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It’s coming. The annual Eating Peace Retreat 2019. We begin Weds evening 7 pm on January 9th and end Monday morning 11:00 am on January 14th. If you fly into Seatac, arrive by 4:30pm on Wednesday, and book your flight out Monday 1:00 pm or later.
In many ways moving about as peace is what this whole thing is all about; eating peace, thinking peace, being peace. Even lining things up in a peaceful way when moving the body from here to there to here again.

And one thing that isn’t so peaceful? And often results in eating off-balance?

Boredom.

It’s really thinking. Thinking in a way that feels repetitive, sigh-inducing, restless.
Boring thoughts come down to a basic point: I need something more than what is here. This isn’t good enough. This is pale by comparison (to some past experience). I don’t like this. I want entertainment. 

And a big key to boring thinking: I don’t want to remember the things I’m concerned about. As I mention in today’s video, I once heard “boredom” called Dissociation Lite. 
Why do we dissociate? 

Because we don’t want to look at our environment with open, clear eyes. Sometimes, we’re afraid of the darkness, the emptiness, the space, the memories. 

Maybe we think of the emptiness of unscheduled or unplanned time as haunting, lonely, or sad. 

We say it’s “boring” and we’re off to the snack cupboards.

Who would you be without this thought?

Watch here to get the feel of exploring being with reality when it’s empty….without boredom.

Much love, Grace

So grateful for all those of you who came to the Eating Peace free webinar this past weekend.

As always, I think the last one went the best of all. Please enjoy the Breaking The Spells webinar right HERE.

And now, the new Eating Peace Immersion group gathers for the upcoming seven months to explore our inner stressful stories, being in loving support, un-hooking from internal violence or fear, and relaxing with what is.

In this Eating Peace Program, we’ll be diving for an entire month into each of these five modules, with pre-recorded lessons and practices addressing each one:

• Module ONE: Breaking the Spells of Suffering with Food and Eating
• Module TWO: Satisfied, Safe & Balanced–Whether Hungry or Full
• Module THREE: Trauma to Triumph–Inquiry & Power
• Module FOUR: Body Attack Cease-Fire
• Module FIVE: Living in the Yum Zone

No, we’ll never be on facebook inside this program. The facebook group I’ve mentioned is a free group for anyone wanting to be in inquiry around compulsive or emotional eating. This program does NOT meet there. (Too distracting).

Every few days (and sometimes more often than that) a new lesson is released. It’s pre-recorded and created to follow along, building brick upon brick of practices and insights for our eating peace path. This is all about coming home, step by step on the yellow brick road, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

We’ll take approximately a month to walk through each “module” or topic, with our lessons and practices.

As we begin the program, you’ll share with me your vision for eating peace and the way of eating you prefer right now. It may be a more structured plan and it may be “eating 3 meals a day sitting down, with no x type of food” and it may be “eating between a 3 and 7 on the hunger scale”.

You sit with what works for you, keeping kindness, support and just the right amount of clarity and pleasure in mind.

From there, the focus when it comes to food itself is on when and where we have trouble with it. We get to investigate when it’s calling like a magnetic force, or when we find ourselves disturbed with what is, or what’s happened.

These moments are fabulous clues for looking closely at our minds, our thoughts, our feelings….and inquiring.

We begin to pull in other ingredients to our daily lives, like compassionate listening, partner work with others (if we choose) and of course our regular inquiry telecalls as a group. We sit in silent meditation (everyone begins with five minutes a day) or become curious about why we don’t want to sit?

A base foundation for eating peace is relaxing. How many times have you screamed at yourself? Has it worked?

Maybe for a day or two. The violent internal thinking never worked for me.

A remarkable part of this program is the level of live contact. You have the option to dial in, believe it or not, 5 days a week.

Three of our calls are for 30 minute meditations in inquiry on very common and profoundly stressful thoughts when it comes to eating, ourselves and our bodies or food. These three shorter inquiry meditations meet Mondays 4 pm PT, Wednesdays 9 am PT and Fridays at Noon PT.

Two of the calls (Tues 4 pm PT and Thurs 8 am PT) are longer 90 minute sessions addressing our topics and practices with Q & A and personal coaching, and inquiry if we have time.

Not everyone will attend the calls live, of course. But hopefully your schedule will make it possible to be on one of the longer 90 minute calls, and at least one of the short inquiry jams. They’re intentionally offered at a variety of times so your time zone or schedule works.

