Deepening the Health-ing I Now Love -- Listening Anew

Dedication Health, the formal ‘program’ I have been vested in since June 10^th, concludes tomorrow. Or today, plus a celebration visit tomorrow at the gym. This week, anyway. I sit here with the ‘power tower’ behind me, inviting some strict pull-ups as I get antsy sitting for too long. A cup of half-caf coffee next to me, a little bit of almond-milk, like I enjoy in the afternoon. I find myself curious about what my intentions will be in these next weeks, even months. The formality of the health-journey with coach and community has provided a good container for me to learn habits that make me feel good, body soul and mind. I suspect simply the regularity at the gym will hold enough of this kind of container to continue on with maintaining what I’ve learned, and listening for anything new. So…what might be beckoning…? I wonder, with a sense of not-knowing in the least…

As I was driving home, I got curious about the journal/poem I remember writing one night, spring of 2018. I knew it had a number that I had been ashamed of, but I honestly could not remember what the number was. Poetic this seems to me now, I might add. I bounded upstairs when I got home, to look for it. Yes…easily found. And a smile. 207 was the name of the poem. I had had to visit the doctor for something that spring—maybe a bronchial bug or some such—and had been pushed onto the scale by an assertive nurse. I was surprised and embarrassed, a short slide into ashamed, for me. The highest weight I had ever seen on a scale that I stood on. Writing circle that night provided a window to face it, to bring my sketching and poetic mind to befriending what was, who I was, right at that moment. I drew the numbers 2-0-7 with space to write words within them. Then a mouth with fleshy lips, space enough for words to fit within them too.

How do numbers shame women? Why do we let them? I wrote at the top. In the sketched numbers and mouth, I wrote: (In the sketched 2-0-7) A perfect number for / All of Me is needed for All I get to do / Evenly and with LOVE. (then in the mouth) Shame began before I could talk /wordless/ It ended when I was birthed anew in her eyes. I remember hardly being able to speak these words aloud to my spirit-friend, Lisa, whose eyes I referenced, who loves me so fiercely that weight nor numbers nor body-image matter little, if at all. She was one of the most powerful ones to unlock the door for me, actually, letting all that I feared out of my body energies and into the world without harm. Unbeknownst to me at the time: it was an important event that night—loving my body at the heaviest it had ever been. Being seen and not ashamed. Knowing I was loved regardless, unconditionally, right then and there.

Now, I’d say that health was born in me at that moment, though I did not know the decisions I would be making in the months to come to live that journey into its harvest. I entered into CrossFit, and then Dedication Health, less to change what or who I was than to know what they know and see what it might feel like in my body. My beloved, over-200-pounds woman’s body.

Which has become nearly 30 pounds less than she was, more muscled than she used to be, and more energized and feeling-good than I have ever known before. There’s less of you to hug, said a friend recently, smiling. Yet my bodysoul is so much bigger, more expansive, steady, easy.

Today I celebrate ‘having arrived’ a bit, at a destination I had not necessarily crafted for myself, but which I receive with deep belly satisfaction and pleasure. I love how I get to eat, what I get to eat, and the precision of tracking on the app that allows me to tweak and confirm, hold the practice/container for myself. The Inbody ‘norms’ urge me to lose 6.4 lbs of body fat mass. Melissa and I talked about keeping an eye on my metabolic rate, which dropped about 40 cals/day. I find myself wondering whether my body does that in the autumn, preparing a bit for winter and more sedentary rhythms in the cold. I’ve only been measured in the height of summer, which IS my most active time of the year, period. Longer days, more light, better temperatures… I could begin to explore intermittent fasting twice a week from time to time, instead of once/week. Which I’m curious about to some extent. We talked about moving my net carbs down to more like 40 g/day, as I do tend to hit 50g or even a little more regularly.

I listen to each of these invitations, I here return to my opening pondering—what beckons for me in this next part of the health-ing journey? I am tickled pink with where I am. Do I want to be further down the road, with a potentially-perceived ‘more restrictive’ setting to my ‘norms’? Is the last 6 lbs of body fat worth tightening some of the specifics, so to ‘achieve’ what the InBody norms suggest? Is it a fine thing to arrive at one’s plateau and simply enjoy the view?

I may desire to do just that!

Regardless, I will sit and move with these invitations for a while, just doing what I know to do now. My instinct is to turn my attention to activity and some skill-building things—pull-ups have been on my view-screen for a while, but not with focused attention during my heaviest work-season (which slows down a little in three weeks); double-unders arose today as something that opened unexpectedly, and the cardio aspect attracts me; as has running, for that matter. My body just loves to move now, and I’m blessedly strain and injury free. (Part of me wants to write, ‘knock on wood and all that’). I’m enjoying the Mark Hyman reading that is before me, beginning to research some of the local-farm possibilities in my area, exploring with some new and on-plan cooking, even baking. Restricting my eating habits to the next level ‘inward’ feels just that, restrictive. Without a clear sense of discerning and valuing the end-goal—a norm given by an outside source, population-norms, etc.—it’s simply not my goal yet. And it might not become my goal at all. Or it may, if I find myself desiring in that direction...

It is good to receive the invitation, to listen with coach(es) and community, to participate in the regular rhythms of the gym and just enjoy the movement. Just show up. Just get better, as I discern in these next weeks, months.

Ember of Curiosity Under Heavy Logs of Disillusionment and Cynicism

My eye caught a glimpse of an email that arrived unexpectedly amid the rush to ‘airplane mode’ on the phone, for my flight. “Historic” “Task Force,” “Board decision” “repentance for participation in slavery” were some of the words I caught before the flight attendant came by to check on us all. An African-American woman, with striking hands, beautiful nails, well-trained kinky curls in her hair. I had little phone battery left, so turned it off and decided to read with interest when way opened after the flight. Pat Schneider’s ‘beginning again’ writing exercise asked me to sit with her question, “What matters, then?”

I find myself befuddled, to be honest, with seeds of hope and a slight ember of curiosity underneath the heavy logs of disillusionment and cynicism well familiar to the mid-career theological scholar. My relationship to Princeton Theological Seminary is a convoluted and conflicted one, rife with painful and pleasurable memories both. It was a time in which I made use of father’s-daughter transferences, becoming the model ‘good-girl’ with just enough innovation and charm-ster in me to be interesting and succeed in intellectual, social, and political ways. Unaware of the cost to my whole Self, I fed their hungers too, seeing now the cannibalism of my own work and voice by unconscious, well-intentioned father-figure scholars-mentors. Faithful men. Good-hearted men. Men doing what they had been trained to do, supporting me while relying upon my exuberance in less-healthy ways too.

I played my role well, at various stages of my 11 years there—student, intern, PhD candidate, administrator, adjunct/designated lecturer, student’s wife, etc.—until I didn’t play it well within the necessary norms. I advocated for a grant program, on behalf of all those we had said we would serve, forcing my direct supervisor’s hand in the privilege and political-capital I had with the standing president.  Unknowingly, I signed my exit papers in that passion, but not until the grant program (which was of course successfully funded/won) was well on its way. This institution paved the way for me to do what I do in theological education, for which I am inexpressibly thankful. This institution was also a desert without in-depth spiritual and emotional nourishment for me as a contemplative, as a woman, as an old-soul on an unknown but familiar path outward, forward, inward.

Ten years after my husband and I left Princeton for sacred callings in Dayton, Ohio, I was finally free of both attachment and aversion energies with the institution. I had traveled outward and inward paths to see more clearly the attachments I had had that drew me there in the first place: Ivy-league associations of privilege and intellectual prowess, commonplace in the Midwest, where I grew up; beautiful grounds and comfortable settings in which to explore my own intellectual interests; high acclamation in my family of origin, who boasted “Lisa’s at Princeton” in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Going to Princeton bought me intellectual, social, political, and familial capital that heightened my status and my interactions with those for whom those things mattered.

And I was as lonely as I ever knew anyone could be. I knew people’s call stories and their personas for ministry, but never felt known myself, or deeply connected to others around me. I attended chapel and learned the practices of worship for this community, but rarely felt seen or heard in who I was. All the forms of community were unfolding around me, but few touched the deepest parts of me. Until David Weadon. Until James Loder. Until Wentzel van Huyssteen. Three men who saw my musical heart, my love of philosophy and science. Three men who were lonely in their own ways, encased in the privileges and politics of a functional-academic ‘community’ with high performative norms.

Some of this loneliness was staved off when I reconnected with my first-love from college-days and got married. My husband and I were our own emotional island in a sea of polite, lonely Presbyterians, most of whom would never articulate a loneliness, deep to the bone. The entire eleven years I was in Princeton, only one person ever used the word ‘love’ in a personal-relationship way, like good friends say to one another, or prayerful Christians share amidst suffering. The only one to speak love to me in Princeton was the man I imported into the town by marrying him, my husband. Eleven years of bible-studies and prayer meetings and deep conversations…not once did I ever hear the words, “I love you Lisa.” Not even from a close friend. It simply wasn't the culture of the place at the time to honor deep feelings so vulnerably.

So when it was finally time for me to depart, for me to be freed from my successes, trials and tribulations in this academic community, I had a huge aversion energy that would erupt whenever any reference to Princeton arose, or Princeton would contact us as well-oiled marketing machines do—calls for money, etc. I had no awareness of how bound I was in this negative energy, how overwhelming it was of everything I was trying to grow into as a young theological scholar. Eventually, along with the help of a Buddhist sangha and a deep dive into Buddhist practice, I began to see that aversion was simply the negative expression of attachment. I was still deeply attached to Princeton in its sizeable gifts to me and its deep body wounds as a woman in the fields of theological education, practical theology in particular. I began to do the work of healing into non-attachment, of release and relinquishment, of acceptance and allowance.

