Now that I'm in my late 30's and I've had two kids, it inevitably happens about twice a year: I'll pull on a favorite pair of jeans and realize that they're snug. Now I'm a huge believer in radical self acceptance and self love, but what can I say? I don't like it when my stomach hangs over my pants . . . So when the pants are snug, I hop on the dusty scale (which I otherwise ignore) to confirm my suspicions and force acknowledgement of the fact that I've been mindlessly plowing through cocktail hour and dinner with reckless abandon. Sure it's fun, I am hyper social: happiest when the calendar is full and activities are flowing, but this means a lot of food and cocktail centered gatherings, which can mean slipping into mindless and habitual eating and drinking. What I dislike the most about weight gain is not the weight itself (though muffin top isn't pretty), it's the fact that the weight is symbolic of my inability to sit with sensation and practice a little restraint (brahmacharya).
Our human nature is hard-wired to resist sensation. When hunger arises, we eat, when we want a cocktail we drink. For some people, the total inability to sit with sensation leads to constantly numbing ourselves: we feel pain, hunger, craving, longing and we stuff the sensation away with TV, spending, sex, food, drugs, alchohol . . . . pick your poison. Anything to not feel. We don't even think about it. We stuff sensation away, we fill it up. We satisfy our cravings and we don't feel pain, love, connection when we are stuffed full of our poison of choice. Bramacharya is one of the 8 Limbs of Yoga and one of the most misunderstood. Bramacharya directly translates to sexual celibacy. But many modern scholars view it more as harnessing control of "sensory and sensual pleasures that distract us." A recent Yoga Journal article about brahmacharya included this quote, "If we don't realize there's an alternative to being driven by our desires, we don't have any choice in how we act. Our culture does a really good job of encouraging us to indulge our desires and ignore any signals beyond them."*
So this is not about beating myself up or degrading myself because of few extra pounds on the scale (I actually am amazingly finally beyond that), but the painful truth is that when I gain weight it is only because I've slipped into the mindless mode of indulging to fill up, to take the sensations of wanting and craving and stuff them full so as to not feel them. And for me radical self-acceptance and radical self-love does not mean to love the extra pounds, it means to demand the best of myself which is mindfulness and presence around everything that I do.
I look forward to getting to place where the mindfulness never slips (it's a path, I'm on it, it will occur) but for now when I become aware of the fact that my human frailty and mindless indulgences have wrecked havoc on my waistline, I start the process of re-training myself to sit with sensation and practice a little restraint. When I'm really hungry and mindless, I grab a scone at a coffee shop. When I'm mindful, I allow the sensation of hunger to arise and I sit with it without trying to dissipate it. I simply observe the sensation. I let myself feel it without attaching to it or making a false statement like "I'm starving" (cause really,not many of us are starving). Always, and inevitably, the acuteness passes and I can wait until I get home or to a juice bar to fill up on Prana filled foods.
When I am in the mode of mindful eating I'm also acutely aware of the sensation of taking in food. I notice each bite and I allow the food to fill me up. On Friday night I munched my way through cocktail hour with a Kombucha tea and fresh, raw vegetables. By the time dinner came, I was no longer hungry. Mindless me would have taken a giant plate of food and kept my wine glass full throughout dinner anyway, but as I'm in the space of noticing sensation, I put a very small amount food on my plate to participate in the social aspect of dinner without plowing through a giant wine-fueled meal. It's amazing how much less we need to feel full when we are really paying attention to sensation.
I also avoid obsessing: I had cocktails with friends on our beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, and that doesn't mean I somehow failed, I made a conscious and mindful decision to simply enjoy a beautiful summer afternoon and the socializing aspect of the cocktails without attachment or self-degradation.
Asana (physical yoga) is a really amazing place to come into the space of allowing sensation to arise and learning to simply sit with it, resisting the urge to indulge. I see people grip against sensation all of the time, I'll bring students into a deep stretch or a challanging pose and I'll watch their jaws clench, their neck muscles bulge and their eyes pop as they resist the pose and the uncomfortable sensations the pose can create. Or they simply come out of the pose right away, instantly indulging in a craving. I even see people use muscular effort resist the most delicious poses like ½ pigeon or supine twist because they don't even allow themselves to feel the sensations of relief and release. In class tonight, I watched students stress and strain in a challenging pose and said, "it's a Yoga mat, not a battle field." So what happens when we do stop the battle? When we simply let go, breath and allow the sensations of the pose to arise without trying to squash and resist them? We find ease, we find release, and we find peace. As in life as on the mat: allow sensation to arise, sit with it, practice a little self-restraint, breath through the discomfort, breath through the craving and find ease, release and peace.
Namaste
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