• Sitting in a comfortable, supported position, close your eyes. Allow your body to relax completely. Release any tension in your face and throat. Let your belly soften and your limbs be heavy. Take a moment to let this unfold.
• Become aware of any sensations you are having in your body. Can you feel the backs of your legs on the chair? Can you feel the points of pressure where your back is against the chair? Become aware of the feel of your clothes on your skin.
• Keep tuning into the subtleties of the sensations you are having in this moment. Begin to scan more specifically. Are you feeling pain, tension, pleasure, relaxation, freedom, constrictions? Are there certain areas of your body you are more aware of than others?
• Now that you are tuned in, can you feel what you might wish for your body? “My wish for my body is that it: breathes easy; has relaxed shoulders; is free of tension, feels healthy . . .” You get the idea — whatever it is that might help the body to feel good, create a wish. How many wishes can you fulfill in any given moment?

Write some of these wishes down, play with them throughout the day and the week. See what kind of difference it makes to create and fulfill your body’s wishes.

Your face is not only what you present to the world, it also affects your body. If you are scowling or tensing your jaw, the body tenses in response. If you smile, the body relaxes. So, to become more conscious of your face, try this:

• Start by relaxing your face completely, no frown or smile, just neutral — do that for 30 seconds.
• Now, use the tips of your fingers to vigorously massage your forehead. Try to get your fingers up under the wrinkle lines.
• Then massage the backs of your jaw. Work your way along the roots of the bottom teeth. Do the same along the roots of the top teeth.
• Pull your ear flaps forward and away from the ears, from top to bottom while opening and closing your jaw. This helps open the ear canal.

Now close your eyes and sit quietly for a moment. What do you notice? Do you feel more alert, energized, calmer? How is your body feeling in response to how your face feels? How are your thoughts? Take a moment to appreciate your senses. Open your eyes and go about your day.

Being quite sick of this craving getting the best of me – I devised a plan! I wanted to more deeply understand what peanut butter represented to my internal world, why it was so important, what it meant. I wanted to get present with was so that I could really begin to address the issue from a place of wisdom and clarity rather than from the bottom of a peanut butter jar. So, here’s what I did . . .

I took the great forbidden food, sat down to meditate and placed the peanut butter jar and spoon in front of me. It felt important to have the actual food so that the senses were engaged as well as the imagination. I closed my eyes, took a few minutes to open my heart and really bring the witness forward to facilitate the proceedings. Then, I imagined a great round table with many chairs around it. I sat the jar of peanut butter in the middle of the table and invited anyone that was interested to come join me at the table. One by one, their interest piqued, they showed up. When it seemed that all of those who wanted to come were around the table, I started the proceedings. I took a spoonful of peanut butter and rolled it around in my mouth, then spoke a few words about what I was feeling and what peanut butter meant to me. And so it went, sticky spoonful by sticky spoonful, each aspect took a turn with the peanut butter, attempting to tell some sort of truth about themselves. It was meaningful to hear each of them speak – it often wasn’t about the peanut butter at all. With few exceptions, the sharing was more about the individual suffering then the love of peanut butter.

I crave less now. It’s quieter now. The edges have softened and the ravenous hunger has settled down. What remains is the 10 year old who is always – and perhaps forever – convinced that love lies in the bottom of a peanut jar!

Symptoms, then, are an indicator that something is out of balance, and that ‘something’ affects the entire system.  The way to rebalance is to provide information and direction – verbal, physical, conceptual – to the whole being; to awaken health from the inside out so that the body can reestablish equilibrium, restore the system and heal the symptom.

We normally do just the opposite – just manage the symptom and ignore the system. Losing weight is a good example: If we focus only on losing weight, the opportunity for true healing is diminished as only the symptom (weight) is being addressed and not the fundamental imbalance. If, instead we address the body as a whole, feed it relevant and caring information, guide it into its healing capacity, then it has the opportunity to reorganize itself and regenerate health. At this point, with the strength of a balanced system to support it, the extra weight can come off in a way that is natural, conscious respectful and intelligent.

If you are carrying extra weight that has shown up as fat, your emotions may be all clogged up around those certain “unacceptable” areas of your body.  I, too, have heard that internal scream of, “Argh where did that come from? And why won’t it go away?!” The only way to truly quiet that scream is to shift from fat phobic to fat receptive.

Acknowledge your fat for what it is – a life saver; a temporary fix to a larger issue that is waiting, ever so patiently, for your attention. Fat is, after all, a symptom that something is not working the way it should be. So, take a quiet moment in praise of fat cells. From this vantage point of grateful acceptance, your judgment subsides, clarity prevails and you can begin to listen with a compassionate ear for what your body needs from you to be healthy, vital, strong and confident.

I am still pondering what I want to do with this blog.

Here’s what I know so far about the content:

• Relevant and meaningful
• Within my realm of expertise (body/mind/spirit)
• Interactive so that we can have a dialog (very important to me)
• Different feel than the e-rhythms, more casual
• Short and to the point

I would like to invite you to share with me what you might find interesting, meaningful, inspirational and comment worthy.

Send along a comment, question, inspiration.

I’d love to hear from you, Carol