A = Awareness
When we bring active awareness to our experiences - all of them, not just the ones that we like - we are invited to participate and engage in ways that truly honour us as unique beings, just as we are in that moment.
Awareness is a core pillar of understanding ourselves better. And believe me, we humans are complex creatures. So if you’ve started here at A this is a really good building block to move through the rest of the book. In its broadest sense, the word ‘awareness’ means having a perspective; an understanding and knowledge that something exists. The ‘something’ can be in our inner worlds – thoughts, feelings, sensations. And they might be in our outer world – our behaviours, other people, events.
Warning: Developing awareness just for awareness sake can end up as a fancy, intellectualised exercise in over-thinking. For example, we can be more aware that having late nights and caffeinated ourselves to kingdom come the next day is making us feel like shit, but unless we take the time to reflect on why this cycle is happening, then we can be aware all we like, and nothing will change. Using this example, awareness can then be used as a weapon against us; we might say ‘but I know what I’m doing/not doing/what’s going on but I can’t seem to do it differently’.
Awareness requires curiosity; taking a genuine interest in ourselves in a non-blaming, non-judgemental way.
Awareness requires curiosity; taking a genuine interest in ourselves in a non-blaming, non-judgemental way. Awareness also requires courage, because we are almost definitely going to stumble over some uncomfortable shit we don’t want to take a look at, and let’s be honest, it’s definitely easier just to pack it away again with a swift *nothing to see here*. But if we want to develop better relationships – with food, eating, our bodies, ourselves and other people – then cultivating a genuine sense of awareness invites us to flick out the rubber-backed tartan rug, unpack the metaphorical picnic that are our experiences and take a good look around. At which point the two most common responses are ‘uh oh, it’s raining!’, pack it all up and get back to business as usual, or we can take some deep breaths and stick with the task of understanding ourselves better so we can have a better quality of life and get some seriously awesome shit done!
Creating awareness around food and eating might include:
· Developing an understanding, with no criticism or blaming, of past patterns relating to food
· Identifying how any goods/bads/rights/wrongs/shoulds/shouldn’ts have snuck into our life around food, and the trajectory of how we came to think this way
· Developing insight about why these patterns might absolutely feel terrible, but are likely to have helped us in some way
· Getting to know what is truly okay with you, and what’s not okay (it’s called boundaries, people. Boundaries.)
· Over time, being better able to make moment-to-moment choices that honour you as a unique human, not what is being demanded of you.
Creating awareness of your body might include:
· Acknowledging that you actually have a body
· Developing a sense of kindness towards your body’s experiences through life
· A sense of courage to turn towards ourselves, rather than away
· A willingness to accompany your body along each of its human experiences – the comfortable, the uncomfortable and everything in between.
Awareness does not mean that the picnic we unpack is going to be all chocolate brownies; the positivity, pleasure and joy. There’s probably going to be pickled herrings and soggy curried egg sandwiches too. There’s going to be things we discover that we don’t like, or things we want and are not easy or quick fixes. Importantly, cultivating awareness builds a capacity to ‘be with’ our experiences – the ones that feel good, the ones that perhaps don’t feel as good – with a sense of curiosity and non-judgement. With greater awareness, we can notice these experiences without then piling criticism on top; for example, ‘Argh! I shouldn’t be doing this again! I should not be feeling like this! Why does this keep happening?’ When we pile judgements and criticism on top of our original experience, it can make our experience feel even more messy, confusing and difficult to address.
It's hard. It could be uncomfortable. I get it. So what’s the point?
Simply this. If we want to develop new ways of understanding ourselves, our patterns and how we show up in the world, developing awareness means that we can have access to more options in every moment rather than getting caught up in the same old repetitive, reactive cycles. To be clear, this is not another way to get better control over your eating and body, this is an insight-oriented process that supports us to take a genuine interest in how we have come to relate to food, eating and our body in the way we do currently, reflect honestly on what’s working and not working for us, then chart a path forward that feels more aligned with how we want our life to be.
With awareness comes options and choice.
Building awareness – First steps
These prompts are designed as starting points. If you have had fraught and difficult experiences with food and eating, please proceed with the utmost kindness or seek the support of a professional or peer who can guide you through these reflective questions. There is no right or wrong, your experiences are real, valid and to be honoured.
· What’s your immediate and extended family’s history around food and eating?
· What do you understand about what impacted or influenced your parents and grandparents (or older generations) and their relationships with food and eating?
· Growing up, what were you taught about food and eating? What were the main messages?
· Were there times in your life you can recall your relationship with food and eating changing, either more positively or more negatively?
· What do you notice about the way you relate to food and eating today compared to your childhood or teenage years?
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