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
Hi Grace,
I listened to the webinar on Sunday. I have a very demanding work schedule and cannot make the calls during the week as they are all scheduled during my work hours. I would love to participate, the money is not an issue just the schedule. What do you recommend?
Hi Tina, I’d check in with yourself and see if you have time to listen to one call a week and also listen/watch the pre-recorded lessons? It does take time to watch them, so you’d need time off your work hours to touch base with the program like a home-study course. Are you someone who could do OK with this? What I’d suggest is listening to one of the longer 90 min calls each week, and at the end of a different day, listen to the group inquiry 30 min call. The other alternative could be doing solo sessions via skype in inquiry work with me. It doesn’t have the content/lessons, but we’re narrowing in on the disturbance and inquiring. –Grace