But the good news is, they are all recorded so even those who can’t make a thing, and if you actually prefer listening only….you’ll have them all on recording to use as a guided practice for your own learning.

As we move along through the days and weeks in the program, we become willing to fully feel our disturbed feelings and the places we’re compulsive. We become acutely aware.

We take a look at the images, rules, beliefs, ideas, fears we have about all this troubled eating, just one belief at a time (thank goodness, only one is required).

I’ve done this many times myself, and I’m still thrilled to enter such an inquiry practice. I get to apply and refine where I sense my own thinking wanting to move away from accepting powerfully What Is.

I notice a compulsion with over-working, for example.

My belief: I have to keep working, creating. Like a dog grabbing a bone or a monkey not being able to let go of the food with a tight fist.

I can’t stop.

Is it true?

Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Are you sure you won’t be safe if you stop? Are you sure you’re truly unable to stop?

Hmmm. No.

How do you react, what happens, when you believe you can’t stop?

I panic. I just do the thing (eat, smoke, drink, work). I ignore the disturbances within and press on. I resist.

Who would you be without this belief that you can’t stop?

WHAT?!?

You mean….

Yes. What if you didn’t know anything about stopping or not stopping in this moment, and you sat with this moment here now, not believing (thinking repetitively) over and over that you can’t?

Turning the thought around: I CAN stop. My thinking can’t stop–only my thinking. But I can. I don’t have to believe everything I think. I am able to sit still, even if my mind is yelling to keep working, or get something to eat, or starve myself even if I’m hungry.

I find this lighter, curious and fun. I become interested in testing out my ability and capacity for stopping, and for becoming a true explorer of this inner world.

An Eating Peace Explorer. Awesome.

The usual approach to this whole eating problem is to apply a technical fix around food management. Whenever I solved my eating problem this way, I spent more time thinking about food. Not less.

This inquiry work, using the powerful Work of Byron Katie, allows us to catch the movement towards compulsion, the habit of escape, avoidance, resistance.

When we see this quick-moving moment of focus on food or eating or weight-loss or self-criticism, we know to slow down, and sit with the discomfort. It’s there anyway. No amount of compulsive force will hide it forever.

Here’s the magical thing that happens, though, when we take a look, or even become willing to look at what troubles us: the usual pattern shifts.

Slightly in a tiny sliver of almost imperceptible change. Or, in a big lurching movement towards another view, and destination.

Who knows. The process moves in whatever way is just right, for you.

What I’ve found is we do not have to be controlled, or to follow, the directives of our unquestioned thoughts.

We can discover how to do less about food, or anything, and end the cycle.

As our life with self-inquiry unfolds, our life is touched by joyful, happy, balanced eating because our thoughts are no longer frightened, violent, confused or arguing with reality.

And even when we’re stressed, or scared….we do not have to turn to thoughts of food, dieting, or other obsessive behaviors (drinking, drugging, smoking, spending, buying, ruminating, fantasizing, using, planning, working, busying, cleaning, worrying) to address our troubles.

Wow.

The Tin Man: What have you learned, Dorothy?

Dorothy: Well, I think that it wasn’t enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em–it’s that, if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!

What good news. We have not lost anything. We are not missing what it takes to completely heal our compulsions.

All we need to do is to inquire, and find our honest answers.

“If the mind depends on anything, it becomes the I-Know mind, and ego flailing around in apparent space and time, always trying to define itself, always trying to prove that is judgments are real, that its whole world is real. The mind’s only way out is in: the mind inside itself, Buddha-mind, responding to the illusion of a self. Once the illusion is questioned, it can no longer exist. It appears as inconsequential, funny, and completely insane.~ Byron Katie in A Mind At Home With Itself

If it’s right for you, I hope you’ll feel brave enough to take the journey in through the months ahead. We have five calls per week offered through April, then Tues/Thurs only through June.

Everyone in Eating Peace Program can participate for free in Summer Camp For The Mind (week day inquiry practice for 6-7 weeks in July and August for everyone and anyone in the world).

Everyone who joins has access for life.

You can sign up here. (Scroll down to see the payment options).

As far as I can tell, there’s not much to lose…..except your stressful stories from the mind trying to prove judgments about lack-of-success, eating, food, bodies, acceptance, love, approval and rest.

I’d rather question my thinking, and become the one who it no longer occurs to flail about (eat) in a frightening or irritating world.

