Mirrors and Media

It's been quite a bit of time since I've visited this space. New jobs, a new university, and a relative in the hospital have kept me away from any non-work-related writing, but I'm excited to be back today to share a few thoughts that have been helpful in battling the demons of anxiety and anorexia.

Image found on Her Campus

A few weeks ago, I experienced a (rather frightening) flash of reality when I watched a news clip about the dangerous side of the "K-Beauty" industry. Plastic surgery is in huge demand in South Korea, with Seoul considered to be the plastic surgery capital of the world, and among the most in-demand surgeries are double eyelid surgery and nose jobs.  Now, I'm not criticizing anyone who has had any of these (or any other) cosmetic procedures, but it does break my heart a bit to think that roughly 1/3 of young South Korean women have felt the need to alter their faces in order to be beautiful. (And I'm terrified by the fact that the walls of the Seoul metro station are covered in plastic surgery advertisements.)

Being part Chinese, I'm very aware of how difficult it can be to "live up to" some of the Asian beauty standards, and the shock and sadness that I experienced when learning about the popularity (and risks) of plastic surgery for so many people throughout South Korea made me think more seriously about every country's beauty standards and how unrealistic they are (ex. U.S. ideal of supermodel/fitness model with million dollar legs wearing skinny jeans and a white t-shirt).

We're surrounded by media influences. Phones. Televisions. Websites. Movies. Magazines. Whenever I take an objective look at life and realize how much time we spend exposed to advertising and (very edited) images, I question the sanity of the world. That said, though, I question my own sanity even more because I'm often very sucked into the "look this way, feel good" messaging we're inundated with. I know that what's really important is inside.

The soul.

The spirit.

The dreams that wake you up and make you feel inspired to do something more with your life.

But none of these things are glamorized the way that a "perfect" body is. Why can't average or easy be okay? Why do we need to recreate ourselves into something "better"?

Here's the answer: we don't need to. In fact, all we ever "need" to do is be kind. Kindness towards ourselves and others is the answer, and it always has been. Kindness is respecting your body and the bodies of others. Kindness is nourishing yourself properly. Kindness is getting sleep when you need it but also letting yourself stay up just a little too late to celebrate a friend's birthday. Kindness is getting vegetables but also baking muffins with your mum. Kindness is realizing that your world doesn't have to revolve around macros or calories in order for you to feel good.

"I believe we all have the opportunity to stand up as women in our ordinary everyday lives. I believe that we all have the power to replace hate with justice, open-heartedness and kindness. This doesn't have to be a seismic change that we all have to learn. I believe we, as humans, (gender aside for a moment) have the opportunity to combat hate because of the way we behave towards one another. Not just during seminal moments, but during our everyday, ordinary ones too.I believe we can start with kindness."-Emilia Clarke

<3 <3 <3

Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone

I like familiarity. It's comfortable and easy, and when every day is the same, there is little room for uncertainty.

But avoiding uncertainty is completely unsustainable. The only thing that's guaranteed in life is change, and if we aren't ready and willing to adapt to change, then we're setting ourselves up for a lot of stress.

One of the biggest challenges of eating disorder recovery is learning to embrace uncertainty. An eating disorder's survival relies largely on things being "controlled" and "predictable." We need to be able to plan our meals (or lack of meals) and regiment our exercise so that everything is totally "balanced" and we don't have to worry about our bodies just being the way they're meant to be. I mean, how on Earth can we trust our bodies to work normally when all the diet and fitness media tells us that our natural selves just aren't good enough?

For me, embracing change means adding extra food in (while also reducing the amount of time I spend running around for no reason) and then just letting my body work itself out. Embracing change means not constantly calculating calories in and calories out all the time. Embracing change means stepping WAY outside of my comfort zone and moving forward with my life instead of just staying where I am right now.

It's very tempting to stagnate, but it's not healthy. If any of us want to have fulfilling lives, we need to kick our eating disorders out and take back what is rightfully ours. We deserve the energy and motivation that will help us be positive forces in the world. It's impossible to be fully present when we expend at least 50% of our mental energy calculating calories and worrying about our workout routines.  Seriously, though. I've made some very sad choices in the name of my eating disorder, and it breaks my heart when I hear stories of people ruining family events and other fun experiences because of their worries about food and exercise.

The stair climber will always be there. The person sitting next to you right now won't.

I fully understand how difficult recovery is. I'm in it right now, and every day presents new obstacles. I'm constantly having to ask myself if I'm making fear-based or love-based choices, and as the semester draws to a close, I'm anticipating a summer that will bring some major life changes. But every day I tell myself that change and uncertainty aren't necessarily bad. Maybe they're actually good. If change means no longer worrying about calories and macros, feeling more fully alive, and being a force of good in the world, then bring it on.  

<3 <3 <3 

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

Confessions of a Cortisol Junkie

I come from a long line of cortisol junkies. We treat coffee and green tea like they're food, prefer intense cardio sessions to relaxing movements, stay up late working, and even wash our faces with anxious rapidity.

Where do we get all of this energy if we're eating sparingly and sleeping shallowly? Is it magic? A gift?

No. It's just cortisol.

Found on Pinterest.com

Cortisol is a hormone released by the adrenal cortex in times of stress. It's one of the key hormones of the "fight or flight" response, and, while it's very much necessary in the body, Mama Nature never intended for it to be our go-to fuel source. (As all of us eating disorder warriors need to recognize, the best go-to fuel source is food. Which means that survival depends on eating. Sigh.)

My tendency to run on cortisol (both literally and figuratively) has really contributed to my tendency to engage in restrictive eating behaviors. Feeling empty gives me energy, but what I'm learning is that the human body can only take so much depletion before it gives up. Chronic jaw issues, dry skin, and anxiety are some of the symptoms that are triggering me to realize that maybe the cortisol junkie lifestyle isn't very sustainable. And many of the women in my family who are also cortisol junkies have suffered a plethora of health conditions related to their adrenal systems.

Cortisol breaks down our bones and causes inflammation in our bodies, and when we're malnourished, we tend to have even more anxious, self-deprecating thoughts than we normally would.  Ever notice how not eating makes it more difficult to eat? Yeah. It's a vicious cycle, and the only way to break out of it is to make the conscious choice to not give into your desire for the cortisol-induced "high."  Think of yourself as a WARRIOR. Be STRONGER than whatever mean voice exists inside your mind.

You are not your thoughts, and whenever you're tempted to engage in an eating disorder behavior, remember that you are WONDER WOMAN, and you're flawless.

From giphy.com 

<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

Identity and Playing Small

After work today, I was feeding my cats and listening to Oprah and Eckhart Tolle Chapter 7 of A New Earth when I heard their conversation shift to eating disorders. A caller phoned in asking for advice on how to release her attachment to her "eating disorder identity," and her words sounded just like some of the ones that so often go through my mind. Once we've consciously acknowledged that we need to recover, how do we take the leap and let go of the false "safety" that an eating disorder provides?

In the podcast, Oprah and Eckhart explained that the answer can be found in becoming more present and embodied. That makes a lot of sense given that the whole premise of A New Earth is presence = awakening, but they took this idea further by saying that, when we're caught in the eating disorder identity, we're refusing to see ourselves as "bigger" than our eating disorder selves.  Oprah's advice was particularly powerful. She said that the eating disorder is "as big as you know yourself to be right now. And when you know yourself to be something more, you will choose to be the something more and not this 'little me' that has an eating disorder."

WOW. Eating disorders may feel safe and easy, but they aren't who we are, and even if we feel like they're "working" for us sometimes, they aren't. All eating disorders can do is hurt us, our relationships, and our lives, and we need to stop "playing small" so that we can recognize the awesomeness and potential that exist beyond the eating disorder world.

<3 <3 <3

A New Earth

Hi, friends! I realize that I neglected to write anything during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 25th to March 3rd), but midterm exams, transfer applications, and work somehow managed to absorb all my time. March 1st was a big deadline for me, my mum, and my brother, and the days leading up to it felt unusually foreboding. But I'm incredibly grateful to be getting a brief respite period now because it's Saturday morning and the imminence of my other work deadlines hasn't quite hit me yet.

The weather here lately has been a bit crazy--balmy one day and then snowy the next. I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by climate change. Flowers blooming much too early and frog eggs frozen in ice break my heart, and I'm overwhelmed by all that is happening in the world. I've recently applied to study Spanish and ESL Education because I hope to work with refugees, and it's clear from climate predictions that global warming is going to lead to the displacement of thousands because certain areas of the planet will become impossible to live in due to rising sea levels and temperatures. This will be very tragic for animals and plants, too. :(

But I don't mean to morbid or pessimistic here. While I clean, I often listen to podcasts, and Oprah's series with Eckhart Tolle about A New Earth has given me hope for things getting better. Right now, so many of us--often at no fault of our own--feel "separate" from those around us. It's difficult to recognize that we're really all very connected, but the awareness of our unity is what's required for us to make lasting changes. We need to acknowledge the fact that we're all in this together. We're all Earthlings together. We're all part of the incredible, frightening, and perplexing complexity that is life.  Hate, fear, anxiety . . . these are all just symptoms of disconnection. We need more hugs.

 

I try to remind myself of this whenever I'm entering the "Upside Down" (Stranger Things reference). That's the place my mind sometimes goes to when I let Bellatrix or Gollum go all "my precious" on disordered eating habits. When I step outside of myself and realize that I'm this little blip on a sphere floating in an endless universe, I remember that what's really important isn't whether or not I eat meals x hours apart. What's really important is that I recognize that we're all connected to each other and that the world needs more love in it. Love for ourselves, love for those around us . . . .

Love is healing.

<3 <3 <3