Sunday Story...Home Sweet Home

Sunday Story...Home Sweet Home

Where is “home”?
...Home is where the heart is
...You can never go home again
...The chickens come home to roost


There are so many aphorisms about home. Yet when we look up home in the dictionary, most of the definitions are in reference to a physical dwelling, a place to live, or an abode.
But for most of us that is a house.


I live in a house.
I dwell in an an abode.
I make my house a home.


The deeper meaning for many of us has to do with the reference to hearth. The hearth in times gone by was the heart of a house...the fireplace where the cooking was done, where warmth emanated from, where the people gathered to commune and join together. When I think of home this is what I think of...the community where I am accepted, the people who love me.


Home is not necessarily a physical spot on the globe. I have never lived in my parent's house, yet when I go there I am home. When I return to my house, I am home. Yes it is possible to have more than one home. When I sit with my brothers I am home. When I meet with my martial arts friends to work out and sweat and bleed I am home. When I return to the meditation hall I am home. All of these places have something in common...they are all places I can be the authentic self I am called to be. They are all places where I can just be.


We often talk about the “homeless” as a group, a category of people. What we should say is “house-less”. Just like each of us have a mother and a father, yet can be orphans, so, too, can we be house-less and not be homeless. Home does not have to be a physical destination. Home does not have to exist between 4 walls.


Home could be a cave or a tent. Home could be a barracks in a foreign land. Home could be an imaginary place you only get to in the silence of the night. Home may only exist in the residence of your mind.

Home really is where your heart is. Are you home yet?

This is the last story of 2010. Next Sunday will be 2011.

To all of you who have found the time, the strength, or the desire to comment on these stories, I thank you. I read every comment with relish and gratitude. As a rule I do not respond to the comments, there isn't always time, and often a response would be gratuitous anyway. Please continue to comment and let me know if what I have written has touched you in some way. Over the years of writing these stories I have been excoriated, lauded, punished, kicked, made fun of, and complimented. Some of you know I am writing directly to you (I am). Some of you are sure that somehow I know just the right thing to write to you this particular week (I do). These are your stories. These are the channeling from each of you into the universal energy that flows through my fingers onto these pages. So, yes I am talking to you. I am writing to you, about you, for you. I am writing to challenge you. I am writing to excite you. I am writing to get you to feel, to think, to get out of your ennui, out of your torpor, off of the couch and into the world, out of complaint and into action...any action is better than the “quiet desperation” most of the world is living in these days.

I want to make you mad. I want to have you feel something, anything. Our world needs your passion, your heart, your soul to get up and get counted. You were not placed on this earth at this time to do nothing. You are here for a purpose. Not finding your purpose is a crime against nature, like a chicken with no wings, or a horse with a pig nose. Not living on purpose is a crime as well. I want to help you find your purpose and start living into your purpose.

4 questions for you:
How am I making a difference?
Is what you are doing, right now, on purpose?
Is this what I really want to do?
Am I following my passion?

How will you answer?

As some of you know I do private life coaching, personally designed to help you create the life you want to be living. We can work on purpose, vision, diet, exercise or any number of areas that will enrich and encourage and challenge you to create a life you want to live.

If you are interested in exploring that sort of relationship email me at:
jmariotti1@gmail.com

But understand this: My mission is to teach focus and inspire transformation. In you. If you are ready I am willing. No excuses, no maybes, sort ofs, kindas...just the hard and rewarding work of transformation.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com
 
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PS.
Some of you have asked about my knee from last week. I am very fortunate to know an outstanding healer. Her name is Dr. Laura Harmon. She has an office in Fallon NV. She is a chiropractor, a massage therapist, an acu-pressure specialist, a Reiki healer, and, most of all, an energetic healer. She spent 2 hours working on my knee and got me back on my feet. Her office number is: 775-423-7000 and her business is called Fallon Family Chiropractic. She comes with my highest recommendation.

