TL;DR: Go listen to today’s podcast with Kimber Simpkins & find out how to win 12 books on body love for free!
In today’s podcast, Kimber Simpkins shared a parable about the Buddha that made my brain melt a little, so I thought I’d talk about it with you:
The buddha was sitting in a cave when the demon Mara, showed up at the cave’s mouth to torment him. Each day, the demons would return and torment the buddha from the mouth of the cave. Finally, one day, the buddha invited the demon in for tea.
If you’re struggling with your weight (keeping it on or taking it off), your food, or your exercise, you have a demon who shows up each day at the mouth of your mental cave and begins to torment you.
Maybe it’s the torment of overeating. Maybe it’s the torment of restriction. Maybe it’s the torment of exercise addiction.
If you let the demon sit at the mouth of the cave and taunt you, all you will hear all day long are the echoes of each insult.
But what if you were to invite that demon in for tea?
Sorry to get all metaphorical here, but I see this as an incredible lesson for using your inner demons to your advantage. In order to make it less esoteric and parable-like, I’ll give you a great example of how I invited my exercise addiction in for tea.
I had my third ankle surgery in January of 2014. I was already recovered. But even recovered, lack of exercise still gave me anxiety. I went for three months straight on the couch—three months of zero exercise for the first time in my entire adult life.
By the time Paleo F(X) rolled around, I was determined to get back into exercise—so I completely overdid it as soon as I had the opportunity to do so.
And I ended up in pain.
Now here’s the thing: I don’t believe that exercise is a bad thing, even for an exercise addict—but only if you know how to control it. Exercise—or, really, movement—is incredibly useful for sustaining positive mental health (in addition to being necessary for physical health too). However, because someone like me might be using exercise in a destructive way—to feed negative mental health patterns, in addition to control body weight and create a certain body image—I ended up with Mara sitting at the mouth of the cave each time I went (or didn’t go) to the gym.
But. When you invite a demon in for tea, you don’t just sit there staring at one another in silence while you sip; you talk.
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And you can learn a lot from that conversation.
In my case, my demon told me about why I use exercise destructively: because I’m a goal-oriented person who needs validation and knows I can get it from projecting a certain perception of fitness; because I’m an anxious person whose panic gets soothed by the neurotransmitters that fire when I use my “drug;” because I have a belief about my own worth, ability, and identity, and all of those things are affected by the exercise I choose to do.
And I talked to the demon about what I could do differently to decouple myself from the need to use exercise as a drug and as an identity.
Here is what I learned:
Exercise can be a useful drug. A good pilates class can calm my brain and help me ground myself on days when I know that anxiety will be hanging with my demon. Getting my heart rate up and releasing some of the self-produced opiates in my brain can actually help me dull some of the pain my body feels on a regular basis (so long as I don’t use my body in a way that actually increases the pain).
Exercise can also be a good way to rebuild my identity. I stopped going to the gym, where I once tried to build a destructive identity, because my demon hangs out there and tries to trigger me to stay in that identity, even when it hurts. I started pole dancing not to become a competitive pole dancer, but because it allowed me to start building a community of supportive women who don’t all believe that you need to look or perform a certain way (unlike at the gym). It gave me a mirror to look at my body in a loving way and watch myself let go of the pieces of me that I used to harm myself.
I learned that exercise doesn’t have to destroy. That I don’t have to end a workout crushed. That my imperative wasn’t to get #swole. That I can use exercise in a constructive way by talking to my demon and learning how to use it on days when I need it and how to set it aside on days when I don’t.
My demon also told me a secret: that we don’t have to “exercise” at all. We just have to move. That the demon likes exercise because it’s regimented and easy to obsess about. That it creates a sense of control because the workouts are scheduled and the results are expected.
But movement….joyful movement, movement in the moment has all of the same mental health effects of exercise without the restriction, fear, or obsession. With movement, there can still be progression—you can walk a little longer, run a little faster, lift a little heavier, climb a little higher—but you don’t have to progress. Instead, you check in with your body each and every day and see what feels good. And what feels good, you do.
I still see my demon every day. Don’t think for a moment that recovery means the demons all just fly away—they’re like telemarketers: once they find you, it’s very hard to convince them to put your name on the “do not call” list. They always find ways around it.
And I’m okay with that. Because when I hear the banshee cries and feel the rush of hot, uncomfortable wind coming from the mouth of the cave, I invite the demon in and ask what we can do—collaboratively, constructively—today.
Do you have a demon? What is it saying to you? And instead of resisting it, what can you learn if you invite it in for tea? Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.
You’ll hear more about this in today’s mind-blowing podcast with Kimber Simpkins, the author of Full: How I Learned to Satisfy My Insatiable Hunger and Feed My Soul. I honestly walked out of this conversation with my mind FULL of ideas…I cannot, cannot wait for you to listen.
Also, you can enter to win *12* amazing books on body image by entering Kimber’s giveaway HERE.
And of course:
Go Listen Now!
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Stay hungry,
The post UNpodcast 097: Exercise Addiction: How to Face Your Demons appeared first on In My Skinny Genes.