Sitting in the Centre

"Compulsive eating was a way to distance myself from the way things were when they weren't how I wanted them to be. I didn't want to sit in the centre of my own life. To ask myself what was actually going on when I wanted to eat even when I wasn't hungry. Crazed with self-loathing and shame I vacillated between wanting to destroy myself and wanting to fix myself with the next best promise of losing thirty pounds in thirty days."
- Geneen Roth

If you have issues around food and eating, the above experience may be familiar to you. When I teach people about Intuitive Eating, this is one of the key ways in which I see them transform: Moving away from I don't want to sit in the centre of my own life and into: I AM the centre of my own life - right where I've always longed to be. I'm strong, able, joyful and at peace....and here I am, nested right in the centre of my own heart.

Living in the centre of your own life means being willing to be in touch with what you are thinking and feeling as you move through your day. Learning to accept all thoughts and feelings, as part of your here and now experience. But no longer driven to act on any of them. Simply allowing, investigating certain thoughts and feelings if they seem to have the power to disturb you or draw you into old patterns of behaviour. Looking at the root of them and then releasing them. Returning to the calm and steady core of your own life.

I've noticed, too that those who tend to sit on the outskirts of their own life (including me, for many years) often have a great deal of resentment towards others they feel are keeping them on the outskirts. What I learned for myself, was that no matter how much others seemed to reject me, minimize my gifts, be blind to my talents, by refusing to live in the centre of my life, I was rejecting myself more and that was the source of my pain.

This was the good news for me....as I progressed I saw that the habit of sitting on the edge of my life WAS just a habit and could be transformed at a speed that I was comfortable with.

And there was no-one to blame, including me.
Here's to sitting in the centre!
Love,
Dawn