Where is my attention? That's a question I'm asking myself a lot these days.

Being a highly sensitive person, as it seems that many people who've struggled with disordered eating are, I've spent a lot of my life trying to tune out my inner environment. That inner cavern of feeling and perception was just too scary and foreign to start to pay attention to. What might happen if I were to listen to those inner stirrings? My very survival early in life seemed inextricably linked to focusing outward, trying to micromanage my environment and experience. The luxury of simply being present in my body, and with whatever is happening within me at any given moment seemed unfamiliar at best, and dangerous at worst.

I've started to become more acquainted with that primordial part of me that fears so deeply what will happen if I let down my guard for even a minute; if I were to relax into my body and my self and the moment with no agenda to alter or 'fix' it in any way. That part of me has been deeply conditioned to pretend that I don't hear myself, to look outward first for a sense of whether or not I'm good enough. Smart enough, attractive enough, aware enough, and contentious enough. 'Enough'. And 'enough' is determined by other people's moment to moment reaction to me. Or, my perception of their reaction.

My default way of being in the world has been to use my psychological energy to attempt to intuit other people's expectations of me (which may have very little to do with what they actually expect of me), and to strive to accommodate that. I can see more clearly now that this once seemingly 'helpful' approach costs me dearly as an adult seeking to live a fulfilling, truthful life. The price has manifested itself in a variety of ways - in relationships, jobs, career choices, health, even spiritual path. Most of all it's manifested itself in my internal experience of myself - of being at home in my body, of belonging to myself, of feeling safe and cared for - by me. There's nothing more disillusioning than the creeping, dawning realization that you've been living someone else's life.

All of this reflection has been the byproduct of an intense period of personal and spiritual growth, and has left me asking many questions about life. 'What makes people tick?' has been the favorite of the past. Now I realize more and more the sheer necessity of paying the majority of my attention to what makes ME tick. Applying that same attention to detail, hyper-awareness, and scrutiny that I've been programmed to project outward to my inner experience. What a gift to give myself.

And what a challenge. I find myself many times a day asking myself 'where is my attention focused right now?' Is it focused inside my body and my experience, or is it focused on you and your experience, or them and their experience. On the bus, on the street, in the lineup, on the phone. Where is my attention? In the end, it comes down to an opportunity for me to get centered as my-SELF again and again, moment-to-moment, and turn my focus and attention to MY experience, my body, my feelings and thoughts, my wisdom and truth. That truth is housed inside all of us, waiting to be listened for.

If you feel inspired, I'd invite you to take a moment in your day, or even better, take many moments to check in and ask yourself that same question.

And notice what happens.

"Laughter stimulates your immune system," says Dan Gascon, a certified laughter leader and president of the Canadian Humour for your Health organisation. "There is extensive research which shows how laughter releases endorphins into the brain. According to a recent study, laughter is the only natural way your organs get a massage. It is also a principle element in the digestive process. Simply, your body needs it."

And laughter doesn't stop there. The results of a 1998 study conducted at Loma Linda University Medical Centre in California found that humour: Decreases levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline, helps lower blood pressure, boosts immunity by raising levels of antibodies such as T-cells. Plus, Stanford University research indicates that a good laugh also: Stimulates circulation, makes you more alert, exercises the skeletal muscles, has the same cardio respiratory response as 10 minutes of strenuous rowing - but you only need to laugh for 10 seconds.

What does humour do for a social situation? A good guffaw can also lighten up just about any situation. "Humour is a social lubricant," says Steven Sultanoff, a humour therapy specialist. "We like to laugh because it feels good, and we like people who make us laugh. As a result we feel emotions like joy and happiness, become more energised, and are open to the development of new relationships." So what are you waiting for? Laugh away.

Laugh Lessons: According to Sultanoff, laughter doesn't always come naturally - you need to embark on a quest for humour: "Observing and sharing humour are actually skills that we can develop through seeking opportunities to laugh." Try these exercises for your inner-comedian: Lie in bed and sing duets with your partner. Devise a humourous answering machine message. Tickle your kids a bit to make them giggle. Set up a laughter notice board at work or home and pin up funny clippings, sayings, cartoons or photos. Start your memo or e-mail with a joke. Find a funny card and send it instead of a letter. Leave a humourous message on your best friend's answering machine. At your next dinner party, rent some comedy classics.

Gascon also encourages people to remember to take the time to do the things they love. "Your sense of humour is connected with the things you love. We forget to do the things we love in this fast paced world. Remember to take a walk, read a book, or take a hot bath. There is humour and laughter in the things you love." "If you're angry, statistics show your body starts to shut down," Gascon adds. "Physiologically, stress and negative energy releases toxins in your body and can make you sick. Obviously laughter makes you feel good."

