The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Living systems, Homeostasis, and the Quantum jump

Again, we're clustering the ideas I've been talking about around a specific issue: losing weight as a sign that an emotional trauma is being healed.  Because of the massive amount of buried negative emotions, I strongly suggest both deep meditation and professional therapy, as well as a circle of supportive friends, and a dream diary.  Much, much stuff is going to be processed.
##
Even if you don't have a massive load to process, remember that living systems will reach an equilibrium, and resist change with everything they have--they think change will affect their survival, and in a sense they are right.  Your ego, thinking it is you, associates with your current state, and any serious attempts to change will be viewed as approaching Death itself.  This is why fear management is so vital.
#3
My personal efforts to lose weight (10 pounds by July 14th) kicked off yesterday.  Because I don't have strong emotional issues around the subject, it will be easier for me.  Not EASY, but easier--hopefully what I experience will be of some limited use.  First blip--Tananarive is going out of town today, and I playfully suggested celebrating our recent good fortune with a couple of buttermilk bars...no, we didn't do it, but I could feel the part of me that doesn't want to lose the weight saying: Yeah!! Buttermilk bars!  You can afford one...
No, you can't.
##
Your subconscious is a tricky thing.  Your body will try to maintain its current weight.  the only way to come face to face with your issues is to change the physics of the equation--physics supercedes biology or emotion.  In other words, if you increase the caloric output (exercise) at the SAME time you decrease caloric input (food), your body simply has to lose weight.  Consider this a two-headed snake--you have to control both heads, or the other one will bite you.
##
Remember--the point of the exercise is to force your issues to the surface, where they can be processed and dealt with.  To find out what is really going on.  So the dream diary, meditation, and therapy are important.  The more traumatic the reasons for the weight gain, the longer the weight has been in place, the more vital these support systems will be.
##
Remember also that you will experience massive stress.  You must keep it from turning into strain.  The FIVE MINUTE MIRACLE is perfect for this--if you don't have a copy, get one! If you do, practise the BE BREATHED exercise, and slow it down so that each rep takes 60 seconds.  Doing just the lower body half may be necessary if you are carrying a lot of extra tissue.
##
Five times a day, at 9, 12, 3, 6, and 9, stop and breathe for sixty seconds.  Breathe properly.  Close your eyes, and use your spinal flexion and muscle contraction to create an exhalation.  Then simply recover to your original posture and allow air pressure (and diaphragmatic partial vacuum) to fill your lungs.  Become more sensitive to the way your body moves when it is breathing healthfully. Try to catch the difference between this and the way you breathe during stress.  Become more and more sensitive to this.
##
Breathing is your first line of defense on stress, and to increase energy.  Start researching the breathing techniques that increase energy--there is a ton of information on-line and available for inexpensive purchase. Start with the breathing.  It will trump any trauma, any other problem.  The only downside is that you have to have your fear and emotional damage coping mechanisms in place to drain that psychic pus when it boils to the surface.  And you will need to keep these mechanisms in place until your weight has normalized.  At that point, you can use the scale to determine whether you are doing enough.  If your weight creeps up--more meditation, diary-work, and therapy.  If it crashes down into anorexic territory--the same thing (remember that your mind is sneaky--being too skinny is functionally the same as being too fat--both obscure those horrible secondary sexual characteristics!)
#3
More later...

No comments: