A Happy Body Is A Healthy Body

Author : Jerzy Gregorek
Publisher : The Happy Body Press
ISBN 13 : 099624395X
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (962 download)

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Download or read book Food for Your Soul written by Jerzy Gregorek and published by The Happy Body Press. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kate was a 47-year-old nurse when she joined my Happy Body 12-week comprehensive class in San Francisco. She reported that over the years, she had less energy and was becoming weaker. She had two goals when she joined the class: to lose fat and to gain muscle. During the third week of the class, I talked about the fact that exercise can result in muscle loss or muscle gain, depending on the type of exercise. In the middle of the class, Kate said that she simply could not find time to exercise. When I analyzed her daily activities, I felt that I was faced with the impossible. There was indeed no way that Kate could exercise. Or so it seemed. Holding down two jobs, all of her time was spent either working or caring for her two sons. When I was driving home, I thought about this situation and felt as if I had failed Kate. There was something in her story that was not acceptable to me—the inability to find time to make her life better. Back at home, I meditated for two hours, during which time, the poem “Who Cannot” came to me. Who Cannot “Every night when I wake up I walk to the kitchen. And every morning there is still food on my face. How can I stop myself?” His coach thought for a moment and then told him. “Think about all those people who stopped themselves from owning and killing and having fun because they finally saw how others suffered. Without them we would still have slaves, the Holocaust, and a world just for men. Becoming a man like that is your only chance because there is no one else to force you.” “Don’t you expect too much from me? Do you really believe I can be a man like that?” “Who cannot?” When I returned the next week to the class in San Francisco, I talked about the process leading to the creation of the poem, after which I read it. Kate was the last to speak. When she began, she looked down at the floor. “The poem took me home in my thoughts, prompting me to imagine that my younger son asked me to play with him. I told him I cannot. He said, ‘You always say, “I cannot,”’ after which he turned around and walked to his room. “I saw myself and what I was doing at the time. I was reading a novel. I realized that whenever my children want me, I am either reading, watching a movie or answering emails that did not have to be answered. It is not that I did not actually have time. It was my belief that I did not have time that prevented me from having time with my children and from exercising.” Raising her head, she said, “I want to make a plea to myself and to all of you. I will never again say, ‘I cannot.’ If I ever have to say ‘no,’ it will be based on truth and reality.” Kate’s response triggered a two-hour discussion about how we are able to deceive ourselves and how to identify false beliefs that can be the basis of our suffering. I was shocked. It all happened so fast. The switch from the fatalistic belief that something is impossible to the belief that much is in fact possible mesmerized me and prompted me to reflect on the power of a simple poem. What I was not able to achieve with extended reasoning, a little poem had achieved, in only few minutes. It opened in Kate a space where she could see the reality of her life, honestly, without interference from her pre-conceived notions. When I shared the story with a psychologist friend of mine, she told me that research has found that there are mirror neurons that help us to experience vicariously what others experience, without actually experiencing it first-hand. “So when your client read the poem, she identified with the person in the poem and she was inspired to make changes.” After reading a poem, you might physically experience some pleasant sensations—a sudden rush or feeling of warmth in your body. This happens because the most primitive part of your brain reacts to what it perceives as being desirable. The emotional part of you is locked in the immediate past. So if you believe that you cannot go to college, for example, the emotional part of you will create every possible scenario for you to fail. John was a strong man, 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds (80 pounds overweight): He was always in charge—as an athlete, as a student and, later, in business. In class, he complained that weight management was the only area in which he had failed, specifically because of the influence of others in his household. John said that almost all of his family members are obese and they do everything to make him obese, too. If we are like John, it is easy for us to angrily blame others, in an attempt to cover up our weaknesses. I empathized with what seemed like an impossible situation, not immediately seeing the flaw in his thinking. When he left, I went to my mediation room, arriving at an understanding of the root cause of John’s weakness after more than an hour. My first thought was that