[One amusement in this path was having my eldest 1^st-cousin marry the fellow who would then become the President of Princeton Seminary. After ten years of deep inner work to finally be free of the institution in question, it freakin’ married into my family. I have very little contact with that cousin, though I see her Facebook feed from time to time, catching glimpses of her implicit work offered to that institution today. This convergence has often brought discomfort for me, for a variety of reasons. One, my husband and I have refused all contact with the institution, including offering financial support to it. Money and privilege are the problem and wounding of community, in our experience of the place, so though we actively support other institutions (college and other), we have not given a cent to Princeton. Over the years, I have written the alumni/ae and development directors to inquire if there are other ways to give back that would honor our experience of Princeton’s light and shadow sides. None has ever responded with any communal or truly relational connection, rather proving our point. Princeton is not about relationship or community in our experience; it is about privilege, performance, and a certain brand of Presbyterianism I have since left behind.]

But…having it marry into my family did facilitate the inner and outer work to “Let Princeton be Princeton,” to allow and honor it to be just as it was, and to have no attraction to it, nor any aversion to it. Equanimity. Non-attachment.

Christian sisters and brothers might ask me at this point whether this kind of work was really about forgiveness and reconciliation…but my gut-instinct is to say, “No, it has not been of that ilk at all.” That work would require repentance and alteration of behavior, at a level that human institutions are simply unable to manifest at this point, unconscious and unwilling to look hard at systemic and ‘socially architectural’ aspects of institutional life and function. I do not know of any institutions, to be honest, that have repented—of the treatment of women for centuries, of the dehumanization of people of color, of the rape and pillage of the land. Institutions are corporate entities without personal characteristics (though I think another cousin has made a philosophical case for corporations as ‘persons’ in our legal currents today…Not sure…).

So perhaps that is the seed of the ember of curiosity and even hope? Is this the energy of ‘what matters’ to me today?

I read, briefly, an email that spoke of institutional repentance written by a man 'in my own family' yet with whom I am very careful to cloak association. It has pricked a scar in my bodysoul that I haven’t had to tend or even consider for years now. This scar that has spear-headed so much of what I do and how I do it today: circle-work, creating alternative realities because the current ‘wine-skins’ or ‘containers’ I know are declining and sinking into irrelevance (for me). One elder’s words that landed deeply in my bodysoul: Don’t go to war with the way things are; create alternative realities. This thickened scar-skin has allowed me to delve deeply into collaboratively-birthing circle communities in Dayton and Columbus Ohio. This sizeable disillusionment has driven an idealism and passion to create alternative realities of human collectives able to be fully human—being-with, present to, strong-for the ‘other,’ the wounded, the silenced.

Over these two decades, then, Princeton became blessedly irrelevant and non-existent for me. I demur my association with the place. I refuse it entrance into my awareness or my work, mostly because its spiritual vacuity (for me) makes it unnecessary and not of much interest.

And yet...and yet... I read: An institution is repenting of its participation and support of slavery in our country’s history. A place left purposefully in my past has acted within a stream of my own values and current spiritual journey-work.  Hmmmm….

Food, Boundaries, Healing Energies in the World

Boundaries matter. Knowing where my energies extend to (and no further), knowing where another’s energy field begins in proximity to my own, matters. Distinguishing and honoring both requires a highly sensitized discernment so very new to me today. Most of us in today’s rather secular, materialistic culture(s) are not adept at discerning these energetic boundaries. The reasons for this are vast and varied, of course.

Speaking only for myself—I was reared in a highly cognitive, deeply rational home with a strong religious faith and a rather clinical ‘see it, believe it’ lens on the body. Getting curious about and exploring something so airy-fairy as ‘energetic fields’ would send my father off the skeptical disdainful deep end. He could hardly sit for a whole lunch with a woman who practiced Qigong and wanted to talk with him about her experience. So growing up, I had no way to really know my own boundaries amidst the spiritual and psychological hungers of my parents, those around me. I didn’t become sensitized enough to feel my own energetic field and boundaries until the last 1-2 years. I’m 50 years old.

I don’t want or need to convince anyone about energetic fields, or how they could feasibly be understood as your ‘soul,’ within which your body is nourished (or not). What I’m interested in is the role food can play in honoring good, healthy boundaries—for oneself, for others.

Food is energy. Whatever kind you may choose, it is ostensibly to nourish your cells, your bones, your blood so you have energy to be as active as you want, to do what you dream of doing with your ‘one wild and precious life.’ (Mary Oliver). I have had a wonky relationship with food my entire life, with its role much beyond energy and nourishment.

My storyline: I inherited my mother’s deep fear of scarcity and ‘not-enough.’ She grew up in a rough part of Detroit, one of 6 children in a truck-driver’s salaried family. She knows what it is to not have enough. She and my father have lived a modest but increasingly well-privileged life with an internist’s and school teacher’s salaries. I have never wanted for anything material (except my sophomore year in college when I ran out of money 2 days before my mom was to come pick my up. I used my credit cards at the bookstore to make it to the end). But I have had a deep belly fear of not enough. Yet I was also reared in a fairly rigid religious home with a high-shame ethic. Eating ‘too much,’ or ‘wanting too much,’ was a ready shame trigger. I remember coming home from school, shaky hungry (I now know from high carb, high salt diet), and being refused any food, or shamed for eating too much before dinner.

