Here are some pieces of feedback that we received this past week about our newsletter. Thanks to all of you who provide us with feedback, it is so important for us to know what works for you and what doesn't. We appreciate hearing from you!

I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your newsletters. I read them whenever you send them to me and they are great. I am just committing to the things you are suggesting Michelle and I really appreciate the support here and your stories.

Just wanted to tell you I love your weekly newsletter & I think it is the perfect size. Hope all is well with you & I'm looking forward to reading your book.

So enjoying receiving the newsletter again. Reminding me what I learned a few years back and how to keep practicing it. You asked for feedback re: length of newsletter. The content is useful and relevant. I like the pictures putting faces to names. One thought I had was in the discussion piece on money/poverty and then the follow-up suggestion: "pick up a few books on the issue of money that will make a huge difference to your sense of empowerment to change your situation, regardless of your age." For those who live on low or limited incomes, suggesting where it's available for free either in your library at the Cedric Center or at the general library would be helpful. Appreciate the hard work you and the other staff are doing! Thank you.

The feedback on the newsletter being too long caught my eyes and mind. I totally disagree - I enjoy the in-depth readings; they help me to learn and understand complicated issues and concerns. I think that the instant gratification mentality is part of the problem we all have with eating disorders and self-abuse. Please don't change your format - it is refreshing, offers intelligent perspectives and I print and store them for later reflecting and learning. Keep up the good work. You are all so awesome.

This week I'm sharing a few quotes from "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" by Robin Sharma. It's a wonderful "how to" book on expanding your consciousness and deepening your connection with yourself on all levels.

I'm still hanging on to it at home but as soon as I'm done re-reading it (a few more weeks I'd say) it will be added to our library.

"To improve your mind without the cultivation of your physical gifts would be a very hollow victory. Elevating your mind and body to their highest level without nurturing your soul would leave you feeling very empty and unfulfilled. But when you dedicate your energies to unlocking the full potential of all three of your human endowments, you will taste the divine ecstacy of an enlightened life."

"Quick-fixes do not work. All lasting inner change requires time and effort. Persistence is the mother of personal change."

"You must be ruthless with your time. Learn to say no. Having the courage to say no to the little things in life will give you the power to say yes to the big things."

Our Web Page is Up!
Well this is exciting! Our new web page is up and running. Please check it out if you have time and would be willing to offer us some feedback on your impression and on anything you see that could be improved.
www.cedriccentre.com

Vancouver Health Show
Michelle and Karen will be at the Vancouver Health Show, Saturday and Sunday, October 28th and 29th. The Health Show is at Canada Place Conference Centre, downtown and runs from 10-6 on Saturday and 11-5 on Sunday. Michelle will be presenting on Sunday afternoon: "Food is not the Problem." So do stop by our booth or come to the presentation. There will be lots of great handouts and information shared.

New In House Group
Food is not the Problem: Deal With What Is Saturday's starting October 28th 10am - 12pm for 12 weeks. Each group meeting covers a topic specific to your use of food and body focus to cope and provides you an opportunity to share about your experience of the previous week's homework and life experience. The goal of this group is to provide you with the support, tools and information you need to be successful in forever changing your relationship with food from one fraught with stress and negativity to one of peace, ease and unconscious competence.

New Web GroupOur 6 month web group is an awesome experience for anyone who wants to take part in a healing group but would prefer to receive their support from home. We have been offering our web group for 7 years now and have received wonderful feedback from participants about their healing experience and the strong sense of connection they felt with their group members. The Web program provides you one group session every week for 24 weeks; each group session on line is 90 minutes. You also get a Monday update which is a weekly newsletter just for your group with sharing specific to the topic for that week. You get all of our products (book, cd's, dvd's and workbooks) and a cd with each of your 24 weeks of lessons and corresponding handouts.

That's a lot of information, a lot of support and a nice long period of time to really see yourself making solid changes to your relationship with food.

Yoga
Our gentle moving and stretching classes are led by Deb Moncur, Certified Yoga Instructor and CEDRIC Centre staff member for 4 years. Deb understands the need of our clientele to connect gently with their bodies, to feel a sense of oneness and safety with themselves and to relax into the moment and be fully present and alive. Her yoga classes at the Centre are always a beautiful opportunity for bodies of all sizes and shapes to move and to be acknowledged compassionately and lovingly.
Our newest set of yoga classes begins Tuesday evenings, October 17th from 5:30 - 7:00 pm. The set is 6 weeks long and the fee is $72.00 Our classes are small and there is time for individual connection with Deb as well as some great group experience.

Intensive Weekend Workshop: Phase I
November 10 - 12, 2006. 3 full days of small group education and support. Our phase one transformative intensive workshop not only provides you a solid understanding of the underlying triggers of your use of food to cope, it also delivers clear and concrete tools to lead you to freedom from food and body focus once and for all.

For a full listing of upcoming events and appearances at The CEDRIC Centre, visit our events page on our web site: www.compulsiveeating.com/news.php

And for more information on any of these offerings, contact us at info@cedriccentre.com or visit our web page and have a look at some more detailed information.

Most of the time my brain works really well! Sometimes, not!

Yesterday I was putting the finishing touches on the newsletter file having just finished what could only be described as the best ever tools for recovery article and then (insert scary organ music here!) when I closed down the file to take a break and do thanksgiving related things and the computer asked me if I wanted to save my changes, I said to myself "Why would I want to save my changes, I don't want to save my changes." Where was my brain! Has anyone out there ever done that? Well, naturally moderate mayhem ensued as I struggled with my computer illiteracy in trying to figure out how to undo what I had just done. To no avail. I think the same thing happened to the man who wrote War and Peace! Only his dog ate it. And he said his book was much better the second time around. Let's hope this is the case here as well.

