In Journalism 101, we learned the importance of the Five Ws (and one H) in gathering information. Answering the Ws (and H)–who, what, where, when, why (and how)–is considered essential in understanding the full story. What would happen if you applied them to your weight loss goals? Some Ws (and an H) to consider:

1. Who is it that wants to lose weight? Who is the “you” that’s dieting? Another way to ask this is, who are you, inside your body? The bottom line is, your body is a place for your soul to live. That’s it. Should it be comfortable, healthy, happy? Absolutely. But losing 10 pounds is not the call of your soul. It’s the call of your ego.

I once knew a woman who could light up a room just by walking through the door. Her eyes literally sparkled. When I spoke to her, her attention was so fully and completely on me, that it was as if no one had ever spoken before. I knew she would remember every word I said–and she did. She was so vibrant, deep, warm, compassionate, that it was a very long time before I noticed she was what some people might call “heavy.” Actually, I don’t think she ever noticed she was what some people would call heavy.

Likewise, I knew a woman who was wildly self-assured, sexy, vibrant, alive. She was in her mid 40s, tall, big boned; she weighed close to 185 pounds, and she literally turned heads walking down the street. Her secret: Inside, she loved herself, she was healthy and she felt good. That was enough for her. She knew who she really was, and that her body was comfortable, well-nourished–even if it wasn’t petite.

2. What would happen if you never lost weight? We set so many conditions on our love for ourselves. Unconsciously (or not) one of those conditions may be our weight. “I’ll feel better about myself when I’ve lost 20 pounds,” or “If I can just get rid of this last 5 pounds, I’ll be able to get on with my life.” As far as you know, this is the only life you have, and it’s happening right now. What would happen if you lived it right now, as you are, weighing what you do and wearing the size you wear? Can you love yourself anyway? Pause here, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and ask yourself that question. See what comes up. If the answer is “no,” it may be that learning how to love yourself is a bigger priority than losing 20 pounds.

3. Where do you want to be in ten years? Answer that question, and you’ll have a better sense of your reason for being here. Write down where you’ll be in terms of physical health, family, relationship, spiritual practices, career, home, travel–whatever comes up for you. Chances are really good that “I’ll be X pounds lighter” will come up on your list. That’s okay. Just recognize all the other things that are on your “where I’ll be” list.

How much time, mental energy and passion are you devoting to those aspects of your life, compared to counting calories and obeying the bathroom scale? Maybe you can see where weight loss falls on your list of dreams, goals and visions, and maybe you can assign it a different priority. Losing weight is not your life’s work. Your life’s work is to love, to serve, to be honest, to develop personal integrity, to be kind, to raise healthy children, to grow spiritually, to adore yourself. Which is not to say you can’t choose to shed some excess baggage. You’ll just do it with a sense of perspective.

4. When will it be okay? I once worked with a man who slaved tirelessly to lose 15 pounds. He exercised obsessively, starved himself, became a fanatic about supplements, drank diet soft drinks and coffee throughout the day to blunt his appetite, even took up smoking to blunt his appetite. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But here’s what’s really crazy: once he lost 15 pounds, he wanted to lose another 5. (I should pause here to tell you that the term “crazy” was his, not mine). He felt that being 5 pounds under his goal gave him a buffer, in case he gained a few pounds back.

I realized then that, no matter how much weight he lost, he wasn’t going to be satisfied. It would never be okay, because it wasn’t about his weight, or his body. It was about his sense of self; he was depressed and dissatisfied with his life, and no amount of weight loss was ever going to make that okay.

When will it be okay for you? Ask yourself that question, then listen softly and quietly for the answer. It might surprise you.

5. Why do you want to lose weight? Ask yourself with gut-level honesty: why do you want to lose weight? Is it because the doctor told you your weight was harming your health, or because that little red two-piece swimsuit went on sale at Neiman Marcus? Is it for your wife, your health, your ego, your high school reunion, your best friend’s wedding? Is it because you’ve decided the ten extra pounds around your middle no longer serves you, or because you still want to fit into the size 4 jeans you wore in your senior year of high school? Once you’re honest with yourself, you can decide just how important it is to you to lose weight and where it fits in the grand scheme of your life.

6. How will shedding pounds serve the world? We’ve already touched on how it will serve you. Now, take it to a deeper level: how will losing weight make a difference in the world around you? Perhaps being lighter and slimmer will boost your health, and make you feel more confident, inspired, energetic and passionate; in turn, that will positively affect your children, your mate, your co-workers. There’s no right answer here; it’s just about being aware and exploring possibilities, and perhaps understanding how your own personal goals fit into the grand scheme of life.