As a result, I have a hard-to-hit, razor-thin ‘sweet spot’ between ‘not enough’ and ‘too much.’ Food choices have always been highly charged, emotionally-driven, and tinged with shame. These parallel similar body-judgments, many of which were simply my mother’s projections about her own body experiences: too big, too much, not attractive, high shame. I entered into a ‘nutrition re-education’ health program this past summer precisely to see if ‘food-freedom’ could be a fruit of this learning, re-learning. And it has been. I know a freedom with food that I have never known before. Shame rarely comes from the inside of me anymore. When it is directed at me from the outside, which still sometimes happens, I have a strong body-center-awareness of my own freedom, my own energetic field. I can even sometimes deflect it now, knowing who and how I am in my body, for me.

I know my own energetic boundaries when I live into the food-choices that I can feel are good and wise for my own cells, bones, blood, body. What I was taught, what we knew when I was growing up, was simply not accurate for this woman’s body (perhaps most human bodies, but that’s not my argument or intent to surmise here). What I know now, how I know to choose my nourishment now, sensitizes my body to know its boundaries, its expansiveness and its contractions when I’m weary. When I’m in a highly social environment, surrounded by people choosing all kinds of foods for themselves, I can feel where I extend to, where my field ‘ends’...if I am choosing well for me.

What intrigues me is that when I choose as another is eating, particularly if s/he is choosing something that I know my body will not be nourished by, I lose my felt-sense of where my energetic field ends and where his/hers begins. For the longest time, my husband and I would eat almost exactly the same foods and similar portion sizes. It’s important for his sense of generosity and hospitality to serve plates overflowing with food. When I would demur and move my portions to half-size, he would get offended and feel shamed or that his artistry/offerings were unappreciated. Given my own empathic self, my own deep feeling ways, it was often more important to avoid his displeasure than to listen to my own body. Same is true with cocktail hour. He can pour a stiff drink, and it was easiest simply to receive it, usually drinking more than I wanted. So my boundaries would diffuse and while I then felt connected to him in a way I recognized and even thought I appreciated, I would lose my own sense of center. 

I have used food as this energetic connector for most of my life. It is what so much table fellowship in religious communities is built on, after all. Families and friends sharing meals and festivities together. What a beautiful thing, and a web of community building we need to do more of in our highly fragmented civic spaces today. And yet, those who are highly sensitized to the energies of others—empaths, healers, deep-feeling bodies of all genders—often find themselves faced with challenging food choices and confusions when surrounded by others.

The new learning for me is that when I am strongest in my own center, I can be more present and more connected with whomever I’m with than if I allow my own boundaries to diffuse and cave to whatever their food choices are. How odd it has seemed, to feel connected through my body not beyond it or despite it.

So…it means I’m willing to withstand the social pressures a preacher’s wife might face, for instance, at a dinner party of pizza and beer or some marvelously named sugary alcoholic drinks (Jamaican Me Crazy…love that clever wordplay). Or pack my own nourishment when I travel with my husband, minimizing the ‘special diet’ characteristics necessary in restaurants, requests that embarrass his Swedish-Lutheran sensibilities (in which you never ask for what you actually need/want, but only what might be offered or decided by the other…). What I’m learning is that I am able to listen to my body deeply enough now to consciously choose indulgences I want to enjoy, in a rhythm that is sparse enough to make them ‘special occasions’ and indulgent. The rest of the time, I know what helps my body feel the best and be as active as I know I want to be now. As a result, I’m more attuned to my own center, and more present with whomever I am with, able to offer and celebrate whatever they want to eat, as they so desire.

I suspect my capacity to participate in healing work in the world is expanding, as my body gets stronger within its bodysoul field. 

Food is energy. 

Good food strengthens the body so to expand and shine in the world in a way that most of our corporate-created foods simply cannot provide. 

Good food means a greater chance of healthy boundaries, for self and for other.

Good and Shy-Inconvenient...and GOOD

It is a good (and shy & inconvenient) thing that we cannot see ourselves accurately.

Today in my 8 o’clock CrossFit haven, I did my first Toes-to-Bar…basically. My toes actually missed the bar, going above the bar, but that’s because I need to hold my lats differently, trust my core more than I did, and as always, stay out of my head. It’s a matter of placement now, not ‘can I’? It’s a matter of stringing them together, keeping the form and awareness that when I weary, I return to knee-tucks until next time.

I felt the energy in my body with the first knee-tuck I did, actually. Startled myself! It was a fasting afternoon/evening/morning, so I was unsure how the upper body stuff would feel this morning. (What is it about intermittent fasting that brings such good feeling and even surprising levels of energy at the tail end of it? I dunno…but I’m beginning to recognize the pattern…). The scap pulls felt cold, a bit stiff, so I relaxed a little and went ‘careful’ for the warm-up. The first jump up to the rig was fun and my knees went up without too much thought.

I’m appreciating more the implicit yet persistent ways Melissa invites movement forward or ‘more.’  The DB snatches yesterday, I did move up to the 25 DBs, and she was right there to remind me to stay in my core. It changed what it felt like, to do the movement—slower, but more disciplined. Then she approached me today with the T2B observation.