Hello there. I would like to speak to you briefly this month about a very key issue in the recovery process. That is: getting, on a gut level, that your behaviour around food and body image is just a coping strategy.

If there is any part of you that doubts what I"m saying or that doesn't feel immediately relieved and reassured, as though a great weight has been lifted or a forgotten knowing reasserted, then you don't get it on a gut level - yet! My purpose this month is supporting you to do that -because it is the most fundamental piece in the recovery process.

The reason why it's so important to truly know that your focus on body image, or your overeating, restricting or purging behaviour is just a coping strategy and not the real problem is because as long as you still get sucked in to believing that your food and body image stuff is the problem you're spinning your wheels, you're wasting your precious time and energy and you're feeding that nasty drill seargent who says things like "you're never going to get it"; "you're always going to be like this"; "there's no point"; etc.

That's because you're spending your time looking at a symptom, a flashing neon sign that says "something's up, something's not right, we're out of balance somewhere" and then saying to yourself - "hey, that sign should be yellow, not blue - what's up with that!" Well, how much progress do you think you're going to make with that focus? You can get all bent out of shape thinking that the sign (your food and body focus) should be different and feeling defeated becasue it's not changing, or you can recognize if for what it is - a sign, an indicator that you have needs that aren't being met and then take steps to identify and meet those needs.

The amazing thing about this process is that as soon as you prove to yourself that your food and body image focus is just a coping strategy - just an indicator of unmet needs - you will feel so free and empowered and truly able to begin meeting your needs in all the areas of your life in ways that are respectful to you. This means that in taking care of the underlying needs that were triggering your use of food and body image focus as a coping strategy in the first place, you actually side step the issue of disordered eating altogether - it becomes a non- issue. And, if it does come up again, let's say you're walking down the street months from now and have a bad body thought, you can say to yourself, "ah, that's a coping strategy, it means I have needs that aren't being met, what are they?" And you're immediately in problem solving mode instead of self- beratement and spinning your wheels. Inevitably you will discover that you have the capacity to meet all of your needs and that there is absolutely nothing at all to fear in becoming conscious of what those needs are. There is only power and security and true love and true trust to be found in becoming conscious of who you are and what you need.

So, to begin really proving to yourself that your food and body image focus is just a coping strategy and only there to let you know that you have needs that aren't being met:

• Start by making a commitment to check in with yourself once a day (it's best if you choose the same time daily as you'll have a better chance of remembering initially)
• When you check in, ask yourself if you can identify any disordered use of food or body image focus since you last checked in.
• Then, if the answer is yes, say to yourself: "That is just a coping strategy, it means I have needs that aren't being met"
• Then ask yourself, "What is going on in my life that might trigger me to have unmet needs that would lead me to use food to cope?" Remember things that trigger unmet needs can be past issues; things that are up in the present; and things that we're imagining happening in the future.
• Undoubtedly you will be able to identify at least one thing (best if you write this down the first few times - it helps to keep your thoughts clear) that is impacting you and leading you to want to numb out or distance with food and body image focus.
• There you go - in one fell swoop you just proved to yourself that your food and body focus is really a coping strategy and that it's triggered by unmet needs from events in your life, past, present or future.
• Now do that a handful more times until you can authentically, at a gut level, say to yourself "I'm reaching for food and I"m not hungry, I know that's just a coping strategy - I can eat if I want but let's also check in and see what's up."
• From there it's really just a matter of honing that skill, fine tuning your awareness so you notice closer and closer to the initial triggering of the need and ultimately have no need for your coping strategies because you're effectively meeting your needs in life enhancing ways.

The rest of the recovery process is about honing those skills of consciousness in the moment; learning to identify what the need is that has been triggered and learning new, life enhancing ways of meeting those needs. It is a beautifully self-reinforcing process because each time you become more aware of an unmet need and take steps to meet it in a new way you feel freer, lighter, more secure, more trusting in yourself and others, safer to be authentic, safer to be out in the world - and isn't that what you are seeking in vain through your focus on food and body image? That sense of trust and security and acceptance and reassurance that you've never been able to attain through your focus on food and body image becomes immediately accessible once you stop focussing on the symptom and acknoweldge and attend to the underlying need(s) that triggered it in the first place.

