Making Love in the Kitchen

This is Nourish Your Soul Week. We are well in to summer and it is time to start enjoying it. This week is dedicated to just that, enjoyment of life.

Read Part 1 of the Interview with Byron Katie here.

I need Chocolate: Is That True?

What I wanted to know from my conversation with Katie, was how this repetitive thinking, and believing of these repetitive thoughts, enables the unhealthy state most of us inhabit both in terms of our physical health and our emotional health. They do go together. As Katie said, “A healthy mind has a healthy body”.

The Work is a process of inquiry that involves four questions and then a “turnaround”, which is a way of experiencing the opposite of what you believe. Let’s do The Work on one of phrases I hear most often in my nutritional practice.

Thought: I could never give up chocolate.

Question 1: Is that true?
My answer here might be yes… I can’t imagine giving up chocolate, so for me this statement is true.

Questions 2: Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
Well…I could conceivably give it up. And since I can’t ever know the future, I can’t absolutely know that it’s true that I could never give up chocolate. I would probably miss it (though even that, on second thought, is something I can’t really know). I would crave it (oops, I can’t absolutely know that either). The bottom line: Can I absolutely know that I can’t give it up? No. No, I can’t.

Questions 3: How do you react when you believe that thought, I can’t give up chocolate?
I feel defeated by my own craving. I feel weak, embarrassed by my lack of self-control. I think that I’ll always be overweight. I get angry at myself. I feel hopeless, stressed, panicked. I snap at my children. When my husband says that he finds me attractive, I don’t believe him. When a friend compliments me on my looks, I invalidate what she says.

Question 4: Who would you be without that thought?
I would feel a lot less stress if I didn’t believe the thought “I could never give up chocolate”. I would feel lighter, more hopeful, better about myself. I would be more open to possibilities.

The turnaround: I can give up chocolate.
This statement could be just as true as, or truer than, my original statement. Who knows? Certainly not me.

The next step is to give three examples of how the turnaround could be true and voila!  If we can believe the turn around thought that we can give up chocolate, we can experience a taste of freedom from the weight of addiction. Obviously chocolate is a little thing, but we need to start somewhere and I am by no means a trained facilitator.  Not convinced? Neither was I until I did The Work myself, on myself and my own thoughts, putting pen to paper.

The Work forces us to get to the heart of our challenges. If we can free ourselves from the thoughts that are holding us down, we can get deeper. I can’t lose weight, I can’t exercise, I can’t eat healthy, I can’t quit drinking, I hate my body, I can’t stand my partner, I need more money… Do I really need to go on? We all have a list. I hear the lists everyday in my practice

What I have now begun to ask my clients when they begin to challenge me on the recommendations I make is simply Is that true? And does that ever open up a Pandora’s box of stuff.

The Work is about questioning our thoughts, thought by thought, level by level, until we find ourselves free. As Katie explained to me, when we believe our thoughts, we challenge our own sanity. When we become free from believing our thoughts, we live in reality, with joy and freedom.

Check back tomorrow for Part 3, the final part of the interview, where Katie and I discuss freedom from fear and suffering.

Byron Katie will be in Toronto from October 2nd-4th to conduct a three day workshop. Get the details on the event or find out how you can win tickets to this event, click here.

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Tags: Health, Meghan Telpner, Wellbeing