in - Diet & Weight Loss, HEALTH & WELL-BEING 742 Words

Misery, Sugar and Movement

I have been overweight most of my adult life, but since changing my diet to gluten and dairy free pretty much all of that excess weight dropped away over a period of five years, and stayed off for a further seven. I worked to kick sugar too, and mostly succeeded, and more weight dropped off. But recently I’ve been eating more sugary foods (including carbohydrates and dried fruits, which are all sugar in one form or another) and have started to put some weight back on.

I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression. The trouble with eating sugar is that it gives you a lift and then drops you down even lower, so there is a cycle of feeling low, eating sugar, a moment of feeling OK then a crash back down to feeling low again. We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair.

The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices. I know that for me, when I truly love myself I naturally don’t want to eat anything containing sugar – which can also include fresh fruit – because it makes me racy and I can’t feel what’s going on around me.

Question: But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?

Answer: Awareness and Understanding.

I have the awareness that there is a certain tension in my body that I really don’t want to feel and an understanding that overeating has been my ‘go-to’ numbing device, but it’s no longer working. All I do is eat more and more sugary foods with a kind of desperate addictive behaviour. My body is warning me it’s too much because I am putting extra weight back on, so I know that I need to bring myself back to me – to re-establish my inner connection.

Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, we have been provided with many tools and techniques for bringing ourselves back into balance and one of them is the quality of our movements.

How are movements connected to being self-loving?

Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile. By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.

When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.

Getting into a car is a challenge, especially when the seats have high sides. I do it as gracefully as I can and then close the door firmly, but not slamming it.

My voice is an obvious one because when I am racy it tends to go a bit hard, so I breathe gently and that helps to take out the hard edge.

There are many examples of ways I can be tender, and I can really feel it when other people are not being tender. For example, one I’ve particularly noticed is in ladies’ toilets – the way I hear some women attack the toilet roll or the paper towels makes me smile. It is something we do every day without thinking and that’s the point… when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.

So, coming back to the title of this piece, the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender: there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy. So… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness. No sugar needed!

By Carmel Reid, Northern Rivers, Australia

Related Reading:
Are we Consuming Sugar or is Sugar Consuming us?
Quality of Movement = Quality of Life
The Dieting Misery-Go-Round

1,075 thoughts on “Misery, Sugar and Movement”

  1. Carmel what you have shared is truly amazing, I can also attest to your sharing that in my mid 60’s I am very fit, so fit that my fit app has my age as 5 years younger! how about that. I have really found that ‘Move fit’ which are a set of exercise programs for all ages is extremely supportive. I feel more alive now than I did in my 30′ and 40’s. Listening to my body has been the biggest support too because I have learnt the hard way it actually does know best. Irrespective of what my mind tries to tell me.

  2. Thank you Carmel. The simplicity and openness of you sharing this is very impactful. And practical too. Inspired by having just read this article, my attention is on my finger tips and there is a sense of delicacy and sweetness that feels very amazing in my body. I know too from much experimentation that no amount of sugar comes close to this feeling of awareness and settlement.

  3. This is a timely blog to read. Sugar and certain foods is the last thing to go for me, in that I turn to it not always because I’m exhausted but because I don’t want to feel the joy that I am. Because the artificial sugar or taste, which is stimulating, gives you that instant hit. Whist the joy that comes from within, is an ever lasting, universal feeling, that only loves everything and everyone.

    I know with consistency, commitment and responsibility, that joy will be forth. Whilst the artificial stimulant and tastes will be made nought…

    1. I have come to understand Shushila that there are two energies running my body, unfortunately I have been using the wrong energy. This other energy is like the devil that sits on my shoulder cajoling me to eat either sugary substances which stops me from reading life, or suggests, if I won’t eat sugar how about some salt? Salt I have discovered is an as-sault, There’s a pun there! So that I protect and harden myself because I’m fed that I cannot cope with life which I haven’t read because I ate too much sugar, so I now feel life is too difficult and what’s the point anyway. Stop eating sugar and I can instantly read life, as in fact we all can and because I can read life, I do not need the Salt which gave me a false sense of protection anyway. Has anyone noticed that now we eat salt and sugar together, what a dire combination for our Bodies, but we don’t seem to care.

  4. Carmel, this is a recipe offered by you that seems too simple, and yet I too know its power. And at the same time, I forget…. or I choose to forget sometimes to surrender to this stillness and enjoy the warmth and beauty that it has to offer: “the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender: there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy. So… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness.”

    1. That inner stillness is an amazing place and pace to be in. Once we are in there, there could be a tsunami, a tornado or everything ferrel that is around you, and aren’t affected or phased by it.

      1. Shushila I am just starting to feel that inner stillness you mention, and how life is set up for us not to feel it. Life is modelled so that we look outside of ourselves for acceptance and recognition of who we are. We have manufactured food so that it numbs our bodies so that we cannot feel. Our lives are set up in such a way that we do not have any time to stop and feel our surroundings. All this is deliberate as it stops us from feeling the stillness within. When the lie of how we live and the damage it does to our bodies and mental health is exposed then we can reconnect back to the stillness and it is such a beautiful place to be because as you say it doesn’t matter what is going on somehow it doesn’t impact our bodies. We do know this stillness, it is coming back to something so familiar.

      2. It is very inspiring to hear people talk about stillness. And the fact that it is within us all. I can feel it when I give myself the space to do so and from others sharing I realise the depth of settlement that is there that stands us so sure and steady whatever life throws our way.

  5. How to start to be self loving requires such simple steps that anyone of us can choose to do: “By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.” – thank you Carmel once again for making it so real, practical and simple.

  6. Carmel – These are such super wise words: “The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices.” we can try to convince ourselves with words to stop something, but in the end it is the body and how it feels that holds the final and lasting say.

  7. I wonder if there is more going on here than we care to admit. Is it possible that there is an energy running our bodies that do not want our bodies to feel or have any connection to our innate stillness? If we connect back to the stillness that naturally resides within us; then this energy has no hold over us. So this energy that runs our bodies keeps us craving foods and drinks that race our bodies and so avoids at all costs any stillness or chance of settlement. So who or what is controlling our body?

  8. Adding to what you have shared Carmel and that is when we become sugar free then have some sugary food then we can be up at-least 3 or 4 times in the night to eliminate the sugars from our system.

  9. We are not victims of misery, we are in control of it. Which is not a pleasant truth if you want to be miserable and give up because that seemingly takes little effort. But thats a lie cause it takes a lot of effort and energy to be miserable! It does drain us whereas being gentle and tender and sweet does not drain us.

  10. I wonder if we have set ourselves up for this cycle on purpose?
    “We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair.”
    Because while we are in this state of despair we have taken our eye of the ball which is to evolve and get of this plane of life back to where we belong. But the distraction takes us so far away from ever coming to this knowing.

  11. I love what you have shared here ‘the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender’. The last few days I have been feeling quite vulnerable and fragile with lots coming up for me to feel. What I can appreciate is when I went to a supermarket this morning I felt this even more and instead of grabbing food from so not to feel it I made a choice to continue to feel it. It is but all a choice and our movements, thoughts, words and physically are all a part of this. What do we choose and how much do we love ourselves.

    1. Treating our bodies with love, respect and honouring is a natural part of loving ourselves, ‘When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.’

  12. The whole area of health and well-being has completely missed the topic of movement and the quality of movement. In a very obvious sense we know not to be rough with ourselves, we feel the impact, but we haven’t taken it to the other side, that how gentle, tender and loving we can be with our movements can actually positively impact the health of our body, and the wellness of our being. Thanks Carmel, great topic.

    1. Our quality of movement has a big impact on how we are, ‘By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.’

  13. I have been reading some comments and I must admit I reach for the sugar when I am feeling amazing…. it feels like I just want to suppress and alter the expansion I am feeling…. although for me I think my body can turn any un-needed food into sugar….

    1. Ha ha – hilarious Toni and I too can relate to this! Not feeling great or feeling ‘too great’ for my socks can make me choose foods that take me away from feeling all of these things! There is so much more to eating foods than simply telling ourselves what or what not to eat – it is like there is something else controlling us at times that makes us do things we would not normally want to do!

      1. Absolutely Henrietta, its like we are puppets at times to a controlling force, ‘There is so much more to eating foods than simply telling ourselves what or what not to eat – it is like there is something else controlling us at times that makes us do things we would not normally want to do!’

  14. I’m realising how there is a part of me that wants to race my body so that I cannot regain my awareness that I gave away as a child by eating copious amounts of sugar not realising the affect it was having on my body. Now at the age of 63 I know that if I eat sugar it will race me and dull my awareness. My desire for my awareness and what it offers me, an ability to read life is now so much more important to me that I will not forgo this for a few minutes of sweet sensation in my mouth, because once I have swallowed the sweet something I can no longer taste it.

  15. It’s very beautiful to experience how a reading like this can support us to be more aware about the way we move, our posture, the quality of our voice…every little detail counts and has an effect in the whole body, which is designed to be treated in deep regard and tenderness. I take this message into my day, thank you Carmel.

  16. ‘enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender’ This feels medicine, if we all had more moments like this, anxiety and depression wouldn’t exist.

  17. We do seem to forget that our bodies are very tender and delicate and we do seem to use them like battering rams on the outside and think that we can eat anything we want and it is not going to affect our insides how arrogant are we and also how ignorant at the same time.

