The Pause

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel.

I’ve just come back from a week’s retreat at a women’s Buddhist centre on the Welsh border. The retreat was focussed on meditation and the development of ‘metta’ for ourselves and for other people. For anyone familiar with all this – just tune out now and tune back in a bit later. For anyone not familiar with this, I’ll explain briefly. Metta is roughly translated as ‘loving kindness’ and the idea of the Metta Bhavana meditation is to practice feeling this towards ourselves and towards other people. That’s a simplistic explanation, but it will do for now.

The point I’m working towards is that much of the discussion on the retreat could equally have taken place on a Beyond Chocolate workshop. I was astonished by the similarities in what I was hearing. For anyone who is a strong adherent of any other religious practice – don’t worry – I’m not out to make converts to Buddhism and I’m sure that Beyond Chocolate fits equally well into your religious beliefs or no religious beliefs at all – this is just my personal experience of a Buddhist retreat.

As all the participants were women, that was one immediate similarity. One immediate difference was that they weren’t there primarily because they were struggling with their relationship with food and their bodies – in fact it was lovely to bake a large rich chocolate cake for a group of women who WEREN’T dieting! However, some of the advice being given to women struggling to achieve a feeling of ‘metta’ towards themselves was very similar to the advice Beyond Chocolate offers to women struggling with their own self-esteem and their own eating and bodies.

In fact, without ‘metta’ for ourselves, without viewing ourselves with ‘loving kindness’ it can be difficult to make changes to the way we feel about ourselves and our relationship with food. Viewing ourselves with loving kindness AND curiosity can help us to being to work through any problems we are having with food and our own bodies.

One of the tenets of Buddhism is that life equals suffering. We can’t help suffering because we are alive. If that sounds rather bleak, it’s not meant to be – it’s actually true. Some of it is self-inflicted; some is inflicted on us by others. It’s our reaction to that suffering that was being discussed on the retreat. What can happen when we encounter suffering is that we either block the feelings or we ignore them. But the feelings are still there, they haven’t gone away and they will re-surface. When they do, we deal with them in many different ways, but the one that caught my attention was dealing with the pain by using food to squash it down.
And one of the ways we can short-circuit that process was remarkably similar to one of the methods we can use with Beyond Chocolate. We pause. In between the suffering and our reaction to it is a brief space which we can use to pause and decide how we want to manage or deal with this suffering. With Beyond Chocolate we have a moment between the urge to eat when we know we’re not hungry and we can use that moment to decide whether to deal with what’s urging us to eat by eating or by deciding not to.

Either way, we have the power to short-circuit suffering by using this very powerful pause and by making a decision, rather than being driven by our feelings into doing something that won’t help us in the long run.

Eating in a non-Beyond Chocolate way?

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel. 


In my week away at a recent retreat I encountered a situation that might reasonably be described as a Beyond Chocolater’s worst nightmare (apart from waking up to find ourselves in a diet club meeting, of course!!). 


The food on the retreat was all provided. It was vegan. There were 3 set meals a day at set times. There were no snacks in between apart from fruit, plain digestive or rich tea biscuits. There was no choice on the menu; one dish was prepared for each meal. Meals were dished out and served to the tables on a volunteer rota basis.


All of which sounds very ‘un-Beyond Chocolate’, but actually, it wasn’t.


I guess I have been working with Beyond Chocolate now for long enough to be able to be flexible with how I manage the principles. At least flexible enough to cope with the conditions described above, and I found it was perfectly possible to continue working with the Beyond Chocolate principles during that week.


I was very tuned-in during that week. Spending a week in meditation, in communal activities and in silence, having time to myself and time spent working in groups – I was very focused on myself, how I was feeling (emotionally and physically), what I was thinking etc.
Although I didn’t have any obvious choice about the food I was eating, I did have a choice whether to eat it or not. I found I was naturally hungry at the meal-times (particularly as I wasn’t interested in the snacks on offer in between meals), and that I could exercise choice by eating the bits of the meals I liked and leaving anything I didn’t. I could also eat to satisfaction and leave any food which was extra to that.


