Mind, Body, and Spirit – Week 1

Mind, Body, and Spirit – Week 1

                This will be my first non-PBP post. I realize that the contents are terribly personal and may be all together uninteresting. However, I feel that it will help to reinforce my objectives and keep me on yonder “straight and narrow”. On with the show!

                The last two years of my life have been rather amazing. I took a step out of my comfort zone and decided to network with a group of like-minded individuals in the immediate area. This group consisted of witches and a few interested parties who were seeking to network and form some sort of community to study with and celebrate Wiccan holidays. The original plan had been to gather once monthly at a local restaurant and share ideas. This quickly transformed into a study group, led by a woman who has become a very dear friend to me. She and her husband are taking the Temple of Witchcraft courses provided by Christopher Penczak. Her work and dedication is of such quality that Mr. Penczak has allowed her to form an offshoot of his studies, while he provides the end certification throughout the courses. This has been a very exciting time for all of us. We've seen our small group, which in the first year began with nine individuals including our teacher and her husband, first shrink down to four, and then explode to quadruple in number of students and participants in our public rituals.

I had, in the past, been in a coven of sorts. We were really just a small group of eclectic solitaires bumbling around and trying to make sense of our spirituality. These women became sisters to me. But eventually, our happy little group split apart. It had nothing to do with a loss of friendship or power struggles. I simply took a job three hours away and had to relocate. The others ended up moving away after Katrina tore our coastal hometown apart. In the eight years following the move, I sort of drifted, unable to make a solid connection with the divine or even with like-minded people.

Finding the new group was like a reawakening, only I've come to realize that I’d been sleep walking even back then. I miss my old friends dearly, especially a lady whom I consider a second mother. But I have forged new friendships and gained even more sisters (and a few brothers) since the onset of this little movement, which has now extended beyond the classes and transformed into a budding spiritual organization. The class that started it all, The Inner Temple of Witchcraft, was presented in an orderly fashion; the information was rather eclectic and fairly unbiased. Through a combination of the exercises, guidance, sharing with peers, massive introspection, and of course the aid of my guides and gods, my mental and spiritual health is vastly improved.

That being said, I realize it isn't quite time to toss confetti and cue up the rainbows and unicorns. I’m having a hard time balancing it all. While mind and spirit have been reaping the benefits of my hard work, body has been suffering. Not that it was terribly healthy to begin with. Being an introvert and a fairly ungrounded Pisces, I never really understood that whole “my body is a temple” thing. I've been an on again, off again (mostly on) smoker for the past twelve years and a yo-yo dieter for even longer. I’m aware of the wonderful resources at my disposal and have educated myself as to what aids one can use to remedy these issues. I’m well versed in the various drugs and techniques used to kick the smoking habit. I’m schooled in portion sizes and fat and calorie counts as well as the dangers of sugar and sodium. Over the years, I have joined websites, bought food scales, frequented gyms, enrolled in programs, and even started a weight loss blog in fruitless attempts to change my unhealthy lifestyle. While these things worked for a little while, they were not able to magically transform my mind so that I was able to enjoy my veggies more than a greasy slice of pizza.

                I tried the Adipex thing for a while. For six full months, my mind and body ran a non-stop marathon. I couldn't sit still long enough to meditate and couldn't sleep more than five or six hours at a time. I went to the gym five times a week and ate like a finicky toddler. I lost thirty pounds and went from a size 18 to a curvy (and very sexy in my opinion) size 10. Being a pear shape, I ended up replacing every bra I owned and my waist had gotten so thin that my rib cage was clearly visible. Unfortunately, becoming thinner did nothing to cure my psychological problems. I thought my self-esteem has improved, but in reality, my ego was far more fragile than when I’d begun the process. I’m not sure how it was even possible, but I became even more obsessed with my weight and looks. I formed a habit of checking myself out in every shiny surface available. I constantly worried that my tummy was poking out, which was ridiculous considering just how much weight I’d lost. I became a narcissistic bitch, teetering between extreme self-confidence and crushing depression. It all came tumbling down when I decided to blame my emotional problems on my boyfriend and nearly left him. I still look back upon that time with shame and even a sense of awe when I consider what he put up with and the fact that we were able to salvage our relationship. Not a high point in my life, to be sure.

                Here we are, going on three years later and my self-esteem is better than it’s ever been. Oddly enough, my weight has climbed right along with it. I’m back in a 16, seams screaming. I suppose it’s healthy to no longer attach my state of mind to my pants size.

                While I’d love to return to that size 10, body image is not my only concern. In fact, it’s not even my first. I’ll be 31 on Friday, and with age comes wisdom, hopefully. Being an overweight smoker can lead to a plethora of health concerns. I've got hearth disease on both sides of the family, and cancer on my father’s. My mum combats high cholesterol while my dad struggles with high blood pressure. With these things in mind, worries about how I look in that all natural cotton or hemp blouse take a back seat. Rocking a healthy heart seems a hell of a lot more important than those skinny leg jeans and UGG boots.

                In my experience, small, slow, and steady changes seem to work the best. In all the times I've raged forward, full steam ahead, I've ended up crashing and burning rather quickly. Admittedly, while the slow changes seem to last longer, I have always ended up reverting back to the same unhealthy choices. I haven’t quite figured it all out yet, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet. I've learned a few things in my Psych 101 class that might be useful. Hilarious, I know! Psych 101 and she thinks she knows it all! I've done some light studying on conditioning and neurons and how they function. I’m going to look at this recent attempt to better my physical condition as something of an experiment. Instead of simply halting my unhealthy behaviors, I’m going to try to actually replace them with healthy ones. Novel idea! I know!

                My first step is a tiny one, though it has proved to be rather challenging in the past. As of yesterday, I have begun to replace my soda intake with water. This change will not only help in ridding myself of empty calories, but actually has an additional health benefit. I have a condition called interstitial cystitis, IC for short. People suffering with IC have pinpoint sized holes in the wall of their bladder which can cause a great deal of discomfort and pain, urgency, and various other embarrassing and seemingly non-related issues. My doctor has suggested that my flare-ups could be linked to a dietary issue and recommended I eat less acidic foods. I have noted that flare-ups occur more often following a period in which I've had more soda than normal. One such flare-up, the worst yet, occurred a few weeks ago. I ended up in her office twice, the later visit ending with a dose of medicine injected directly into my bladder. That is not a good feeling.

I've done the switch from soda to water a few times with varying degrees of success, but have always ended up back on “the coke”. I don’t understand why I revert back to this unhealthy habit after kicking it for so long. I've found that drinking a soda after abstaining for a week or so is actually an unpleasant experience. I can taste the sodium in the cola. It takes a special kind of stupid to continue drinking it long enough to re-deaden the taste buds. I vow to be more mindful of my slip-ups, and set the can aside if it happens again.

                To aid against the physical struggle, I will also combat the cravings in the spiritual. In the next day or two, I will do a binding spell. I know it may sound kind of odd to do a binding against a beverage, but I honestly cannot think of a scenario in which I’d be regretful of the decision. The easiest thing to do would be to remove the offensive product from my home. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing my boyfriend will drink. I may brainstorm a bit and see what other measures I can take, and I will of course ask my guides and gods to help me with the issue. I've spend the better part of my life programming my brain to enjoy Coka-Cola. I realize it will take a bit of time to get over this breakup. I’m giving myself a full month before evaluating how I feel. If all is well, I’ll move on to phase two, the dreaded cigarette addiction.