Using the Cycle of Breaths

It goes against all common sense.

How can you say that if I cultivate the pleasure in eating, I will find a sense of enough? If I am feeling the pleasure, won’t I want to keep eating, to get more pleasure? Shouldn’t I rather work to decrease the pleasure I feel in eating and rely instead on meal replacements and protein shakes to divert my desire?

No. If we open ourselves to feel the pleasure of eating, the rhythm and arc of that pleasure, then we will also be acutely aware of the moment in which our pleasure starts to wane. And because we are, in that very moment, attending to our sensations as the source of our pleasure, we are more likely than ever to feel our fullness as a desire to stop. I can eat again later. Or tomorrow. At that moment the pleasure of eating morphs into the pleasure of knowing when to stop and doing so. We taste the pleasure of giving ourselves the experience of being nourished. Of getting what we need. Of having and being enough.

When we cultivate a sensory awareness of the movement making us, then, the desire to override what feels good in our bodies or stuff ourselves silly falls away. It does not fall away because our will power establishes its dominance, but because we realize that we want something else more. We realize that the pleasure we desire is not one we will find by denying or indulging our desire. We want the pleasure of moving with the wisdom in our desire, and following its arc to a sense of enough.
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All well and good. But can practicing the cycle of breaths (see Jan 29, Feb 5, 12, 19, & audio version in side bar) really help?

(Are you breathing?)

Yes. As we practice the cycle of breaths, breathing to move and moving to breathe, our experience of our desire for food evolves. Desire is movement. It is movement in us that moves us toward whatever we believe will give us the experience we seek. So too, as we are ever getting new information about what works for us, our desires have the potential to change constantly.

When we move through the cycle of breaths then, its different perspectives help us release the potential of our desire to evolve in line with our rolling revelations of what will bring us the pleasure we seek. More and more we find ourselves wanting to eat what nourishes us, and wanting to do so as the condition for our greatest pleasure and health. We move with the wisdom in desire. Really?
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Imagine yourself consuming a package of oreos. Imagine how delightful it would be. You will let yourself do it—release into your desire and get the sweet satisfaction you crave. All of it. You will become an oreo-eater, someone who nourishes herself this way.

With that tenth cookie, however, you begin to feel too full. Your stomach aches. You deny the ache. You want the satisfaction of eating the entire package. You begin to feel nauseous. A headache crops up. Your mind starts to blink. Listen.

What is happening? You want the pleasure of eating. Your desire has taken shape in the form of an ideal of what you need to do to get it: eat the oreos. More oreos equals more pleasure. It is an ideal that coordinates the impulse in you (for eating pleasure) and the options available in your world (oreos). Yet as you eat, you meet resistance in your sensory awareness to satisfying your desire. Pain! Discomfort.

If you experience this discomfort through a sense of yourself as mind over body, you may be tempted to interpret this pain as an obstacle to your full satisfaction. A nuisance. You will want eat another oreo just to prove that you are master of your body and can get what you desire. Yet every time you override your own resistance—in the name of greater pleasure—you dull your ability to sense what will give you the pleasure you say you want.

There is another way. If you can release into your sensory awareness, your experience of this discomfort will shift and the resistance will make sense to you as something to trust. You will know that your own discomfort is expressing the wisdom in your desire. The idea you have (more oreos) is out of sync with what will actually produce pleasure (stopping). The movements you are making to satisfy your desire are making you sick! Your best wisdom is crying out for you to stop.

Even so, it is not that easy. Even though you know that eating another oreo will make you ill—and you can feel it—you still want to eat it. The sensation of displeasure you anticipate cannot compete with your desire to taste now. What then?

If we rely on coercion and denial—regardless of how fine our intentions—we will inevitably crack, gobble up what we denied ourselves, and then eat more to compensate for our sense of deprivation. If we make our relationship with our self into a battle, we always lose whether we eat or not.

Alternately, we can call on the cycle of breaths (see side bar). Practicing the cycle of breaths enhances our vulnerability to the persuasive power of our own sensations. It helps us tilt the balance toward the side of pleasure that comes with a sense of enough. With every breath we are more able to sense and respond to our discomfort as moving us to make it stop… to stop eating.

Breathe to move and move to breathe.

Breathe and release the tension in your wanting into the earth. Let it go. Let it settle. Feel yourself sitting, standing, from inside yourself. Connected. Breathe again, and open up a space traced by the edges where skin meets air. Fill the space with oxygen and invite the reach and roots of your sensations to appear. Breathe again and plug the energy of your desire into your fiery core. What is it you really want? Where does your greatest pleasure lie? Breathe again and kindle that fire into fluid, flowing through you. Open to impulses to move that bring your senses back to the arc of your pleasure.

When you engage the cycle of breaths in this way, the feeling of fullness will grow stronger in your awareness than the watering in your mouth. As you breathe some more, remembering and recreating your connections with the elements, your desire will move in line with the sensations of fertile, free, fiery, flow you are awakening in yourself. It will spread out and gather again, along a trajectory of the respect-full attention you are practicing in relation to your own self.

Do you want that oreo? In the time space of breathing you will realize that it is not the oreo itself that you want—what you want is for the oreo to taste good. But the oreo won’t taste good if you are overriding your own sensation of fullness. It won’t give you the pleasure you want. The taste in your mouth deteriorates. It will only be the oreo I want if I am hungry.

A decision forms: I won’t eat it. Not now.

The move away from the oreo may be tinged with sadness, it is true. I am missing out! But that edge of sadness will be followed immediately by a gush of relief. You avoided the violence of overriding your bodily sensations and the inevitable pain that would follow. You lived through the moment in a way that nourished and nurtured you, creating the possibility in you for greater future pleasure than you would have had now. Honoring your sensations in this way, you create yourself as someone who can do so, wants to do so, and knows she can do so, for her own health.

The relief is delicious.

Next Week: Why this practice is a social, political, and economic act