    2. We certainly have a lot to learn in respect of how to treat and honour our bodies, the rates of illness in the world confirm this.

  18. Put sugar into the fuel tank of a car and the engine seizes up and doesn’t work. Hmmm? Our vehicle/body runs evenly and reliably when we choose food and drink that nourishes us.

    1. Spot on Mary, we would never consider putting the wrong fuel in our car as we know the consequences are severe and expensive, and yet we have consequences in and on our body from eating foods that do not suit us and we have the arrogance to ignore the effects these have short or long term on us.

    2. Keeping feeding the body a poison, like alcohol, and then further down the line wonder why your body has different signs and symptoms of not being well.

  19. How often are we truly honest with ourselves when we reach for either food or a drink in why we are reaching for that type of food or drink? ‘I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression.’ and if we were honest in how we were feeling it would actually be loving ourselves more in being wiling to go there and maybe just maybe instead of reaching for a certain type of food or drink which suppresses, dulls or burys the feeling there was a way of being and living that could change, heal and clear this instead? Something I definitely know is a truth, although certainly not perfect with this and still go to this to avoid feeling something I feel I am loving myself more and more where this is becoming less and how I support myself is becoming more.

  20. Many years ago I gave up certain foods that I was informed were’t good – for anyone to eat. Rather than feeling for myself what was being presented I took it as an instruction – which it wasn’t. I did feel ‘better’, however because I had stopped eating these foods on account of my will power last year it all came untangled. I realised I had to feel for myself, not rely on anyone outside me telling what I should or shouldn’t eat. So rather than being ‘good’ and doing what I thought was ‘right’ I gave myself permission to eat things I had previously stopped myself from eating. Result – I feel more me and I am evolving. Certain foods are less appealing than they were and will disappear out of my diet in their own time.

    1. I find it fascinating Sueq2012 what has naturally fallen off my radar of things to eat. Something I would always buy at the Supermarket I now walk by, I look at the product and my body just doesn’t want it any more. When we open up and communicate with our bodies it is fascinating what the response will be. I have discovered when we are on auto pilot of buying food based on what we have always done or always eaten there is this lack of communication and then we can get into the habit of eating something that is no longer required by our bodies. That’s when we can then feel sleepy, dull and bloated after eating something which is our body’s way of saying to us that particular food wasn’t wanted. If we listened more to our body’s communication I feel there wouldn’t be a need to go on a diet.

  21. Its great to bring awareness to how we feel when we start to crave a food that we know doesn’t serve us. We may still continue to indulge, but if we keep doing this (checking how we feel in our body) the craving may subside and eventually fall away completely.

    1. absolutely sueq2012 an example for me was potatoes especially chips, however it got to a point that if I ate chips I would fall asleep, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open and would have to stop what I was doing and sleep. Even if I was driving in the car. Now I don’t eat chips because it just isn’t worth the feeling of sleepiness I feel. I took my sister to the sea side and there is a stall there that sells the best hot chips but I didn’t buy any for myself because I actually do enjoy being with me, if I’m not with me, then no one gets to enjoy being with me either, eating them would take that feeling away and it’s just not worth it.

  22. How honest are we when we focus on the food we are eating? We are so used to thinking about whether we are eating right or wrong, if it will make us put on weight or whether it will tamper with our awareness – but how often do we truly consider the energy we were in before reaching out for that which we know harms? How honest are we in our reflection, or are we often too content and comfortable in settling with the self-bashing chatter of “i shouldn’t have eaten this”.

  23. Eating to numb myself from what I am feeling doesn’t work anymore. But that understanding and admission doesn’t stop me from doing so. The more I connect to my essence, which has no want or need to do something it knows doesn’t work, the less I spend in the mindset that ignores past results.

    1. Beautiful Leigh. Our essence has no needs or wants,as you say. Reconnecting to that part of me supports me to ignore the subtle mind cravings that result in my indulging. If I move and maybe go out for a walk – with me – I feel so different on my return and no longer have the craving. .

  24. Movement being the key word here. As what movement have we been in or what have we been aligned to that then craves something. This is something I am still learning.

  25. “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different..” I experience this as well, the quality of my thoughts and emotional state can all literally change instantly when I allow the tenderness and grace back into my movements. The soulful quality of tenderness is like a wash through my whole body.

  26. ” because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender:”
    This is an important learning, coming from the truth that one’s body is beautiful and treating it so will imitate the beauty.

  27. ‘But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?’ mmmm good question so does the cycle continue? Eat sugar etc for comfort and because we are not feeling good, then feel worse then eat more sugar? I am learning more and more that the way the cycle can be broken is indeed through our movements. Simply by walking to be with us we can change things in an instant ✨ Simply yet powerful when we choose.

    1. Yes but I can find myself eating comfort foods when I feel amazing too – in order to sabotage that feeling. Crackers isn’t it?”

      1. sueq2012 I totally agree with you, what energy is at play when we eat something to dull how amazing we feel. That is when the spirit has completely exposed itself and shows how it wants to trash our bodies so that we don’t get to feel amazing or if we feel it, it cannot last.

    2. How we choose to move, in a delicate or tender way, with connection, and with purpose are all ways that support us to be in a quality of energy that is more nurturing and loving of ourselves.

  28. I’m experimenting with the seat belt of my car again as it is so easy to just get into my car and drive off with no awareness of what I’m doing as I’m so busy with where am I going, what will the traffic be like, how long will it take roughly to get there? I’m totally focused on the outside world and not what is happening to me.
    The seat belt is my stop moment to bring it all back to me to be tender with myself as I strap myself in before anything else.

    1. Love this Mary. I was doing this but have stopped. Thanks for the reminder. There are so many stop moments in our day when we can choose to reconnect and be tender with ourselves.

  29. “The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices” Honesty is the first ingredient in true healing.

  30. Thanks for the reminder, Carmel. Feeling the hardness in our movements is a good indicator where we are at with ourselves.

  31. Incredible isn’t it, Sue, how ingrained a sweet reward can become even down to the time of day? My childhood sweet craving started and has since been before the evening meal when the anticipated return of an abuser was looming and I would clock the minute they walked through the door whether abuse would take place that evening or not.

  32. The feeling miserable is like a confirming of how empty you feel and so the catch-22 spiral continues and confirms. Pharmaceutical companies would have us believe that the only answer to this downward spiral is to put us on a lifetime program of popping Prozac as there is no money to be made in encouraging self-love.

    1. Brigette Evans this is a great observation because taking Prozac is like putting a sticking plaster over the wound, but it doesn’t address why or how we got the wound to begin with.

  33. “the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender:” Staying connected with our body can transform so many of our more negative feelings and when we move it tenderly even more so.

  34. I know the cycle sugar can throw you into… once begun the cravings can be a challenge to stop. When consumed I feel my nervous system heighten and my body becomes very unsettled.

  35. It sure does make you more tired, but what a perfect reason to eat some more! That’s exactly how I used to live until my body began presenting me with a raft of very unpleasant symptoms, messages from my body that I could no longer ignore if I wanted to live my life to the fullest, a life where sugar has no place.

  36. I certainly know the pattern of feeding the tension in my body with foods that my body really doesn’t like, and the result is, I still have the tension and my body feels decidedly more yucky than it was. I have realised that I often feed this tension as I really don’t want to know what it is actually telling me, but the avoidance doesn’t solve anything, in fact it makes things worse. Note to self – be honest about what I’m avoiding so I then can avoid the foods that make my body miserable.

    1. I’ve been noticing this recently too, Ingrid, how ‘I still have the tension and my body feels decidedly more yucky than it was.’ I’m realising that this doubled up yucky-ness is not worth it anymore so I’m taking a page from your notes if you don’t mind and rather than trying to numb this tension I am feeling with food, choosing to raise the bar on the level of honesty I am willing to go to with myself.

    2. Ingrid, is it possible we are avoiding ourselves? The tension is that when we drop the foods that numb or race us we expose the power and the beauty of who we truly are. We cannot handle the purity of our being that we have been denying. Surely there has to come a point when this being that we have tried to suffocate breaks free and the purity of who we truly are takes over. I can feel it in my body. It’s like a battle ground the spirit is constantly trying to take command again, as it has been exposed through not eating the foods and drinks that it could hide behind what we used to trash our bodies.

  37. Thank you, Carmel, for the gorgeous reminder of how our movements can fill that empty-ness that I too tried to fill with sugar from a very young age and from any number of different sources. I have felt how beautiful it feels to move in a self-loving way, or to change my movements to be self-loving ones when I clock they are less than. Your blog has inspired me to bring these self-loving movements into those moments when I am still reaching for something sweet. I am realising with great joy that I am ready to let go of a lifetime sustenance of finding sweetness in the outer and instead am ready to accept and embrace my inner sweetness.

  38. Being in conscious presence (when our mind and body are doing the same thing) and when we move with the quality of tender loving care it is exquisite.

  39. It feels like you have to work hard to feel yourself miserable – in entertaining that endless self-harming thoughts, to constantly looking for something to eat to keep that uncomfortable feeling in your tummy, the constant motion to distract yourself perhaps with sporting or burying yourself in your work.

    1. I was never that that my body is the doorway to heaven and to treat it as such.

  42. Thank you for sharing Carmel. The pull of sugar is one of the most addictive things I have ever experienced and trying to use willpower to give up inevitably backfires as the root cause and understanding of the attraction to the sugar has not been truly addressed and understood – super inspiring to read of your experiences.

    1. Sugar is very addictive, and is a poison to our bodies, and yet it is everywhere, hidden in so many products, a really crazy world we live in.

  43. ……’there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.’ Connecting with our body provides us with lasting energy and vitality.

  44. Yes, absolutely. I have seen this play out in life and it is very interesting to observe and understand how love works.

  45. This beautiful blog reminds me to be more gentle on myself and be more aware of the quality of my breath and my movements. Sometimes I can get a bit racy without sugar but by going into a rushing energy.

    1. Chan Ly I can appreciate what you are saying for many of us, it is going into the doing energy and then we leave ourselves behind so that any form of gentleness has gone. We are so programmed to be racy, or to go into the doing, all of which takes us away from the stillness that is at the core of our being.

  47. I reckon if you asked most people, especially kids “would you like to willingly live a life of misery?” Most would say no.
    And yet most foods, activities that drain us, being harsh, unloving, critical, blaming, obliged to task and much more is a normal part of daily life that leaves us miserable! As a whole we haven’t fostered a life lived from being gentle, tender and loving with ourselves but thank God there are people doing so and many more learning to live such a way.

    1. Good point Doug! We are slowly getting there – with warnings against diabetes and obesity if you eat too much sugar. And with the current craze in searching for what makes you happy a misery warning may well pay off.

    2. I love this. However, we have all the warnings of the dangers to health on packets of cigarettes yet people keep smoking. We need to find ways to stimulate them to look at and support them to heal the causes of their miserableness rather than scare them.

  48. Sugar gives us a false high and then leaves us feeling depleted and exhausted. If I have sugar in the evening then I find it much harder to wake up in the morning and to be present with what I am doing.

  49. It’s beautiful to read the depth of relationship you have with your body and the way in which you respond to it.

  50. Recently I have been dealing with a few challenges that have been emotionally challenging as well as physically challenging and I have resorted to old eating patterns as my ‘medication’. Also old patterns of avoidance – staying busy so as not to have to think about what’s truly going on, going hard so I can’t feel the truth of the deep sadness that is coming up for me, knowing that my movements and looking after my physical body will help, eating nourishing foods, going to bed early and being very tender with my body.

    1. Carmel I have found ‘Movefit’ which is an exercise program that supports my body. I didn’t realise just how contracted and dense my body had become. I found by exercising on a regular basis that I am now standing taller which has changed the way I walk. I have never been a fan of fitness programs as I found they can be very intense, more like boot camp training. ‘Movefit’ is completely different and I actually enjoy the exercise and do not like to miss a day, it’s such a part of my self care routine.

  51. How often I too have fallen for that quick sugar hit to raise my energy levels only to get dropped – as you say – a while after. I am not letting myself go for these intense false sparks – at least rarely now and it is literally making me steadier in all parts of my life.

    1. elainearthey I agree that eating less sugar is very beneficial for the body as it doesn’t get into that yoyo effect of highs and lows which as you say supports us to be steady in our life. It’s interesting to observe friends who eats sugar in the evenings then wonders why they do not sleep very well and wake up tired. Is it possible we do not want to understand the effects sugar has on our bodies because we want to be able to do what we like when we like, we think we have the freedom of choice but actually we are being fed our choices.

  52. We learn to counteract our tiredness and exhaustion with sweet and uplifting foods but we need to understand that this does not change our actual state of being it only gives us a momentary solution but in truth adds to the exhaustion at hand. When we allow ourselves to move more according to how we feel, in other words in honour of our body, we give our body space to recuperate within its movements.

  53. Great tips here about how to make note of and reflect on our choices and behaviours. There is no approach more powerful and supportive than one initiated from our own observations and understanding.

  54. Almost a chicken or egg question: does non-supportive food lead to not loving movements or do not loving movements lead to non-supportive food? I would say change the movements and the rest will follow.

    1. I would agree with you Monika that everything stems from movement first, I have found a program on line that supports our bodies to move in a way that reconfigures our bodies and at the same time supports us to become fit and full of vitality as we discard old patterns of movement and bring back balance and flow into our daily lives.
      https://movefit.uscreen.io

  55. I have been experimenting with what to eat and what not to eat a lot lately also because I felt literally too heavy and not enough in connection with myself. It was after a session with one of the practitioners where I realized what I was actually holding onto that also kept the weight on. Within a week I was back to my normal weight and the size and shape took a little longer. So not only food, but also our behavior and our thoughts give us our weight and shape.

    1. This is a really interesting point Monika, and makes such a lot of sense. We always tend to associate our weight and shape with our diet and how much exercise we do (or not), but as you so clearly point out there is much more at play here. And it can go to either extreme, as in carrying too much weight or being underweight – both being indications that there is an imbalance in our overall health and well being.

    2. Monika what you say is opening up the discussion further which is what is needed so we can look at all the angles that are affecting us. I can say that when I have taken something on that someone has said or done without discerning the energy that it came with my tummy bloats! One of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves is to step back from life and observe it but not absorb it. We are bombarded daily with the energy of life that if we absorb can have a hugely negative effect on how we respond to life.

    1. Interesting to think that we are addicted to particular ways of moving, more so than particular foods, that is something for me to ponder on, thank you Joseph.

    2. Brilliant comment Joseph, not many people would consider these movements as addictive but they are, and they are probably the hardest to address and heal.

  57. “… there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.” Beautiful – to breathe gently through the nose and feel the stillness inside – which we all have. Why would we reach for other substances to bury that feeling?!

  58. That really is the key to do everything or as much as possible with conscious presence, for it is so easy to be gentle and tender when we are but when I switch on to autopilot thats when the roughness comes back in and things can go rather pear shaped in more ways than one.

  59. I find that my food needs are changing all the time – listening to my body and not my desires!

  60. Sugar is so normal for most that most do not even question its presence in food. I was talking with someone today about it and she was not aware of the fact that sugar was being used by her to avoid feeling tired. It is such a normal way of living for most that most do not realise how unnatural it truly is.

  61. My experience is that evolution does not happen in a straight line and we don’t just progress from point A to B. And the thing is when we identify a ‘wrong’, we want to ‘right’ it, but that doesn’t seem to be the way things go any more.

    1. Yes we tend to want a quick fix – whatever that may be. Becoming aware is the first step, then listening to our body and going from there. But I find I zig zag – and as long as I don’t beat myself up for doing or eating something ‘wrong’ and treat it as a learning opportunity I cautiously move forward.

    1. Your honesty here feels excruciatingly poignant and truth-full, Joseph. Yes, the frustrating condition we are faced with is brought on by earlier movements “we’ve made that are at odds with Love.” Who knew?? Haha, we ALL know – hence why we get so frustrated. It is not frustration with the condition we ‘suddenly’ seem to be faced with but with our own earlier choice to disconnect from the Love that we are and could be in every moment and movement had we but chosen to stay connected.

    1. Danna I agree with you when we change our movements it opens up the possibility for everything to change not just our food choices but how we feel about ourselves changes too.

  64. Thank you Carmel for shining a light on what I can avoid in being racy ‘… there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.’ And in that stillness we feel ourselves and all around.

  65. Even the smallest amounts of sugar make me feel tired so I was asking myself the question, today, why do I still eat it?

  66. I have become very aware of how my thoughts are influenced by what I have eaten. If I eat sugary things I often have self-doubting and negative thoughts the day after. There is a definite correlation between food and our quality of thoughts.

  67. I still go to fruit or sweet things sometimes when I want a lift but as you say it doesn’t last and can leave us, after a while, feeling worse than before or have us pushing ourselves through in the illusion that we are on top of things.

  68. The biggest thing I realised from my own experience about body weight is that it’s to do not just with food intake, but with energy. If we are holding onto things, not letting go, or taking on people’s stuff, emotions that are not ours then it leads a heavier mass being accumulated in the body. Letting all that go can equally see weight excess loss.

    1. This is a valid point you make here, Zofia, holding onto things often means that our critical thoughts go round and round in our heads taking us out of the present moment and circulating in our past. Our negative thoughts can be toxic to the natural harmony of our bodies.

    2. A great sharing… if energy precede form, then energy precedes food, or more like the type, quality of food we choose… and reflects the energetic state of being we are in before we get the thought of what food to eat…

    3. How often do we read of people who are larger in frame yet are eating small amounts of food. We are often baffled to understand why – but do we stop to consider the emotions that build up over time and their impact on the body.

  69. The more I pay attention to my thoughts and the quality of them, it becomes easier to start to say no to the negative rubbish because it starts to stand out against the quality of how I’m moving: less rushed and hurried and more ‘with myself’- ie more focused on what I’m actually doing instead of being distracted by my thoughts.

  70. Wonderful Carmel… And yes of course, as we know, feeling our voice just a little bit more is an extraordinary doorway into understanding where we are, what connection we had with ourselves, and how we are communicating with the world, and what we are communicating.

  71. The highs that we seek in the form of experiences and relationships may offer momentary elation, happiness and relief. However, just like sugar highs we cannot sustain the artificial stimulation and then we must experience the low or drop of not living in our natural harmonious way of being.

  75. The more tender and honouring I am with myself, the more beautiful I feel and the less I choose to let any of life’s distractions disturb what I feel inside. There is a sense too that this builds as an unshakeable strength the more honouring I am.

  76. There is definitely a cycle of not feeling good, eating more and feeling a bit better for a while and then dropping low again which will have us looking for relief once again. It is interesting to observe with myself that as soon as I feel discomfort that I will look for a fix instead of just feeling what I am feeling and being ok with that. Because just being with it is actually ok and then I can make the choices to not make it worse, because the fixes often make it worse on the long term.

  77. Beautifully expressed, no space for misery if we are living the stillness of our essence and then no need to seek sugar for we are full-filled.

    1. So true, when we are living the stillness of our essence there is no need to seek sugar for we are full-filled with sweetness of who we are.

  79. Carmel it’s changing the way we respond to ourselves, understanding that yes we need support, but choosing ways to support ourselves that don’t bring temporary relief or harm to the body, instead we can be self caring and loving with ourselves by adjusting the quality of our movements.

  80. Carmel, I really love your article, you have a way of writing so simple and practically, this stands out for me and is really helpful; ‘By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.’

    2. I agree Rebecca and what stands out for me is when we are being super gentle and loving with ourselves this naturally flows onto others too.

    1. Absolutely true it is our choice to move toward love or away from love. When we connect to ones own tender and gentle movements we are moving towards love.

  82. Consuming sugar is a vicious cycle, we have the sugar, get exhausted, feel low, crave more sugar, get exhausted, feel low… it’s no surprise that cocaine has virtually the same chemical component as sugar.

  83. Wise words in the whole of this article and I find them very supportive…”Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.” This is one of the main if not the main issue for us and health issues, we do not respect our bodies and we override their sensitivity.

  84. When I feel into the lows of life I can feel how a space is created by the contraction and the dips, all of which allows for the self doubt and despair to nest in.

  85. I have noticed this tension too which can build up and then I start looking for a relief from the tension in various ways one of them being food. I have also noticed that relief is not the only option available and if we deepen in our connection within and reconnect to that still part of us that is not tense at all then we can honestly observe the tension and not be dominated by it.

  86. When we have experienced the tenderness and gentleness within our movements hardness feels awful and we know that we are off. I am more likely to feel different after I eat my lunch, especially if I have been engaging in stimulating conversation with work colleagues but when I go for a walk in the park and chat to people I feel different on returning to work.

  87. This is a great reminder Carmel to stop and be tender with ourselves, tenderness is a key to unlocking the wisdom inside of us.

    1. I agree, we cannot feel the details and subtle aspects of our body and health when we come in hard and rough, we need to be gentle and tender to refine and adapt our lives to be more supportive and enrich our wellbeing.

    4. Yes, it is Sam and it is great to remind each other of our tenderness and sensitivity through our reflection and livingness.

  88. We may one day realise that the way we move can actually lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices like overeating, because when we are rough, rushing, unaware of our bodies and not consciously present there is a quality of energy in the body that is not harmonious or pleasant to experience. That in itself is a type of misery because it doesn’t represent our true being or essence which is love, instead it feels quite awful to experience. Moving with connection to my essence and body and allowing each movement to express my soulful qualities of grace, loveliness, harmony, tenderness, and delicateness brings a joy into my body and being.

  89. Great when the movements we make are so deliciously sweet that no amount or version of sugar in the world comes even close to the enjoyment we feel in our body.

    2. So true Alexander, and this reminds me of when people ask me if I would like sugar in my tea, I reply, ‘no thanks, I am sweet enough already’.

  91. Sugar has been one of the hardest things for me to stop which is crazy when this is what we give children often before they can even speak.

    1. I too am finding sugar to be the hardest thing to let go off, especially when you are working late the body sometimes craves the sugar in some form to keep going.

  92. We live in a society that promotes hardness instead of gentleness. We tend to think gentleness is about being slow and an airy-fairy way of moving but true gentleness is very far from this. Our body resonates with the true qualities of gentleness and it is part of our natural and true movement. I have learned about gentleness at Universal Medicine and through the amazing presentations of Serge Benhayon.

  93. Once we have established a certain amount of tenderness, stillness, equilibrium… the ‘temptation’ of distracting, numbing or dulling ourselves may not be gone, but now that we have a sense and a knowing of the above-mentioned qualities we experience the reduction and misery that comes with giving in to the temptations (or addiction). And there comes a point when we cherish a well-balanced state of being so much that we will not want to comprise it anymore.

    1. Yes and there comes a point where the taste is no longer what it used to be. For me the taste of salt and sugar are just too strong and the initial taste is too much, it is then still easy to override that if I choose and eat the sugar but my taste buds say no to start with.

  94. When I am disconnected my voice is loud and boisterous, when I am connected to my body, my voice has a sweet melody and sounds divine even to my own ears. The sound of my voice is a dead give away as to where I am at in any given moment.

    1. You’ve reminded me of when I observe children, I notice the same thing happening to them too, and how the vibration of their voice changes when they are not connected to their body.

    2. Great what you share as I too have noticed the difference in my voice to when I have been connected to my body or far from connection to my body, as the voice sounds very different.

  95. I find it very confirming of how energetically aware we are that we know just what to eat to provide ‘hidden sugars’ even though we may think we are choosing ‘healthy food’. I find this with other foods too. I may want to eat something creamy but end up with eating tahini or macadamias. Even though they are healthy they are still in the same energetic food group that provides comfort.

  96. Perhaps there is a connection between moving with tenderness and being able to sustainably change one’s diet?

  97. I know only to well the trap and contagiousness of sugar and all its implications . A beautiful sharing with understanding what is really going on and the honesty we need to address it and the effects and loving choices we can make.

  98. “Our bodies are a delicate balance” – I love this, it gets me imagining that one harsh or careless move could unbalance our whole system. And it works both ways – I find my body is enormously responsive to how I move it and take care of it, if I treat myself as precious and if I’m delicate it’s the best way to reset my internal balance.

    1. “If I treat myself as precious and if I’m delicate it’s the best way to reset my internal balance.” That is exactly how it is for me too Meg, beautifully expressed, thank you.

    2. Taking it to the next level of care brings in another level of delicate balance, allowing the preciousness and internal balance.

  99. Overeating and feeling miserable is such a vicious cycle. I am in it at the moment and I know there is no end to it unless I choose otherwise so this was a good blog to read today. Practising tenderness and gentleness will be my focus today.

    1. I know what you mean, for me it is not over eating but the wrong food that does not agree with my stomach, makes me feel miserable, which is a vicious cycle.

  100. When we get stuck in a rut that we think we cannot get out of, it is often a spark from someone or something that ignites and/or inspires us to see beyond our trench and make the steps to pull ourselves up and out.

  101. I am finding movement so important in my day… to take a walk, or even just to get up and move around the workspace, allows for the release of any mentally created tension I’ve allowed and helps me come back to feeling my body and moving in a way that is truly supportive for it.

    1. I’m finding the same Paula, I can sometimes feel quite awful in myself emotionally when I wake up, and after getting up and moving about gently attending to tasks in the home I bring myself back to a lovely state of being and can feel remarkably better – just from the quality of my movements.

    1. Yes, “My body is beautiful” is a powerful statement when we truly feel the significance of this within.

      1. It sure is especially as soo many of us find pretty much and and everything fault under the sun about our bodies, rather than embracing the gift they are offering us.

  103. Bringing awareness to the smallest of movements changes the way my whole body feels. The delicacy at the tips of our fingers can ripple through our whole bodies if we simply allow it… in a breath, a momentary pause and a willingness to feel.

    1. I agree Matilda, I fidn the same too and it starts with something so simple like being tender and delicate with our finger tips. My body loves it and so naturally it supports me to allow my whole body to be delicate and tender. And with this I get more of a sense of authority and presence in my body.

  104. Especially when under tension the choice to either seek relief or to raise one’s vibration is very present, a learning on our way out of the identification with tension back to knowing and living who we are within the tension.

    1. That’s great Alex because we so often just want relief from the tension but to know that we actually will always have tension it’s our relationship with tension is what makes it something we want to rid ourselves of or deepen into.

    2. To allow the pull of the tension in our awareness of the discordance in life is what will guide us beyond the way things currently are… our resistance and the many ways we do this just perpetuates the discordance.

    4. Yes, with tension we pay the price of numbing and exhaustion in return for a temporary boost.

  105. When we look at the amounts of sugar many children eat, in processed foods, in biscuits, cakes and in sweets (lollies), it certainly explains bad behaviour, because they must be feeling so miserable inside and not-them. What is sad is when parents reward them with sweets for being good, not realising it was probably the sweets that caused the bad behaviour in the first place.

    1. Yes, such valid observations, we feed that what we do not want and reward ourselves with something that is harming us.

    2. A properly mad cycle to be in, yes Carmel. And actually connecting bad behaviour with feeling miserable inside because we are not ourselves, really helps to understand our own and anyone else’s waywardness.

    3. Great point Carmel, it made me laugh when I read the last part of your comment. It is so true that we use sugar as a huge form of reward and when we understand what sugar does to our body and to how we respond to life, it is no reward at all.

  106. The misery of sugar and all its addiction and buisness with the loss of connection stillness and joy within is something i know so well and a way I used to live and it is only now with changing the way i live and eat that i can truly appreciate the effects of sugar on my body my awareness the quality and purpose of life and the learning process this is in every movement .

  107. Misery and sugar….yes the misery of going numb and missing ourselves, not being connected with ourselves, because sugar and eating a lot of it, gets us to check out and not feel. That is my experience, and movement, when we move with awareness and connection, then the sweetness of flow and stillness is with us and sugar is bitter. I have days when I feel flat and that is when the thought might come in to sweeten things up with some sugar… when I move with purpose there is no sugary recipe in the world that will take me away from that. It is so much to do with how we move.

    1. I love those moments when I absolutely know with every fibre of my body (stomach included) that there is no food that can surpass the feeling of being connected and purposeful.

  108. Actually we all, everyone is so sensitive and tender that anything that doesn’t match that tenderness is felt as a disharmony, disturbance or even assault on our body and being, but depending on the coping mechanisms we develop we may either have numbed ourselves or became over-sensitive which actually means we have not learned to process the input appropriately and thus are overwhelmed by the onslaught of stimuli. But at any point in time we can learn to restore our natural senses and the ability to handle it.

  109. Eating sugar can be an addictive pattern that is hard to break free of, and one we often don’t go to the root cause of – why do we crave that food in the first place? Is it a deep seeded exhaustion, a lack of joy and spark in life, a desire to ease a tension or to race the body to not feel? When we ask these questions it removes the power and emphasis on the food and returns it to us and how we are feeling

  110. Carmel thank you so much this is beautiful what you share, simple to understand and apply to our lives. Bringing awareness and understanding to our movements.

  111. Carmel, the fact that we get more tired and can get depressed after eating sugar is something that is really important to discuss. It is not often talked about but can explain why we maybe feeling low.

  112. “…there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.” Esoteric Yoga supports me to feel the stillness inside – which feels really beautiful. When I get pulled away from this – rephrase – when I choose to pull away from this – then I may go searching for something to nibble. This is not very supportive behaviour and I’m catching more easily these days.

  113. I finally had a stop moment that gave me the full impulse to stop eating fruit and I’m currently on Day 7 of no-nuts and no-fruit and I’m feeling more steady and more still inside and am finding that my ability to read situations is already evolving.

    1. The self bashing that has now become so normalised is the true harm that hurts way beyond words.

  116. How sweet life is when we do away with all those foods that make us racy and even when those foods are thought about they can make our body go into overdrive and feel racy.

  117. I love the simplicity and truth of what you have said Carmel. To avoid feeling miserable and down, choose gentle movements which brings us back to the love and inner sweetness that we are, so no need for sugar.

  119. In bringing absolute honesty to what we feel from our bodies we can connect to a wisdom which is greater than anything we can imagine. All starts with simple honesty and a relationship with our bodies.

  121. It is great that in this blog you are sharing that it is wise to look at why you are eating or craving certain foods in the first place and deal with that, rather than just trying to cut them out, using will power which in my experience never works for long.

    1. So true Andrew – will power doesn’t cut it in the long run and the old behaviour will reappear., as I have discovered. Addressing the reasons why a behaviour exists gets to the root of the issue.

    2. Great point Andrew … it seems to me that what we choose to eat is the end product of how we have been living in the in-between period between meal times… Do we eat on the run? in a rush, standing and not sitting? have we let emotions / reactions in that need pacifying/numbing? There’s a lot more going on than just simply having a bite to eat.

  122. I like the way that you have made a connection here between love-for-yourself and eating sugar. And I find that it can sometimes be the case that when there is huge amounts of love being offered to me, often by someone else, I will also reach for the sugar, just as much as I will reach for it when times feel loveless.

  123. It is so amazing that in one simple movement so many parts of our human body come in to play and are affected, nothing is in isolation from anything else, all a beautiful interconnectedness within this vast universe.

  124. When we are in the company of someone who is truly gentle and tender in their body it feels like there is a permission for us to be the same way. This can be confronting for some people although other allows themselves to surrender and also return to a naturally tender way of being and expressing.

  125. Recognising that you are being tender and loving with yourself is almost as important as the act itself.

  126. Once you start reducing sugar in your life, the many places it hides become super obvious. The body tells you loud and clear when you have eaten something sweet.

  127. The tension can feel almost unbearable but it is of the mind whereas the body is the steady backdrop that we can always refer to and connect with. Its wisdom is unbeatable.

  128. How amazing that we can read our own choices and desires to learn and understand more about what is affecting us as a result of our earlier choices.

    1. I agree, Michael – we have everything there at our fingertips – limitless wisdom and support available to us for us to live the divinity that we are. It comes down to one choice – are we saying a big Yes to this or not.

  130. So true Carmel that when we are full of stillness there is no space for misery or any other negativity… stillness is full of exquisiteness: love, grace, joy and harmony.

  131. Do we consume sugar which then alters the way we move or do we move in a way that alters our physiology and then ‘feel’ the craving for sugar?

    1. Great question, Michael – and what is it that causes us to move in a way where we find our selves craving sugar, or other substances that take us away from our stillness? It’s as though another energy has crept into the pilot seat and is forcefully driving us to self-destruct.

  132. If we crave anything, surely the best answer is to look deeper at why we crave whatever we do first without giving in to the craving which I so often do.

    1. At least then we are giving our selves the opportunity to nominate what is driving us to feel this way and renounce whatever it is. Clocking and calling out the offending energy in this way is immensely powerful, it may seem like a small thing, but with commitment and consistency it’s our path home.

    2. Maybe another question is will we take our craving to the grave? And seeing we have no idea when we will pass-over and what is waiting for us on our return maybe it is a great relief to undo any wayward addictive-ness as soon as possible as any addiction this life will probably carry to the next?

  133. I have been off sugar recently and absolutely loving the impact on my body and the new steadiness I am allowing. Yesterday I had a mouthful of a biscuit and immediately didn’t eat the rest as the sugar was so overwhelming and this morning I am a little foggy in the head. The more I honour the lovely steady feeling within and place that as all important the less I will want even a mouthful.

    1. I love how our bodies so readily respond to our loving choices! Once we stop eating sugar, then anything sweet – even a piece of fruit or green peas – will have a sweetness about them. Its like our bodies create a radar for the types of foods we have given up and let us know loud and clear if we slip up and eat some of it… which is so supportive and inspiring.

  134. So true Carmel that some women try to minimise the time it takes them to visit the bathroom, rushing on the way in and the way out. What if in taking the time to check the mirror, wash hands more gracefully etc. we had a moment to reflect on our day and rejuvenate for whatever was next?

  135. It’s our honesty that allows the awareness, then without judgment, we are offered the understanding which then invites us to make more loving choices moving forward.

  138. I am seeing that the food I eat is the end result to how I have been with myself. There is no good or bad with my choices – even though I can think that from time to time. But really all these choices that I make are highlighting that there is something deeper to look at and feel. One of the aspects that I keep returning to is the quality of my movements, but its not just physical movement either. Often its can be a expectation or ideal that I have of the way something should be, leads me to a way of thinking that allows me to eat in a particular way, that is not supportive. Its so obvious when I eat to nourish and support, but there are threads that I allow in where the end result is me eating either way more or make not so good choices.

  140. I find it amazing how paying attention to the way we turn the door knob can have such a ripple effect to how we the start to move and behave elsewhere in life.

    1. I agree, Eva, bringing this detail and awareness into one very tiny area of our life, with consistency, sets a new standard, which we can then apply to other areas, gradually bringing this new standard to all areas of our life. These standards have the potential to be forever deepening and evolving.

  141. It is worth an experiment or actually self-observation to honestly feel what emotionally is going on when we crave certain foods or drinks – most often we will find ourselves emotionally needy, a need that food cannot really satisfy but compensate, ie. substitute and suppress, only for the need to return and return over and over again until we take care of it appropriately.

    1. It is so true Alexander when we crave certain foods to satisfy a negative feeling and have a moment of pleasure or relief it is only ever satisfying for a few moments in our mouths and then the dissatisfaction returns. The source of dissatisfaction is however within us or in something we have taken on from life that is in truth not us.

  142. I love this; ‘The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices.’ What I find is that it actually feels great to really feel into my body, to be honest if I am feeling tired and to notice how my feet, shoulders and back etc feel and whether they are achy or not. Having stop moments in my day, even for a few minutes feels really supportive for this. What I really love is lying down for 5 minutes if I am feeling a bit tired, I then feel deeply into my body and can often let go of tension that maybe there.

  143. This is so great to be aware of; ‘I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression.’

    1. So true Rebecca by the time I have started eating sugary or salty foods, I know there is some issue from the day that I wish to avoid and not feel.

  144. It is the everyday moments of our connection with our body and being in sync with our body that in truth make our day, as it deepens our relationship with ourselves and lets us feel where we are truly at.

    1. Exactly, so when we are disconnected and we hear the door slam harsh and loud behind us, it is a reflection for us to look at why we were not truly with ourselves in that moment. A simple learning without placing any need for perfection on ourselves.

      1. Yes, I love that Eva, it is just a taken note instead of ignoring / dismissing it and to feel how it is for ourselves. Does the way we move through life allow for an environment we want to live in? And if not we ourselves can step by step introduce the changes in our own awareness and movement that brings a quality to life that we feel truly at home in.

    2. All these little moments that we get to feel and appreciate the yumminess that we are add up so much that we then do not crave or need a sweetener as we are already sweet enough! There is nothing more fullfilling and satisfying then feeling who we truly are and living this as much as possible.

  145. When we remove the props and crutches that we have employed to keep us going in our daily life we expose the irresponsibility of our choices however this offers a great opportunity to be empowered in making new choices which mean we no longer have a reliance on anything outside of us to keep us going.

    1. Yes, beautifully said Michael. First we need to be honest and aware with all that we medicate ourselves with throughout the day which then opens us up to look closer at what it is we are fixing and covering up. This way we step by step are getting to know ourselves more truly and deeply.

  146. A few years ago, I was in the US and went to a large chain restaurant that the food was served on plates and asked for their allergy menu. The only thing on the whole menu that was gluten, sugar and dairy free was raw broccoli on the kid’s menu!

    1. That is quite shocking to see how so many foods contain so much, sugar, dairy and gluten. Without knowing we just consume them when we don’t stop to read the ingredients. How many people live like that this, I would say quite a lot.

  147. Living proof that there we can make huge shifts within our selves simply by focusing on the quality of our movements. It seems too simple to be true, but when we make a marked attempt to restore our connection to our inner grace and express it in how we move, it brings us back to a foundational quality that puts so much of our lives into the correct perspective. Once we can see and feel this, developing a supportive life style naturally follows suit.

  148. When we are tender in our movements we are more able to feel our bodies and the wonderful messages they have for us about the choices we are making. When we are truly willing to listen our bodies don’t have to shout, the wisdom is already accepted and known.

    1. Yes, it is the settlement within the body that is so very precious and it does not compare to any short or long moment of entertainment and stimulation of our five senses.

      1. Yes its beautiful what you share ladies, there is no comparison to what is felt within the body and known, it is so very precious.

  149. Carmel, this is such a gorgeous, simple and very helpful blog … the question you ask, how we be with misery and of course not go into those numbing behaviours is a such a pertinent one, and of course being tender with us is part of that pathway … one thing I find as part of that tenderness is to just accept what we feel and not judge it and then it provides the space to feel even more the tenderness we are.

  150. I repeat the same thing with sugar, when I’m feeling amazing and I clock it, the next thing I do is reach for something sweet to make sure that I don’t feel amazing. I did that this evening and now I’m feeling so terrible that it feels much easier to say no to having sugar next time.

  151. All of our choices tell us more about how we are living when we feel influenced to make a choice that we know is not truly supportive or healthy. Understanding the influences is more important than the choice itself.

    1. The influence is usually triggered by our previous movements, everything is connected. The more tender we are with ourselves the more we are able to connect and feel, what is a true choice or not.

  152. I find gentle movement completely changes the way I feel towards myself and this has a flow on effect to how I feel and behave in my life. It is also has the benefit of keeping me with my body, so I can be more responsive and respectful to what it needs, rather than overriding and wearing it, to the point where quick fixes from food are needed.

  153. I find gentle movement completely changes the way I feel towards myself and this has a flow on effect to how I feel and behave in my life. It also has the benefit of keeping me with my body, so I can be more responsive and respectful to what it needs, rather than overriding and wearing it, to the point where quick fixes are needed.

    1. The more gentle we are with our movements has an effect on how we feel, how much our body is open to being responsive to what is felt.

  154. Yes, Elizabeth and have you found there is then less of a pull to those foods? Once you can see the connection and realise you have been fooled and manipulated then there is a detachment to the need and our body moves in a different way. This means we either don’t re-create the tension that means we look for the sugar or the see the sugar as being the solution.

  155. You asked a question in this article that made me sit up and really pay attention because it is one I haven’t consciously considered, yet it is such a key to so many of our dysfunctional and self-harming patterns of behaviour “But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?” Now that can be read on so many levels, but for me I read, “How can I self-sooth when I feel miserable? What will I do if I take away my self-soothing strategies?”!!!!! Very exposing, so thank you body for reacting like that because it just gave me a great key to why I do what I do and how I can reclaim a connection with tension and ask my body, not my head what would support it the most to maintain or deepen its homeostasis.

  156. ‘my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender’ – There is a vast difference between a body being tender and a body being hard and contracted.

    1. It’s a self-inflicted vicious cycle – when we contract and harden our body, we can’t feel how amazingly gorgeous we are, it’s like walking with a suit of armour on. By letting go of control and choosing to surrender back to our body, we remove the armour and once again feel the deliciousness of all that we are – connecting with this, we can only be tender and delicate with our selves. The choice is there for us to make – we can make it seem as though it’s difficult, when in truth, it’s very simple.

    2. Absolutely, I know very well as I used to move around in a very hard and contracted body until I started to understand and make changes to my livingness.

  157. Interestingly I recently had a sugar binge type day, eating dried apricots, and that night I was woken up with severe chest pains. It seems my body is now shouting louder so the next day I ate nothing sweeter than a carrot and felt much more settled.

  158. A beautiful understanding of ourselves ,sugar, food, weight and feeling that is so honest real ,aware and supportive and makes sense of it all so simply . What a gift are the tools we have to come back to loving and feeling ourselves and the guide our body gives us . Craving sugar is very much my gauge also to what is going on for me and what I don’t want to feel and fill myself up when feeling tired and disconnected but I am finding more and more how it is by changing my movements that is the most powerful way of coming back to me and love in my very day joyfully and instantly and is to really appreciate.

  159. ” So… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness.” Love this – and its so true. Making any movement with tenderness brings me back to my body and a deeper connection. I woke with a heavy head this morning and felt to stay in bed in stillness- listening to 30 minutes of Chris James’ Music Suite music – staying with me – in my body. I feel so different now.

    1. What a beautiful confirmation of the enormous power we hold within to heal our selves through our connection with our body and a commitment to honour what is felt.

  160. The UK government is proposing a ban on energy drinks for children under 16/18. On the labels, it already states “not recommended for Children. The government’s research has found: 69% of adolescents and 24% of those who are under 10 drink them, on average contain up to 16 teaspoons of sugar, unsafe levels of caffeine and one study found 55.4% had at least one adverse health effect. Children are naturally full of energy, what happens in a classroom when you add sugar and caffeine, you only have to ask any teacher! What is our responsibility in this crisis?

  161. I have been feeling racy lately quite a lot and indeed the only thing that brings me back – that is feeling myself in stillness again – is connecting to my body through movement. Like exercise works very well and also feeling every muscle and join move when I move.

    2. Bringing it back to the details of our movements allows us to connect to whether we are being tender or gentle, will often support us in coming back to our stillness.

  162. Great to feel the difference in our voices depending on the state we are in, both in what we say and what we hear and feel that others say.

  163. I feel I am just starting to allow myself to truly feel this, that is how sugar and salt affect my body and know that now it is time to truly start to renounce them and as you say re-establish or deepen my inner connection. What I can feel is this needs to come from my body and not my mind and what I ‘think’ I should do as this never works.

    1. So true Vicky – when I have ‘given up’ something with will power and from my mind it finds a way to creep back into my life. Feeling from my body brings a whole different purpose.

      1. I agree, using will power is just another form of abuse – dominating the body from the mind, it never lasts because it is not true. When we are ready to be honest about how something is impacting on our body, we will naturally move away from using it, as it becomes more important to us to maintain our inner stillness than to get a momentary hit from having whatever it is, which comes laced with the harmful after effects.

    2. I agree the need of sugar and salt comes from the mind, the more we connect to our body and allow ourselves to feel the tenderness and move in this way the body talks to us and lets us know that we don’t need salt and sugar to keep us going, these are ingredients that actually take us away from our true connection. But this has to be truly felt from the body and not from the mind.

  164. Breathing gently and moving with tenderness is the answer to so many of our woes and it feels so great, it is just a matter of staying with it and not falling into the patterns of life times removed from this. It seems sugar and things that make us racy are a direct plant or plot to keep us from the beautiful beings that we all are.

      2. Sugar is a stimulant it makes us racy from within, our movements are very different when we have sugar, they are racy, a doing energy.

  165. Thank you for sharing Carmel.
    I’ve loved letting go of dairy and gluten but sugar creeps back in, and it is so important to bring a deeper awareness and understanding to why we go for certain things.

    1. Dairy and gluten were relatively easy to let go of, for me. Both can have adverse effects on our bodies that we then compensate and re-taught our bodies to except. Ah, sugar the drug like many others that also create endorphin’s, that require more and more to achieve the same feeling over time. Sugar is a drug habit that is hard to break, could it be because today it is hard to find any food that doesn’t contain it?

      1. If you have ever lived in USA, most definitely, yes. I enjoy cooking, so have naturally tended to buy fresh ingredients to cook meals from scratch. However, it’s pretty hard to find anything that’s pre-made or partially prepared that doesn’t have sugar, salt and many other additives as well. It feels like there has been a gradual re-conditioning over the years so our palates have become accustomed to much higher levels of salt and sugar, as they both enhance the taste of food, so it does make it harder to quit when you’re not appreciating how much you’re already eating without realising.

  166. What we experience as misery might simply be the tension to be more – more aware, more loving. If we then use food we may actually diminish ourselves rather than reduce the perceived but non-existent misery.

    1. Yes Christoph and this subtle in the head but not so subtle difference in the body can be felt if we allow ourselves a moment to not react but clock the tension we are feeling.

