Sacred Dance Day Sadhana ( Day 24 )

Today We continue to explore our relationships with our perception around nourishment.

Food can impact us in many ways and we can make food choices for many reasons.

It is clear is that there is a strong emotional and social connection to food.

In clinical practice, I find that many people have the knowledge of what food to eat to support their health or at least have a pretty good understanding. However, their nutrition choices don’t always reflect that knowledge.

In truth food is not just about understanding what we should eat, it is also about appreciating the connection between nutrition, our thoughts and emotions, and social interactions.

Emotions/feelings are an extremely strong trigger for food choices. From a young age, food becomes connected to a variety of emotions and social interactions. Whether sad, happy, celebrating, commemorating, lonely, angry, etc food is often used to support or cope with these emotions and circumstances. This relationship can start well before we are even in control of our own diet, influenced by our parent’s choices for us.

Primitively we as humans do a lot of things to either seek pleasure or avoid pain. Eating is no different. On a basic level, we can experience “pain” in the form of hunger and we seek pleasure in the form of sustenance (food & drink). Now consider when emotions get involved, we begin to avoid other forms of pain more related to emotions, and because we have learned that food or drink can provide pleasure we start to use these substances for reasons beyond just hunger.

We often find ourselves stuck in a bit of a pleasure trap when it comes to food, especially the types of food that trigger off the reward centers in the brain.

Journal Prompt

How do you know what your emotional relationship with food is like?

Here are few questions to bring some awareness to this area. Take some time to think about these questions and answer them as best as you can.

1. Do you use food to enhance pleasure? If so, how do you do this?

2. Do you use food to avoid pain, such as in the form of loneliness or anger? Does that work? Or do you end up feeling more dissatisfied?

3. Does eating certain foods make you feel more anxious, guilty, or ashamed? Do you judge yourself for eating these foods?

4. Do you turn to food in an attempt to fulfill much deeper cravings simply because you are dissatisfied with the other areas in your life? Such as work, relationships? If you began to live more in accordance with your highest values, how do you think that would impact your relationship with food?

5. What’s your ideal emotional relationship with food?

Acknowledging this relationship is present is generally the first and most powerful step. Just witness without judgment and see where you want to consciously make changes.