Applying The Power of Now to Eating Disorder Recovery (Part Two)

Happy Sunday! Things have been slightly chaotic lately with lots of work and school deadlines and events, but the pretty April flowers have a way of making everything seem very storybook-like despite awful springtime allergies. I'm working on an essay right now about the relationship between environmental and human health (both mental and physical), and last week I hosted a fundraiser at school for an organization supporting artists in Guatemala and Nicaragua. (If you're interested in supporting these artists, too, visit wwww.pulseraproject.org.)

I'm excited to be sharing Part Two of Applying The Power of Now to Eating Disorder Recovery. Tolle's book can really be applied to anything in life, but the way it connects to eating disorders has been very powerful for me, and the section I'm reading now--all about the "inner body"--has profound implications for the disconnect that occurs in the throes of an eating disorder. In anorexia, my mind, body, and soul all separated from one another. My soul took the backseat to my mind--which was "infected" with insidious thoughts--and my body became an object that I had to control and obsess over.

UGH.

Yoga has been very helpful for me in recovery because it is focused on connecting the mind, body, and soul back together. "Yoga" literally means "to yoke"--pull together--and by linking breath, movement, and intention, I'm slowly figuring out how to stitch myself back into a whole spirit-person again. Eastern philosophy emphasizes the "bodymind," and if you're trying to recover, please remember that, though you aren't your physical body, there is a profound and beautiful connecting energy force coursing through you that links your physical self with your spiritual (true) self. Also remember that when Eckhart Tolle refers to "connecting to the body," he usually means the "inner body." We'll get to that now :).

The "inner body" is not part of the external world. Rather, it is the invisible energy running through you that makes you who you are and enables you to become "rooted within" (Tolle 98). Think of yourself as a tree. The inner body is the complex root systems coming up from the earth and spreading up and into your trunk.

Here are some excerpts from The Power of Now that may help make the concept of the inner body more understandable:

"Direct your attention into the body. Feel it from within. Is it alive?  . . . Can you feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body and gives vibrant life to every organ and every cell?" (p. 93)

"The art of inner-body awareness will develop into a completely new way of living, a state of permanent connectedness with Being, and will add a depth to your life that you have never known before." (p. 98)

Your inner body is "formless, limitless, and unfathomable" (Tolle 93), and you can connect with it at any moment to pull yourself out of your head. It's difficult to connect to the inner body because we've been so conditioned to be focused on the external and on the mind, but try to take a few moments every day to consciously tap into the energy field within yourself. Even if you can only do it for a second, it will help ground you, and over time, connecting within will become less of a challenge. Meditation and yoga or any other sort of mindful activity/exercise can strengthen your bond with your inner body, and I highly recommend picking up a hobby that encourages inner-body awareness.

<3 <3 <3

Applying The Power of Now to Eating Disorder Recovery (Part One)

Happy Saturday, loves! I hope that everyone is having a happy start to Spring. We don't really have any big festivals here where I live to honor the arrival of this season, but I like imagining the celebrations taking place around the world because it makes life feel more colorful. And Spring is a really good excuse for weaving flowers into my hair, which is something that I have never done but have always secretly wanted to do. Because being a faerie would be fun, right?

I'm continuing to read A New Earth and The Power of Now, and I have to say that these books have had a profound impact on how I perceive the whole "eating disorder recovery" process. Because of this, I'm going to be posting a little series of reflections on the principles of The Power of Now and how they relate to the healing journey.

(I'm going to pause really quickly here so that the words "healing journey" can sit with you for a moment. Rather than thinking of eating disorder recovery as loss of identity/major change/etc., think of it as what it is: recovery from an illness. You're healing your body. You're not "losing your fitness" or anything, okay? Making this shift from victim to warrior is incredibly empowering. I mean, right now we have the opportunity to change our lives for the better! An eating disorder is not a choice, but recovery is. It's healing. We're healing. Yay!)

I rediscovered The Power of Now while staring in desperation at the titles in my mum's medicine pantry. Many of the books there were collected by her and by my grandmum over a period of decades. They're coffee-stained and have broken spines and smell like cinnamon, and they remind me of a childhood spent rescuing earthworms from flooded streets and listening to my mum and grandmum read aloud from the works of Beatrix Potter, Marianne Williamson, and C.S. Lewis.

When I saw the faded binding of The Power of Now, I remembered the audio book version that my grandmum used to play during long car trips, and upon opening the book's cover, I discovered the words "best heart" scrawled in my five year-old handwriting. My grandmum used to always tell me to love with my "best heart," and seeing those words again was like a wake-up call. My "best heart" would in no way approve of an eating disorder. And neither would my grandmum.

Between school assignments and work, I've only gotten about a quarter of the way through The Power of Now, but the sections that I've read are already full of underlining and annotations. The concept of the "pain-body" has been particularly meaningful for me because Tolle's description of the pain-body is so applicable to eating disorders. The pain-body seeks to perpetuate itself by feeding on the sadness, anxiety, and fear that it creates.

"The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, 'become you,' and live through you."

WOW. Reading this, all my disordered eating patterns started to make sense. When I start digging a hole for myself--relapsing, getting absorbed in fear, etc.--it's really hard to pull myself out of that hole. The pain-body "feed[s] on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy," so the more anxious I become, the more power the pain-body gets. And then, because the pain-body convinces me that it's who I am, I just dig my hole deeper, not realizing that my eating disorder is trying to perpetuate itself. This all sounds pretty abstract and metaphysical, I know, but it's been incredibly eye-opening for me. I've finally started to take a step back and realize that my eating disorder is an illness. It's pain seeking pain, and I have the power to put an end to it.

"The pain-body . . . is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness." 

Next time, I'm going to write a bit about consciousness and awareness vs. unconsciousness and thinking. I hope that these posts will resonate with some of you, too, and I'm sending #kittyzen wishes.

<3 <3 <3