Losing Your Pounds of Pain and The Secret

Well I have finished two of my books for this year - the Horse Boy and Losing Your Pounds of Pain and am feeling rather pleased with myself.  This blog entry is about the second book (I may return to the Horse Boy some other time.)  It is a book I bought a long time ago and only realised when I added it to my list of books to read that was written by my favourite Oracle card producer Dorren Virtue.  As you an see to the left I have 10 packs of her cards as opposed to 3 that aren't and even one of those was produced by her husband and so is sort of the same.










They are beautiful cards though all of them as you can see here.  These cards are from my favourite pack Mermaids and Dolphin Oracle Cards.  Anyway if you want to see more of her stuff go and see her Amazon page here.

Anyway back to the book.  It is about breaking the link between abuse, stress and overeating.  It was a really interesting read even though it concentrates a lot on binge eaters which I don't really class myself as.  It still had lots of helpful hints for losing weight and why we carry the weight we do.  The basic premise is that when you release emotional pain from your formative years, your appetite normalises because you aren't filling an emotional void with food.  We are designed to be light in body and spirit and food is meant to be fuel for daily energy and nothing more.  If we are searching for a sense of self, peace of mind and self-acceptance and cannot find them because of past pain then this can lead to over-eating or other unhealthy habits e.g. addictive behaviours or depression.  There is the need to transform FATS - fear, angers, tension and shame (leading to over-eating), into FATS - forgiveness, acceptance, trust of self (nice acronym.)

A very interesting idea she same up with was when we dismiss any childhood pain as not really a big deal, put your own child in the same situation and see how you feel about them being treated the same way you were.  This acknowledges that intellectually remembering someone (or remembering something from an adult perspective) is not the same as emotionally remembering something.   I have done this in the past and when I replaced me with Indie at the same age my 'not a big deal' became a much bigger deal than I thought.  This type of visualisation really works.

When you acknowledge that there are reasons for your addictive behaviour it then becomes easier to take control and realise that the childhood pain needs to be felt and let go of.  There is talk of dream journals, meditation, affirmations, taking note of any memory that keeps recurring as something that needs looking at, stopping before engaging in the unhealthy behaviour, exercising every day even if only for 15 minutes.

"Treat your body and soul with compassion and kindness.  Love that little child inside of you and be understanding when she occasionally falters."  - you cannot argue with that as an idea.  Anyway because of this book I have added a whole load of affirmations to my computer screen and because of watching The Secret I have added a wish-list screen saver as well high-lighting some of the things I want in the world.  Neither the affirmations nor the screen are very clear although you can see the gorgeous feet circle picture at the top of the screen which always reminds me of the ubuntu story.  Unfortunately I believe the ubuntu story is an urban myth but I will repeat it here anyway because it is such a lovely idea.




An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe   He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first won the fruits   When he told them to run they all took each others hands and ran together  then sat together enjoying the fruit.  When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said "ubuntu."  In Xhosa culture ubuntu means "I am because we are."

For me this picture therefore signifies world peace and the desire that we all have compassion for ourselves and all other beings.  The other pictures are all things I would like in my life.  I will see if any of this makes any difference and let you know.  

I know there are many people out there who think that films and books like 'The Secret' are codswallop but I like some of the ideas in it and it has already helped my dd be more positive and see that it makes a difference so that makes it all worthwhile.