Nevertheless, this is me in the tiniest jeans I own (circa 1999).  I saved them in the super-tiny clothes storage bin, hoping for the day I would once again be able to wear them.  It’s a real friggin’ miracle.  That’s all I can say.  Oh, and of course, one that I am quite thankful for.

In the last few months, I went through the process of trying on every article of clothing in my closet and bringing lots of stuff to Goodwill.  It was quite a profound experience to actually make myself visit the closet, and in one full day of tenacity, diligently try on every single piece of clothing.  It was like going back in time, and letting go of a lot of my past—metaphorically, symbolically.  Deep experience.  No wonder I was avoiding doing it for so long!  I came face to face with the part of me that really tries like hell to hold on to stuff.

But, now it’s done.  I’m back to wearing things that actually fit, and beginning to feel a little more at ease"the state of being comfortable" when people say things to me about my weight loss.  I prefer so much the folks who actually say things to my face, than those who quietly assume I’ve had some dark form of unspeakable intervention that they can’t ever dare acknowledge.  I’m not sure that I like the fact that folks tend to think my body’s changed because had some kind of bariatric surgery or lap band procedure.  I have never been an advocate of those methods because they fail to address the underlying causes of the behavior"the actions or reactions of an object or organism".  Taking a close look at something psychoemotional is more my speed than having something surgically cut off, cinched tighter or stapled shut.  Oh, well.  There will always be haters, but it just seems to suck more when I discover that the haters are some of the people I love.  Is it toxic to love someone who can’t celebrate your recovery?  As a recovering co-dependent enabler, I would do well to remember that sometimes you have to leave people behind.  Sad as it sounds, cruel as it sounds, I have to keep going and try not to take it personally.  Phew.  Thank goodness for acceptance.

So, to the right is the core group of 20/20 exercisers.  Boy did we have some fun this month!  It’s actually closer to the end of April, and I have deviated from my standard, laundry room self-portrait in order to show off the goodness of community efforts.  Aren’t we just the cutest?!?!?!  I’m the one in the middle with the tan cap on.  You can’t really see my physique, but behold:  is that a little shadow of my bicep muscle?  Why, yes!  I believe it is!  Does the girl actually have guns???  Amazing!

This month was a month of community and movement.  It was really a stretch for me and this post is admittedly a little later into the month than I usually post, but the weight is April 1st’s weight, so we’re still on track.  I welcome May, and all that the Florida summer has to bring—including an excruciatingly painful 4-day work week, and 10 hour days.  Goddess, give me strength!

So, after"following in time, later" leading a few popular yoga series this winter, I am prepared to teach a bunch of my peers an outdoor class I call 20/20.  It is a 20 minute segment of cardiovascular movement followed by 20 minutes of yoga.  Fun!  We’ll see how many of us can get charged up and connected to the outdoors in April.  I am offering it on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the whole month.  I pray that we have great spring days with very little rainouts!  This will be a wonderful way to prime myself for doing more outside as it gets hotter and hotter and hotter out.  I find that when I start with outdoor stuff early in the season here in Florida, I can withstand more of the summer simmer than I would ordinarily.  It’s like being outside in April and May gets a person’s body ready for July and August temperatures (and humidity).

So, obviously folks, I’m so happy moving about in my smaller body.  I am really delighted with my recovery and weight"a measure of the heaviness of a person" loss so far.  I feel really blessed to have all these things happening in my life at the moment and I am doing everything I can to keep going towards Step 12 so that I can make the most of this experience, and so that I can know more about The 12 Steps (from a professional and scholarly perspective).  It is an amazing thing to banish an addictive behavior"the actions or reactions of an object or organism", and to feel the healing effects of not doing destructive things to myself (and my body).  Sometimes people see me and they say “Wow, aren’t you proud?” and to this I insist that I am not proud—I am simply GRATEFUL.

Yes, it’s a difficult thing to embark upon, but I am here to tell you that it is way easier to surrender to recovery than it is to continue to surrender to a destructive addiction (whatever the substance or subject).  It is a relief to have been so successful in my program.  It is work to act upon my program, but, it is much easier to “work my program” than it is to face myself in the mirror wearing 100′s of extra pounds of fat as armor and hating myself with every ounce of my life force.  Either I choose my recovery and its related activities and people—or I choose self loathing and self destruction.  Those are the two options I have right now—and for me it’s a no brainer.