How many times have you criticized yourself in the last 24 hours? Stop for a minute and think about it. If you’re having any doubts that you’ve been anything but complimentary, think back to when you got dressed this morning. What exactly did you say to the image in the mirror? “Look at that stomach! Your thighs are enormous! You’ll never fit into those pants you got last month. You look terrible!”

Most of us wouldn’t dream of speaking to another human being like that. But we have no problem routinely addressing ourselves in a disrespectful, even demeaning, way. And those voices make weight loss, or any kind of change, difficult or even agonizing.

Where do they come from, these critical, demeaning voices? Mostly, they’re the collective, cruel voices of our past — our parents, our siblings, schoolyard bullies, former lovers — that we’ve internalized. Over time, we come to believe them as true. They’re incredibly powerful. And they can set up all kinds of horribly self-sabotaging situations.

Not long ago, I was in an unavoidable situation with a person from my past who was the source of many of my own voices. I had gone into this situation feeling positive, even elated: my career was successful, my friendships were solid, my family life was strong, my health was great. Less than 24 hours after being with her, I felt demoralized, pitiful, small. Nothing in my life had changed, but I was utterly deflated — until I became aware of a cacophony of voices inside my head. There it was: a steady stream of small but painful self-criticisms, like an onslaught of tiny, fierce hornets. The irony is, this woman’s criticisms of me paled in comparison to my own self-talk. I’d done most of the work for her.

How does negative self talk hamper your best efforts to lose weight or, for that matter, get a job, run three miles, begin a new relationship, even move through your day in a peaceful fashion?

1. It keeps you stuck in the past. Most of the time, negative self-talk has nothing to do with what’s going on in the moment, in present time. Those critical, blaming voices are based almost entirely on past influences that don’t recognize who you are today. They’re not accurate. Staying in the past also keeps you in a comfortably familiar role, even if it’s a miserable one. No matter how much you want to change, it’s scary to step out of a familiar pattern and into a new way of being — even if, ultimately, it will bring you joy and peace.
2. It increases cortisol. Stress — any kind of stress, be it physical, mental or emotional — increases levels of cortisol which in turn encourage the storage of fat, especially around the belly. A new study published in the journal NeuroImage, found that study participants who engaged in self-criticism showed more brain activity in the regions associated with depression, anxiety and eating disorders. In other words, mean self-talk makes you eat more, and hold on to excess weight.
3. It undermines your confidence. You’ve got to be your own champion, your own best friend. No one else will do it for you. If the voice in your head is hurling demoralizing epithets at you every 10 seconds, you’ll feel defeated before you’ve even left the starting gate. And when you’re standing on the sidelines screaming, “Who are you kidding? You’ll never lose weight,” you probably won’t.
4. It destroys your trust in yourself. When the nasty little voice in your head is hurling unkind words at you, it’s impossible to simultaneously trust yourself. And trusting yourself is key to any kind of change — especially a positive change in dietary habits.
5. It’s really believable. The voice that’s spewing out that steady stream of negative talk is powerfully persuasive. It knows the right phrases, the exact tone, the fastest way to cut you off at the knees. But the voice isn’t always obvious; it can be clever, slippery and so hard to pin down that you’re not even aware of its presence until the damage is done.

Knowing that negative self-talk is a nasty habit is one thing. Stopping it is another issue altogether. The first step is to simply draw attention to the voice in your head. What is it saying? And whose voice is that anyway? Try this exercise: for one hour every day, become acutely aware of your negative self-talk. You don’t have to confront it right away; this first step is a fact-finding mission. Take a step back from the voice, and listen to it with curiosity. Give it lots of space to express, but stay non-committal. For some people, 15 minutes of this practice is plenty.

Once you’ve become painfully aware of your own negative self-talk, talk back. This is your chance to say all those things you didn’t get to say in real life. If it’s possible for you, talk back out loud. Really loud. It’s freeing to holler at the voice that represents the critical people from your past.

I had a client whose parents sat at the dinner table every night and poured on a torrent of criticisms as she ate: “Why are you eating so much? You’re already so fat! You’re only going to get fatter!” Mind you, this woman was a child at the time, and she played out their predictions: she ate more, and she got fatter. She’s a grown woman now, and not speaking to either of her parents, but their voices continue to ruin her meals on a nightly basis. Once she became aware of how efficiently she’d internalized their negative dialogue, she started to talk back — or, rather, holler back, using words I can’t print in this column.

