How to Eat Mindfully

I’ve made this amazing shift in how I eat most of my meals. For the most part, I no longer eating frantically, standing up, on the run, and without paying any attention to what I eat or how much of it shove in my mouth. I’ve embraced a new way that has brought me so much connection and vitality. Eating for me is now like moving through a yoga class. Now, I eat with intention. I make the choice to eat. I choose what I eat based on what I want and know will serve me well.

I give eating my full attention. I sit down and take a few deep breaths. My body relaxes. I put my cell phone away and turn my laptop and IPad off. I am here to eat.

With every bite, I spend the time to notice. With all of my attention on what I am eating, the tastes and textures are sometimes big and complex and sometimes so simple.

Like a beautifully timed child’s pose, I naturally take a few breaths in between bites. These are moments I take time to check back in and notice my body.

I naturally stop eating. Sometimes there is nothing left on my plate. Sometimes a few bites remain. My body simply says “just enough”.

Sometimes, my mind wants more and my body says stop. There may be a bit of a wrestling match. I notice that too. There is no perfect answer. With awareness, I consciously make a choice; continue to eat or stop. I practice keeping it simple.

I have finished eating, but I stay seated and invite in a few deep breaths. It’s like shavasana; a time for my body to integrate with the food I just nourished it with. These are the sweetest and most tender moments.

I spent years eating too much or not eating enough. I was lost without a diet or a set of rules to offer me the answers. Thankfully, the power of my yoga practice has opened my mind and guided me to a new way that focuses around being intentional and mindful. Eating now is an opportunity for connection instead of a process filled with uncertainty and numbing. I am so grateful for my practice. Namaste.

Where to Look

In the past I looked outside of myself for the answers. If I wanted to lose weight, I looked for a program or diet to follow. If I wanted to run faster, I searched for a book to read. If I felt anxious and sad, I sought out a therapist. Surely, someone or something else had the answers and I was going to find them. At the time, I wanted to improve myself and I thought someone else knew better than me. Researchers, scientists, health professionals, even the government spread a wide range of valuable information around how we should live based on averages. They share what foods to avoid and which ones we can’t eat enough of. They know how much sleep on average we should get and on average the right amount of water we should drink to keep hydrated. For a long time, I put much of my unquestionable faith in these experts. After all, they did research, studied and had all sorts of average solutions for people who were sort of like me. I didn’t realize there was a different approach.

Then I started connecting and listening to my own body. I am now noticing how my body reacts to certain foods. Do they make me tired and bloated, or light and alive? I notice what workouts leave me feeling energized. And more importantly, when I feel overwhelmed, stressed or anxious; I can stop, breath, experience and observe all of the sensations in my body and learn from them. The uncomfortable disappears.

This has been an imperfect process. It’s been filled with miracles, frustrations, and also big insights into who I am and what works for me. I am waking up to my own body and my own spirit. Sometimes I listen and sometimes I don’t care to. That is also part of connecting. I can see when I’m connected and see when I’m not. Before, I didn’t see any other options but to look somewhere else. Now, I realize there is only one option. I am my own best health professional. I can be open to the valuable information coming from the outside, but now I try it on for myself first. I am trusting and curious. I am fully responsible for me. After all, the answers lie within me. They always have.

New Girl, New Habit

I have a confession to make.  It may make you laugh. My family thinks it’s hysterical. Over the past 2 ½ weeks, I’ve been obsessed with the TV show “New Girl”. I sat down to watch the pilot on Netflix and after a few shorts weeks, I’m already in the middle of Season 3. I’ve been watching the show religiously every night, averaging about 2.5 shows an evening. This is a big change for me as I typically only watch TV  a few times week. But now, I sit down to watch it with a glass of red wine or a cup of tea (depending on the night), curl up on the couch and let myself be thoroughly and mindlessly entertained. A habit is supposedly formed by consistently doing the same thing every day for 28, 30, or even 40 days (depending on who you ask and where you look). So you may not call my "New Girl" routine a habit just yet, but it did get me thinking about habits and how some habits can be so easily formed and some habits can be so hard to break.

People spend a good deal of time and money trying to create positive habits and to break negative ones. They often look at the action of the habit itself, for example, smoking, running every morning, or flossing before bedtime. But there are a few other pieces to the habit puzzle that are more critical than the action itself. A habit also includes the desire we crave before we move into action and the outcome that immediately follows. Take my “New Girl” routine. It started with me looking for relaxation, which is the desire I craved. While I watched the first 4 episodes of Season 1, I laughed, gave my mind and body a break sitting on the couch and afterward felt renewed. Immediately, my mind drew the connection. Desire to relax > "New Girl"> Feel Better. It didn’t take more than a few days for me to realize that when I wanted to feel better; I sat to watch "New Girl".

One habit that I’m familiar with is around binge eating, as it started for me in my early teens. At the time, food was the only coping mechanism I knew to help me deal with overwhelming feelings.  Even though I wasn't aware of it at the time, my desire was to not feel the intensity of my sadness, frustration, anxiety or anger. When I stuffed myself with food (maybe girl-scout cookies or M&M’s) I went numb and didn’t feel anything. The outcome of my binge eating habit was to take away the immediate discomfort (even though it was fleeting and ultimately I felt worse). This habit continued over the years by eating uncontrollably in response to stress, overwhelm or anything else that I wanted an escape from. I would try desperately to change this habit by trying to stop binge eating, like it was the cause and effect of my problems. The more I fought with the binge eating, the more energy I was giving to the one thing I desperately wanted to change. I realized, with mindfulness, awareness and compassion that acknowledging and not reacting to the the emotion was at the heart of dismantling this habit. It was then that I began to replace binge eating with a more loving habit.