I had the pleasure of teaching a really fast lesson (30 minutes) on the mind-body connection to a great group of teens this past Tuesday.  IRSC’s Chastain Center campus generously hosted our time together in a big, open room on campus that had been cleared out for us to “get our yoga on”.  What a thrill!  I love teaching, and it is especially fabulous to get to work with young adults, and to promote that they begin to install ways to deflect (or relieve) stress at an early point in their lives.

The stress we have when we are teens is overwhelming enough:  SCHOOL, TESTS, SPORTS, TESTS, EXAMS, HOMEWORK, TESTS, QUIZZES, JOBS, TESTS, CHORES, FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES, FRIENDS, HAVING MONEY, just to name a few.  It’s quite a lot!  Unfortunately, stress just gives us bigger and bigger chances to experience it as we grow into adulthood, particularly since we tend to take on more responsibilities, and have lots more obligations as we mature.  As the teens and I discussed in our group conversation, stress just makes us feel pretty bad (body and mind), and it has also been identified as one of the main ingredients of disease, which is often spelled out for us as dis-ease"the state of being comfortable" in order to illustrate how ease promotes health and the absence of ease contributes to that which is unhealthy.  Stress is one of the first things our trusted health care practitioners tell us to try and eliminate if we should happen to need to heal anything in our bodies (or minds for that matter).

One of the most significant things that has happened in my life as a direct result of my experiences with yoga is my ability to keep STRESS at bay.  The reason why yoga reduces stress is a three-pronged rationale that just also happens to be the way we connect mind to body, and body to mind.

Making the mind-body connection is actually quite simple.  There are essentially three (3) ways to do it:

1. BREATH
2. MOVEMENT
3. AWARENESS

When I first started writing this post, I nearly wrote “Mind Body Teens Learn to Beat STRESS!”, but the word BEAT is kind of a stressful word.  It gives the impression that one has to FIGHT or DO BATTLE with stress, which is just not as effective as simply side-stepping stress and not letting it catch hold of you.  The idea here is that these practices make one resistant to stress.  We want to be solid and inhabit our lives with such serenity that stress can not touch us.  So, I changed it to “Evade STRESS” because I think of stress as a form of capture.  Stress has a way of imprisoning us—keeping us in captivity in our own lives, and if we are not made aware of ways to slip past its steely grip, we run the risk of letting it squeeze out the joy we might get to experience in our moments.  (I’m a big fan of joy, so, for the sake of joy alone, it’s worth understanding how to escape the clutches of stress!)

In order to understand the How-To’s of connecting mind to body and body to mind, we first take a look at what I like to call the three (3) dispositions:

1. MIND DOMINANT
2. BODY DOMINANT
3. IN-THE-MIDDLE

Those of us who are born into minds that are vastly inquisitive and insatiably curious tend to gravitate towards things that are mental.  We, like scholars and scientists, like to think, to question and to problem-solve.  We read, we write, we ponder things deeply, we can sit in silence (and sometimes solitude), working our minds for hours and hours and hours on end.  We are so cerebral that we sometimes forget we have a body.  For us, the body patiently awaits our return from where we usually hang out—in our heads!  We are mind-dominant, so in our practices we must connect mind to body.

Those of us who are born into bodies that are naturally inclined towards movement and physical human performance tend to align ourselves with more concrete, sensory things.  We, like athletes and dancers, like to move—we NEED to move!  We are oriented towards working with our hands or on whole-body tasks that we repeat and refine.  We are sometimes restless and unfocused when we don’t get enough physical movement.  We tend to spend more time immersed in the embodied sense of our experiences—and wayyyy less time in our heads.  We are body dominant, so in our practices we must connect body to mind.

There are those of us who share aspects of both versions described above, and it is we who have an easier time of this thing called integration—or the mind-body connection.  We have a little less distance to travel in connecting the parts because we sort of hang out in the middle most of the time.  Because we are neither mind nor body dominant, in our practices, we must learn to discern what our needs are in the moment.  This requires us to refine our inner listening ability, and allows us to become more attuned to ourselves and those around us.

Of course, yoga isn’t the only way to make that connection, but it just so happens that yoga features the three (3) things that are very effective at bridging the gap.  When we place our attention on our BREATH (Step 1),  we take a huge step in the direction of calming the nervous system.  Whenever we focus on our inhales and exhales, the breath naturally deepens and slows, which bring oxygen rich blood to our cells and just make things easier, and better for our physiology.  When we engage in MOVEMENT (Step 2), we incite the cooperation of all body systems, we move many fluids, increase heart-rate and respiration and circulate our life energy.

When we connect the BREATH to the MOVEMENT—that’s when we are really balancing things out!  All the great benefits of BREATHING and all the great benefits of MOVING come together to bring stillness, and calm to our beings.  That’s the secret of the connection!!!

AND, as if that were not enough grooviness for you, the last part of making the mind-body connection is to add AWARENESS of what we’re doing to the equation.  When we add AWARENESS of our breath, and awareness of our movements to the discipline of whatever we’re doing in each moment, we really take ourselves to the very center of the experience.  When we give our full awareness to the thing we’ve chosen as our practice—basketball, lacrosse, football, art, music, writing, rapping, fishing, basket-weaving, dance or WHATEVER—and if we do that practice diligently, with all three (3) steps, then we can really lose ourselves in the thing we love and create a big space for happiness to come into our lives.

When we take the time to practice these three (3) steps in what we do, there is no before"at an earlier time, previously", there is no after"following in time, later", there is only the moment that we’re living.  There is just RIGHT NOW.  When we are in RIGHT NOW, there can really be no stress.  We side-step it, like greased lightning.  Like teflon.  We are slick!  We are just ourselves, breathing, moving and paying attention to our breath and movement—to the rhythm of our life.  We listen closely with the ears of the heart—we look deeply with the eyes of the breath for our chance to grab a big, healthy dose of joy.

My recovery is still first and foremost in my life.  Meetings, sponsor, the continued writing of inventory, all the aspects of movement toward Step 12.  Thank Goddess that I finally decided to look at this thing through the lens of “the addictions model”.  I know that for some of you who have not ever had a problem with eating, reading these words may cause you to think  “Gosh!  It’s only food.”  This is exactly what makes food addiction so diabolical.  If the food-addicted were predisposed to ingesting only, say, RAT POISON for example, (instead of food) then the self-destructive nature of the pathology would be really apparent.  One might say, “Oh, look how sad it is, she’s addicted to eating RAT POISON, what a shame"a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety" that she’s killing herself”.  Food, however, has such an incredible disguise.  It, by its very nature, is nourishment which is not only benign, it is intended to be beneficent"doing or producing good".  It its very first form, it (food) came from Mother.  Let’s trace back to our gestational experiences for a second, the umbilical cord was the first connection of ours to sustenance.  It wasn’t eating per se, but it was the lifefood, our connection to the Mother that provided us with everything we needed in order to grow.  After"following in time, later" birth, we then relied upon her for nourishment in the form of milk (even if if wasn’t breast milk) food was still Mother.  Are you following my driftus?  Food is not supposed to be a toxic substance!!!  But somehow, for some of us, it becomes just that.  It is we who turn it into this messy thing.  It isn’t exactly clear to me how food manages to anesthetize so effectively, but I am here to tell you that, for me, and legions of people like me, it does.

Since becoming abstinent in September (I am celebrating my 150th day of abstinence in about a week), I have had to actually ride out the experience of dealing with difficult emotions and I have got to tell you that I really don’t like it.  Pain is not something that I willingly wish to have to endure, and there is something particularly intolerable about emotional pain, but there is no experience that I will now have to go through that is more painful than continuing to eat in out of control ways would have been.  I am so delighted to have been blessed with recovery, weight loss, a food plan that I love and that supports me.  It is within the confines of this plan of eating that I have found freedom.  Finally…

If I am 187 by the 1st of 2011, then that will mean that I ONLY lost five (5) pounds this month, which is something I want to feel happy about, and ‘should’ feel happy about, BUT still manage to have some weird (toxic?) expectation around.  Can you tell that I have toxic expectations through my use of the word ONLY?  I guess wanting to be thinner; littler; smaller; tinier is something I have always had “going on”.  (Always = My Whole Life).  I wonder if I will ever get to a body weight"a measure of the heaviness of a person", or size that will leave me feeling satisfied, instead of yearning for something else?  For the first time in my life, I actually feel aided and hopeful about being “restored to sanity” and getting to live in a normal sized body as a by-product of my commitment to my abstinence.

This picture was taken on Christmas Eve (not on Jan 1, which would actually be one week or so later).  I think it’s interesting how my fat clothes do still fit me after"following in time, later" about 31 pounds shed.  With my pear-shape, I tend to remain “hippy”, “buttock-y” and “thigh-y” despite tremendous droppages in poundage.  Thirty-one (31) pounds lost seems to have all come from my face and upper body.  I think it is noticeable though, that through the hips (in clothing of course) I am beginning to appear a little smoother.  This tunic top sort of shows that because it is falling relatively straight, rather than bunching up across my usually very ample hips.  I’m starting to get excited…which is also scary.

Commitments in the new year include:

A new schedule for my accelerated cardio training.  Hopefully the Mother Goddess will guide my mornings more closely–I’m praying for the life force to jolt out of bed and hit the SPIN bike for at least 20 minutes of fat burning on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.  I heart SPINING.  Three (3) days a week is a good start, and I need a replacement plan for my regular outdoor bike rides, which will become more and more impossible if this cold weather persists, and because it is sooooo dark in the mornings before"at an earlier time, previously" work.  Yesterday, I rode 10 miles, which was so much fun, and which makes me feel like everything is just “gonna be alright” like nothing else can.  “Movement is medicine”, as Gabrielle Roth says—I heard that, Gabrielle!

Weight lifting and Pilates!!!  Yes.  I have decided that Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are going to be wonderful days for weight training (and or Pilates).  I recently had a session on a friend’s Pilates Reformer and I am hooked.  I have to see what the future holds for me, but there is a chance that I will have a connection to some lovely people who operate a Pilates studio in Stuart, and that I will come into contact with a great deal on a used Reformer for the house.  This is something that I can incorporate into my day-to-day, and that will definitely help with my pelvic instability.  If I can use Pilates  and weights to stabilize my Sacro Iliac joint in 2011, I will be really grateful and happy.  Prayers, please…

Writing.  Well, if Pacifica accepts me in a few weeks, there will be absolutely no doubt that I will be engaged in some heavy writing (and reading).  But, as Steven Pressfield has inspired me to do, I am very interested in doing The Work that my built-in unworthiness (disguised as The Resistance) would have me continue to ignore for fear that I might actually succeed.  So, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, in addition to my Lifting / Pilates plan, I will spend the other 30 minutes engaging in something artistic (like with colored pencils or other art medium) or writing for publication.  Yes.  Writing for publication.  There, I said it.  Writing for publication.

One last thing:  I am so glad that I am no longer “in the throes of a dangerous illness”.   Surrender, and the ability to be powerless over food is the absolute key to getting free.  I’ve got a great chance to really live now, and to do it in the tiny body that I’ve only dreamed of.  Happy Holidays, friends.  I send you love in tsunami size waves.  Muah!

—————

Addendum:  Today is December 28th, the last weigh day of 2010.  In miraculous fabulousness, I weighed 185.6 this morning, which registers officially as 186 above.  A full 1 lb. lighter than I had hoped earlier as I wrote my hopes for the week.  Thank Goddess!  She is doing for me what I could not do for myself.  Woo-Hoo!

The Odyssey of Homer

translated from the Greek by T. E. Lawrence, and brought forth into this writer’s reality by Steven Pressfield

INVOCATION

O DIVINE POESY
GODDESS-DAUGHTER OF ZEUS
SUSTAIN FOR ME
THIS SONG OF THE VARIOUS-MINDED MAN
WHO AFTER"following in time, later" HE HAD PLUNDERED
THE INNERMOST CITADEL OF HALLOWED TROY
WAS MADE TO STRAY GRIEVOUSLY
ABOUT THE COASTS OF MEN
THE SPORT OF THEIR CUSTOMS GOOD OR BAD
WHILE HIS HEART
THROUGH ALL THE SEA-FARING
ACHED IN AN AGONY TO REDEEM HIMSELF
AND BRING HIS COMPANY SAFE HOME
VAIN HOPE—FOR THEM
FOR HIS FELLOWS HE STROVE IN VAIN
THEIR OWN WITLESSNESS CAST THEM AWAY
THE FOOLS
TO DESTROY FOR MEAT
THE OXEN OF THE MOST EXALTED SUN
WHEREFORE THE SUN-GOD BLOTTED OUT
THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN
MAKE THE TALE LIVE FOR US
IN ALL ITS MANY BEARINGS
O MUSE