it is wrong to use all kinds of tricks to get people to eat more. But then what occurred to me is that it is also wrong to blame others for our actions. America is a country of freedom and we should be able to remove blame from our language by becoming the master of our decisions. It is a tough road but a very rewarding one because what lies at the end of it is freedom. A person is free if a person has a choice and a person who doesn’t have a choice or gives it away is a slave. There is no freedom without responsibility. If we blame others for our choices, we release ourselves from responsibility and thereby weaken ourselves. This simple error of thinking needs to be noticed and uprooted, through knowledge, logic and gracefulness with regard to accepting what needs to be done to correct the error, shifting the mind from weakness to strength. Taking charge means taking power from those that control us. The only way to make this happen is to recognize that we have choices. In a free country like America, we cannot expect the government to help us with making choices. Everyone has a right to express himself. For this reason, we sometimes feel that we are out of control but the reality is that everything is possible. That is why the world is out of control. In a communist country—and to some degree in socialist countries—the government decides what is good for people and makes choices for them. In a capitalist country, the government does not make decisions for people. Everyone is left to make choices for themselves, striving for self-control. As these thoughts rushed to mind, the poem “Knowing” began appearing to me. Knowing While looking at a billboard picture of a delicious burger with fries, John told his wife, “No wonder we get fat.” “That’s why you think we get fat?” Mary said, “just because of beautiful pictures?” “It is not just a beautiful picture, John said. I salivate while I look at it. These food producers should be ashamed.” “Ashamed of what?” John’s mouth started to twitch. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Making our nation obese.” “Would you do anything differently if you were one of them?” “Of course!” John burst out. “I would help people to eat just enough.” “So what would you be, a philanthropist?” “It’s simply not human to make people eat more than they need.” “Is it human to blame?” “Yes. Weakness is human.” “So, do we become human because we are weak?” John kept silent for a while. “Then, how can we resist these masters of seduction?” “By knowing what is just enough.” When John came the next Thursday, I told him about the process leading up to the poem and then read it to him. After more than a minute, he said: “This poem is depressing me and liberating me at the same time. I have used blaming so many times in my life and I hurt many people as a result. It is depressing for me to see myself in this light but it is also liberating to me that I don’t have to be this person anymore, that I have a chance to reverse my wrongdoing.” He looked at me and said, “Thank you. I got it.” He stood up, ready to leave. “I always loved food and I will never stop loving it. But I will now have a nurturing relationship with it. It used to be food producers and I. Now, it will simply be food and I.” During the next eight months, like clockwork, John easily lost his excess 80 pounds of fat. The most important thing he said was to apologize for the weakness he exhibited in blaming others for his weight problem, pledging never to do this again. John for me is the poem “Knowing,” while Kate is the poem, “Who Cannot?” The energy that the poems in this collection evoke may not last long without additional cultivation, by immersing ourselves in books and friends that support our efforts, especially when dramatic change is at stake. Each poem here is clarified with a question at the end of the book, to engage the reader, on a conscious level, reinforcing the positive energy. Poem by poem, question by question, discussion by discussion, there may grow within us a conviction that one day will empower us to say: “I can, I will, I am happy.” It is a cumulative process. A person may say “I cannot” today but next week or next year, after many moments of accumulated willpower, may finally say, “I can.” It takes time to accumulate enough strength to shift a belief. We can identify the instant when a person, for the first time, says, “I can.” There is a journey from the point at which one feels that something is impossible to the point that one realizes that it is actually possible. This journey is among the most beautiful things to be experienced. And the most rewarding part is that after you experience it, you will seek to guide others along the same path. Goodness is contagious. If a poem is capable of initiating such a journey, then we need more poems. Since the time that Kate and John experienced their revelations, whenever any one of my clients has described “impossible” situations, I have gone to my meditation room and meditated there until a poem showed up. These 56 poems all represent stories along the lines of Kate’s and John’s experiences—each one opening a space where we find our creative and active voices inspiring us to improve our ways of