I know I’m a touchy one to approach too, with as many shame-land-mines as I’ve inherited in my body-journey. But again it was fun…to be seen, to be pushed and seen in ways I didn’t see myself yet. That’s the good part, which is also inconvenient in ‘stepping out’ or ‘trying something new.’ When someone 'sees you' into a stronger or more expansive you, you still have to make the choice to enter in...or not. I felt it in my body, but could not 'see myself' to actually try the T2B.

I know I’d not be where I am, in my professional work or in my body journey, without this good and inconvenient blessing of ‘being seen.’ Which was so raw and vulnerable 14 months ago. A good day to pause for a cup of coffee, coffee shop blog-post, and honor that what I need is indeed finding me. Nothing inconvenient about tending one’s own deep belly breath and expanding awareness of the adventures that await, if we’re brave enough to show up and we surround ourselves with peeps who truly support us in our yearnings and imaginings, even dreams. Thank heavens we canNOT see ourselves accurately then!

What dream might arrive in me these next weeks? I wonder…

Bringing My Body to Portland

I think it’s time for me to watch Last of the Mohicans again. I remember seeing this in the theater when it first came out. Big screen, surround sound, Daniel Day Lewis in a loin-cloth in the Midwestern frontier of O-HI-O. I saw it several times, actually. I was mesmerized not by Daniel Day-Lewis, interestingly enough, but by the stories of the women awakening to freedom, each woman her own freedom. Cora, a dark-haired British woman, to a life on the frontier without her British fiancée (whom she loved but with whom she could not enter into the confines of 18^th-century marriage); her fair-haired sister, to a choice of freedom in the here-after, alongside her gentle-souled love just murdered by a Huron warrior.

I can already hear my husband with his knowing and accepting smile: No projections there…none. Which, of course, is true. I was so enamored by the movie that I checked the Fenimore Cooper classic book out of my local library, so to enjoy the story in more ‘slow-motion’ and appreciation. I’ll save you the trouble here: Cooper’s literature classic does not tell the story of these women coming into their own freedom. Not even close.

Driving to the gym this morning, however, I heard the voice of one of the women in the film in my head. Cora’s voice: “I would rather make the gravest of mistakes than surrender my own judgment.” Even writing it out, I sit straighter, feel taller, and sense a groundedness in my body I’ve come to cherish in these recent days.

Soon I will be walking off the plane in Portland, Oregon, to visit my parents in their new life there, their new apartment home. I am curious about how they will react when they see me. I suppose I should simply prepare myself with detachment and as few expectations as I can muster. That’s the best practice with me and my folks these days. I do best with them when I don’t need anything from them, emotionally or spiritually. I’ve long not needed anything from them in most other categories—economic, intellectual, etc.—determined as I have been for my own independence, right out of college. But this time, I admit I am curious for internal and external reasons.

Internal reasons: I am the happiest I have ever been in my body. Ever. I finally feel like I have a healthy relationship with food for the first time in my life. I have learned how to nourish myself, and to discern—really discern—what my body prefers in increasingly subtle-body sensate ways. I’ve landed in a CrossFit community that circles up each day, several times a day, to invite movement and health, challenge and safety. Adult recess, I often call it. I get to play on the jungle gym and we sometimes play games. I hear encouragement to ‘just get better,’ and the freedom to define what that means for me, that day. My life has a rhythm to it that I love, and I can be present in my body in ways I’ve never known how.

If I were to guess, based upon past experiences: My father’s eyes will widen and he will be emphatic in a breathy-body-voice sort of way about how I look when he gives me a hug hello. He will be surprised and affirming in a loud sort of way, both touching my previous needs for his approval and my felt-sensibility that who and how I was before was somehow lacking. He clearly prefers the skinny, the trim, the … whatever.

My mother will give me a hug and murmur her own version of whatever he does. We’ll have the familiar love-hate dance we’ve shared forever about our body-type. I inherited my mother’s body-type and shape, which is both a beautiful way to feel connected with her AND a difficult challenge. She’s hated her body for as long as I can remember, naming deficiencies often. As a young girl growing up, I never could deflect those judgments, ingesting and internalizing them instead. Now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, in a body shape that perhaps at one time would have been like her own…but is, no longer…but still is, in type or shape.

External reasons:  The curiosity arises because so much of what I knew, what we know about nutrition and medical care of human beings, is evolving and changing within those populations that are allowing the change. What we were ‘sold and told’ in the 1950’s-1970’s is simply wrong, which has led to the rise (some say epidemic) of obesity, heart disease, cancer, and more.  The medical care in the United States is some of the most challenging in the world, largely because of the bed-fellow relationship of medical-research science, government-funding, capitalism and its  consumerist markets, global corporations, and ‘managed-care’ or insurance-impacting practices of care, diagnosis, and compensations. It is overwhelmingly difficult to get uncomplicated information and to make health-care decisions that you feel you can trust, as an ordinary human being living life and love at the grass-roots level of ‘what I know.’