“You either believe your thoughts, or you question them….there’s no other choice.” ~ Byron Katie

Let’s inquire, together.

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Much love,
Grace

True Confessions: I have so many ideas and offerings for eating peace, and studying the way compulsive behavior occurs (and how to dissolve it)….

….it may seem like an information overload data dump of invitations from me to come do The Work on eating, food or body image. Webinar, class, another webinar, facebook, youtube video, eating peace note, webinar again, in-person workshop, facebook live.

What is going on? So much!!

Maybe like a binge. Heh heh.

See how I am? Some things never change (haha, I question that).

I jest, but I appreciate those of you who have asked “what are you offering, and when are you offering it, and what venue and where, because I’m confused!!”

So if you were confused by webinars, facebook thingies, videos, needing to opt-in or wondering where you’re supposed to go to find out more about Eating Peace in any form, then you really are not alone.

There are two things:
1) Breaking The Spell of Eating Battles webinar
2) Facebook LIVE daily Mindful Inquiry for Eating Troubles

TODAY November 4th, if when the one-week mindful inquiry course begins: The Daily Practice of Eating Peace. We’re going to question our thinking.

This course will happen inside facebook in the eating peace facebook private group, with a live video each day. You can come live so I can interact with you and your comments and participation OR you can watch the recording later–it will be saved immediately and stay right there in the facebook group.

I’ll offer one thought every day I have found exceptionally useful to question if you want to stop over-doing eating or dieting or anything compulsive. We’ll inquire together Nov 4th-10th.

Our focus is on compulsion around eating, weight, body image and food, because that was my thing. And it felt horrible.

To join in this daily facebook live deal, simply request membership in the group here. No opt-in with emails required.

So the second offering I’ve been yakkety-yakking about for weeks is a 90 minute webinar called Breaking The Spell of Eating Battles. I’ve held it twice so far.

I’ll offer it one more time live on November 11th, but if all you want to do is WATCH the thing right NOW….please enjoy it right here. If you click that link, you’ll get taken to the recording. Yes, I had so many requests and I truly hope it serves.

Phew. I hope that was a bit easier?

If you feel like letting me know what the webinar is like for you, or you have questions or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. Write to me by hitting reply to this note, or emailing grace@workwithgrace.com.

Hopefully, these two Eating Peace offerings I’ve just mentioned are more understandable now, and it will be easier to “consume” them (and not overdo it).

Keeping it simple is such a beautiful thing. The mind loves complication and finding the right answer, doesn’t it? Or the right diet or way to live with eating and food and exercise. Mind will say there’s a right way, and it’s not here (sad day).

The calmest way I know, is to question anything that feels positively absolutely permanently “right” or “wrong” and notice what’s here now, in this present moment, with awareness and patience and compassion.

Which brings me to sharing with you something that came out of one other third in-person thing I did in Seattle. OK! It’s a lot! I know!

During the presentation and workshop, I summarized three beliefs to question if you’ve experienced compulsion in your life and wondered how to stop doing the thing(s) you do that don’t serve.

They’re broad areas, but amazing questions and beliefs to bring to the four questions and turnarounds. So I’m sharing them with you here:

What to do now?

Get out your notebook, or find a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet, and begin to identify just one thought at a time that runs through your mind, that when you think it, you hurt. It feels bad. You feels stressed. You eat. You obsess about Not Eating. You think about food and diets.

Then, start contemplating that thought using The Work.

“Take each judgment separately through the inquiry process. The Work is meditation. It’s about awareness; it’s not about trying to change your mind. Let the mind ask the questions, then contemplate. Take your time, go inside, and wait for the deeper answers to surface.” ~ Byron Katie on her basic “how to do The Work” instructions.

Much love,
Grace

P.S.
Registration is excitingly underway for Eating Peace Process which begins November 13th. Awesome beautiful inquirers are joining, including those who are repeating from previous years. Read about it here.

Is eating a battle zone? If it is (it was a nuclear war for me) you can sign up for my free webinar offering here.

Then on November 4th a new experiment in sharing: an 8 day challenge in eating peace on facebook live. Sign up HERE to receive daily alerts via email for the live course and you can also find me on facebook here. I’ll send out the schedule very soon for everyone participating (we meet in mornings Pacific Time).

When my eating world seemed like a battle zone, one of the primary emotions propelling the ups and downs….

….was rage.

Rage Eating.

I was so furious at the rules, regulations, requirements, management, arguments, powerlessness, enforcements.

