3 practices for understanding the story your sugar cravings are trying to tell you
Time to sit back and let yourself enjoy 30 minutes of reflection and practice... just you + you (and my guiding voice of course!)
Don't forget to bookmark this page or save the link so you can return to the audio anytime you're interested in the meditation at the end. Just scroll over to minute 20:00 when the timing is right!
If you process better by reading than listening, follow along with the words I've dropped for you below!
I'm so glad you're here for 3 Practices for Understanding the Story Your Sugar Cravings are Trying to Tell You!
So, Beloveds, if you're like me, and millions of other women on the planet, your relationship with food is complicated.
Your relationship with sugar might be especially complicated.
It's complicated because sometimes sugar seems like the new smoking.
You hear and see things recommending you eat a low glycemic diet, or linking sugar to leaky gut or fatty liver, or taking out the refined stuff and only using maple or honey.
But then other times you see women who are inviting you to "reclaim your time in this one sweet life" by embracing all of life’s sexy pleasures, or letting your body enjoy sweetness.
Perhaps it's also complicated for you because you don't actually feel so great after you eat it sometimes. Maybe too much seems to keep you up at night, or you're eating just enough of it that your pants are a little more snug than usual and that's actually just uncomfortable for you.
If you're like another percentage of us, you honestly notice it makes you feel a little bit irritable and cranky. There's a "comedown" after the "sugar high" that feels sort of like being hungover.
So the question I have for you, today and ongoingly, is what if there was a way you could use this very complex relationship with food, and in this case sugar, and more importantly, the complexities of having a human body, to create a foundation for learning even more about yourself at the deepest level?
By “the deepest level” I don't necessarily mean what your high glycemic diet might be doing to your bloodwork - although that could be a really worthy question to ask and there are so many beautiful wellness practitioners who can hold your hand through that exploration.
But no, the question that I'm inviting you into is, more specifically, "what if this complex relationship with sugar is a doorway into a deeper inquiry?"
If you have moments where it feels like you're moving out of alignment with Self, and food often feels like a manifestation of this deviation, how can you uncover a path back home?
The truth is, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are behind your desire to shift your relationship to a particular food.
Is it because it makes you cranky? Your doctor pointed out your bloodwork? Is it because your jeans are fitting a little more snug? Or your cousin Sally told you how much better she feels eating this instead of that, and a little voice within you said it was something you wanted to try.
At some level, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are.
If you're hearing yourself say to yourself,
"I think I want to change my relationship with "X" then that's the beginning of possible transformation.
And transformation will arise not just because changing patterns is hard and usually challenges us, but because the growth that we experience in the process of partnering these inner curiosities about change will illuminate new elements of who we are and what's possible for us.
Now that is a doorway worth stepping into!
So let's get into the reason you're here.
What are three different ways that you can learn *what* this experience with sugar is actually inviting *you* back into at the deepest level?
You want to know the different techniques you can use for understanding the story that your sugar cravings are trying to tell you.
Okie doke, let’s go!
The first practice is really a foundation builder.
It’s to understand, accept, and embrace that craving sugar might be more than just a biochemical experience, it might be more than your physiology, and it might be more than your microbiome.
For some of you, knowing this might already be a strong part of the work that you've been doing, and you're very clear on this aspect that there’s more to your cravings than just the body’s role in them.
For some others of you, this first step is quite a new paradigm.
So in either case, wherever you're starting from, it's really the linchpin upon which everything else will be built, so we'll spend just another moment here if we can - becoming aware, accepting, and then actually embracing, or pulling into ourselves, the possibility that "wow, my cravings aren't just a biochemical microbiotic response between my body and sugar….there’s more to this experience than meets the eye. There's a deeper layer here."
So to sink into an awareness of this new paradigm even more, I'll give you a few examples of what that could actually look like in a person's life.
What if your day is long and hard, and you're a little dissatisfied with your job, or a little dissatisfied in your marriage, and at the end of the night, the sweetness that you experience scraping your spoon around a creamy bowl of chocolate ice cream meets that yearning for more sweetness that you have in your day to day?
And maybe, for some reason, it hasn't felt possible to switch out of the job or the marriage or the challenging routines in your motherhood, so the sweetness in life that you crave doesn't fully feel at your fingertips quite yet.
But when you reach into the fridge and open up the container of chocolate ice cream, the sweetness *is* at your fingertips.
How rewarding, how satisfying, to be able to access that which you're craving, that feels a little out of reach during the day, but you get to have it at night when you open up the fridge.
It's really, actually, a brilliant solution. A part of you is quite wise in creating this experience for yourself.
So that's just one example that we can be aware of.
As another example - we can think about one of the sweetest foods that many of us first experienced... not all, but many of us... it was mother's milk. It's the perfectly designed nourishment and it’s very sweet tasting for a little baby who has not tasted anything on the planet before.
So even if you weren't breastfed, you were evolutionarily predetermined to crave this food from the beginning because once you came out of the womb, that's how you were going to stay alive.
So we can acknowledge then that for some of us, sweet foods, the taste of sweet even in adulthood, will tug on some of the threads about mothering and nourishment that we're still working through.
It starts to get really complex here sisters, and believe me, I know!
I'm going to give you one last example.
For some of us, sweet things are tightly woven into a model of being a "good girl." An outdated model that could use some updating for sure, but that's work for a whole other session.
Consider if this was you or someone else you knew:
When you ate all of your dinner, you were promised dessert afterwards.
When your soccer team scored the game, the whole team went out for ice cream at the end.
When you got straight A's on your report card, you were taken to the bakery to pick out a treat.
And for some of us, still to this day, when you eat your perfect vision of healthy meals all week long, you allow yourself a splurge with something sugary on the weekend. Or maybe one of your dieting parents had that routine growing up and you observed them doing it.
So another association could be that eating the sweet treat is a way of reminding and reinforcing for yourself that you're a "good girl."
You are good. I'm here to tell you without a shadow of a doubt that you are. You're right! And you don't actually need to do anything to prove it, to earn it, or to remind yourself of it.
But for some of us that message was lost in translation somewhere along the way, so sweet foods are an incredibly effective way to accomplish that same goal when we're not quite adept yet at reminding ourelves on our own.
Okay, so hopefully those three examples paint a really clear picture for you of that first step which is just to accept that when you crave sugar, it could be much more complicated than just not having had enough carbs to eat that day, or that you have a little bit of an overgrowth of yeast and your body is compelling you to eat the sugar to satisfy something at the microbiotic level.
Those things could be true also… annnnnd it could be a little more nuanced than that.
So become aware of the larger field available for your exploration here, accept that it could be a part of your story, and embrace the possibility of diving in!
Once you’ve become aware of, accepted, and embraced this paradigm, then you can set to work applying it in your own life and learning what your actual sugar cravings are telling you. And this will bring us into practices two and three.
The second practice can stretch us a bit friends, I'll be honest.
This isn't something you have to do forever, and you’ll benefit from listening to yourself and staying within your window of tolerance (that being the space within which you can safely explore and experiment with this technique).
So practice number two is to spend some time without the sugar - and here's the key - in conscious partnership.
What do I mean by conscious partnership?
For some of you, you might have already experimented with pulling the sugar out of your diet as a way to manage to the complex relationship you have with your sugar cravings, and you might actually be really adept at not eating it for prolonged periods of time because some contract that you’ve made with yourelf around this says not to.
Maybe you have a routine where you eat a certain way during the day and you only allow yourself to eat sweet treats after 8pm.
Maybe you have a “cheat day” or splurge days.
Maybe you've been managing your sugar cravings already with supplements or dietary shifts.
So perhaps you've been doing all of those things, and so again, perhaps you actually have a fair amount of time where you don't eat sugar at all out of some contract that you’ve decided to make with yourself.
The fine detail here in Practice 2 that will assist you in taking this experience to the next level would be that you experiment with windows of time without sugar from a really conscious place, as I said
Now, I'll pause here and say: if everything that I mentioned a second ago is not familiar to you – if you haven't been managing with supplements or balancing macronutrients, or the idea of ever going a period of time without sugar is totally new to you, then you're in the exact right place as well!
So whether you've tried a little bit of this before or it's completely new, just stay with me and consider what it would be like to try a conscious experiment of abstaining from sweets.
Again, this is not forever (unless you decide that’s what works best for you after some serious intuitive practice).
And trust me when I say I have no attachments to whether or not you have a "sugar free" or a "sugar full" diet.
I’m only attached to wanting to teach you how to hear the deeper stories weaving their way underneath all of this.
So back to Practice #2.
I'll give you an example of why I’m suggesting you remove the sugar temporarily, and why I’m insisting that this be a conscious process.
Have you ever been in any sort of conscious spiritual practice with your mate where, even though you were together, you decided that during your time together, you were going to observe a period of silence?
Maybe it was just a 10 minute silent walk that you took side-by-side, choosing not to speak? If you haven’t, I highly recommend it.
Now this would be different than riding along in the morning on the way to dropping your kids at soccer practice and everyone in the car is a little tired and so no one's talking.
No, I mean actually choosing: “Hey, what would it be like if we went on this walk through the woods together, and instead of making small talk, we both just chose to be silent and observe what that's like. Let's just observe what the forest sounds like. Or what it's like when I have an impulse to share something that floated into my mind with you and I decide to just hold onto it instead of speaking it.
This could be a very different walk, a very different car ride, and you might be surprised to discover just how much it brings up in you.
Now we’ve already outlined that the process of being with sugar, or any food or wellness practice, can be a little like being in a relationship in some ways, so this is an invitation to be in a conscious relationship with sweets, like you’re both are on a silent retreat, or you and sugar are taking a little time out.
So again, even if you already abstain for periods of time, is it really a conscious silent woods walk, or it more like an exhausted trip to soccer practice when no one’s talking?
Now, when you orient to this work from a true intention to partner yourself into deeper insights, you’ll get to see “what it's like when I have the impulse to consume sugar and I don't.”
"What happens to my craving, when I pause in an empty space before satisfying it immediately?"
Now, it could be that the first few times you did this, maybe there's not a whole lot that comes out of it.
Maybe you don't have any startling revelations.
Maybe you're just frustrated, irritable. Maybe you just think that Rachael got it all wrong and this was a stupid idea.
I am willing to wager, and I'd wager quite a lot because this is my lived experience, that if you stick with the practice and open yourself to the possibility of being taught, of being shared with from your highest knowing, and your deepest knowing, something will emerge.
So for example, during that first little bit of time when you usually would be having your chocolate ice cream because it’s after 8pm, or you normally would be enjoying the cupcake that's offered at your friend's birthday party, or your sweet latte because it’s the morning commute….
Whatever it is, in the moment when you decide, I'm not going to choose it today, what comes through?
And how can you consciously partner those sensations and experiences to receive some amount of information from them?
So for example, if you find yourself incredibly irritable, because you're in this conscious practice you'll know to tune into your irritability instead of just quickly bypassing it.
Now maybe previously what you would do with the irritability is you would just go order yourself a latte before you really had a chance to understand what the irritability meant.
But in this new way of being, just for these few times you decide to be in this practice, you're just going to actually notice, "Oh, I'm really irritable."
Or, "ugh I'm really sad. And actually, I'm really sad and I miss my friend who just moved."
Or, "I'm really frustrated and I feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction about my job, more so than I've allowed myself to feel all week long."
So the list of possibilities is infinite here, friends. It would take hours to even list and name all the things that might come through if you were really listening.
And that brings us to Practice # 3.
You see, in the second practice I’m inviting you into spending conscious time without sugar, your main intention will just be that of noticing and experiencing.
It will be one of being in your body, your emotions, being curious, being willing, and taking a journalistic approach to the question of what these sugar cravings really have to show you.
Practice # 3, on the other hand, is to really reflect, and the capture those reflections. Whether you’re grabbing a journal, the notes section of your smartphone, or a friend who’s always willing to listen, it’s time to be in the deeper contemplation about what’s arising in you when you explore these sugar cravings with conscious intention.
In my effort to assist you along the way, I’m going to lead you in a brief practice that you can turn to when you need it by simply returning to this video in the midst of Practice # 3.
If you’d rather be guided by your own intuition about what questions to ask yourself, or how to partner what’s arising in the midst of this "silent woods walk with sugar cravings gone unanswered," I support you! But if you’d like a bit more guidance when the time for practice is upon you, come back here and let me lead you with a few deep breaths and some specific questions for you to contemplate.
Now, before we dive in, let me share one last disclaimer:
Sometimes, you could do a brief meditation like this and you'll get a little slivers of new information, or hardly any at all.
Other times, you'll go inside and you'll be shocked what reveals itself and what you learn there.
So, do your best to release judgment about what happens each time you take this journey! Soften into the possibilities and release any attachment to the outcome.
Just show up a new each day like you're going to meet a new friend and you're not really sure what you're going to talk about once you get together. You just know that you're willing to go (you haven't seen them for a while, you're looking forward to the visit) and it won't really matter what you talk about once you get together.
The important thing is just that you make time for each other. It's the same when we go inside!
Just carve out the time to make these connections with your inner self, and what happens while you're there is of little consequence compared to the value of just making the time.
I'll guide you every step of the way.
So, if this is a good time to sit with your sugar cravings and do inner work, either in the midst of Practice 1 or as a follow up to the second practice, just keep going.
Otherwise, now’s a good time to pause if you need a bit more space to integrate and sit with Practices 1 and 2.
If you give this practice a try today and anything interesting emerges for you, I’d love to hear about it.
I would love to know how this work impacts you. And of course, I would be honored to take these inquiries and any others that you’re sitting with in your wellness journey into the safe space of our work together.
So, Beloveds, if you're like me, and millions of other women on the planet, your relationship with food is complicated.
Your relationship with sugar might be especially complicated.
It's complicated because sometimes sugar seems like the new smoking.
You hear and see things recommending you eat a low glycemic diet, or linking sugar to leaky gut or fatty liver, or taking out the refined stuff and only using maple or honey.
But then other times you see women who are inviting you to "reclaim your time in this one sweet life" by embracing all of life’s sexy pleasures, or letting your body enjoy sweetness.
Perhaps it's also complicated for you because you don't actually feel so great after you eat it sometimes. Maybe too much seems to keep you up at night, or you're eating just enough of it that your pants are a little more snug than usual and that's actually just uncomfortable for you.
If you're like another percentage of us, you honestly notice it makes you feel a little bit irritable and cranky. There's a "comedown" after the "sugar high" that feels sort of like being hungover.
So the question I have for you, today and ongoingly, is what if there was a way you could use this very complex relationship with food, and in this case sugar, and more importantly, the complexities of having a human body, to create a foundation for learning even more about yourself at the deepest level?
By “the deepest level” I don't necessarily mean what your high glycemic diet might be doing to your bloodwork - although that could be a really worthy question to ask and there are so many beautiful wellness practitioners who can hold your hand through that exploration.
But no, the question that I'm inviting you into is, more specifically, "what if this complex relationship with sugar is a doorway into a deeper inquiry?"
If you have moments where it feels like you're moving out of alignment with Self, and food often feels like a manifestation of this deviation, how can you uncover a path back home?
The truth is, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are behind your desire to shift your relationship to a particular food.