I could go on - but I did promise to be brief! Please know that we're here for you if this resonated in any way and you'd like support in this process. And if this gives you a sense of direction and the information you needed to begin to make changes in your use of food and body image focus as a coping strategy then I'm an exceptionally happy camper! Have a great September and we'll see you in October. Michelle.

One of the most important pieces of my own recovery has been letting go of needing to be perfect. In one sense, striving for perfection can have a positive spin, but more often than not, and definitely in my case, it was a form of self-rejection and rejection of myself as a human being.

This relentless drive for perfection has at its' root a quest for acceptance and love. The old core belief was, "I need to be perfect in order to get love." Because I grew up in a home where there was active addiction (my parents suffered from alcoholism) my needs for consistent, safe, acceptance were never met, and consequently I spent a great deal of my life striving to get this need met, but always in relationships that were eerily similar to the relationship I had with my parents. There was affection, but it was inconsistent, and I was driven in a quest for perfection in order to secure love.

In recovery, I learned that I am enough, I am deserving of love, simply because I exist, and even more importantly, that I am the greatest source of love for myself. Love for myself can best be described as a relationship I have with myself based on acceptance and compassion for all of me. I allow for my limitations and acknowledge that perfection is, quite simply, an absurd goal to strive for.

Whenever I hear the critical voice inside me, or I am experiencing anger towards myself I can be pretty sure that the old "quest for perfection" is at the core. In those cases, I take a break, reflect on what is going on, and remind myself that I am human, I give myself explicit permission to be human and I remember that I am on equal footing with all other humans. No better, but no worse either.

My deepest wish is that we all give ourselves permission to be human and let go of the relentless drive towards perfection.

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. - M. Scott Peck

"When we see the need for deep change, we usually see it as something that needs to take place in someone else. In our roles of authority, such as parent, teacher, or boss, we are particularly quick to direct others to change. Such directives often fail, and we respond to the resistance by increasing our efforts. The power struggle that follows seldom results in change or brings about excellence. One of the most important insights about the need to bring about deep change in others has to do with where deep change actually starts." - Robert E. Quinn

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. - Alan Cohen

Everyone knows that teenagers spend a lot of time on the Internet, but a study by the Stanford School of Medicine and Packard Children's Hospital is now highlighting a use of the Internet that could be dangerous to adolescents' health. "Web sites that actively promote anorexia and bulimia are used by a significant number of adolescents with eating disorders," the study's authors point out.

Sites that give visitors tips on weight loss and how to hide their food avoidance tactics from friends and family members outnumber sites devoted to recovery from eating disorders by five to one, the researchers found, and most make the point that eating disorders are not a disease but a way of life. "The web sites are well-designed and alluring, often with a gateway emphasizing the danger of the site that can be attractive to teens," said researcher Dr. Rebecka Peebles.

The pro-eating disorder sites tend to be pretty ambivalent, the researchers agreed, with discussions in chat rooms and on bulletin boards about how much the disorder pains sufferers and cautions against trying too hard to lose weight. But the sites also offer "thinspiration" in the form of pictures, body weight goal charts, exercises, and low-calorie recipes, and more than 60 percent of teens who visit the sites appear to try some of those techniques. Adolescents typically use the sites as a forum to express their innermost thoughts and feelings, the researchers say. "Teens enter the sites promoting eating disorders possibly to gain solidarity and express their pride in and publicize what they see as a lifestyle choice." They also may want reassurance that they can continue to do what they really want to do, which is to lose weight.

Medical professionals need to recognize how dependent teens are on the Internet for health information and peer support, the researchers suggest, and they say they hope their study will serve as a wake-up call for physicians treating adolescents with eating disorders who may underestimate the influence of those web sites. The Stanford/Packard study was released at the May 14-17, 2005, annual meeting of Pediatric Academic Societies in Washington, D.C. Information about the study is available at rdicks@stanfordmed.org.

This 12-week group will give us the opportunity to develop an appreciation of our spiritual nature without having to prescribe to a specific doctrine. In this group we will explore spirituality as an important part of our human experience, one that often gets short changed with our obsession of secular issues; setting boundaries, good communication skills etc.

It is our hope that after the group, participants will continue to explore their spirituality through art, ritual, nature, contemplation, music, community and any other avenues that they are drawn to.

This Group is the creation of Beth Burton-Krahn and she will be faciliating this offering in the fall. If you're beginning to ask those big questions about purpose and meaning or wanting a safe place to explore different meanings and expressions of spirituality this is the place for you.

email: info@cedriccentre.com

phone: 1-866-383-0797 / 250-383-0797

web: http://www.cedriccentre.com