It sometimes felt like the whole thing, all of life really, was one big thing to “deal” with.

I’d hold my breath and take it, and do what was needed, and then something would snap and the anger would come out sideways like a geyser.

In the form of eating food.

Everything I ever wanted I ate that day, from one end of town to the other.

Then, of course, I’d feel absolute disgust, hatred and rage with myself.

Several years ago, I witnessed on video Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of non-violent communication, speak about facilitating raging mad prison inmates to find peace with others.

The inmates rebellious hatred of authority or “the man” had a similar feel to rage eating I had done.

The feeling of anger at What Is Greater, and the feeling of anger at ourselves at the same time.

I didn’t like myself when I raged against anything (even though partially it felt like a relief at first), and I’d isolate and hide from the world after the eating or raging was over, licking my wounds. Which is an interesting way of putting it using the word “licking”, right?

There’s something soothing about licking, what some animals literally do for their own wounds. It’s normal to find food and eating soothing, like medicine for the attack.

What Marshall Rosenberg did with these gangs of men who were so furious, was offer them a way to be heard and then speak, then listen, and use “I” statements instead of lashing out and making accusatory statements.

Rooms with hugely violent emotional energy in them completely softened, as men heard what others had to say and became willing to listen a moment and wonder what it was like to stand in the others’ shoes and consider who needed what, including themselves.

When no one felt cut off, hated, or disrespected… …something pretty remarkable began to happen. People found themselves able to relate to the other.

Then, in that space of connection and listening, dialogue could continue, and understanding.

What are we afraid of? What voice are we trying to shut down or cut off, because it’s frightening? Where do we feel we have no say, or no way to get our needs met? Where does it seem like you have no choice but to eat (or do some other kind of compulsive behavior)?

Was it really true that I was being pummeled by life, or that relationship, or this circumstance, or the rules about food, eating and being thin?

Who would I be without my thoughts, my story, about people, places, things, food, or my own mind coming at me?

Just today, a beautiful inquirer doing The Work on her feeling of compulsion with eating said that without the thoughts of fighting with something, fighting with others, fighting with the craving….she’d be aware of the vast nothingness around.

And suddenly, not so comfortable with it.

Sometimes, the wild mysterious vast expansive place we can experience when we wonder who we’d be without our story of arguing with reality…..

…..is a bit frightening.

But there’s one simple place to begin, when you notice you’re experiencing angry eating. You can at the very start question your thought that you shouldn’t be angry.

Is it true?

Without the belief I shouldn’t be angry, and I shouldn’t eat over my anger, I could ask myself what my rage is about? What does it have to say?

This would be a very kind thing to do, and a very loving-parent thing to do. It would be a respectful, clear, open-minded orientation to the experience of rage, and to feeling unmet needs, and to sharing life with others here in this world.

“To imagine that some little thing–food, sex, power, fame–will make you happy is to deceive oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Maybe uncovering your real self begins with saying what you’re angry about, and listening closely, with respect.

I hope you’ll also join me in the Eating Peace webinar.

Much love,
Grace

Eating Peace Process 5 month Immersion starts November 13th. Short lessons each week, group calls every week, 3 live inquiry calls each week. Lots of contact and connection to dissolve isolation and share in honesty and freedom.

There’s a great debate amongst people who have noticed eating issues in their lives: there’s a right way and a wrong way to eat. Right foods and wrong foods. Good. Bad. Allowed. Not allowed.

You don’t even have to feel compulsive about food, or that you’re a binge-eater, or call yourself someone with disordered eating or emotional eating to get into this debate.

You can be a fairly normal eater, and still feel anxious about when, what, how, where or what time to eat, right?

There’s even a fairly new (in the past couple of years) diagnosis for a type of eating problem, called Orthorexia. It simply means someone who is obsessed about eating the “right” food.

When you have this trouble, you can’t stop reading labels and feeling concern about getting the right food into your body.

So how do we think about (or feel about) what’s right for us when it comes to dieting, following a food plan, having structure?

For me, there are two things you want to look at closely, holding them central to whatever you’re choosing around food and eating: 1) kindness and support and 2) fear.

Here’s what I mean.

1) When it comes to kindness and support and what, when and how to eat….are your ideas, or what you’ve learned, or how you are eating supporting you? Is it kind? Or does it have a punishing, restrictive, dictator-like feel to it–where your thoughts about yourself are that you can’t be trusted and you can’t do it right and you’re no good, wrong, and always out of control?