Also, I would like to request that anyone who tries the homework this week share their experience of it with me so that I can pass their experiences on to our readers (anonymously) and let others who may have sat on the fence with this one know the benefits of this tool.

Well, here goes, for the second time:

Last week I shared with you some thoughts about your Authentic Self. The week before that I encouraged you to "check in with your gut feeling a few times a day. And whatever you notice there ask yourself: Independent of food and body stuff, what might be going on in my world to trigger this feeling in me?" Now we're going to put those pieces together and build a solid tool for you to be able to catch any unmet needs as they begin to arise and attend to them directly so that you never get to the point of distress that leads you to use isolation, procrastination and food to cope.

Let's begin with another look at your Authentic Self. Your Authentic Self is the part of you that houses your feelings and that knows intuitively what you need and how you need it. Your Drill Sgt. doesn't value the feedback or needs of the Authentic Self because often they fly in the face of his "external approval at all costs" mentality. That's why if you just leave it up to the critical voice in your head to validate and acknowledge the needs of your Authentic Self, you'll be waiting a very long time.

The Drill Sgt. is caught up in co-dependency. He's caught up in needing everyone else's approval first and foremost. Then and only then will he let you attend to any esteem or self-respect needs of our own. Well, you know firsthand that there is absolutely no way to meet everyone's needs. There is always someone who will be unhappy or frustrated or want more or less, or something other than what you're offering.

Understanding this point and how it impacts you is very important. You see, when you really get that your focus on meeting the needs of others is harming you and preventing you from meeting your own needs, thus forcing you to numb out with your food and body focus coping strategies, you will begin to allow for the possibility that you might better serve yourself and others by attending to your needs first.

Now as far as the Drill Sgt. is concerned I have just committed a sacrilege. "Meet your own needs before you meet those of others?" He says. "That's a sure path to ostracism, judgement and vanity." That's the old co-dependent belief and the Drill Sgt. has bought into it hook, line and sinker. So of course he's going to have some resistance and uncertainty about a new way of thinking. It's time to ask yourself how well the old way of thinking is working for you.

• How happy are you?
• Do you feel equal to others?
• Do you feel that you are able to meet your needs as well as those of others?
• Do you find yourself using food to cope with the stress of: making others happy; not offending; and squashing your own authentic expression of life?
• Do you find that no matter how hard you try you never feel a true sense of completeness and satisfaction with your body?

Well, what do you think? Do you want to keep pouring more of your precious life energy into an old, inherited way of doing things that never worked and never will? If there is any part of you saying no it's time to explore a new way of being with the world, with food and with yourself. What would that look like you say? Well, it looks like this:

Three times a day for the next week stop, put your hand on your stomach, connect with your Authentic Self through your conscious intention to hear what she has to say right now and ask yourself the following questions:

1. What am I feeling right now? (Mad, Glad, Sad, or Scared)

2. What is going on, independent of food and body image to trigger these feelings? (if you have a hard time getting beneath the food and body focus remind yourself that that is just a coping strategy and that there is always something beneath it, then let yourself offer suggestions of things that might be impacting you, however inconsequential they might seem.)

3. What needs to happen in order for me to feel completely peaceful right now?

Stop and check in with those 3 questions 3 times a day for the next week and you will begin to notice many things.

At this point, I believe you'll discover that your Authentic Self does come up with suggestions for what needs to happen in order for her to feel peaceful, followed closely by the Drill Sgt. telling you why you can't have/be or do that. That's okay - what we're looking for right now is for you to have the experience of touching base with yourself throughout the day, tuning in to what you really need and how you might meet those needs. Then the healing can really begin as you begin to be more and more aware of the blocks that your Drill Sgt. throws up to prevent you from taking that action from self- respect and self-esteem, and any blocks to your honoring choices that are present in your external world (in the form of relationships and external expectations).

Identifying and healing those blocks to your authentic expression is where you will begin to see change occurring on a very deep level. A whole new way of looking at the world and your place in it is awaiting your awareness that your needs are valid, you have a right to feeling peaceful and to caring for yourself first. From that place you are able to be the best friend, lover, parent, employee, student, child etc. that you have ever been.

Well, I had a thing or two to learn about blogging! I began the CEDRIC blog a few months ago with the intention of creating a community of CEDRIC clients who would share with each other about their recovery experiences; how they were using the tools and what they were noticing. Also, I hoped that clients and readers would share feedback with me about CEDRIC and the things that we could do to make us better every day.

I didn't understand at the point of putting the blog on line that there is a blog etiquette. A sort of "rules of blogging" if you will. And I didn't realize that for any professional blog the rule of thumb is to issue user login i.d.'s so that each member is accountable for their sharing.

So, within the first month of our blog I had breached etiquette unknowingly by removing an entry and by deleting feedback.
Now, the feedback I deleted also breached etiquette but the point is, I would like to have handled that differently and to have been aware when I started that there were certain rules or guidelines to a successful blog.

I want our blog to be a place where people can share authentically about their experiences with our tools, our work, our promotions and anything else that might impact their experience of CEDRIC. So, I've been doing a little research, reading some books and taking some time to educate myself on how to make our blog a safe place to share and receive support.

To that end, I am in the process of making a few changes to our blog. At which point I'll be offering user accounts to anyone who wants to post providing they adhere to the blogging etiquette and I commit to doing the same.

By this time next week our blog will be back on line. I'll let you know how to get the user name and where I'll be posting the etiquette information.

And if anyone has any suggestions for things they'd like to see on the blog or how they have seen other blogs run effectively I welcome your sharing.

email: info@cedriccentre.com

phone: (250) 383 - 0797

web: http://www.cedriccentre.com