All of this undergirds and instigates curiosity about a now-familiar contemporary dynamic that touches me and my life at multiple levels—with my family of origin, in my marriage, in my work-world.  Much of what my father, the internist and ‘must be right’ man knew and stewarded was wrong. The father figure was simply wrong, even if good intentioned and working with what medical and governmental science-institutions said at the time. He was wrong, through no fault of his own. I can count on my fingers the number of times in my 50 years of life I’ve heard my father say, without resistance or humor, “Yep, I was really wrong about that.” He doesn’t know who he is unless he is explaining something to someone (man-splaining, we call it now) or offering medical expertise in family, school, or doctor’s office settings.

Living some “nutrition-re-education” practices and choices in these last 14 months or so, I now have a lived-trajectory of what I know about my body, what nourishes my body, what makes my body feel good and most active, strong, and healthy. I had my annual physical yesterday, celebrating within myself this new place I’ve found within me and within a supportive community. Except we spent a good chunk of time discussing how my cholesterol levels had jumped about 25 points, within range but on the higher end of ‘the latest standards.’ My doctor, whom I do appreciate for many reasons, encouraged me to consider two different kinds of diets—Mediterranean or South-Beach. She wasn’t listening to me and what I know about my body now. The food-freedom I have. What I am finding in my own experience. As a matter of fact, she didn't even ask much about it.

So…I have two books to read this weekend—one, a more science-heavy expression of ‘medical-science-research’ on how Fat and Cholesterol Don’t Cause Heart Attacks: And Statins Are Not the Solution. (Columbus Publishers Ltd  2016) and the other, a more-popularist expression text, The Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won’t Prevent Heart Disease—and the Statin-Free Plan that Will (Fair Winds Press, 2012).

The challenges here are multi-faceted for me. I no longer trust my father’s medical expertise in areas of nutrition, women’s health, and overall health-wholeness. That is such a huge statement, I can hardly withstand the dissonance inside for how I used to live in my family’s sense of identity and giftedness. Not only are ‘the brothers’ a focal point of authority and significance, my father is the recognized medical authority about most everything. Except in the instances of what I know now, he was simply wrong. Secondly, I can see more how my own doctor works within basic tropes of ‘established medical knowledge’ that, at least for nutrition and health-wholeness, no longer suffice. I know something else or differently in my own body. She did not know how to ask about what I clearly knew and we spent most of our time in a supposition of 'what she knew,' which was not relevant to me or what I know now. Finally, reading these books then offers me invitation to learn more in my cognitive and intellectual awareness things that I don’t know how to articulate yet. I do not and will not presume to challenge my father’s (or my husband’s) clear convictions rooted in (what I would call out-dated) medical science…AND…I want to ingest deeply what this strand of argument/discourse has to offer what I know in my own body. The trick, of course, will be not to ‘bite the hook’ of intellectual debate with either of them. This reading is for me, for me and my body alone.

So it's time to watch the movie again: “I would rather make the gravest of mistakes than surrender my own judgment.” ~ Cora Munro, Last of the Mohicans. 

[For those who desire critical-assessment in the larger literature/science world of ‘information-curation,’ assessing the validity/legitimation of information: Columbus Publishing, Ltd is an independent publisher, in the UK, with motto “because the world is not flat; specializes in ‘books that challenge’… Fair Winds Press is also an independent press located in Beverly, Massachusetts, originally part of the Rockport Publishing Group, now owned by Quarto, which has a global market in health and fitness publishing. Most medical-establishment, university-research-discourse authors and leaders would hold these publishing sources with high suspicion and skepticism. "Independent publishing" tends to be disregarded as not-peer-reviewed, so not rigorous in contributing to objective human knowledge.]

Dedication Health -- Part II -- Journeying Ever Onward

The first gathering we had two months ago, we were asked the question of what brought us to the table, to the program. I don’t remember what I said, but I was aware I wasn’t very articulate about it. Later that night, I sat with a journal and wrote my intentions for the Dedication Health journey I was undertaking. Here's what arose for me...

1)  I seek food-freedom in my own mental life. Cravings, thinking about food, emotionally-driven eating (and drinking)… I desire freedom from the psychological dynamics surrounding food and drink in my life. Especially fear—of not having enough, lack, or of eating too much(shamed in this way in my early years, suffering hypoglycemic symptoms from high-fat/high-carb/high salt processed foods). I want to know what my body feelswhen I am at my most mindful and supported-healthy. What does it feel like to be mindful yet free, active as much as I desire?

2)  A secondary aim is to reconcile myself with my abdomen. May sound strange or even overdramatic, but most of my own self-loathing lives there. My mother’s body shape—which I inherited—is one I heard condemned and belittled, shamed and refused all my young and early adulthood years. My mother hates her own body. She has never truly embodied herself in a way I could observe except in critical judgment…so I have had to work overtime to simply enter in and the be in my own body with compassion and hope for my own shy beauty. If these ten weeks could move me toward acceptance of my abdomen, no matter how it looks, that would be fantastic.

3)  At the end of these ten weeks, I want to have practices and habits I can carry into my busy seasons of many work hours. I am glad for the summer’s spaciousness to try new recipes and tend my body’s needs with focus and time. Carrying what I learn into a busy autumn schedule? I want to learn with that in mind, shortcuts via preparations on weekends, etc. 

I was not overly interested in losing weight, which is a roller-coaster mountain I've learned simply to not climb.  I had not stepped on a scale for the last 2.5 years, including the doctor's office. "I don't do that anymore," I told the nurse who was startled. "It will take me four days to recover my sense of equanimity and quiet the voices screaming in my head from our culture that despises and objectifies my woman's body." The nurse never asked me again. :) But by the time this DH journey opened, I was willing to step on the scale and enter into the measurements bit. And they do tell a story of this journey for me, but not the most salient details of the story. They are fruits I had not desired, nor really seeded, but grew anyway.

Here, on this end of the journey, I’m smiling with those fruits  and a sense of movement in the intentions I named above. I have felt more food-free these last ten weeks than I can remember. [Well, except for the time I keep a kosher home for 4 weeks, learning about Jewish observance and the wisdom of that practice for my sabbatical-work.] You’d think that tracking our food and the refusal of processed food would be restrictive and isolating, right? Christians often think Jews are legalistic and obsessed with silly things like food-kashrut observance. Here’s another plug for body-teachings: try it for yourself with an open heart and a curiosity of spirit. Soften your resistance inside and truly receive, allow…wisdom from other traditions than what you know. I would put big money on your learning, because humans have shown this for thousands of years: a communal structure gives a human being freedom to be connected to other things, deeper matters, things that connect him/her to his/her best self. Counter-intuitive and Christians especially often resist this wisdom lineage, relying on Christian-centric tropes from authorities invested in differentiating their own tradition. Try it. Stay in your own body and learn what your body has to say when it’s not silenced or numbed.

These ten weeks, I have felt such incredible food freedom. I don’t have cravings much at all, though of course some arise. Then I choose with more consciousness than I once had. But I don’t even really see the billboards of food or fast-food restaurants to seed the craving. I frequent those establishments less, if at all.  I don’t feel fear about whether my body will make it home for her next meal, shaky-hungry and riding the carbs roller-coaster. Startling to me, I don’t much desire the foods I am supposedly ‘giving up’ for this summer journey. The sensation of desire has changed, softened, opened up into an invitation not driven by fear or social pressure. Which opens up spaces for me to feel and be connected to other things I value…I feel freedom.

I am reconciling with my abdomen, bit by bit. Here the numbers of body-measurements have helped, though these were not what I was intending or aiming for in the end. Yes, I’m down 12 pounds in DH journey, 20 lbs since starting CrossFit, and I have lost 5% bodyfat. Those who know and love me mirror the difference they can see in my physical body. More important to me, those who know and love me mirror the light in my eyes they notice, more free than I’ve been. I can more easily see my body when I step out of the shower. Used to be I’d avert my eyes, a sense of shame arising. That lessens and lessens, the more of this kind of integrative inner work I do. So I’m reconciling with my abdomen, more and more. Do negative voices still arise here? Yes. [Interestingly, they arise more if I’ve had a glass of wine or a martini. Doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy those pleasures from time to time, but it’s interesting to me to notice aloud that they come with a possibility of negative self-talk and whiffs of self-loathing]. Do these voices have the last word? No. My body continues to lead me and I practice with a community becoming more and more conscious. Both are louder and more effective than my negative voices.

Finally, I have learned information I can trust because I can feel it and see it in my own body. Did I simply supplant reigning authorities with the authority of the CrossFit coach, Melissa? No, though we have a smiling and laughing refrain that Melissa is always right. (We laugh about it and enjoy it...AND I suspect that can get heavy from time to time! It does for me, always being right in my worlds... :):):) Though my husband would disagree, of course). Regardless, I appreciate deeply her tenacity and her wisdom. She has found her calling and her passion in life, bringing it to the world alongside her husband and her family. But I learned to trust this information about the sugar overwhelm and Type-2 Diabetes epidemic unfolding, the cholesterol myth and statins business-bottom-line, the difference processed food makes in a human body’s sense/reality of well-being because I learned it in my own body. 

The pictures here and the numbers tell a journey that can be quantified, yes--ten week ago, then four weeks into the journey, then this morning, at the conclusion (really) of the ten weeks (though actually nine weeks so far). It’s a nice happy-ending journey that pleases me at this time in my life. My body is happy and I feel better than I can ever remember feeling inside--energy, steadiness, freedom, curiosity--all after a fabulous weekend in Santa Fe and Albuquerque with my husband. I enjoyed homemade sangria, some of the best Carne Adovada I have ever tasted and more New Mexican fare in moderation. Yet the work for me was learning to love my body when I was 208 pounds and trapped in habits of self-loathing and shame. I did all that before I got to CrossFit, by learning to honor and listen to my own body and its innate wisdom, leading me slowly but surely out of life-denying habits into life-affirming ones. So if circumstances were to change and my body were to return to a heavier weight and a previous appearance, I would still and do love this journey of being human.

That said, CrossFit Dedication and Dedication Health have provided me precisely the ‘container’ and the community I was seeking at a time when my body was trying to teach me things my mind and my worldview, my family’s habits and information-gorge resistance, would never have given me. My husband’s body-journey is different and he need not join me in all these things to be present with me in our life together. Do I want the fruits of my journey for him, for his freedom and body-love and more? Of course I do. I love him. AND he has to learn from his own body, not me. I am not an authority or expert for anyone, nor should anyone be. 

Return to the body. Learn to listen curiously and openly for what nature is saying through your body…for a better you, a better day, a better world.

Dedication Health -- A Pause, in Retrospect

In my fiftieth year, I may have finally learned how my body and I can get along with food, even thrive with food, in both healthy sustenance and the delights of indulgence. Better late than not at all, I figure, and yet I’m lamentably amused too. Only when I turned fifty? Really?

No blame, no shame, no harm, no foul to all those who nourished me the best they knew how in my younger years. None of that even for myself, in my five decades of trying to nourish myself. Yet I am saddened and a little angry to have unknown for so long…a primal facet of being human in a body and I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know… Argh.

And…We live in a time of information-gorge, which can often mean misleading information and unending debates aboutinformation. The movement into responsive action oninformation faces internal and external resistance hard for a person to overcome. How do you know whom to trust? Is the challenge of lifestyle change worth it if you don’t know who to trust? When new information emerges, how do we welcome it? Test it? Be communal and collaborative, yet also wise and savvy to our era? Debates in the information-stage canend, of course, but in our media-soaked environments, it’s usually from exhaustion in the struggle to dominate the discussion with the most compelling or persuasive information. The one who perseveres and disregards the most feelings, the quieter or lesser-known or accessible voices, wins. 

Here, I’ll stand with the Buddhists and say another ‘end’ to the debates is simply to learn from your own body and your own experience. Explore multiple perspectives and learn from those teachers who come into your path, in those invitations that seem to have energy for you. This is not an age to trust the authorities, because there are simply too many of them and they disagree with one another. Even wisdom texts, I’ll say, like scripture or daily sources many of us used to trust, like the evening news. No. Let all that go. Learn from your own experience, felt-senses in your own body. And to be clear, this is not a journey toward orthorexia, as a recent Washington Post Op-Ed piece named it—the only one right way to eat. But it is an invitation toward a skillset with food that offers you the most inner peace, food-freedom, and healthy well-being. 

Learning only from your own body, your body as primary teacher, means you hold a lot of paradox in a socially complicated world, of course. You can live with beloveds whose body experience differs from yours, which then requires you to honor his/her choices just as they are. For instance, my husband loves a muffin each morning with his coffee. I used to confuse our intimate connection time in the morning with having to partake of that too.  So I did, even though my body didn’t really like how I felt afterwards and it set my energies on edge mid-morning. I’ve learned now I don’t need to partake in order to spend present time with him when he has his muffin and coffee. I feel better with just my decaf coffee. He enjoys his experience of dark coffee and a sweet of some kind. We stay more truly connected because I’m not ignoring my body’s teachings for me and he’s staying with what he chooses. 

The only way I know how to stay with inner transformation of any kind is to find a community that will hold space for me to ‘try on their worldview’ for a time all the while listening to my own experience. To enact lifestyle or habit-belief-worldview change on my own rarely succeeds, or if it does, it rarely stays steady amidst the social and relational pressures to conform to the group-mind/worldview. So as soon as I heard about Dedication Health with my local CrossFit gym, CrossFit Dedication, I knew I wanted to enter into the journey of 'nutrition re-education' and 'supportable-supportive health learning.' I wanted to know ‘what they know’ and see what my body would teach me as I learned from their experience, but in my own experience.

Not even ten weeks later, I finally feel like I know how to feed and be in my body in a way that offers me inner peace and raucous amusement. Even though I'm fifty and a late-bloomer here. :) The choices I know to make now for myself offer me a steadiness of presence and enjoyment, free of fear of too much or too little. And significant for me and my own spiritual journey, it weaves me into a circle-esque community practicing becoming more and more conscious of the world we live in, the choices that are easy to make and those that are more difficult to make…but better and worth it for peace, body-health, and general well-being. I like to be with people like that, even if I don’t agree with or understand everything they say or do. Their practice speaks more loudly of the values I want to see more of in the world: just get better, whatever that may mean for you. Learn where you are and be with people who support you. Listen to your body. Cheer on those around you to be their best selves. Stay active and rest when you need to. Laugh…a lot. Bring your best self to the world. Who doesn’t want to be around that luscious kind of energy?

[In experience, in my family...? Most folks who are scared of or have been formed to shame their own bodies and those who are rightfully fearful of judgment by our culture for how we’ve not known about our bodies.(Another post for another time…)]

So…People come into this DH journey for a variety of reasons, of course. Some are exhausted from dieting and the frustrations of weight loss/gain cycles. Some are facing chronic conditions of heart-disease or pre-diabetic/Type2 diabetes challenges. Some are well-established athletes with good habits, but who want to focus on the latest in nutrition research and upping their workout-performance. True to form, my own intentions were internal and largely psychological, emotional…Part II...