Sunday Story...To Die For

Sunday Story…To Die For

2008
Silver state 50 mile race. We are going to run from Rancho San Rafael Park over Peavine to Verdi. And back. I am trying to finish in less than 12 hours in order to have a qualifying time for the Western States 100 miler. I did this race for the first time last year in 13 hours. I ran 50 miles around a track (200 laps) in 11 hours and 30 minutes the summer before today. I ran a 50 kilometer race about 8 weeks before this day and a ½ marathon about 3 weeks before this day. It is a beautiful day a little warm for this early in May but the sun is out and it is most pleasant.

Around 10 miles in I realize I am not feeling great. My nutrition plan isn’t working quite right and I just don’t feel on. But I press on…it is too early to tell how the race is going to go. Somewhere around 25 or so miles I know this is not going to be my best day but I am ½ way and I don’t want to quit yet, besides I have a pacer going to join me in Verdi at the turn around point and that should improve things. Up to this point I have been alone.

At about 31 or 32 miles I pick up Katie R. my pacer. She immediately notices that I am not drinking enough water and starts in on the mantra…drink, drink, drink. My right knee is starting to act funny and I definitely feel like something left on the road dead. But I hate to quit. Absolutely hate to quit when I have anything left to give. So I press on, besides Katie is ready to go. The last 11 miles are all downhill. This really really really sucks. My knee is throbbing, my gait is off my body is starved and I am barely staying hydrated. With about 3 miles left they try to pull me off the course as the 13 hour time limit has passed. I refuse to come off the course. I am basically out of my mind at this point but I don’t run 47 miles out of 50. So we finish, every step is agony and suffering. The knee is shredded. Surgery takes place about 6 months later. I finished dead last.

Last Thursday
My left knee has been troublesome for 3 or 4 months. I have been trying to not push it too hard but I also refuse to stop. While doing box jumps (jumping up on to a platform and down) I feel something in the left knee give out. I still have several sets of jumps to finish. Do I quit? Slow Down? No and no. I complete the entire 150 jumps. The next day I can barely walk. This morning I can walk even less. Now there aren’t any jumps in my near future.

What is it that has us continue in the face of pain and injury? Maybe even in the face of permanent and long term pain. In my two examples above there was no 8” high trophy, no $25,000 check, no date with a super model. Nothing to gain but the satisfaction of finishing something that I started. It has been said that men will die for points. Why is that? Why will we continue just to say we finished?

I believe it is part of our make up to continue in the face of adversity; that there is something within us that wants to be able to say I Did It. I finished the task. I decided to do it and I have done it. Mission accomplished. Yet not everyone does it. And honestly I would be better off today if I had made a different choice in both of those examples. I probably could have avoided surgery on the one knee in the first example and I certainly would be walking better today in the other example.

It was clear to me in the second example that I should stop yet I did not. I considered stopping yet I did not. I work out enough that calling a halt to that activity was not going to jeopardize my fitness level. Yet it did jeopardize my overall health. Maybe I have a wish to be hurt so I can stop? Unlikely. Maybe I just want to beat everyone else doing the work out? More likely. Once again a man dying for points.

I am not going to let someone else beat me if I can help it. I am not going to put up less than a 100% effort for any endeavor. If it is worth doing it is worth doing with my entire being, my entire heart and soul. Too often in our world today, too many people are just going through the motions. They show up, clock in and go back to their stupor. They bring no passion, no energy, no chi to the game. The game just plays them not the other way around.

The game is life folks. Life includes your workout, your 50 mile race, your job, your family, your personal growth, your evolution as a human on the planet. Will you die in pursuit of your life, or would you prefer to die quietly, going out without a whimper?

For me I want to go completely used up. I want to have done all there was to do, jumped every jump, ran every race, tried everything…leaving nothing on table but crumbs. Don’t carry me quietly, get out of the way as I slide into the grave screaming woo hoo what a ride!

How about you? What will you die for? What will you live for?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Upside Down World

Sunday Story…Upside Down World


A world turned upside down….credit is not actually credit. Credit is actually debt. Debt is not good. Credit is good. Credit goes on the plus side of the ledger. Debt goes on the minus side, at least in all the accounting books I am familiar with. Yet they call them credit cards, when in fact, it is a debt card.