Here is the thing. We make our habits and then our habits make us. The action of the habit can define us if we let it. We start to smoke and we become a smoker. We train for our first 5k and we become a runner. We stop eating meat and become a vegetarian. Look at your habits carefully; are they reflecting who you want to be and how you want to live? If not, look at the desire and the outcome of the habit itself.  Is watching "New Girl" every night a reflection of how I want to live? Maybe not. But let me put it another way, is relaxing and laughing every evening how I want to live? Absolutely.

The Hurricane

This particular Saturday morning did not go as planned. With each of my three kids going in different directions starting at 6:45am, and my husband away for the weekend, I needed to be on my game. Instead, I overslept- waking up 15 minutes before we we're suppose to be at the football field. I felt like "Hurricane Tara" arriving at the school as I was speeding in, slamming doors, hustling over to where we were supposes to be and clearly creating a wake in my path. When I saw my son’s coach he said “It's okay, just breath". As a yoga studio owner, that felt a little embarrassing to hear from a football coach. At the same time, a friend nearby jokingly said to me, “Ya, isn't that what you tell your yoga students? You are not a great advertisement for your yoga studio right now". They were both right. I immediately felt guilty and a bit bummed at myself for that showdown. The good news is that it gave me some insight.

When we are living authentically, we have nothing to defend. Sure, we all develop expectations and judgments of people, the roles they play and how we would like them to act around us. I know that I like the grocery store bagger to know how to bag groceries. I want my kids teachers to be respectful, enthusiastic, and care about their students. I want my car mechanic to not unnecessarily charge me an arm and leg to fix my car. But the funny thing is that if I were to see any of them outside of the grocery store, school, or auto body shop, aside from breaking the law, I don’t expect much from them. And herein lies what makes teaching yoga and owning a yoga studio so amazing. We’ve created a built in mechanism to stay committed to our journey and the process we are teaching. It’s so natural that my yoga students and my community may expect me to be mindful, peaceful, relaxed and not stressed out when they see me outside of the studio. I expect the same thing for myself. They may even expect me to be a vegetarian, not drink beer or coffee, and drive a Prius with a Namaste bumper sticker on the back. And I have no problem with any of those expectations. Their expectations are their business. I may not meet any of them or I may not meet them 100% of the time. I don’t need to apologize, defend myself or beat myself up about it. My practice is waking up and catching myself when I am not living true to my word.

You don’t have to be a yoga teacher to stay committed to being yourself. Being yourself takes little to no work at all. Can you see areas or situations in your life that feel heavy or forced? Where are you applying a lot of effort to hide or try to show a made up version of yourself? Getting to the football field the other morning felt pretty stressful. I was worried I was letting people down (my son especially) but also when I take a hard look, I was afraid of looking bad. After all of that, being late the other morning did not really create any problems for anyone. But it did give me an opportunity to catch myself trying too hard, hiding behind my self-imposed stress and taking myself way to seriously.

I can now think back to that morning and smile at “Hurricane Tara”. If it were not for her, I wouldn’t feel as peaceful and connected as I do right now.

Getting Out of the Mud

Do you feel stuck? Like, feet in the mud and you can’t move no matter how hard you try to lift your legs stuck? Being stuck is such a powerless feeling. You may feel stuck around your job, the relationship you have with a friend or family member, or maybe an illness of someone you love.  Feeling stuck can leave us feeling pretty resigned and complacent, like things will never be any different. For me, I’ve often wondered- how do I ever get myself out of this mess? I can’t see a way out.

For the past few month, I’ve been feeling really stuck around my work schedule. I’ve got too much on my plate and it’s dragging me down.  Yes, I am doing everything I love- hanging with my husband and 3 kids, teaching yoga, creating a beautiful yoga community and continuing to work on my accounting and finance career.  But it ‘s one of those situations where I have too much to do and not enough time to do it in.  I’m sure everyone reading this probably feels the same way about their own schedule! I’m have been feeling overwhelmed and trapped.

Thankfully, I recently had a shift. Thanks to a personal transformation training I attended over the weekend, I now see things differently and I’ve tried it on for myself.

What if we choose what we have? I choose my work schedule. As soon as I said it out loud, I began to relax.  Yes, I choose it!  I choose my work schedule. Now, here comes the shift. I choose to feel calm and peaceful around my work schedule. Is that possible? Well, it wasn’t possible when I was fighting with my work schedule. It wasn’t when I hated my work schedule and I was just looking to fix it. It wasn’t possible when I felt victim to my work schedule and I was so focused on being at the mercy of my work schedule. This feels powerful. I can choose what I have and when I do, I can choose my way of being around that choice. This doesn’t mean I have to like my choice.  Choosing what we have creates ownership.  Since I’ve made this shift, I do feel much more calm and at ease.  I actually feel like I’ve made more time for myself and I’m more focused. I even feel more creative.  Now, if I choose to make a change, I know that I’m making that happen, it’s not happening to me.

I’m no longer stuck in the mud. My feet are on dryer ground and I feel like I can walk or even sprint in any direction I CHOOSE.  How about you? What’s in your life that you choose for yourself?