    2. Yes it is really about understanding the tension we are feeling, this only comes to us when allow ourselve to be still, tender and honour our feelings and know there is more love, when we choose more love.

  167. ‘when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.’ – It is strange how most people have learnt to move in hardness and without being present in the body but allowing the mind to run the show, when our natural and innate expression is to be tender and delicate.

  168. You really hit the nail on the head Carmel, as when we are willing to be honest with how we are feeling in our bodies, we then are open to being honest about the choices we are making where they are originating from and why. Are our choices impulsed from our loving connection to our essence, or from our separation to our love as such an impulse to seek fulfillment, numb or distract us from how we are truly feeling in our bodies. Our body will always reflect the truth of the degree of love we are willing to live.

  169. We think that sugar and caffeine give us energy, the advertising tells us so, but that’s a lie, it doesn’t. I don’t drink caffeine any more but still go for sugary foods and I feel very tired shortly after eating something sweet and then crave more sweetness. I end up exhausted because my body has gone into overdrive from trying to process all the sugar. When I don’t eat anything sweet my body is more vital and more still inside, and it can sense more of what is going on. It makes more sense to live with stillness rather than raciness, but the addiction takes over.

    1. Maybe there should be a health warning on products with high sugar content – juices, fizzy drinks, confectionary etc in the same way that is with cigarettes, explaining that by artificially tricking our bodies into thinking we have loads of energy, when we are tired, means we end up depleting our body even further which can result in health issues and an addiction to sugar amongst other side effects such as weight gain, poor sleep and mood swings.

  170. One very simple movement I do makes a huge difference to how clear I feel: it is very easy to slump downwards, to let my chest sink and whenever I realise that I’ve done it, I lift up my heart centre and that physically and emotionally lifts my heart.

    1. I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at work and then at home too, this is a movement I find myself making constantly, along with other slight adjustments to re-align and re-connect with my body.

      1. Computers were meant to make our work/life easier! They have become anchors that hold us in place for hours. Today our greatest movements are when we walk away from these time-saving devices and reconnect to the most incredible machine ever created, our body.

    2. I agree Carmel – sitting up straighter or standing taller makes a big difference to how I feel. How we move is so important = even subtle minor changes can have a huge impact.

  171. ‘if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness.’ I can’t argue with this Carmel. Astoundingly simple and effective.

  172. Being honest with how we are feeling in the body is the very beginning of self love, and equally a forever ingredient of it.

  173. ‘When we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender’ yes and the longer we move in this way the harder and more ridged our movements become. When I am present there is a completely different feel and flow which feels completely natural to when I am in my head and I start to notice that my movements are feeling out of sorts.

    1. I love this analogy, Steve, it’s amazing how many stones we can willingly take on board, disrupting the stillness and weighing us down. It’s only through self-love that we start to appreciate the extent of this mad sabotage.

  176. When we are truly willing to go there and be totally honest, it is surprising just how addictive some of our behaviours are.

  177. We can be very good at being hard on ourselves so that we are caught up in this rather than having the responsibility of consistently expressing all of ourselves openly. Feels entirely self-motivated.

    1. So true Michael… a bit of an ouch but honestly thats how it is when we are so self absorbed – being hard on ourselves is hard work and a very insular way of living, and the truth is that taking responsibility for shining our light is a much simpler and easier way of living. Note to self – thanks for the reminder!

      1. It’s a confronting, but sobering truth to remind ourselves that things don’t randomly happen to us, we are choosing how we are in life and everything that happens constellates to offer the opportunity for learning and the potential to choose differently moving forward.

    2. Yes.. for while we continue beating ourselves up there is no room for heaven to pour through us. It’s one or the other, never both at the same time.

  178. We will not change the food we eat by willpower, but the more we allow ourselves to feel the effect in our bodies the easier it becomes to choose only nourishing foods and eliminate those that dull our awareness

    1. The more we love and treasure our selves we will naturally be drawn to nourishing foods that support our bodies, rather than those than numb and take us away from feeling the gorgeousness within.

  179. Does anybody ever question why is it possible that our mouth loves the sweets that we eat, but the rest of our body totally not?

    1. Yes, Nico, good question. Personally speaking I have because I kept finding that my mouth would tell my brain something was really good and my body would be stubborn and refuse to play the game. There was a mutiny and the body just spoke louder and louder till the taste buds needed to re-assess their logic of taste is always good!!!

      1. I do recognise that Lucy, that the body simply says no to the pleasures the mouth desires because it knows the repercussion it would have from allowing this pursuit of the mind. Or better said the spirit that tries to play its game in suppressing the body because of its natural connection with the universe and thus with God.

  180. But the lift you get from sugar is not without cost, firstly you will drop even lower after its effect, so is setting you up to repeat and increase the intake, but secondly, and possibly most important it is dulling our awareness of the energetics of life and make is solely about the fulfilment of our needs.

  181. Bringing understanding to our choices, especially those which may not be so positive, allows us the space to see the whole picture – how we made those choices, why we made them, what was driving them… and then to simply make a different choice next time – no beating ourselves up for ‘wrong’ decisions because there are always lessons to be learned and we know we have the power and choice to make change.

  182. Carmel its great to share this and understand what is behind our cravings. I need to rest deeply to recover from an operation and I keep reaching for sugar because I know it is my rebellious way of fighting the surrender that is needed. When I nominate this I understand the cravings and can say no.

    1. Well said, key is to see the energy behind it all as opposed to self medicate our issues with food or other distractions.

    2. This is such a powerful sharing, HM, showing how when we allow the honesty, without judgment and bring understanding to why we are feeling the momentum to do something that we know it’s supportive, it’s so much easier to then make the loving choice to arrest that energy and say no.

  183. ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.’ – Sadly, in today’s societies we are encouraged to dismiss our natural delicateness and fragility, it is seen to be weak. Even for girls and women we have come to a place where we go ‘the tougher the better’.

  184. I’ve been learning about walking this week and how, when we want to get from A to B, we are so focused on what we will be doing when we get to B that we are not consciously present on the steps in between. For example, going to the toilet, how do we walk? Getting up off a chair, how do we move? Watching someone stand up and walk across the room with absolute conscious presence offers us a vibration that is evolutionary.

    1. Absolutely Carmel… someone moving in conscious presence is truly inspiring – the whole room feels their presence and is blessed by it.

    2. We can drive to work and cannot remember the journey because our mind is elsewhere. When we walk the same way, our only evolution is getting older, but not wiser.

  185. “when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.” that makes it simple really to know what is and what is supportive and true. Add in our tenderness and everything starts to make sense.

    1. When we add tenderness to the equation of our life we definitely come to feel that sugar does not fit in there any more.

  186. In coming to the understanding that our bodies our simply our vehicle for this lifetime we have a responsibility to ask what is this vehicle intended for? and then how should i look after it accordingly? We are more the custodians of our bodies in preparing them for purpose than we are their owners.

    1. Love what you’re sharing here, Michael – when we allow ourselves to connect to the purpose of why we are here, it’s so much easier to get our ‘selves’ out of the way and instead support our bodies to be the intricate and delicate vehicles of expression that they are.

  187. Your comment on the toilet paper Carmel made me think about how I tear off the paper, definitely a rip when I am in a hurry, instead of a gentle pull, everything is everything along with tearing off toilet paper.

    1. The toilet paper example is a lovely detail highlighting how there are actually so many areas in our lives where we may be doing things on a very regular basis without being present in our bodies.

      1. Yes, and that is the beauty about the simple and daily things in life, they are our markers where we are at and how we are doing.

  188. Awareness and Understanding could be the antidote to not only our cravings when we are feeling low but also most of the worlds bigger problems as well as with awareness and understanding there is no judgement and without judgement our awareness and understanding becomes way more powerful.

  189. Have your every sprinkled sugar on a campfire; it burns similar to any other flammable fuel. When we put it on our body, it has the same effect but acts as a propellant to allow us to move faster. But Newtons first and third laws; about our motion will be changed by an external force, and the equal and opposite reaction rule must be obeyed, at the cost of our bodies!

  190. Indeed getting out of our heads and its negative thoughts through focusing on the quality of our movements can shift the way we feel. Just as letting others in is also a movement, so when we choose to shut others out we often can experience more negative self talk and a sense of isolation.

  191. I was once given some great advice that to come out of a cycle in which you have become stuck, rather than repeatedly trying to stop the behaviours which are being perpetuated, introduce something else which is true service and support to you. I did this when my own eating choices were unhealthily repetitive and despite understanding why they went on i found it difficult to change them. Th thing I bought in was to ensure that I went to bed at a time which felt truly supportive to my body, which is around 8.30pm and in a state of having wound down from the day. After a couple of days, I was no longer making the choices in which I had become stuck previously.

    1. I can feel the true support here – if we find ourselves stuck in a pattern that isn’t supporting us, to introduce a loving choice that is offering true support for our body has a ripple effect that allows an even deeper shift to take place if we are willing.

  192. When we take greater responsibility for managing our reactions and emotions, we do not need to resort to our ‘got tos’ of food, alcohol, drugs etc as things stop overwhelming us and making us feel at the mercy of life.

