than downward spirals. I am with you in this process and I trust the journey is possible for you all.

Love is an expression of care, respect, consideration, appreciation, celebration, and our ability to truly see and be seen. If we include in this view the relationship we can have with our body, this thing called Love becomes more internal, personal, perhaps even vulnerable. So many of us want to be "loved as we are". Naturally we long for this. It came with our human wiring at birth. We were dependent on this possibility so that we would not be abandoned in the forest, left to the wolves. So that we would not be forgotten on the sidewalk outside the grocery store wondering where home is. Of course we want to be loved as we are! Love is related to Self-Acceptance. Yet, let’s not confuse self-acceptance as permission to become passive or dismissive about our self-care. (this would be apathy disguised as self-acceptance) It doesn't mean that we stop growing or being interested in growing. (this would be stagnation disguised as self-acceptance) It also doesn't mean that we reserve "loving ourselves as we are" for the days that we feel at our best and our blue jeans or the scale rewards us with optimism. (this would be conditional love and state-dependent self-acceptance) Loving ourselves as we are means welcoming the full spectrum view, seeing ourselves as we are within our potential for a 360-degree life - currently living within our understandable limitations - and our understandable vulnerability to shame and risk and the unknowns of growing and healing. And it means, we continue to try, to Say NO where we need to in order to give our YES the best chance at leading us. Let's try this today. Our brains will be better able to accept these possibilities if we are hydrating, resting, avoiding unhealthy media, and reminding ourselves that we are not walking this path alone. We are journeying together.

Today is another day where you have the opportunity to commit to our health, our recovery, and our journey. Health includes digestion for our food and our emotions. A journey considers our process not only as individual meals and days, but as the overall horizon toward which we are taking ourselves too. A journey is made of many small steps... when these steps, however small, move us toward our goals, we are on the path. When these steps, even incrementally, move us away from our goals, we are in the currents of past influences and reflexive habits pulling us off course. Acknowledging even the small steps IS part of the practice and essential to our confidence in moving forward. When you're feeling vulnerable to succumbing, again, to those behaviors that pull you astray (or under, as I sometimes refer to it, since it leads to the dorsal vagal response), it may help to remind yourself that while this self-numbing might feel "protective", it also becomes "preventative" - it prevents us from having Faith in ourselves and the Courage to do the next wise thing. Faith is the foundation, grounding, and stability we need. Courage is the motivation and action we also need. You are worth it.

The teachings on Personal Buoyancy include a focus on "Elimination". Specifically, Not Letting Rajas and Tamas Take Over. (Rajas and Tamas are yogic gunas referring to chaos or lethargy, angst or apathy, urgency or depletion.) As we journey in yoga and recovery, one of the great discoveries is that we actually do have the inner capacity to make decisions - to advocate on our own behalf, on behalf of our well-being, our recovery, and our personal buoyancy. Certainly, we often need the boost of knowing it also matters to someone else that we make these decisions and take the steps on our stepping stones. So as you step into the day, point your toes in a wise direction. Think of energy of Rajas as the fuel or fire to get where you want to go. When properly harnessed, it becomes motivation, direction, and focus. (When not harnessed, it can feel like ongoing chaos or anxiety.) Think of Tamas as the undercurrent of your stamina and steadiness to get where you want to go. When Tamas is not wisely engaged, it becomes stagnant and apathetic. You deserve movement, growth, and relief!

May we all remember, recovery is a journey, not a straight line to a decimal point. You're here and that means you are going in a good direction. I'm with you and it's my honor to see your courage, questions, confusions, and celebrations along the way too. As your day unfolds, remember none of us already needs to be good at recovery. We are in the process. Reflection is a part of the process. Contemplation precedes action. Connection with others in reflection often precedes insight. Yoga is sometimes defined as putting insight into action. Even while reflecting and contemplating, we put into action the things we know to be nourishing and stabilizing. This may come from our personal experiences or from new information gathered as we grow - such as tidbits of information about our health. We're on a journey. Together.

As the day unfolds, let's reflect on thoughts, intentions, or actions that we can do to nourish today. Sometimes it helps to remind yourself of things that may now seem automatic, but at one time weren't. For example, if you floss your teeth on default mode, but used to argue with this self-care tool (or used to avoid it altogether.) If you no longer turn to a scale, to measure your worth, but used to. Or if you do it less than you once did. If at one time you were more unkind to yourself about bobbles in life and the tone of that voice has changed. When we acknowledge changes that have occurred, even historically (both long ago and recently), we are wiring up the part of our brain that embeds positive memory and becomes internal, personal encouragement for the tiny - and countless - forks in the road on the path to recovery. Then we can come into the present moment and ask ourselves to reflect on today - specifically seeking what we can acknowledge about our efforts to go in a good direction. I know that some days are harder than others. I am recommending that you don't to focus on that which you are not able to do - but rather to focus on that which you considered, intended, acted on, aimed for... even if you weren't as "successful" as you wanted to be. Let me know how this goes. Often, for the youngest parts of us, these acknowledgments make the difference between building inner confidence (or eroding it). I am glad to be on your inner confidence building team!

Recovery is a process of slowly adding tools and perspective shifts to your journey. For example, let's consider what we can "eliminate" (aka reduce, diminish, lessen, fade, evaporate, etc): Reading, hearing, or mentally repeating unhelpful media messages. Lessening a form of personal postponement - like if you always postpone peeing or drinking water or breathing! Not associating your Worth with your Weight! In fact, you can stop weighing yourself on a scale (or in other ways). Check the habit of getting too hungry (or too depleted or too low on empathy). Reduce your proximity to things you crave. They don’t need to be in your face all the time. Drive a different way home. Close the pantry door. Walk a different route back to the office. As you reduce these burdens on your health (brain, body and mind), nature will instinctively feel that it can flourish a bit more and more in you.

Discomfort is a signal for us that we're approaching an opportunity. Yet, most of us don't enjoy feeling discomfort, which is why we have created so many ways to mitigate discomfort (such as with food!). However, there are key things to learn and benefit from if we understand the role of discomfort in our brain: There are regions in your brain that feel they are responsible for our safety and connection. These brain regions will override the part of our brain that is responsible for your best decision-making (how baffling!). These regions do this in spite of the fact that to preserve safety and connection they must also prevent our growth and evolution. “What’s up with this?!” The part of us that is trying to PRESERVE safety - while causing painful PREVENTION (painful because we can not break out of our confusing patterns) - these parts are in conflict!. Sadly, when this is happening, we BLAME ourselves. This makes the whole thing worse! None of us wants to feel uncomfortable - or stuck - or conflicted - or blamed - or feel like we’re constantly trying but getting nowhere. The practice of Getting Comfortable Feeling Uncomfortable, in Hunger, Hope + Healing, is a practice of resisting our familiar, overused patterns AND developing new ones. If we do not learn about how to get comfortable with our discomfort, we will not be able to grow. We cannot develop the new skills while still overusing our longtime patterns. The scary thing is that even though we know our old patterns DON’T WORK, we aren’t yet sure of our new skills. Add to this that the brain that is conflicted between preservation and prevention is actually constantly stressed, now we feel even less comfortable with the DISCOMFORT that is actually our opportunity to GROW. I recently created a yoga practice about this for you on our youtube channel. You can check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eUCvMYAG