If this is your belief about yourself, then you may not be willing and open to see why you eat off-balance in the first place, and what your reaching for food actually is trying to teach or show you.

When I used to binge eat, I was grabbing for comfort, expressing my rage, and trying to escape, all at once. There were many deeply traumatic emotional disruptions inside of me that were being expressed by the way I ate.

I didn’t binge ALL THE TIME either. It was NOT constant. I had some more relaxed days, and some chaotic ones. As I began to listen to my cravings and manic attacks about food, I could find other alternate support, or sit and wonder what was going on within.

My craving and reaching were powerful experiences showing me where my mind was off-balance and my thinking was panicked.

Which brings me to the other element or experience to look at and hold closely when it comes to the project of “how shall I eat?” and that is, as I mentioned, fear.

2) Here’s what you can ask yourself when it comes to awareness of fear: What’s the worst that could happen? What are you afraid of most of all? What frightens you about eating x or not eating y? Is there something you believe you have to live without (besides food)? Is there something you believe you’ve lost, forever? Are you scared of something happening again that happened before, and it was terrifying?

What is most scary about this whole eating thing?

I used to be so frightened of being heavy, or “fat”. I was also frightened of being greedy, or having huge desire for something. Having huge cravings or desire was BAD BAD BAD. Not just with food, but with anything; people, success, money, things.

In any case, in the middle of wondering how to eat, and taking a look at what will help you calm down (not be so scared) AND what is most kind for you….

….notice that even if you’re never sure exactly how to eat for the rest of your life, you can be kind to yourself today, now, with hunger and fullness and eating. AND you can feel safe, here, even without being perfect, and without being an expert.

Much love,
Grace

Eating Peace Immersion starts in November. Registration will open at the end of October. Read about it here.

Eating Peace Annual Retreat taking enrollments. Limited to 14 people. Learn more here.

Much love,
Grace

We all know what emotional eating in general is: eating because you feel uncomfortable emotionally, and you’re not physically hungry.

Sometimes, it feels like a huge cloud of discomfort…and it’s hard to identify what’s even going on.

We just gallop towards the food, in a panic of “feeling” without asking ourselves what’s up?

The other day, I had a surge of something that felt very sad and the voice within said “I need something”….

….like I need love, attention, distraction, soothing, clarity, peace.

I felt anxious.

I know when this happens, the thing to do is to quietly notice my own anxious thinking.

Instead of only being aware of the voice that says I need something and to quick go get something that would help alter my mood….

….I can ask with a listening and open ear to myself and my heart: what’s bothering you sweetheart?

It’s so much more loving AND exciting and interesting.

I suddenly realized a bunch of things that had crossed my world in a short period of time that all added up quickly to the belief and the proof that “they abandoned me!”

They left, they broke up, they dismissed me, they didn’t listen, they died.

Here’s how I handled the moment of troubled feelings within:

I might take credit for having the idea of doing it this other different and more effective way (vs eating, drinking, smoking, escaping) except that I think this reaction came from practicing The Work.

It’s just simply a by-product of wanting to become my own best friend and wanting to understand my own feelings and wanting, most of all, to question my thoughts.

Much love,
Grace

In these summer months of heat in the hemisphere where I live, I’ve heard from many about their urge to cover their bodies, never go to the beach, and hide themselves from the world and all those critical eyes.

The other day, I received a note from an Eating Peacer that she closed her blinds and stayed inside all day because the only cool place outside was the lake, and she was never, ever, ever going to be “caught alive” (she said) wearing a bathing suit in public.

I remembered this kind of shame about the body, and how it actually escalated my eating behaviors and turned them into crazed eating instead of normal teen eating.

My thoughts were constantly filled with stress, as I tried to get a more perfect body. I starved myself, then binge-ate, then starved again, then worked out for hours, then ran five miles, then ate, then vomited….

….and repeated the swinging flip-flop back and forth with enormous pain.

I believed something was desperately wrong with me.

I always aimed to try harder, use more willpower, get it right.

Which, actually, I finally sort of did. Although, I’m not sure “I” did it (I’m pretty sure nothing actually happened because of my plans, honestly). But my failures did lead to giving up, in a good way, and stopping the pursuit of a perfect body.

I just wanted peace.

If you’ve felt the pull to peace, and it’s become the most important jewel in your relationship with food….then peace tends to rise above all plans, controls, or management of eating and your body and dieting.

