Feelings, Body & Food

Finally after quite a number of sessions, my client has started allowing her emotions instead of suppressing them. She has been practising it more and more and is getting less fearful of her feelings.

We have a habit of denying our feelings; so afraid are we to allow our true feelings that we land up staying immersed in the very feelings that we deny.

This process of denial makes us reach for comfort food. We eat when we are bored, lonely, stressed, angry, and for many other reasons. Instead of eating what our mind craves, if we eat ‘what’ our body NEEDS and ‘when’ it needs food for nourishment, then we will be able to feel satiated and alive; we won’t be eating mindlessly and stuff food inside to deal with the unprocessed and suppressed emotions.

EFT and other body based techniques allow you to feel what you feel, no matter how negative/difficult these feelings are, and also release these feelings from your body.

Geneen Roth ( http://geneenroth.com/) says that “Part of the process of breaking the obsession with food is learning how to do something different. Most of us turn to food when we feel unhappy, sad, angry, or rejected. The next time you feel an uncomfortable emotion, rather than immediately reaching for the comfort food, be curious about the feeling. Where is the discomfort? Is it in the stomach … the heart … the throat? Does it have a color … a texture … a temperature? What is does it feel like? Our reactions to uncomfortable emotions are based only on the stories we tell ourselves about them. Begin to practice being in your body instead of reacting to emotions by eating or pushing them away or denying them. When you allow feelings to naturally occur, then food can be the nutritional resource it is supposed to be, and your emotions can be expressed and resolved in more constructive ways.”

Tips:
Tapping instead of reaching for comfort food is a good way to break the cycle.
Practise deep breathing when you feel a craving or when you are trying to suppress a feeling.
Tap and breathe on each point to release stress.
Eat when you are REALLY hungry and not when you THINK you are hungry.
Enjoy what you eat.
Don’t keep denying food that you like – take a small portion of it instead of denying yourself that food and then one day going for a really big portion of it.
Tap on accepting your body.