Eventually their voices stopped, the negative self-talk slowed, and she regained control of her own mind and life once again. Try it yourself; with practice, you’ll become your own champion and best friend — and speaking nicely to yourself will become a cherished habit.

I’ve been reading the work of Marion Woodman, an author and Jungian analyst who’s well known for her writings on addiction and eating disorders. In much of her work, she talks about how literal the body is in its signals; in a recent interview she says, “The longing for sweets is really a yearning for love or sweetness.”

If cravings really are that transparent, why are we so frequently at their mercy? I think it’s a simple answer: we just don’t take the time to listen to where the craving is coming from. What part of our selves is doing the craving–the body or the mind? The fact is, we don’t really pay much attention to our selves from the neck down. In our culture, the head is where the action’s at; it’s the part that’s sexy and loud and bright, and we’re completely at its mercy. Meanwhile, we drag the body around like a dog on a leash.

But the body is brilliant at expressing its needs and desires. It’s just not as shrill or strident as the mind, and we don’t get still and quiet often enough to hear it — or we do hear it, but allow the mind’s whims to subjugate the body’s needs. When we get sick, it’s often the body’s way of saying “Enough!” when it’s fed up with being ignored. And it’s an opportunity to check in with our selves from the neck down, and notice what needs attention.

What does all of this have to do with eating? Everything. In our culture, we eat from the neck up. When we dine out, we choose grilled salmon, no sauce, dinner salad, dressing on the side, because the brain tells us this is a nutritious choice that will keep us slim and healthy. At the store, we load up our shopping carts with nonfat milk, low-calorie “butter” spread and diet soda, because our minds tell us those foods will also keep us slim. Sometimes, we load up our shopping carts with frozen dinners and boxed mac ‘n cheese, because our minds tell us we’re behind on deadlines and we don’t have time to cook.

Ordering grilled salmon in a restaurant is a fine idea, and there’s nothing wrong in general with shopping for easy-to-prepare foods. But where is the body in all of this? If you order the grilled salmon to be virtuous, but you’re not in the mood for fish, and you’re longing for risotto, your body won’t be fed in the same way. The meal will be nutritious, but it may not be nourishing. You won’t experience pleasure.

Now, the tricky part about cravings is differentiating between the needs of the body and the capricious desires of the mind. Is it truly your body that wants ice cream or spicy cheese nachos, or is it your mind that wants them, to provide a momentary distraction from stress, worry, anxiety, loneliness? It could be that you don’t want food at all; maybe, as Woodman suggests, you’re really craving sweetness in your life. (Or in the case of nachos, more spice.)

Maybe the cells of your body really are crying out for ice cream or nachos; maybe you’ve been on a highly restrictive diet since eighth grade, and your cells are starved for fat. If that’s the case, you might want to engage your body in a dialogue; maybe another kind of fat–olives, avocado, coconut oil, organic butter–would appeal even more strongly.

Sometimes our cravings are what our minds call “healthy” cravings, for foods like fresh melon or walnuts. Because we indulge those cravings without mental or emotional suffering, those aren’t the issue. Other cravings for foods that cause adverse physical reactions in the body–like sugar for a diabetic, or wheat for someone with Celiac–simply shouldn’t be indulged. And if you have a serious eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, I encourage you to seek one-on-one, professional help.

For everyone else, try this out: the next time you have a food craving that’s causing you distress, just stop what you’re doing and notice. Where is the longing in your body? What exactly is it saying? If possible, find a place where you can be still and quiet for at least 10 minutes. Get comfortable, close your eyes and just sit with the craving. What comes up? What words, images, physical sensations, emotions are behind the craving?

Sometimes, when you’re sitting at the edge of a craving, you’ll find that your body wants to move in a certain way; allow it that freedom, and see if it’s offering a clue to what’s really going on. Begin to write about your cravings in a journal; it’s a fascinating exploration into the inner landscape. Sometimes, you’ll find that a craving really is signaling a nutritional deficiency in your body. But you may also notice that, most of the time, your cravings have nothing to do with food. It’s hard–painful, even–to sit there with a craving and be with what comes up. But if you can do it, it’s liberating, exhilarating and ultimately more rewarding than a chocolate chip cookie.

What do your cravings look like? Please post your comments; I’d love to hear.