Thank you, Steven Pressfield, for your poignant reminders, and for sharing the way to pay homage to She who guides my keystrokes.  It is a delight to find a brother in the love and remembrance of Shakta—of Devi.  Thank you for guiding me to place the Divine Mother always at the helm of these endeavors.

November, with all it’s feasting and commercially (socially) sanctioned overeating is behind me.  I am still amazed that I had the good fortune of staying abstinent while having a 12 pound roasted turkey with all the accoutrements (cranberry sauce; stuffing or dressing as it is called by some; gravy;  garlic mashed red potatoes; green beans and fresh baked biscuits) in my refrigerator.  Therein also sat pumpkin pie; candied sweet potato pecan loaf with maple glaze and various other triple X things like whipped cream and ice cream and even granulated sugar (poison?) in my cupboard.

With the last of my company now safely home (I write this December 1 entry just a few days late, on Sunday the 5th, instead of Wednesday the 1st.  I was finally free to clean out the fridge yesterday morning, so that there would not be the echo of tasty treats to tempt me now that I find myself eating solo, without guests to feed.  The only thing that remains in the freezer is the practically full half gallon container of Publix, Special Edition Pumpkin Pie ice cream.  I couldn’t bear to toss it down the drain with the rest of the altogether too old, and non-abstinent leftovers that I easily trashed.  Maybe it is because I am programmed from childhood to finish what’s on my plate and also because I abhor  ‘wasting anything’, that I couldn’t flush that ice cream down the disposal?  There was only one giant tablespoon size gouge missing from it’s cool, light, orange-colored surface.  If only there had been half (or more) of the ice cream missing from the container, it might have been easier for me to pitch it, but, I could not bring myself to just toss a practically completely full container of ice cream down the drain.  Wow, what a food addict I am!  Wow, what a troublesome thing ice cream is.  I am powerless over ice cream, and the second I try to pretend that I’m the wellspring of what keeps me from eating it, I’m doomed.  Fortunately, there is a power greater than ice cream, and so long as I am powerless, She can intercede.

Yesterday afternoon, I performed a task that was somewhat of an emotional challenge for me.  With the echo of that experience behind me, I realize that my thoughts keep going to the existence of that half gallon of Publix, Special Edition Pumpkin Pie ice cream that is resting comfortably in my freezer.  I try and understand how this seemingly benign thing like a frozen food product became a potentially destructive, dangerous element to me.  I spoke to someone about it last night, and today I am leaning towards ridding myself of its frozen promise.  I marvel at the fact that I keep thinking about it, and even though I think it is silly to have to rid myself of it by flushing it down the disposal, I am also sort of afraid to “be alone” with it.  I know this doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but through this recovery, I am beginning to see how cunning the disease of compulsive eating is.  I recognize that the part of me that cannot toss that ice cream down the disposal may in fact be a part of me that is operating in service to the destructive forces of my disease.  Why save ice cream in my freezer if I am abstinent?  If I am finding myself thinking about that saved ice cream quite a lot, why not recognize that as a danger and rid myself of it as an act of self-care"any activity of an individual, family or community, with the intention of improving or restoring health, or treating or preventing disease"?

At the time of the publication of this post (Monday the 6th—90 Days Abstinent!) the ice cream is in my freezer, in the back corner, hidden inside a USPS tyvek envelope that is designed to send Priority Mail items for a flat rate.  On the outside of the container is a freshy drawn skull and cross bones.  I did it in super-fat sharpie!  The words TOXIC DEADLY POISON are penned artfully below the illustration.  I still have no idea why I’m holding on, but at least there are a few more layers between us.  Inside the carton, the protective plastic film that covers the surface of the treat is still intact.  Upon it I wrote the name of my “higher power”.  Now ice cream bears the stamp of the Goddess.  May She keep me from it until I am ready to dispose of it properly.