I was working with a client last week and got into some interesting territory around cravings she was experiencing. Inevitably, we looked at it through the lens of non-personal awareness. One of the hall marks of the non-personal perspective is to switch from a personalised view point to a relational one.
It was very powerful for her to take the following steps when the cravings came calling.
But, first off, it bears saying that some cravings are just natural hunger, and some are telling you that you’re deficient in some nutrient, so not all of them are ‘unhealthy’. This approach is for those cravings you know to be unhealthy…
THE 5 STEPS
1) Align with the personalised truth of the moment…
When a craving hits you, it’s been embodied, so you have personalised the energy. To put that another way, you have claimed the craving as yours and made it part of yourself. I often espouse the value of ‘Starting where you are’, it ground you into the current reality and means your movement from there is more connected and so, more impactful. You can do this with a simple statement: “I have a craving”
2) Step into the non-personal, relational perspective…
You are not, in fact, the craving. That might seem like an obvious statement but it’s so automatic to personalise these independent energies, that we often miss the blindingly obvious. A simple statement will help you move from the personalised, to the non-personalised perspective: “There is a craving”
3) Understand that an unhealthy craving is driven by pain…
This is true of any imbalanced behaviour – underlying it is some form of pain, driving a misdirected behavioural response, which is what marks it as ‘unhealthy’. So now you have untangled yourself from the energy of the craving in step two, you can begin to see this more clearly. A statement will help you align with this perspective: “The craving is in pain”
4) Align yourself with compassion for the craving…
This is not about figuring out what the pain is, analysing it or fixing it. Simply allowing yourself to acknowledge that the craving is a distinct energy and it is in pain generally elicits your natural human response of compassion, and compassion is an empowering perspective for you personally. There’s no statement as such here, but if compassion isn’t coming naturally, try imagining the craving as a little puppy in pain… that usually does the trick 😉
5) Open the possibility of another action or behavioural response…
An unhealthy craving is fixated on a particular behaviour or action as the antidote to it’s pain – be that eating, smoking or whatever. When you ‘give in to’ or are ‘taken over by’ it, when you personally identify with it, you are subject to that belief and behaviour. Now that you have untangled from it and are in a space of compassion, you’re in a much stronger place to open the doors of possibility. Again this is not about figuring out what that is – in the non-personal the ‘mechanisms’ are given space to find you. The point is to align you, and the relational space between you and the craving, with the energy of option rather than a singular and unhealthy route. In other words, it puts possibility in the pot. A simple statement will do this: “There is another way”
As I said, my client found this incredibly helpful, so I thought I would share it with you and hope that it makes a difference to your life experience. I’d love to hear what you experience, so please share in the comments below… and share it on social media if you feel your friends and those in your network could benefit from it.
[JY-General-Bio]