The upcoming Eating Peace 101 telecourse is a good place to focus more openly and deeply on peace when it comes to eating, to food, to our bodies (no matter what weight) and to our feelings and thoughts.

We’ll be looking at our belief system, our ideas, our screaming internal thoughts and voices, and investigating our moments of following a craving, or overeating food, or pursuing at all costs the perfect body.

Who or what would we be like without our stories?

In today’s Eating Peace video, I talk about one key important belief everyone can question who’s ever had trouble with compulsive or dependent behavior of any kind, not just with food: there’s something wrong with me.

Why do The Work?

Because when we do, we unlearn all the decades, centuries of beliefs about thin, fat, full, hungry, good, bad, need, emptiness, control, power, eating, food, attraction, should, shouldn’t.

You are not your mind. You are not your weight or your appearance. You are not your personality. You are not the food you just ate, or the way you ate it. You are much, much vaster than that. (Thank you, Adyashanti).

Long ago, I heard Byron Katie say something that caused my ears to perk up: “Victims are vicious”. 

Yikes!

I didn’t want to be a “victim”. They don’t have a good reputation.

And yet, what I had to admit was….I was very vicious. Mostly, to myself in my own thinking.

When I ate a lot, or binge-ate, or grazed from one end of town to the other, or looked in the mirror, or thought about what I should or shouldn’t be eating, I had a running voice that also said “you are lower than dirt.”

It was harsh, bitter, hopeless, and very mean.

So one of the very first things any of us must do, who experience an addictive behavioral process of any kind, is to relax and recognize the presence of something that is a lie.

Harshness doesn’t solve the problem. You can kill the thing you think you “hate” but it doesn’t end the war. It will rear its ugly head again if all you do is repress or condemn something or destroy it.

Kindness is what changes things at a permanent level. Love is what alters the experience of compulsion to one of understanding and awareness.

Let’s be kind to ourselves.

If you hear the voice that shouts and condemns you in your head, question it.

Remember to ask….is it true?

Do you really need to build this angry energy and use it to FIGHT food, cravings, people, relationships, reality? Are you sure you’re all alone, by yourself, against The World?

Let’s do The Work on this concept.

Is it true that you need to improve, change, or fix yourself….and that the way you are is wrong?

Yes. I’m too critical. My mind is full of harshness. I want to escape. I want to feel better, to get out of here. It’s me against the world (especially in this particular area).

Can you absolutely know that this is true that you need to change, snap out of it, get over it, stop being who you are?

Hmmm. Strange. But I can’t know it’s true.

How do you react when you believe you’ve got to change, especially when it comes to eating?

Ugh. I try everything and anything that addresses diet change. I feel very alone and discouraged. I hate my eating, my body, my attitude, my life.

Who would you be without this belief that you must change ASAP, especially with eating?

WHAT???!!!

But.

I’ve been trying to fix, adjust, improve or change myself when it comes to eating for “x” years (long time)! How could I NOT be wanting change?

Try it on for a moment here now. Just right now. Relax without having a single drop of a future, or need to change. Rest a moment. Notice how connected you are to everything in your environment, sharing the air, the furniture, the space, the people (if there are any). Sharing your environment with this thing called “food”.

What would it really be like if you did not ever go to war with yourself to improve?

Wow.

It can be exciting. Peacefully thrilling. Restful. Simple. Open. Mysterious.

Turning this belief around: I do not have to change. My thinking has to change. Change has to come to “me”. 

Could any of these turnarounds be just as true, or truer?

Yes. I can find how I am still alive, studying life and the world and myself in it and I’m not “done” even though some part of me believes I haven’t changed, or that I need to. I can notice life has it’s own timing. That even though I’ve eaten in crazy ways, I’ve also experienced joy, gratitude, peace and happiness here on earth.

Yes. I’m busy questioning my thinking. I’m learning by turning things around. I’m learning that what I’ve assumed to be true….often isn’t.

Yes. I can hold still and be open to transformation meeting me, not think of myself as needing to chase after it. I can make friends with life, my environment, my mind, my body.

Love is here in the present. Here I am with all my imperfection, a human being.

Who would you be without your story of yourself, especially when it comes to eating, food, your feelings, your body?

Can you feel it just for this moment, now?

Anyone who’s eaten off-balance knows what it feels like to be plagued by obsessive thinking about all things related to food, eating or body image.

We have thoughts like: