[Note: this is Day 10 of a 10-Day Self-Care Expedition. I am examining my relationship with food and movement. You are welcome to join in as well through committing to your own self-care practice, commenting, and/or silently supporting.]
Day 10! The final day of our expedition. Celebrations!
Of course, since my original intention was to jump-start a deeper food and movement self-care practice, I’m really only just beginning.
Still, it feels as though I have covered a LOT of ground over these 10 days and I might be at a place where I can have more of a grounded, in-the-moment, relationship with food and movement. This is pretty exciting!
Let’s take a quick look back over these 10 days, starting with movement/exercise.
I started the expedition feeling as if all exercise was an obligation, something that I have to do in order to be healthy.
On Day 1 I reconnected with how much both my body and I love to move – just to move. Day 2 was spent uncovering and processing a huge about of grief around this sense of betrayal and distrust between my body and me.
Discovering the pressure-resistance piece on Day 3 was especially huge for me. Then, on Day 4, I was able to apply the insights of Day 3.
Ever since then, everything has felt different to me. That sense of exercise as an obligation has completely melted away and I feel a much greater sense of trust. Trust both in my body to let me know what it needs and trust in myself to be able to listen and do it. It’s practically a miracle!
Moving on to food.
It took me until the middle of this expedition to realize I was completely neglecting the food part of my original intention. Finally, on Day 7, I set the intention to spend the remainder of the expedition noticing what came up when I turned my attention towards food.
Days 7 and 8 were spent in absolute resistance. On Day 9, applying Byron Katie’s inquiry process proved helpful – at least in identifying my extreme terror of herbal tea!
There is clearly a lot more to uncover and explore here.
Still, it has been quite illuminating to take the time to truly notice all the resistance and internal conflict/confusion that I carry around food. It has been helpful to be in more of a place of witnessing vs just being in it.
I trust that this relationship will continue to unfold and that I will eventually come to a place of more ease and inner knowing with regards to my food decisions.
Even now, I feel much less conflicted than when I began. I even have this glimmer of hope that that my body and I might want the same thing, that we are in this thing together.
To bring it all together.
Throughout my teens and 20s, food and exercise were my primary (perhaps only) forms of self-care. Then, as I began to open to the more subtle levels of emotional, energetic, and spiritual self-care, food and exercise fell to the side.
This is a fairly common pattern for me.
When learning something new, I tend to become consumed with it and everything else has to fall away to make space for me to go as deep as I need to with the new thing.
Then, there comes a time when all of the things that were dropped need to be picked back up, dusted off, and integrated into the new thing. Or, the new integrated into the old??? In any case, integration must occur. 🙂
In this case, my old ways of caring for myself through food and exercise no longer fit with all the deep listening skills I had cultivated. I guess I could say that the old ways needed to be upgraded in order to fit into the new model of self-care I had developed.
So, in a way, it feels as if I have come full cycle.
From…
a) food/exercise as my foundational self-care practice (but in the form of me imposing what I thought was healthy onto my body) to…
b) the softer, more listening-based skills of self-care, and…
c) back to the core practices of food and movement (but now coming from a place of listening to my body – of integrating the new and the old).
It’s very interesting!
And, I’m so grateful for this expedition… for giving myself these 10 days to focus on this aspect of my self-care practice. It will continue to unfold, evolve, and deepen. Makes me very curious to see what happens next!
For you.
Welcome to Day 10! How does it feel to have arrived at the final day of our expedition? What are you noticing? What is the story arch of your expedition?
Thank you to everyone who participated in this expedition through commenting, reading, participating silently, liking posts on fb, etc. Your presence was immensely helpful and made it possible for me to keep going when I hit all that resistance on days 5-9. 🙂
I want to give a special shout-out to Emma for sticking it out with me visibly through the comments. It was so helpful to know that you were there in the thick of things with me. Thank you. Thank you.
xo
Thank you! 🙂
More things I got from this expedition:
* My relationship with sugar, my body, and pain is complex, multi-faceted, has good and bad parts, and like any relationship, listening and communication is key to health and connection.
* There is a difference between “deep pain that is for sitting with and feeling and releasing” (usually having to do with healing the past, or coming to terms with something you can’t change), and “deep pain that is a message about something major that is not working in your life” (which is about when you are out of alignment with your path somehow and need to take action to be on track, meet your deepest needs, and be happy). And you only get clarity on the difference and what to do by turning toward the pain.
* I probably will always want to eat ice cream for breakfast. And sometimes I will. But not every day.
* Rituals are f-ing awesome, powerful, and transformative. And that anything that is about listening, and has a structure and an intention, is a ritual.
* I (personally) have a real drive to DO something when there is suffering and pain. I need to feel a sense of progress, and that I am taking action, in some way, to help alleviate it. This is a personal need I wasn’t quite as aware of before this. Feeling “stuck” and like there is no way forward is a very difficult thing for me. I can endure a lot of hard work or difficulty or pain as long as I know I’m actively moving toward something better. I need to be in the flow of energy moving in a positive direction. This is just something I got more clear on during this Expedition. With whatever pain I’m facing, I always need to find the thing I can do or put energy toward that will feel like progress. I think that is a lot about discerning what I can control and what I can’t, and giving my all to what I can. Making sure I am doing everything in my power is how I can cope with the things that are not in my power. I have to have somewhere for all my energy to go, it needs to be channeled somewhere positive.