How to lose weight, by realizing that your unhappiness doesn't have to run and or ruin your life.
I'm going to start posting almost weekly in this blog, too. To the right you can find a list of my other blogs and the days on which they are published.
This blog is going to return to it's original aim: Tai Chi:: Yoga::Health:: Weight Loss
And I'm starting my return here by talking to the core of overeating:
Using food as a way to cover "feeling bad."
In later essays, we can talk about eating mindfully, and shifting radically the "kinds" of foods that you eat.
But if you can't begin to shift out of slavery to "getting rid" of unhappiness, the freedom that can come from real health and healthy eating will always be just "beyond the beyond."
So here's the essay, a chapter in my new book on Real Health:
The Importance of Feeling Bad
Sometimes, and with awareness
Sometimes we feel bad. Or, we could say, sometimes we feel like shit, or poorly, or unhappy. Mad, angry, depressed, worried, stressed, overwhelmed, sad. Bad.
We don’t feel good.
Now, this book is about waking up to real health by being present to whatever is going on.
If we feel bad, the “normal” way of reacting is:
Oh no, help. I feel bad. Get me out of here.
So we call a friend to rescue us from our loneliness, or going to a bar or a movie to distract ourselves, or even do something “good for us,” like jog, or write in our journal.
Some of these modes will move our life forward. Some will leave us stuck. And this book is about creating a life of ongoing happiness, health and learning. Of creating conditions where we can be helpful to ourselves, and to others and to the planet.
So, how can we “use” a moment, or a day, or a period of unhappiness to create a life of ongoing happiness, to create conditions where we can be useful to ourselves and to others and to the Earth.
Good old Earth. What does that have to do with being unhappy?
A lot, it turns out, since we can look around and see how much destruction is being melted out to our planet by the ravages of people rushing out to buy all sorts of stuff they don’t need, to coat and cover and “bad feelings” that might be creeping up.
That “shop until you drop” is considered sheik and cute rather than the ethical ecological equivalent of obscenity is testimony to how “normal” the habit of consumption is. And consuming stuff, consuming the Earth, here does the “stuff” come from?
Okay, okay, eco preaching yeah, yeah, but what does that have to do with unhappiness?
When unhappy: A. Don’t shop. B. Don’t get in a car and go somewhere. C. Don’t shop online.
When unhappy, don’t speed up.
Slow down. Slow down to the present.
Don’t avoid.
Feel, in the sensory sense, whatever sensations come up with “feeling bad.”
In your chest, breathing, jaw, neck, ribs. Wherever you constrict and contort yourself when you feel mad, afraid, weird, angry, sad, bad, notice as pure sensations.
There is almost always a bunch of words accompanying “feeling bad,” and try this: shift your attention to the present.
If you feel something in your stomach feel it. If you are sitting on a chair, sense that. If you are sitting upright, or walking, or lying down, sense your five lines (two arms, two legs, one spine) in whatever position you find yourself. Unhappy, let that be the background noise to this job, this job that pays a huge dividends, the job of being present.
Sense your five lines, and let the sensations of your unhappiness add to that.
And listen to the world. If the world outside you is saying, “You poor thing, Mary Lou should have been nicer to you,” then listen. But if those words, and any other ones that carry and justify and fuel your unhappiness are coming from inside your brain, pay them as little attention as you can.
For now.
Later in this book, and always to be recommended is to write down what the “should” and “shouldn’t” statements that are throbbing underneath your unhappiness and “doing the Work” on them. The Work is the work of Byron Katie, and that can be found online at http://thework.com, and she, Byron Katie’s her “stage” name, has books out with titles like “Loving What Is,” and “I Need Your Love, Is that True,” and “A Thousand Names for Joy.”
Also, in my previous book, available online, “Happiness in 4 Modes: 108 Ways of Moving, Feeling, Thinking and ‘Soul-ing’ to transform your Life,” I have a number of sections giving step by step pathways to take advantage of the Byron Katie work.
And for now, we are practicing giving so called “unhappiness” a bigger container by coming to the now.
And a specific set of ways of coming to the Now.
1) Sense the “feel bad” sensations that go along with your unhappiness, without the words, just as sensations
2) Sense your five lines
3) Pay attention to real sound in the “real” world outside of you
4) Pay attention to real light coming into your eyes from the world outside your body
5) Follow your breathing
6) Feel the totality of your experience in the present
7) Find the happiness that is always there when we “wake up” to ourselves in the present.
So, this is subverting “unhappiness” by going Big and going now. Sure you are suffering, but is your big toe suffering? Is your breathing? Is your right elbow? How is the sound coming in your ears? The light coming in your eyes?
Your unhappiness can stick around, if it wants to, but your Life is bigger than that. Can you remember that the next time you are unhappy?
And guess what? Except for “sensing the feel bad” sensations in the list above, all the other avenues toward the Big and Present and Real you can be jumped into and enjoyed, right now.
And will that be good for the Earth?
Yes.
And will that be good for others around you?
Yes.
And will that be good for you?
Start practicing now, either six or seven of the above list, and find out.
All you have to lose is your slavery to
1) Feeling Bad
2) Fear of Feeling Bad
3) Having to "get rid" instantly of Feeling Bad
Good.
All you have to lose is your slavery to
1) Feeling Bad
2) Fear of Feeling Bad
3) Having to "get rid" instantly of Feeling Bad
Good.
