Above is a guided meditation to find emotional freedom through eating. Below is me reading the essay that follows: Most of us have a rather complicated relationship with food. We want it, it soothes us deeply, but it also makes us feel out of control. Most mindful eating instructions tell us to eat slowly, carefully, and just to notice the sensations of eating. Chew a single raisin 100 times before swallowing, simply noticing all the textures and tastes. This guidance can sometimes lead us to believe that eating mindfully requires us to feel no emotion when we eat. Rather than behaving like a starving, rabid jackal— we try to turn ourselves into a proper Victorian lady being stared down by a governess. It’s a high bar. Giving up, we go back to eating while standing in front of the fridge. The common approach to eating meditation treats eating like it’s emotionally neutral, when in fact, most people are experiencing some degree of anxiety, shame, or dissociation while eating. Why else would we compulsively distract ourselves from the pleasure of eating with reading, scrolling, working, or planning what we’ll do after the meal? We can trace this all the way back to being in the womb, when we were completely enveloped by another person’s body, which kept us safe and nourished. And when we were separated, our life could only continue through nourishment in the form of mother’s milk, or something that mimicked it. Warm food from our caregivers was what kept that sense of safety, belonging, nourishment, and love flowing through us, reassuring us that we were protected in this life. A nursing newborn can easily melt into a deep state of ecstatic serenity. So naturally, when we’re feeling lonely as adults, we reach for a cookie. But what we really want is a hug. On some level, we’re all just longing to crawl back up into the womb. But on top of that primal link, there’s social baggage. Our bodies are scrutinized by societal standards of beauty, and our ability to sculpt our bodies into perfection becomes a symbol of our worth. Body regulation becomes a public performance of control, which makes eating meditation feel exposing rather than calming. So we're stuck: food promises the safety we've always wanted, but so does having control and a hot bod. We can't have both. When we eat, we’re simultaneously feeling deeply comforted, and totally out of control and gross. We’re desperate for something, but feeling very conflicted about it. Eating is not just a pleasurable or neutral act, it’s loaded with all kinds of baggage and associations with our lovableness from as far back as we can recall. Of course we try to distract ourselves while we eat. You can’t just selectively feel only the good without the bad, so checking out becomes the workaround. Meditate Your Face Off is made possible because of you! To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Eating meditation, reframed Expect it to be hard. If you're noticing painful or unpleasant feelings, you're probably doing it right, not wrong. Usually what happens is we aren't enjoying the food, or we’re having a hard time moving slowly, and then we think we’ve failed. If we know it’s normal to encounter some hard s**t while eating, it gets easier to lean into the experience. And the more we lean in, the more insight we have. And the insight can be very, very freeing. Allow yourself to eat at a pace that feels natural, or at a pace that supports you in paying a bit more attention to the experience. Widen your attention while you eat, to include your emotional sphere. What are you feeling in your belly, or your chest, or your throat? Notice any tension, any places that don’t feel relaxed or open. No need to dig or unpack anything mentally, just bring your attention to more of your body, and make space for it to feel however it might be feeling. Turn towards it as if it’s a small, scared animal that just wants to be safe and loved. And there’s no need to do this for an extended period of time. Even just a couple seconds of tending to your body in this way can lead to insight. If you come to the end of the meal and you realize you were lost in thought the whole time, it’s the perfect time for insight. People usually don’t want to pay attention to the moment when something is over, especially something we’ve been looking forward to all morning, and believing (however unconsciously) would bring lasting satisfaction. Sit with the feelings of fullness, comfort, disappointment, regret, restlessness, or whatever it is you might have gotten used to avoiding by getting up and doing something else at the end of a meal. Just sit there for a few seconds and feel those sensations directly. All the while, use something to ground yourself. Look out a window, feel your feet on the floor. Don’t push yourself to stay with hard stuff when you’re feeling overwhelmed, but also know that you’re probably capable of staying with these feelings for longer than you realize. The more we practice like this, the more parts of ourselves begin to come home to something that can actually offer real safety and love. We can’t really rely on food, a perfect body, or a sense of control, for the safety and love we are seeking. But we can rely on mindful awareness itself. Mindfulness is not a muscle we can flex, it’s a substrate that holds us in loving attention, much like a womb. The love and connection we’ve been longing to return to has been waiting for us all along, right here in this very moment. So, as you eat, see if you can feel into a presence of love that is holding you in all of the complicated and painful feelings that can come up. The little kid inside you that’s scared, the desperation for control in this uncontrollable world, the lonely quest for safety and belonging in a harsh environment. Feel the earth beneath you. It is holding you. This food is the earth’s message: there is abundance in your life, you are supported, you are needed. You didn’t need to earn it, and you certainly didn’t have to have a hot bod to deserve it. Daylong Retreat with Matthew Brensilver On September 6th, join Matthew “Ol’ Dirty” Brensilver and me for a raucous, nerdy, hands-on look at ambition and self-compassion — in meditation and in life. This is our annual daylong retreat, where I publicly roast Matthew and then field a wave of people rushing to his defense. He keeps coming back for more. Online and in-person at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Awakening for Average People On September 20th, I’ll be offering a mini online retreat on one of my favorite topics: Getting free while being regular. This retreat is about how to make real progress towards awakening in the midst of every day life. Don’t let the idea that you need to be on retreat all the time or ordain in order to get free get the best of you! Meditation for Introverts I was recently on a podcast called The Introverted Leader with Greg Weinger, a podcast for quiet professionals who want to rise in leadership without pretending to be someone they’re not. This conversation was real, fun, and useful. I offered a pretty applicable demonstration of how mindfulness works in real time, without having to do a formal sit. Thanks Greg for having me! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe
