Healing Your Hungry Heart. Joanna Poppink

B that will help you confront and eradicate the false and harsh criticisms you have for yourself.

      I remember visiting my friend Ingeborg one afternoon. She was in her late seventies. Ingeborg was a modest woman with a brilliant and tenacious mind. She translated psychology textbooks from English into Swedish. She was also a gourmet cook, and she created a warm and loving home not only for her family but for those of us fortunate enough to be invited in. I knew she practiced yoga every morning with a program on television and had been doing so for many years. She didn't talk about her yoga just as she didn't talk about her many considerable achievements.

      On this particular visit, I watched her preparing our meal. This was always a pleasure. I saw her move rapidly along the side of the kitchen counter holding a heavy bowl and spatula. A low cupboard door was open, and she gracefully extended her left foot to close the door without spilling anything from the bowl or losing momentum on her way to the stove. It was an elegant and highly functional move.

      I said, “Ah. I see your yoga.” She didn't understand me at first, because the move was so natural and spontaneous to her. Yet she did agree that without a daily yoga practice she might not have been able to do it.

      The exercises and activities in this book are like her yoga. As you practice, your way of thinking, perceiving, and experiencing the world will deepen and expand. You will naturally respond to your challenges in a more graceful and productive way.

      I offer you a new exercise—backtracking—to do at least once a week in addition to breathing, affirmations, and journaling. Backtracking stretches your mind and awareness. It's also helpful in grounding yourself when you need to make a decision.

      Backtracking

      Pick an item of food. Trace it back to where it began. Go back as far as you can, paying attention to the hands, minds, hearts, and backs of the people who were involved in the chain that brought it to your table.

      For example, consider an apple. Take it from your hand to your refrigerator, to the grocery bag you carried it in to your car, to the market display, to the storage bin, to the truck, the loading dock, and all the people who picked and packed the apple, to the famers who planted the seeds. See if you can get to the orchard and the individual tree.

      You can do this with any item of food. You eventually can do this with anything at all as a mind-expanding and even soul-expanding exercise. Your goal is to make your presence more real in the world. Part of that involves making your food and the forces that brought your food to your hands more real to you. You can then appreciate foods that nourish your mind, body, and spirit. You can share food with someone else in the spirit of nourishing their minds, bodies, and spirits. Plus, you will feel connected with the energies of countless people who provide us all with our food. This is the beginning of the end of your isolation.

      In recovery, food stops being an object of instant gratification, just as you stop being an object and become the authentic woman you are.

      In recovery, food stops being an object of instant gratification, just as you stop being an object and become the authentic woman you are.

      You are developing the inner resources you need to cope with your emerging feelings without using food to numb yourself. As you develop your new strengths and inner resilience, you will be able to tolerate your healing experiences, and you will need your eating disorder less.