A world turned upside down…we allow big food corporations to sell us on the benefits of added minerals and vegetables in their processed edible non-food products but broccoli and cauliflower and carrots are being robbed of their nutrient values by mono-crop over intensive farming methods.

A world turned upside down…big banks and big companies get government bail outs but the business owner down the street has to close his doors because government regulation and fees reduce the business that he has worked for a lifetime, fed his family, put his children through school to the point it can no longer be profitable.

A world turned upside down…poor people get hand outs if they qualify, rich people get tax breaks, the working poor get to work and no help.

A world turned upside down…in the face of overwhelming evidence people continue to smoke and deny the deleterious effects of smoking on their health. And cigarette companies continue to advertise smoking like it is still good for you.

A world turned upside down…drug companies advertise pharmaceutical solutions to diseases we never knew existed (restless leg syndrome). The drugs in question get advertised as long as the legal disclaimer is read and the side effects often include death. Yet natural products can make no claim even if clinical trials show their effectiveness in the treatment, prevention, or cure of the same syndromes.

Are we so in love with our pain, so in love with the status quo that we will risk pain, injury or even death to keep it in our lives? Do you so love your plight that you will ignore the open doors out of your wretchedness? I mean really? Is the pleasure you derive from smoking greater than the pain of lung cancer, emphysema, or just not being able to move the way you want to?

As humans we are programmed from birth to move toward pleasure and away from pain. This is one of the astounding paradoxes of our time: We admire and worship heroes who put their lives on the line, who run back into burning buildings, follow criminals, or rush into the fire of battle. These heroes run into danger and into pain not away from it. Our history abounds with these stories. We love talking about these people and placing them on the pedestal of our respect. Yet when we have an everyday choice like not smoking, eating right, or changing our minds we run away like a bear was chasing us.

Why not run into the hard choice? Why not do the hard things the way your hero does? Why not accept the temporary pain of effort and vision for the long term joy of success and fulfillment? Why not? It is that hard? Is it so difficult to see the gain, the pleasure that you will deny yourself if continue on your empty path to status-quo ville.

This is all related to our turned upside down world. We are conditioned by our advertising, by our culture, by our socialization to accept mediocrity, to stay with the herd-think so we never have the chance to excel, to be the truly great, amazing and fantastic person we were put on this earth to be. If you step out into the light, if you step into a vision bigger than yourself, if you run into the burning building you are an outlier, a maverick, a hazard and a danger.

You want to change but it is hard, maybe you aren’t sure where to begin, maybe you are afraid of who might have to be if you change. Here are two different paths:
Path A---Go slow. Change one little thing. Choose a minor, hardly noticeable thing and see what happens. Make sure the sky doesn’t fall. If that works okay then maybe pick another ittle thing and see what happens with that one…and so on until you start on the really big ones. Don’t quit smoking…quit smoking 1 cigarette at a time. Don’t go on a diet and cut out all carbs or sugar…just stop eating a doughnut every morning and have a bagel and an orange instead. Little inconsequential things things not big scary things and the result over a year will be a major shift in who you are. If I turn the steering wheel of my car just 3 degrees in any one direction after a thousand miles I will have a whole new destination.

Path B---Begin with the end in mind. Who do you want to be at the end of 2011? What new habits do you want to cultivate, what things do you want to accomplish? Once you have the destination, the end in mind, you can reverse engineer the journey. If I want to be enrolled in a college education program in 2011, what steps must I take? Then map out those steps…do the research and start the journey one step at a time. Want to quit smoking? Set a date to be smoke free. Figure out what the best method may be for you. Try different things, talk to people, get hypnotized. This is the big step path…decide where you want to be and take the plunge.

Two different paths…one looks like putting your toes in one at a time and testing the water. The other looks like seeing the end of the pool and diving in. They will both work. It is really up to you.

The world is upside down. You can just accept it and trudge along for your 78.8 accepting whatever the fates, big pharma, big oil, big food, and big government give you and then you die. Or you can try to right the world either by standing on your head or shifting how you live in it. Your choice…there is no one right and true way but you know which way I lean.

See the world right side up … if you dare.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Takin out the trash

Sunday Story…Takin’ out the trash

Recently I wrote about getting rid of stuff. About how your stuff is limiting you and holding you back. The pile of papers on the table are sucking up energy and attention and creating a hole where your essence is getting sucked into. You don’t notice this while it is happening. And let’s be honest, you didn’t put the pile there to suck you dry. You put it there meaning to get to it later and then it grew and morphed into the black hole. Until you take care of it you won’t notice the detrimental effect it is having on your life.

Maybe it isn’t a pile of papers. Maybe it is some item that has an emotional attachment, a group of memories surrounding it. Every time you look at the item you remember that day or that person or that time when… It feels like if you dump the item you will be dumping the memories. Which we all know is not true. The memories do not live in the item. The memories live in your mind and the item is just a physical reminder of that experience. But the item is still taking up room in the garage or closet or wherever you have stashed it.

You might want a reminder of that happy occasion. You might want to remember a particular event. So how to get rid of the physical item that is creating clutter and sucking up energy in your life? It could be as easy as taking a picture of the item and writing a note to yourself about the experience…the things you want to remember, the smiles, the lights, and the delights of that moment in time. Put those items in a scrap book for your enjoyment later. The item is no longer taking up valuable real estate in your life and the memories are preserved. The act of doing this will create joy in your life. You will be releasing something that no longer serves you, you will be re-living the experience the item represents, and you will be preserving something that is important to you.

Or you might choose to just release the item and bless it on its journey. The memories will still be there. Granted they will fade and become less sharp and poignant but they will remain. In some ways this may be the better choice. Even the scrap book will contain a certain amount of psychic baggage and energy that may limit your ability to move forward. Better to just let it go with love and gratitude, especially if it is an item that can be used to create memories for someone else. This is the use it was intended. It was never intended to just gather dust in a corner of your garage. Let it go.

Then there is the stickier issue; the one about all the stuff rattling around in your brain. This stuff just can’t be thrown out and put on the curb for the trash man. What to do about the memories, hang ups, and stories that are holding you back, that are sucking up space on the hard drive in your brain. How do we release, how do we let these prickly little things go?

The process comes in 3 parts. First (and obviously) you must find them and decide they no longer serve you on your journey. They are not part of your purpose any longer. Second, you must enter a space of gratitude and happiness for whatever part those things played. They were important and served a valuable purpose at the time you created them and decided to keep them. Third, release them to the universe, the divine. Say it aloud…”Thank you for your service, I release you back to source.”

Unfortunately these memories won’t just be gone like the trash on pick up day. You may need to release them again and again. The stories you have told yourself? The ones about not being worthy, of not being lovable, or not being good enough my require you to rebuild new stories.

Let us suppose that your experience in life has you thinking you are not worthy of love. First go back to the experiences themselves. And take a snapshot of what actually happened. Not the story you are telling yourself but the actual event…as if there was a silent camera recording the event. Second, ask yourself if there isn’t another story you could create about that event? And third tell a new story. This is how we change the past by the way. No longer am I unworthy of being loved. Rather, I have kept my love safe until now, when it is ready to bloom and blossom under my new tutelage and with new stories.

I am not going to tell you this is easy. It is not. You have been living with these stories for many years. And these stories have been serving you well. They may have been keeping you safe for those years. They may have been integral to your growth and evolution as a human. But it is time to let them go, just like we give up the childish things as we grow, so too must we give up the stories we told ourselves when we are children. It is your life, your movie…don’t you want to write the script? What happened to you happened to you. It was not good nor was it bad. Good and bad are the stories, the judgments you are making around those events. Make a different judgment, tell a new story, one that empowers you and serves your adult, grown up purpose today, now.

I mean really, what have you got to lose? You can always go back to the old stories if you don’t like the new ones!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Stuff

Sunday Story…Stuff

I have a lot of stuff. Books, cds, knick knacks, bric-a-brac, tschotkes, junk, stuff. I have tried to eliminate a lot of my stuff but it just seems to continue to multiply. I fear it may take a concerted effort on my part to really get to the bottom of all my stuff and get rid of it. It will take a decision to jettison it, to release it back from where it came. And in that release I will let go of all the things that stuff carries along with it. The memories, the little tendrils of hope and pain and success and failure. Because tied up in all that stuff is a life that has been lived. Maybe that is why all that stuff is there…it represents the life that has already gone before.

There is other stuff I am carrying around in my life. It is the stuff I carry inside of me. The stuff I have picked up over the last few decades, especially when I was a little person. This stuff I picked up to keep me safe, to keep my hopes and dreams alive, to keep me functioning in a confusing and difficult world. This stuff is the decisions I made as 5 or 10 or 15 year old about the world and the way it works. And now at 50+ years old my life is still being ruled by the decision a 5 year old made based on some event (good or bad) that happened to him.

Huh? I mean seriously…a 5 year olds decision is running my life? Think about it…Maybe one of your parents left you at that age…your 5 year old made that mean something to him or her. That child made that event mean something…love isn’t real, people who love you leave, I am not worthy of love, I don’t count. And from that meaning that child begins to live a life. And he or she makes decisions based on those meanings. And for all the years forward the decision that get made are made with that meaning in mind.

This is an integral part of our human condition…we make meaning. We create a story about events so that we can make sense of the world and understand our place in it. These stories become our stuff. And our stuff becomes more ingrained into our lives and gets really difficult to change as time goes on. That is assuming we can even recognize it as stuff. Because we train ourselves to think that this stuff is real and real important to us. We even let this stuff become who we are…it defines us.

Does your furniture define you? Does the house you live in or the car you drive create the person you are? No they don’t. The person you are defines the house and the car not the other way around. But we let this other stuff, stuff we picked up 10 or 20 or 30 years ago drive our lives and set the parameters or who we are capable of being. What if you had other stuff? What if you decided today that the stuff you are carrying around isn’t really yours anymore? What if you just took all that stuff out to the curb on trash day and left it to be taken away? Now what?

Now you get to decide who and what you are to be. You see getting rid of that other stuff…the boxes in the garage, the bags hanging around in the closet, the piles of things gathering dust on the shelves are holding space for the things that might really please you, might really bring joy and harmony to your world. Getting rid of your psychic junk does the same thing…if you create a new meaning, new story about the events in your life you are changing your past. And when you change the past you change the future. By eliminating all that old stuff you get to make room for the stuff that is going to serve the you that is here now, not the you of 45 years ago. The question is…do you dare?

Do you have the courage to recreate your life? Do you have the courage to be the person you really and truly want to be? Most of us are so in love with our stuff, so enamored of the people that our stuff has had us become that chucking that stuff away is just too frightening. This is the creation of a new you, one that does and says things in an adult way in a way that serves the integrated whole.

Do you dare become who you really want to be? What will you do without all that stuff holding you down and molding you into some person a 5 year old thought it would be safe to be? Do you really want to go on being that person? It’s safe and comfortable, granted, but is it really serving you in a way that has you living a life of optimum health and fitness? You see health and fitness isn’t just about your physical body…it is the whole package...mind, body and soul. All healthy, all fit, all working at their very highest and best.

Why not take all that old stuff and put it on the curb? Start with the physical stuff…all the junk lying around your house and garage and get rid of it….make room for stuff that will be more fun and alive. Then go upstairs in your mind and start cleaning out those old stories and ancient movie reels and make room for some new ones. Then get started on your soul. What beliefs and suppositions are you walking around with that really aren’t yours anymore. You might as well find some new ones of those too.

Riddle me this Batman…Who are you going to be when you get to be who you really ought to be?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Me and my shadow

Sunday Story…Me and my shadow

I have a shadow self, several of them to be perfectly honest with you. My shadow lies very near the surface these days; it is not buried at all. I like my shadow; it is not scary or frightening any longer. I enjoy knowing and understanding this part of me that does not always live in the full light of day.

This was not always so. There were many years of my life that I was not aware of my shadow. That the actions and activities I was engaged in were part of some dark and devious parts of my psyche that I was not completely cognizant of. And there were many times parts of my shadow were running my life and I didn’t even know it until I awoke one day and wondered whose life I was living.

We all have a shadow. We all have bits of life that live under the rocks and detritus of our inner landscape. Some of them we buried ourselves. Some of them just got pushed away when they no longer served us and forgotten under some pile of trash in our mind. Often our forgotten hopes and dreams live in these shadows. Along with the parts of us that could make them happen. Sometimes they are the parts that we had to hide from the world to keep them safe. Sometimes they are the parts that we could not bring out due to fear.

I realize some of you may be saying, “Nope not me. No shadow over here. What you see is what you get.” Well…if that is so good for you. However you are a highly unusual individual, to be so completely aware and conscious and fully integrated…drop me a line because I want to spend a bunch of time with you. In my experience, however, (and that is all it is) people who claim not to have shadow are very scary indeed. Somehow they have managed to delude themselves, or hide those parts of their personalities from themselves so well that they can no longer see a shadow. The more light there is the more shadow there is. Congratulations you qualify as a very scary person in my world.

Often we do not realize what our shadow is or where it occurs. Maybe we don’t want to know, after all the shadows can be a bit scary. And turning on the light over there could reveal some things that are starkly unpleasant. Yet if we don’t do this work a couple things will be happening. As a matter of fact you might want to look this short list over and see if you recognize any of these things. If you do you are on the road to realizing just where and how your shadow is manifesting in your life.
• If you find yourself in addiction (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, love, etc) your shadow is in play
• If you are enabling someone else’s addictions, or you are being co-dependent your shadow is operating.
• If you find yourself having the same problem over and over again (jobs, people or more) it may be because your shadow is trying to get out and have you pay attention.
• If you have ever wondered how you ended up in the place where you are your shadow may have been driving the bus of your life before you woke up and took over the wheel.

Your shadow is not bad. Please do not think of your shadow as something you must get rid of or that you must cleanse or shake free of. Your shadow is there to serve you. Your shadow serves as very important foil for the parts of your personality that live more in the light. The light cannot exist without the dark and vice versa. The two of them are tied together like the sun and the moon and the sun loves the moon.

The idea is to understand your shadow and to befriend those places you are not aware of and to re-friend the ones you buried alive all those years ago. We turn the light on and start pulling the boxes out of the corners and opening them up to find out what we stored in them. And then we can start using them. Or at the very least to put them in their proper storage places and labeled to we can get at them when we want them.

You may be wondering how to find your shadow? It really isn’t very hard if you start looking. Every wonder why some people just irritate you? It is more than likely that person is carrying some part in the light that you keep in the shadow. Take a close look at those people and start exploring how you might be like them. Yes you might be like them in some little hidden outpost. Maybe someone you work with is especially challenging and it isn’t really about the work but it is about that person. That person may be dripping some of your shadow out that you really don’t like to face. Like they are arrogant and egotistical and well a royal pain but you are never like this, right? Here is s real zinger…our children often carry our shadows. They come into this world to teach us things about ourselves (and here you thought it was the other way around). The question is are you willing to pay attention and get the lesson or are you going to try to ignore it and hope it will all go away? Because it won’t go away.

The goal is to become ever more integrated; to enlist the shadow as an ally and put it to work for the greater good of your personality.

Of course you can ignore it and wonder why the universe keeps throwing the same drama and trauma in your path. Why your relationships keep showing up the same way with the same sort of problems. Maybe it really isn’t you at all. After all you aren’t the star of your own movie are you? You aren’t the common denominator in all your relationships. You aren’t the one with the drama…it always THEM, THEY are the problem.

Really? I mean really? Think about it. Maybe your shadow selves are having a bit of a joke in your life and you aren’t in on it! Or not. Maybe I am all wet here.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Food, Its not just for dinner anymore

Sunday Story…Food…it isn’t just for dinner anymore

Food is not just a matter of putting calories into your hopper. If it was we could just have some sort of gruel that would provide the necessary calories (energy) and nutrients and be good to go. Unfortunately it really isn’t that simple. And if it was maybe I could get away with eating ice cream and chocolate all day along with a multivitamin and that would be sufficient. Wouldn’t that be nice!

Food is tied up into our emotional being. If it wasn’t there would be no bulimics or anorexics. Weight would not be an issue because we would only eat to survive. Instead we have placed food in a position of soothing us, replacing love, and even meeting our need for companionship.

Food is just food. It is on one hand just some version of macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and fat) and on the other hand it is the responsible for how I feel, day to day and hour to hour. Some of this is chemical…sugar does certain things to my body chemistry, proteins break down in certain ways, carbohydrates create an insulin reaction in my body, fat gets processed through my gall bladder and liver. All of these amazing things are done automatically and without thought.

The thought comes in as we are deciding what and when and how to eat. And that is based on our social conditioning, the way we were raised, and the associations we bring from childhood about food in general and certain foods in particular.

Think for a moment about Thanksgiving (since we are coming upon that time again). There are things about your Thanksgiving experience that are uniquely yours. They are all tied up in the memories you have of Thanksgivings past...the smells, the sights, the fights, and the fetes. And for you, the meal will not be complete unless there is some particular thing on the table, prepared in a particular fashion. It really has very little to do with the food itself, with the calories present, the protein or fat or carbohydrates. And it has everything to do with your emotional body and the relationship you have with food.

How do you feel about the food you are about to eat right now? Is it just sustenance? Is it going to soothe some raging beast inside your soul? Is that piece of chocolate going to validate your existence? How about that fried chicken leg, doughnut, or box of crunch a munch? Why do we tie so much up in our food and then refuse to sit down and eat with gratitude and intention? Does it really make sense?

What I am saying, what I am proposing is to change, shift, transform your relationship with the food you eat. If the relationship you have is at all times healthy and fulfilling then don't change it. But if you find yourself craving certain foods...be it chocolate, peanut butter, candy, cookies, fried okra (?), or what have you, then it may be time to take a good look at what is standing behind those overwhelming desires. What did you miss out on? What did those foods supplant?Why those foods and not others?

One of the simplest ways to look at the issue deeply is to clean up your diet. Eliminate the anti-nutrients, the toxic foods, the empty calories and the industrialized edible food products from your diet. Notice I said simple...not easy. In an earlier iteration I wrote of deciding to eliminate these foods...sugar, dairy, processed food, industrialized food, grains, and even more radically...potatoes, legumes and beans. All of these things carry toxins and anti-nutrients into your body. Eliminate them for 30 days. Then re-introduce them one by one and see how your body feels and reacts when you do.

How does this shift your relationship with food? It will force to to become intentional about your food choices. It will force you to think about what you are going to eat and why. No longer will food be something to be forced down over the kitchen sink. And while you may choose to eat it in front of the television you will make the choice. Food will require planning and shopping and yes, some work. But it is the work of your soul...the work of nourishing your body and nurturing your spirit.

You will eat green stuff. Some meat, hopefully sourced from natural sources, nuts, seeds, fruits and healthy fats. Today I walked around a number of food vendors and decided to eat this exact way...the only thing I could not control was the sourcing of the material, for that I had to depend on the word of the vendor. I did not feel deprived that I wasn't eating pizza, or calzone, or dimsum, or some other food that may be tasty and unhealthy. Deprivation is in your mind. As I write this I can feel the food surging through my system, fueling my organs, energizing my cells and allowing my mind to race from idea to idea.

I am grateful for food that fuels my body. Grateful to the animals that died so I may eat, grateful to the humans that worked to bring it to me, grateful to live in a place where such abundance is readily available to me. This is what I mean when I talk about a healthy and healthful relationship with the food I eat. Bon appetit!

Namaste

John

“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”

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