No matter where you go, there you are. And no matter how you feel about your body, your weight or the size of your thighs, it’s still you. Hating yourself into being different never works.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the importance of self-love and how it relates to food, weight and health. I’ve talked about how you can’t flog, demean or hate your body into changing, whether it be to lose 10 pounds or heal from disease. But some readers have asked me “How do you learn to love yourself?” That’s a good question; most of us don’t know. The first place to begin is to just notice how you relate to your body’s physical needs in general.

Every time you deny your physical needs–you stay up just a little longer when you need to sleep, or work right through the flu, or “hold it” when you really have to pee–you send the message to your body that it’s not important. We do this all day long with food; we shovel down breakfast on the way to take our kids to school, or we rush through lunch so we can get those last few emails sent, or we skip dinner because we’re dieting. Then we expect the body to perform for us, like a dog doing tricks.

You must make yourself be a priority, if for no other reason than your desire to eat better and/or lose weight. Begin by recognizing that you are your first relationship. I’m not saying to ignore your child, neglect your friendships or run roughshod over the needs of others. I’m saying to make yourself one of your friends, and treat yourself like a beloved child. Here are six ways to begin.

1. Act as if. The quickest way to feel loving toward yourself is to act loving toward yourself. Some 12-step groups say “you can’t think your way into right acting, but you can act your way into right thinking.” If you don’t know what that would look like, try this simple but profound exercise from Louise Hay: on the top of a sheet of paper, write “I love myself, therefore,” Then list all the things you do, or would do, out of love for yourself. These might include “I love myself, therefore I feed my body clean, wholesome food,” or “I love myself, therefore I refuse to starve myself.”

2. Eat when you’re hungry. Hunger signals mean the body needs to be refueled; ignore them long enough, which we do when we’re busy, stressed or dieting, and they’ll become blunted. I hear so many people say “I never get hunger pangs.” That’s not the only physical sign of hunger; lack of focus, irritability, nervousness and light-headedness can all indicate the need for food. Food provides nourishment, and to deny yourself food is, literally, to deny yourself nourishment.

Now, here’s a fine distinction: people say “So I should eat every time I’m hungry, even if it’s all day long, nonstop?” To that, I would ask, “What are you really hungry for? Is it really food?” You’d be surprised by how often “hunger” is really the body calling for rest, or sweetness, or some kind of attention that has nothing to do with food.

3. When you eat, eat. Don’t read, watch TV, work, drive or engage in stressful conversations. Just eat. Be present with what you’re doing and mindful of the food and your body’s sensations. Look at your food; smell it, notice how it feels in your mouth, really taste it. Most important, pay attention to how it feels in your body. Is it working for you? Your body will give you feedback if you just slow down and get quiet enough to hear. Which brings me to the next point:

4. Slow down. Part of that feedback loop includes the body’s message that it’s full. Sometimes, that message comes long before the plate or bowl is empty, even mid-forkful. But you’ll miss that signal if you’re rushing through your food. Related to this idea is to sit down for meals. I know so many people–usually moms–who eat most of their meals standing up. Sit down, every time, even if it’s for “just a few bites.” If all you want is a spoonful of ice cream, take a spoonful out of the container, put it in a small bowl, return the container to the freezer, and sit down at the table with your small bowl. Eat it slowly and mindfully. You may actually be satisfied with “just a few bites.”

5. Eat what you’re hungry for. I can almost hear you saying “What!? Are you nuts?!” I realize this is discouraging or even frightening for people with food issues and sensitivities, like allergies, certain food addictions, diabetes and people on strict weight loss diets. Let me explain: examine your desire and see if there’s something in the food that you’re specifically craving. For example, if you’re yearning for Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, what is it about that food that you need or want? Is it the coldness, or the creaminess, or the sweetness? Is it the bits of cherry, or the chocolate? Once you identify what exactly you’re craving so strongly, you might be able to find something else that satisfies those sensory taste needs.

6. Treat your body with respect. Mindless binging, shoveling food into your mouth or chomping on a fast-food burger while you’re driving your car are disrespectful, even demeaning, behaviors. Treat your body as you would a beloved child. Feed it gently, attentively, with care. And feed it clean food. We say we want to “indulge,” and then we do it with too much cheap, low-quality food: fast-food fries, donuts, oversized restaurant meals, chips by the bagful.

If you want chocolate, and you’re a person who can eat chocolate, then have chocolate; buy an expensive bar of the highest-quality stuff you can find, drive all the way home with it still in the wrapper, sit down with it, unwrap it slowly, break off a small piece, smell it, place it on your tongue and let the warmth of your mouth melt it against your palate. Notice the sensations you experience in your mind and body. It’s a completely different experience than snarfing down a Snickers bar on the way out of the grocery store. And one that’s very loving.

If you’re eating, out of your mind–and in your body–is the best place to be.

Think about your last meal. Were you actually there? Were you at the table, tasting your food, smelling its aroma, feeling its texture as you chewed and swallowed? Or were you in your mind, mentally lining up the next thing on your to-do list, composing an email, fretting over an argument with your spouse, or counting calories and grams of fat? Any time you’re doing anything but focusing on your food during meals, you’re in your mind. And even though the entire act of chewing, swallowing, digesting and assimilating food occurs in the physical being, we’re rarely around when it happens.

What does it mean to be “in your body,” and why is it so hard to do? I have spent much of my life in a formal meditation practice that teaches us to be present, embodied and in the moment, and sometimes it’s still hard. Sometimes, being in the body just isn’t as interesting as being in the mind. It’s quieter in the body. There’s less noise, no drama. The mind, however, is much more flashy; it’s cunning, clever and persuasive, and tells a fabulous tale.

We also feel like we’re more in control in the mind. We can spin our take on situations, weave stories that makes us feel comfortable and safe. And, if you have a body that was ridiculed, neglected, mishandled or otherwise harmed in childhood, in your body is a hard place to be. If your early physical sensations were unpleasant or painful, getting the hell  out of your body made way more sense than sticking around to feel.  When that happens, it can take time to come back.

Especially to the soft, squishy, most vulnerable middle of it–the belly. But when it comes to eating, that’s where the action’s at. Many traditional spiritual practices emphasize the hara, the area three fingers’ width below the navel, that’s often described as the energetic center of the self. No accident that it’s also the digestive center of the body.

But we don’t hang around in our soft, squishy centers, or the body in general. We spend most of our lives in our minds; we crash around in our arms and legs, then fling our torsos into bed at the end of the day, with little experience of what those body parts have felt through the day.

How do you get back in your body? If you’ve spent years fleeing from it at the first sign of trouble, it’s just a matter of creating a new habit. Some simple practices can help:

1.    Check in with your belly before you eat. Every single time. What does it feel like? A cursory glance will reveal only the most superficial of sensations–hungry, full–leaving the more interesting experiences buried deeper. Maybe your belly feels grateful, or lonely, or troubled. Take five full minutes before each meal to just sit quietly and sense what’s happening in your belly. Place your hand on the area below your navel, let your belly soften (even though that’s horrible and scary in our modern culture) and direct your attention to your breath. Your mind may quickly start jumping up and down, demanding to tell its story. Notice it, don’t react or respond, and keep guiding your breath back to your belly.

2. Eat with your senses. Look at your food before you put it in your mouth. Smell it; if appropriate, touch it. Become completely enchanted with the food on your plate. In most contemplative spiritual practices, eating is a sacred art. And when you think about it, the act of receiving sustenance from the Earth, and transforming it into flesh, bone, muscle and cells, really is pretty miraculous.

3. Meet your body. What does your whole body–every single part–feel like? Try this exercise: lying down comfortably, do a whole body scan. Starting with your feet, and working your way up, pay careful attention to each part of your body–the big and obvious parts, but also the parts that go unnoticed. What do your elbows and earlobes feel like? The spaces between your toes? The very center of your stomach, inside the actual organ? Focusing on the tiny bits helps get you out of a mental description of what your body feels like, and into a sensory experience. And you might be surprised to find that there are parts of your body you never even noticed.

4. Experiment with being in your body through movement. Thinking about your body doesn’t create embodiment. It’s purely experiential. Movement needn’t be elaborate or showy. Stretch your arms slowly overhead. Extend your legs. Arch, then flex, your spine, and see how quickly you come back to your physical being and its sensations.

5. Check in with your body throughout the day. Make it a regular habit to pause every hour or so, and do a quick scan of your physical self, from the part in your hair to the skin on the soles of your feet. In time, the habit of being in your body will come naturally and frequently. When I first started this practice in my early 30s, in the midst of a riot of mental noise, I was shocked to find that I spent well over half my life in my mind, while my body remained uninhabited. Now, it’s second nature, but it took years of practice.

The next time you eat, do it from your body. Be really, truly present, and notice how different the act of nourishment may seem.