Is it because it makes you cranky? Your doctor pointed out your bloodwork? Is it because your jeans are fitting a little more snug? Or your cousin Sally told you how much better she feels eating this instead of that, and a little voice within you said it was something you wanted to try.
At some level, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are.
If you're hearing yourself say to yourself,
"I think I want to change my relationship with "X" then that's the beginning of possible transformation.
And transformation will arise not just because changing patterns is hard and usually challenges us, but because the growth that we experience in the process of partnering these inner curiosities about change will illuminate new elements of who we are and what's possible for us.
Now that is a doorway worth stepping into!
So let's get into the reason you're here.
What are three different ways that you can learn *what* this experience with sugar is actually inviting *you* back into at the deepest level?
You want to know the different techniques you can use for understanding the story that your sugar cravings are trying to tell you.
Okie doke, let’s go!
The first practice is really a foundation builder.
It’s to understand, accept, and embrace that craving sugar might be more than just a biochemical experience, it might be more than your physiology, and it might be more than your microbiome.
For some of you, knowing this might already be a strong part of the work that you've been doing, and you're very clear on this aspect that there’s more to your cravings than just the body’s role in them.
For some others of you, this first step is quite a new paradigm.
So in either case, wherever you're starting from, it's really the linchpin upon which everything else will be built, so we'll spend just another moment here if we can - becoming aware, accepting, and then actually embracing, or pulling into ourselves, the possibility that "wow, my cravings aren't just a biochemical microbiotic response between my body and sugar….there’s more to this experience than meets the eye. There's a deeper layer here."
So to sink into an awareness of this new paradigm even more, I'll give you a few examples of what that could actually look like in a person's life.
What if your day is long and hard, and you're a little dissatisfied with your job, or a little dissatisfied in your marriage, and at the end of the night, the sweetness that you experience scraping your spoon around a creamy bowl of chocolate ice cream meets that yearning for more sweetness that you have in your day to day?
And maybe, for some reason, it hasn't felt possible to switch out of the job or the marriage or the challenging routines in your motherhood, so the sweetness in life that you crave doesn't fully feel at your fingertips quite yet.
But when you reach into the fridge and open up the container of chocolate ice cream, the sweetness *is* at your fingertips.
How rewarding, how satisfying, to be able to access that which you're craving, that feels a little out of reach during the day, but you get to have it at night when you open up the fridge.
It's really, actually, a brilliant solution. A part of you is quite wise in creating this experience for yourself.
So that's just one example that we can be aware of.
As another example - we can think about one of the sweetest foods that many of us first experienced... not all, but many of us... it was mother's milk. It's the perfectly designed nourishment and it’s very sweet tasting for a little baby who has not tasted anything on the planet before.
So even if you weren't breastfed, you were evolutionarily predetermined to crave this food from the beginning because once you came out of the womb, that's how you were going to stay alive.
So we can acknowledge then that for some of us, sweet foods, the taste of sweet even in adulthood, will tug on some of the threads about mothering and nourishment that we're still working through.
It starts to get really complex here sisters, and believe me, I know!
I'm going to give you one last example.
For some of us, sweet things are tightly woven into a model of being a "good girl." An outdated model that could use some updating for sure, but that's work for a whole other session.
Consider if this was you or someone else you knew:
When you ate all of your dinner, you were promised dessert afterwards.
When your soccer team scored the game, the whole team went out for ice cream at the end.
When you got straight A's on your report card, you were taken to the bakery to pick out a treat.
And for some of us, still to this day, when you eat your perfect vision of healthy meals all week long, you allow yourself a splurge with something sugary on the weekend. Or maybe one of your dieting parents had that routine growing up and you observed them doing it.
So another association could be that eating the sweet treat is a way of reminding and reinforcing for yourself that you're a "good girl."
You are good. I'm here to tell you without a shadow of a doubt that you are. You're right! And you don't actually need to do anything to prove it, to earn it, or to remind yourself of it.
But for some of us that message was lost in translation somewhere along the way, so sweet foods are an incredibly effective way to accomplish that same goal when we're not quite adept yet at reminding ourelves on our own.
Okay, so hopefully those three examples paint a really clear picture for you of that first step which is just to accept that when you crave sugar, it could be much more complicated than just not having had enough carbs to eat that day, or that you have a little bit of an overgrowth of yeast and your body is compelling you to eat the sugar to satisfy something at the microbiotic level.
Those things could be true also… annnnnd it could be a little more nuanced than that.
So become aware of the larger field available for your exploration here, accept that it could be a part of your story, and embrace the possibility of diving in!
Once you’ve become aware of, accepted, and embraced this paradigm, then you can set to work applying it in your own life and learning what your actual sugar cravings are telling you. And this will bring us into practices two and three.
The second practice can stretch us a bit friends, I'll be honest.
This isn't something you have to do forever, and you’ll benefit from listening to yourself and staying within your window of tolerance (that being the space within which you can safely explore and experiment with this technique).
So practice number two is to spend some time without the sugar - and here's the key - in conscious partnership.
What do I mean by conscious partnership?
For some of you, you might have already experimented with pulling the sugar out of your diet as a way to manage to the complex relationship you have with your sugar cravings, and you might actually be really adept at not eating it for prolonged periods of time because some contract that you’ve made with yourelf around this says not to.
Maybe you have a routine where you eat a certain way during the day and you only allow yourself to eat sweet treats after 8pm.
Maybe you have a “cheat day” or splurge days.
Maybe you've been managing your sugar cravings already with supplements or dietary shifts.
So perhaps you've been doing all of those things, and so again, perhaps you actually have a fair amount of time where you don't eat sugar at all out of some contract that you’ve decided to make with yourself.
The fine detail here in Practice 2 that will assist you in taking this experience to the next level would be that you experiment with windows of time without sugar from a really conscious place, as I said
Now, I'll pause here and say: if everything that I mentioned a second ago is not familiar to you – if you haven't been managing with supplements or balancing macronutrients, or the idea of ever going a period of time without sugar is totally new to you, then you're in the exact right place as well!
So whether you've tried a little bit of this before or it's completely new, just stay with me and consider what it would be like to try a conscious experiment of abstaining from sweets.
Again, this is not forever (unless you decide that’s what works best for you after some serious intuitive practice).
And trust me when I say I have no attachments to whether or not you have a "sugar free" or a "sugar full" diet.
I’m only attached to wanting to teach you how to hear the deeper stories weaving their way underneath all of this.
So back to Practice #2.
I'll give you an example of why I’m suggesting you remove the sugar temporarily, and why I’m insisting that this be a conscious process.
Have you ever been in any sort of conscious spiritual practice with your mate where, even though you were together, you decided that during your time together, you were going to observe a period of silence?
Maybe it was just a 10 minute silent walk that you took side-by-side, choosing not to speak? If you haven’t, I highly recommend it.
Now this would be different than riding along in the morning on the way to dropping your kids at soccer practice and everyone in the car is a little tired and so no one's talking.
No, I mean actually choosing: “Hey, what would it be like if we went on this walk through the woods together, and instead of making small talk, we both just chose to be silent and observe what that's like. Let's just observe what the forest sounds like. Or what it's like when I have an impulse to share something that floated into my mind with you and I decide to just hold onto it instead of speaking it.
This could be a very different walk, a very different car ride, and you might be surprised to discover just how much it brings up in you.
Now we’ve already outlined that the process of being with sugar, or any food or wellness practice, can be a little like being in a relationship in some ways, so this is an invitation to be in a conscious relationship with sweets, like you’re both are on a silent retreat, or you and sugar are taking a little time out.
So again, even if you already abstain for periods of time, is it really a conscious silent woods walk, or it more like an exhausted trip to soccer practice when no one’s talking?
Now, when you orient to this work from a true intention to partner yourself into deeper insights, you’ll get to see “what it's like when I have the impulse to consume sugar and I don't.”
"What happens to my craving, when I pause in an empty space before satisfying it immediately?"
Now, it could be that the first few times you did this, maybe there's not a whole lot that comes out of it.
Maybe you don't have any startling revelations.
Maybe you're just frustrated, irritable. Maybe you just think that Rachael got it all wrong and this was a stupid idea.
I am willing to wager, and I'd wager quite a lot because this is my lived experience, that if you stick with the practice and open yourself to the possibility of being taught, of being shared with from your highest knowing, and your deepest knowing, something will emerge.
So for example, during that first little bit of time when you usually would be having your chocolate ice cream because it’s after 8pm, or you normally would be enjoying the cupcake that's offered at your friend's birthday party, or your sweet latte because it’s the morning commute….
Whatever it is, in the moment when you decide, I'm not going to choose it today, what comes through?
And how can you consciously partner those sensations and experiences to receive some amount of information from them?
So for example, if you find yourself incredibly irritable, because you're in this conscious practice you'll know to tune into your irritability instead of just quickly bypassing it.
Now maybe previously what you would do with the irritability is you would just go order yourself a latte before you really had a chance to understand what the irritability meant.
But in this new way of being, just for these few times you decide to be in this practice, you're just going to actually notice, "Oh, I'm really irritable."
Or, "ugh I'm really sad. And actually, I'm really sad and I miss my friend who just moved."
Or, "I'm really frustrated and I feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction about my job, more so than I've allowed myself to feel all week long."
So the list of possibilities is infinite here, friends. It would take hours to even list and name all the things that might come through if you were really listening.
And that brings us to Practice # 3.
You see, in the second practice I’m inviting you into spending conscious time without sugar, your main intention will just be that of noticing and experiencing.
It will be one of being in your body, your emotions, being curious, being willing, and taking a journalistic approach to the question of what these sugar cravings really have to show you.
Practice # 3, on the other hand, is to really reflect, and the capture those reflections. Whether you’re grabbing a journal, the notes section of your smartphone, or a friend who’s always willing to listen, it’s time to be in the deeper contemplation about what’s arising in you when you explore these sugar cravings with conscious intention.
In my effort to assist you along the way, I’m going to lead you in a brief practice that you can turn to when you need it by simply returning to this video in the midst of Practice # 3.
If you’d rather be guided by your own intuition about what questions to ask yourself, or how to partner what’s arising in the midst of this "silent woods walk with sugar cravings gone unanswered," I support you! But if you’d like a bit more guidance when the time for practice is upon you, come back here and let me lead you with a few deep breaths and some specific questions for you to contemplate.
Now, before we dive in, let me share one last disclaimer:
Sometimes, you could do a brief meditation like this and you'll get a little slivers of new information, or hardly any at all.
Other times, you'll go inside and you'll be shocked what reveals itself and what you learn there.
So, do your best to release judgment about what happens each time you take this journey! Soften into the possibilities and release any attachment to the outcome.
Just show up a new each day like you're going to meet a new friend and you're not really sure what you're going to talk about once you get together. You just know that you're willing to go (you haven't seen them for a while, you're looking forward to the visit) and it won't really matter what you talk about once you get together.
The important thing is just that you make time for each other. It's the same when we go inside!
Just carve out the time to make these connections with your inner self, and what happens while you're there is of little consequence compared to the value of just making the time.
I'll guide you every step of the way.
So, if this is a good time to sit with your sugar cravings and do inner work, either in the midst of Practice 1 or as a follow up to the second practice, just keep going.
Otherwise, now’s a good time to pause if you need a bit more space to integrate and sit with Practices 1 and 2.
If you give this practice a try today and anything interesting emerges for you, I’d love to hear about it.
I would love to know how this work impacts you. And of course, I would be honored to take these inquiries and any others that you’re sitting with in your wellness journey into the safe space of our work together.
I can’t wait to see what awaits you in sacred partnership and how it will flower new possibilities in your life!
So, here’s to a life well lived and a soul fully expressed.
And now, onto this final practice. I hope you’ve found a quiet and comfortable place. Feel free to pause and do so now before we continue.
We’ll begin now by taking a deep breath in.
Notice the place where your body makes contact with the surface underneath you and notice the place where it's holding you up.
Breathe a few deep breaths here, all in your own right timing, and all with your own pace.
As you draw the air in, notice that not only can you fill your lungs, but you can also fill your belly. You can fill your pelvic bowl. It feels like you can even fill your thighs.
It feels like if you breathe deeply enough in, you can fill your body all the way down to your feet.
Just notice that.
And for a moment here, become aware of your feet. Wiggle your big toe. And wiggle your small toe.
And now marvel at the wonder that you can feel the difference between your big toe and your small toe without even touching or looking at them.
Just breathe another deep breath in, as if it air was going all the way into that big toe. And another breath in as if the air was going all the way into that small toe.
Filling the lungs, and the belly, and the pelvic bowl, the things, the legs, the feet, the toes.
As much as you're able, feeling the breath traveling through your body.
If it feels a little challenging, then perhaps just visualizing the shape of your torso, your legs, your toes, and visualizing the breath traveling.
If sensing in the body, or visualizing with the mind's eye, both feel a little tricky, then think a thought about the breath and the torso. Think a thought about the breath traveling down to your feet.
No matter what techniques work for you, welcoming the body and the breath to participate in this practice, to be here, to be noticed, in the way that's most aligned for you.
And from this place, sinking a bit deeper down into your body, into your heart.
Let’s bring the mind in for a brief countdown now, simply allowing yourself to drop deeper and deeper into connection with your soft body and your open intuition, as we count.
Starting with 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.
And here are some questions for you to ask, Self to Self.
- What sensations do I notice in my body during this period of time without sugar? What sensations do I notice in my body?
- And as some examples you might feel a range from rapid heartbeat, a clenched jaw or fists. A sunken feeling in your belly, a lightness, a softness, a buzz. The list goes on here, so just noticing for you, today - what sensations do I notice in my body during this period of time without sugar?
- And now notice, what emotions do I experience in my heart during this period of time without sugar?
- You might notice grief, sadness, anger, confusion, fear, ecstasy. It could be positive or seemingly negative. So just checking in here.
- You might notice grief, sadness, anger, confusion, fear, ecstasy. It could be positive or seemingly negative. So just checking in here.
- What emotions do I experience in my heartspace during this period of time without sugar?
- What thoughts, particularly those with a lot of charge, am I having about
- myself
- my family or community
- my career
- my body, my health
- during this time?
- myself
- What thoughts about myself, my family, my career, my body or health?
- Just be open to whatever wants to come through as you open the space for more information here.
- So the last question here my friends - What experience in my body, in my heart, or in my head, do I 100% trust the sugar will remedy for me once I satisfy this craving?
- So just sit with this inquiry for a moment.
- What experiences am I having, whether they be in my head center, my heart center, or my body, that I trust 100% the sugar will remedy for me once I surrender into satisfying this craving? What will I experience as a result?
So my friends, whether today was a practice rich with some new insights that came through in those empty spaces, or just a quieter time of sitting with the empty space, trust the wisdom that’s making it’s way to you as you continue to show up for these moments of inner work.
Trust the unfolding, and send gratitude now to all the parts that arose today. All the insights, and any experience. When you're ready, allow a gentle and intuitive reemerging into the space that you’re in, whatever that means for you today, and notice if you’d like to record any of your experiences, either in writing or in conversation.
Once more, here’s to a life well-lived and a soul fully expressed.