Hi everyone,
As homework I have been doing the orphan/visionary/UM exercise in relation to food, visualizing in turn how and why my orphan eats, my visionary eats, and my UM eats. In my case it is not a question of what I eat but mostly of how I eat. I eat fast, devouring things as if someone were about to steel my meal. I do also eat compulsively at times, but the compulsion is more in the modality than in the substance. I tried to impose slow movements and thoughts, but did not get many results. I got, though, many insights. I have never realized before that this modality is partly dictated by a huge fear of poverty, of lacking the material means to provide for myself. Now, without a job, this fear has increased, even if it is not totally warranted. One day when chewing I had a memory of how painful it was for me as a kid to lose a few dollars that I naively lent to a friend, and how much that memory and the guilt stayed with me. I always tend to look at how much things cost, not at what I LIKE to buy. And I have lived based on survival strategies: if I do this thing, will I survive better than if I do the other thing? I cannot do things just for pleasure, they must have a purpose and it better be an important one. And when I eat I also feel guilty for consuming expensive resources. I know this might sound crazy, but I do feel that.
I also use food to escape from thoughts or things I do not want to realistically analyze. And I often would go on and on eating without ever feeling full - and I struggle to put on weight. I must struggle to absorb all the nutrients, even if my diet is complete and carefully thought of. In the exercise the orphan wants to be done with food as soon as possible, like if food was something to pass through the body quickly and be entirely eliminated. But this is not the whole story, I know, I need to keep working on it.
I have to say that this exercise has given me many insights and I think I am at least more mindful of my eating habits. I am also experimenting with several moments of meditations to slow down and just accept what is there for me. The meditation in the body truth CD has helped me with this word, acceptance, I tend to repeat it over and over, to accept things as they are, I do not want to force or change anything, the change will come from accepting how things are right now. I am trying new ways to combine the orphan exercise and the meditation.
Thank you for listening, girls, and thank you for your insights too.
P.