I have a yoga mat made by a company called “holding.” It’s short for “holding the edge”– a phrase that describes a key concept in yoga. When we arrive at a difficult posture, one that causes discomfort, we stop carefully and notice it. We don’t react by flinching or jerking back, but we don’t shove forward either. We bring awareness to the physical (and mental, and emotional) sensations we’re experiencing in that posture. If there is physical pain, we carefully back out of the posture. Otherwise, we relax into it.

It’s also called “riding the edge” in surfing and some other sports, or “dancing on the edge,” which accurately portrays the practice of moving forward and back along the rim of discomfort. And there is great wisdom at the edge. It teaches us not only what we’re capable of physically, but also what our patterns of reactions are, mentally and emotionally.

In the face of discomfort, what arises? Fear, anger, judgment? And what’s our natural tendency–to ignore the sensations and shove blindly forward, thus risking pain and injury? Or do we run away from the difficulty, missing an opportunity to grow and advance?

This concept of holding the edge–neither forcing through nor shrinking back–applies to most other areas of our lives. Relationships are best served if we show up fully and completely, not holding back but not forcing what can’t be forced. Successful careers are built on the concept of giving it your all, while not shoving forward into uncontrollable circumstances. And it applies to our food lives.

If you struggle with mindless, emotional or stress-based eating, holding the edge will serve you well. Let’s imagine a scenario, one that happened to one of my clients who wrestled mightily with mindless eating. She worked as a house-sitter for a battery of wealthy clients who regularly traveled to exotic locales. Her regular dietary habits were stellar, but when she was staying at a client’s house, the gloves came off.

Around sundown, she would start to get uncomfortable–bored, lonely, out of sorts; sometimes, she found herself inexplicably stricken with grief. By 9 p.m., she would find herself alone in an unfamiliar house, standing at her client’s kitchen counter, elbow-deep in a bag of chips. And she couldn’t stop, until she had devoured most of the chips, cookies, cartons of ice cream in the pantry and freezer. Afterward, she felt shame, disgust, powerlessness. It was exactly the same pattern as an addiction.

Was it because she felt lonely and vulnerable in an unfamiliar home? Was she grieving her modest life in comparison with the spectacular lives of her clients? Was it just the novelty of a pantry filled with forbidden foods? Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that somewhere along the line, she checked out. Emotional discomfort arose, and she yanked back from that edge.

What does holding the edge look like in this instance? The urge to eat arises. You stop, and just notice the sensation. Eating some chips, cookies or ice cream will create a pleasing cascade of happy brain chemicals that will relieve the sensation for a bit. But you don’t do it. Instead, you stay there at the edge of discomfort. It gets stronger, worse, even painful. Maybe you get mad. Maybe you sob. Either way, you stay with it, noticing what arises without reacting to it. Something lies just beyond the craving. Something is there at the edge, some great wisdom and the potential for mental, emotional and spiritual growth.

As it turns out, she did all of the above. One night, alone at the home of a family who was taking some fabulous, pricey vacation, and overcome by the desire to eat, she held her edge. She grieved for being alone, unmarried and childless, for living in a modest home, for being heavier than she wanted to be, for her heartbreaking childhood, for feeling helpless and vulnerable, for the sheer passage of time. She went into the expansive yard, lay facedown under the stars, and pounded on the manicured lawn with both fists. She sobbed for the better part of an hour. At the end of it, she felt renewed, and honest, with a deeper clarity toward her life.

That’s the power and wisdom any of us can find at the edge. The process may look something like this:

1. When a craving strikes, and your first impulse is to head to the kitchen, stop. Do nothing. Close your eyes and breathe, deeply in, deeply out, 50 times. Feel the cells of your body softening and relaxing. Sometimes, this is enough.

2. What’s the level of your discomfort? If 1 is barely noticeable and 10 is unbearable, is it a 2 or an 8? Having a somewhat objective measure puts your feelings into perspective. If your discomfort meter reads “3,” perhaps you can allow it to be there; it may subside after a few minutes.

3. If your discomfort is substantial, find a quiet place and space to let the feelings come up. If you’re in a work situation–a meeting, a cubicle–change your surroundings. Go for a walk, find an empty conference room, take a bathroom break and go sit in your car.

4. Sit there with your feelings. Imagine having them in for a visit and a cup of tea. Let them talk, and listen attentively, as you would to a trusted friend.

5. Allow some space for whatever arises. It’s not necessary to label or judge it. Just let it be there. Envision being in a difficult yoga posture, or catching a tricky wave in surfing. See what happens when you find your edge and take it for a ride.

In what areas of your life do you experience the edge of discomfort? And how do you hold the edge? Think about it, and add your comments here ~