When a Chocolate Chip Cookie Is Not Just A Cookie

Last Saturday, after a long day of teaching yoga, feeling spent and vulnerable, and a lack of my own yoga practice, I found myself eating five chocolate chip cookies in a row. I was not hungry for food and was clearly undermining my own desire to take care of my body. I do not think that there is anything wrong with chocolate chip cookies except that for me- it can be awful. I will feel like crap; foggy, tired and scattered for at least a couple hours after eating this type of food. Not to mention that it will set me up to crave more of the same type of food. It is as if a part of my brain goes on stupid, unhappy and autopilot.

Last Saturday I ate five chocolate chip cookies in a row and so it began: the familiar war with food and my body was on. A place I have been many times before. It had been a while but still I recognized the familiar pull. A tug from my wild side. "Who cares?" "These taste so good." "Eat them." "No one will ever know." "You deserve this." "You will always be fat. Face up to that." The self talk got uglier by the moment.

Anybody who is familiar with using food or any other default strategy (shopping, gossiping, continuous lying or emotionaly outbursts, alcohol, drugs, constant busyness, etc.) to cope with uncomfortable feelings and emotions can relate. To think that the root of the struggle is with food or with my body is an illusion. An illusion that I can convince myself to believe.

The real problem is not with food. The real problem is not with my body. The real problem is with the belief that happiness lies only around the next corner, the next accomplishment. As a person who has yet to fully accept myself the "way I am," I am either trying to squeeze into a narrow and tight version of acceptable behavior or I am rebelling against everything that constricts me. Even if I get thin and stay thin for the next fifty years, I will still be afraid of not staying thin and I will spend my life swinging from one extreme to another. When we want to be different than who we are, when we think we are never good enough, we will never know who we are and we will never leave ourselves alone.

The ability for yoga to be my objective and gentle teacher and show me how to heal from a lifelong struggle with self acceptance is why I practice yoga, teach yoga, and opened a yoga studio in the first place. The real work of yoga is the real work of life. The real work is to disidentify from self-images that were formed a lifetime ago and from which we still construct our daily lives. The real work is to allow ourselves to be who we already are and to have what we already have. The real work is to be passionate, holy, wild, irreverent. To laugh and cry until you wake up to the amazing person that you are, right now in this moment.

The question is how do we do the work? How do we dream our own lives into being when we have spent most of our lives wanting to be different than who we are?

Yoga teaches how to be in this exact moment. As we hold challenging poses, we ask ourselves to think less about what we are supposed to be doing and more about what is actually happening. By being present with each moment of our lives exactly as it is, we learn that the more time we spend constructing parallel lives, the less energy we have for our present lives.

Yoga teaches how to feel, millimeter by millimeter and with support. The support is always there in the form of self observation without judgment. This is the muscle we learn to strengthen. Once we allow ourselves to feel our feelings fully and with complete compassion, then we begin to move through all situations in our life with grace. To feel sorrow, abandonment, disappointment and even hopelessness-we begin to understand what so much of our frantic activity is trying to cover up.

Yoga asks us to constantly inquire into our experience: Does getting what we want take away the discomfort of wanting? If I achieve headstand, am I still left with wanting something else? Is longing replaced by another and then another?

Yoga teaches to honor the longing to have a big life, which can either translate into the longing to have someone else's life or the longing to have the life you would already have if you were not constantly diminishing yourself.

Yoga teaches that behind every addiction is the burning question: What is enough?

Yoga shows us that no feeling is final.

Finally, we cannot understand or move through what we refuse to examine. It's not until we admit we are lost that there is even a possibility of discovering a new way.

After I ate the five cookies, I found myself wanting to eat at least five more. I moved into panic and then disgust. It was at this point that I got real. I got grounded. I took a deep breath, practiced restraint with the cookies and recognized that the cookies are not the bad guys, I am not the bad guy. My longing is not the bad guy. The bad guy is when we forget the qualities that exist inside all of us. When we cut ourself off from courage, strength, joy, will, compassion, and love. But you know, we cannot teach these qualities. We know these things only by remembering them. This is the sweetest gift that we can give to ourself and to others. When we remember who we are, then we no longer have to try to be someone else.

I covered the remaining cookies and left them for my family. It was then that I put some water on to boil on the stove for tea. Hot tea was what I really craved. Something warm and nourishing. As the kettle whistled, I realized that true nourishment existed all along. We all have true nourishment. We are the true nourishment we have been searching for.