Some meals we took in silence and that really gave me an opportunity to really focus on the food I was eating, rather than absent-mindedly forking food in to my mouth in between conversations. All meals were taken at tables, all food was on plates. I never found myself wandering around mindlessly snacking as I sometimes do at home.


I was able to take walks through the beautiful countryside during my ‘time off’ from meditation or helping with communal living tasks. Being on a meditation retreat is probably one of the best things I could do to Support Myself. It gave me a week away from home and work, away from the pressures of modern life (no mobile, no computer, no novels, no ipod, no tv, no newspapers), and a chance to really focus on myself.


Above all, I enjoyed the week. I certainly plan to go again when I can next year. Finally, I have been able to take from the retreat what suits me and what I would like to work with and leave the rest – I am my own Guru!


PS if you’re wondering about the vegan bit – I thought I would miss cheese and butter, but I didn’t. I am now experimenting with meals that aren’t as dependent on dairy produce as previously – I’m enjoying the challenge and the food is good too!

Say Ommmmm

Over the years I have developed, experimented with and refined an array of strategies to support myself in my relationship with food and my body. This is mostly what keeps me sane. Some come naturally, like writing and talking about it with other like-minded women, while others can be a bit of a stretch. This is especially true of meditation. And yet one of the most effective ways I know to support myself is to regularly take 20 minutes to stretch my body, focus on my breath and do some visualisations. When I do this, I have less back pain and am a happier person all-round. And when I am pain free and feeling happy, I don't use food as a reward or as a pick-me-up or as an excuse to take a break. I am more in tune with myself, more in tune with my needs. And that's always a good thing.


So why is it such a challenge to do it? 


Why is it so hard to ring-fence 20 minutes, to believe not only that it's OK to use those 20 minutes to stretch and breath and visualise, but really very advantageous to do so. Why do I so often let my nasty little Gremlin completely take over and collude with all those stale arguments it puts forward to dissuade me from doing it:

• You should be working
• It's not even 'proper' meditation. You made it up. It doesn't work
• Your back isn't hurting that much
• You're so selfish, you've got masses to do
• After breakfast. After lunch. After dinner. Tomorrow
• If you're not going to do it every single day, don't bother

So instead of rolling out my pink futon and giving myself 20 minutes, I move on to the next thing. I am in perpetual motion treading the intricate and laborious steps of the busyness dance. Doing, doing, doing. Never stopping, never breathing, never noticing. Day after day my pink futon stays rolled up behind the sofa.


This morning, I unrolled the futon, pulled down the blinds and set a 20 minute timer on my phone, all while keeping the Gremlin at bay by humming loudly so I wouldn't hear it.


The next 20 minutes fly by. I do some basic stretches. The same ones the osteopath showed me years ago when my back was so bad I couldn't walk. I breath, I send white, lava-like breath into my muscles. I see them lengthen and soften and repair. I thank my body: my feet for getting me places, my legs for holding me up, my backbone for keeping it all together. I relax every body part in turn, letting it melt into the futon and then covering it with a warm blanket of dazzling gold dust. I focus on my breath, pushing it into my lungs, my belly. Occasionally my mind strays and goes off to do the shopping list or my Gremlin tries to say something. For this I have a particularly effective visualization: I imagine a big broom sweeping the thoughts out of my head so that there is nothing left inside. This works surprisingly well. For just a few minutes at the end I am suspended in breath, I feel weightless and at peace.


The phone beeps and suddenly it's all over. I open my eyes feeling alive and refreshed.


This post is a note to myself, a reminder that these 20 minutes are one of the best ways I know to support myself, to stay grounded in my relationship with food and in owning my body. The next time my gremlin starts to act up and try to convince me to skip my 20 minutes I will come back to this post - and read it mantra style - until it gets the message.


How often you give yourself 5, 10 or 20 minutes to stop and just be? To do nothing, to think nothing, to feel...everything. What's your way of 'meditating'? Does it make a difference to the way you eat and feel about your body? 

Me-time

For a while since I have been menopausal I’ve had a fantasy. In my fantasy I have no children, no husband, no cats, no responsibilities. In my fantasy the only person I have to look after is me. I do as I please and mostly that involves doing not very much! I write and walk and drink tea mostly. I spend time with other women. I cook. I read. I knit. That’s my fantasy. One which is light-years away from my reality. Right now my reality involves managing two children, two cats, a relationship, a home, a business, a therapy practice, writing a new book, finishing my psychotherapy training and somehow fitting in a social life, family time and, oh yes, me-time. Sometimes that ‘me-time’ thing just becomes one more item to add to the long and every growing to-do list. Time for myself; a yoga class, a walk with the walking group at The Lab (very nice health club I joined in aid of me-time), a massage, a couple of days away with a friend, a hot bath… me-time just becomes another thing to do and I don’t feel any less hassled, any less busy, it just doesn’t do the trick somehow. Sometimes it seems like the more me-time I build in the more all the other stuff to do piles up around me.

So then I start to tell myself what would really hit the spot is to meditate. To sit, zen-like (a bit like the photo) and block my life and all its demands out for a while. Only hitch is I just hate that kind of meditating. Just doesn't do it for me. And I’d still have to ring fence the time and put it on the list to make sure I did it. I’d have to find a class or a group or a teacher. I’m not sure I’d know where to start on my own, I’ve tried podcasts and CDs but I don’t get on with them.

So I keep on doing, I keep up my busy, capable, efficient (most of the time), organised (ish), full life. In order to get through it I tighten, I frown, I get rigid, my shoulders up against my ears most of the time! I speed up, I drive myself, keep going, keep going. “It’s fine, I can do this, I’m fine”. And then, occasionally, I collapse. I can’t do this anymore!! I don’t tell anyone, I don’t ask for help. I collapse quietly, privately. I have a few days when it all seems to go to pot. When I feel heavy and lethargic and just don’t want to do any of it. When I wonder if I’ll ever have the energy I need, whether I’ll get through it all. That has been my default.

And over the last few of months I’ve been experimenting with something different. Thanks to my father being so ill really, (thanks-to? there’s the Pollyanna in me). Having that one added thing to do - going to Milan weekend after weekend to spend time with him while I could, while we still had time, meant that me-time was right off the radar. And what I discovered was that actually, while me-time is important (I missed the walking, hot baths and time with my friends) those are not the things that really create space for me. Those are not the things that I’m longing for, that my fantasy is built upon. When I really had so little time to spare what I discovered was the magic (again!) of tuning in. I began to realise that me-time, real me-time is a moment, a few seconds when I STOP. When I do nothing at all except take a deep breath and tune in. Me-time, the kind that nourishes me and seems to expand time are the moments in the day when I become aware that I’m rushing and I choose to slow down. Me-time is when I tune-in and notice that all my muscles are tense and I take a moment to soften them all. Me-time is when I notice how my trusty old gremlin is banging on and on and I take a minute to silence it and wrap my arms around myself. Me time is when I sit, just for a moment and look out of the window into my wild, unkempt, rugged and beautifully green garden with a cup of tea. Me time is when I sit and knit another dishcloth without thinking about anything much.

It’s not that all those other things; the baths, walks, massages, yoga… are not helpful or good. They are part of how I take care of myself and they will stay firmly on the agenda. And, feeding myself, nourishing myself, tasting a little bit of my fantasy is about coming back to myself, tuning-in, a moment, a pause, STOPPING. And the more I do that, the more energy I have to be that competent busy woman who has so much to do. And I am making plans to make the fantasy a reality… in some years… when my children are older... And whatever my life is like, the more I tune in for just a minute, the stronger and more spacious I feel. Tuning-in, it’s such a small thing, so simple, it’s a little bit of magic!