  193. What you are showing here Carmel is that we do not have to spend lots of money or time on ‘fad diets’ in order to lose weight, but to simply look at the way we eat, and how foods such a dairy, gluten and sugar affect our bodies and how they make us feel. Then as you say, there is ‘no trying’ to lose weight, as the wieght naturally drops away as we natrually let go of foods that we can feel for ourselves no longer support us.

    1. Fad diets are never going to work, not just because they are ‘mind over matter’ and we are trying to exercise our will power to stop us from eating certain foods for a period of time, after which we resort back to our ‘normal’ pattern of eating over time. The main issue is, we are not appreciating how amazing we truly are and instead, are focusing on how our body looks and everything that we perceive to be wrong with it. The best diet ever is to re-connect with our fabulously, exquisite body and love it to bits. With each loving choice we make, our body will return to it’s natural shape, whatever divine shape that may be, and we will absolutely adore it, because it’s who we are.

  194. One thing I am learning is that the way we overfeed our bodies is exhausting, a fact that is in direct contradiction to how we are taught, that food gives us energy. I often feel tired after eating a meal. Eating is a movement. How we prepare our meal is a movement.

  195. I was pondering on the sequence of words in the title, misery, sugar and movement. Maybe we can reverse it into movement, sugar and misery as to me that tells me more clearly how we end up in misery. It is by movement that makes us to go for sugar. The sugar is used to medicate the situation (mentally and physically) the movement has brought to us. But as we all know, sugar brings us in truth into the misery of life as the medication does not work as a healing but more so to numb our awareness about the reality we ended up living in. But we can also use movement to get us out of this situation as this blog describes so beautifully.

  196. Simply moving gently and with awareness instead of dragging our bodies around makes a huge difference to how we feel. I recently did a road trip through some very windy roads. On the way down, I felt tension in my body as I went around the bends as it felt a bit dangerous. On the way back, I was very conscious of the way I held the steering wheel. I was deliberate about where I placed my hands and ensuring there was no tension in my forearms. This drive felt completely different and felt easy.

    1. It feels like this is a forever deepening expansion. To begin with it’s about being aware of how we are moving, being present with ourselves as we move, clocking how our body feels, where we are holding tension and with this awareness choosing to be gentle and delicate as we sit down, hold our pen, tap on the keyboard, pick up a glass, open the door …. bit by bit, we are building a new way of moving in connection with our body, one that supports and honours who we are.

  197. It is quite incredible how focusing on our movement and bringing in subtle changes to our everyday activities can turn around the most ingrained behaviours. It’s as if we start to deconstruct the patterns from the inside out, breaking up the groves that the old behaviour ran on and empowering us to walk a new path back to true health.

  198. Currently all of our movements are completely out of sync but gradually (so gradually that it will be completely undetectable), we will slowly start to move in sync with each other, until such time that we are all moving in one glorious throng to the rhythm of God.

    1. This movement however is detectable by reflection. As we look to the increased rates of illnesses and disease, the natural disasters that take place more than before and the increased waywardness people are choosing to live nowadays. To me these are the clear signs that something is changing, which as you say shall be the slowly changing movement we all eventually will adapt our movements to.

  199. ‘I have the awareness that there is a certain tension in my body that I really don’t want to feel and an understanding that overeating has been my ‘go-to’ numbing device, but it’s no longer working.’ The more we allow ourselves to settle with the feelings of tension the more we can come to understand what they are and become less unsettled by them.

  200. ‘But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?’ – Ha, great question – how many of us feel that we deserve love when we feel miserable? It can easily become an excuse to stay in the misery loop as opposed to what you are offering here ‘awareness and understanding’ and how, by observing ourselves and our own choices instead of living the reactions of them, we can bit by bit heal our old and ingrained patterns.

  201. There are definitely addictive qualities to the way I crave sugar, there is a part of me that knows I don’t need it but there is a stronger part of me that is going to do it anyway. Some days it’s no problem and those are definitely the days I feel good about myself, when I’ve done something useful that I value, so building my self worth is the way to go rather than using willpower.

    1. I heard some very wise words yesterday which allowed me to understand that food is always going to be a massive temptation for us and to think that we can train ourselves through will power to not want to eat certain foods is delusional. However, what does allow us to let go of certain foods is to hold dear and value how we feel when we don’t eat that food way more than the initial pleasure and then consequences of when we do. In other words, remaining settled within and having the clarity to be able to read, energetically, what is going on around us, means more to us than having 15 seconds of gratification from eating a piece of chocolate.

  202. I love how our everyday movements, like breathing, stretching, reaching out, sitting and walking, when we do it in connection with the body, can support us to change the energy within us and all around us. That is so cool because we can change the feelings of misery and the need for sugar by those movements.

    1. Very true, Gill, and we are not only affecting how we feel within, through our movements and the way we hold our selves, we are also affecting those around us. By this I mean, if someone is feeling out of sorts, when we remain steady and very present in our movements – not engaging in what is going on for the other person energetically. They then have to actively choose to stay with the offending energy, or there is also the invitation to acknowledge that they are not feeling themselves and choose to connect within – blocking the other energy out. This can all be done through our movements, no words required – which is so powerful and very cool.

  203. The tension that we feel is on many levels and one thing that I too have been working with. First starting with and honesty that I can feel it and it is there has and sometimes still is one I keep coming back to. The more I connect to my inner being, my essence I can feel how still and steady I am and what I feel around me is not that at all. So there will always be a tension and the moment I reduce the fullness of how precious I am in connection to the Mulitidimensionality that we are there will always be a tension. A tension that until such time we return to our original innate origins will always be there.

  204. It’s a beautiful thing to bring it back to our movements because how many of us are totally unaware of how we move, how rough or gentle we are or are a lot of our movements just on automatic and our mind is elsewhere?

    1. Yes, knowing how important my movements are and the power our movements have when we move in connection with our body, it shocks me how often I am not present with myself, a reflection of how very ingrained this pattern has been for many, many lifetimes. The way forward is not to judge but to appreciate being with myself when I am present in my body and bit by bit, I am de-constructing my old pattern of checking out for new foundation of conscious presence.

  205. Sugar is like jumping in the air. There is a limited moment of being weightless. The only way to sustain this feeling longer is to skydive! That speeds up our acceleration to the ground.

  206. Each word in your title, are in themselves stand alone descriptions that, themselves alone, put the body into an altered way from its natural state of being… misery (emotions / mental health) and sugar (types of food) individually alter the body’s responses that either stimulate or suppress … Quite often, these three words follow suit, that consequently result in wayward human behaviour on our body and physiology, entering into cycles of addictions. … To break down things into simpler blocks, and see the originating reason, i.e. ‘misery’, we can then see quite easily what lies behind many of our choices.

  207. “Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile…” When we appreciate this about our body, it offers a huge awareness and understanding of self-care, our standard of self-regard, lifestyle choices and in the way we live.

  208. I stayed very attentive to how I felt after I had eaten sugar last night and was aware of a sort of cocooning effect, in that I wasn’t as aware of my feelings as I usually am and although for me that wasn’t very pleasant, I can appreciate that for many it is.

  209. Before there is misery, there is a movement calling it to be by virtue of the source of energy the vehicle (the human body and the being within it) has aligned to. To realign ourselves with the other source of energy (love) is a simple as adjusting our positioning, both physically and energetically. The question is – can we handle this simplicity or are we more addicted to the complication misery offers us than we care to see.

    1. Great question Liane. What is the root of our addiction. As on the surface we all might have a different reason for say an addiction to caffeine, cigarettes, gaming, sugar, alcohol, drugs, shopping with reasons of feeling hurt, rejected, depressed, not good enough, angry etc but way way down there will be a common denominator for them all.

  210. When I do eat sugary foods, I do so as lovingly as possible, knowing that if I am feeling guilty or disappointed about myself or eating too quickly then these things are potentially even more harmful to my body than the sugar. And likewise, after I have eaten whatever it was that my body didn’t really want to eat, I am conscious not to beat myself up, I simply make my next movements as loving as possible. It feels true to choose love in as many moments as possible, even if our mind wants to tell us that it’s not possible to be loving with some of our food choices, we can still eat lovingly.

  211. Its interesting Carmel when you write about cravings it means something is chemically going on in the body. My deepest cravings are after work to eat nuts or some sort of food. It has been the same for years. I can say that I don’t know why .. but I am sure I do. Maybe its a reward for my steadfast of the quality that I bring because in most other parts of my life I’m withdrawn compared.

  212. Being willing to observe how I feel, what my voice sounds like, how I have just moved to sit down, stand up, open a door etc. wakes me up to the amazing support my body offers me, showing me constantly where I am at and how I can apply a bit more respect, tenderness and care.

  213. I know I am off the moment I crave food when I am not hungry, but quite often then I am in the grip of it all and all I can do in the moment is observe the behaviours. Afterwards, I need to get honest with myself, nominate the moment that was the trigger, what wasn’t expressed about how I felt, frustrations and so on and keep myself open to learning from each abusive encounter with food!

    1. There is always so much for us to learn from our relationship with food, as it’s such a common ‘medicine’ that we all use. The key for me is to deeply appreciate myself and all the choices I have made to bring me to where I am today, so I don’t slip into judgment when I know I’ve made unloving choices, and allow the awareness, honesty and understanding with a loving tenderness for myself.

  214. “Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.” so true and reading this i can so feel this delicate balance within me and the importance and beauty of honouring this in my every movement lovingly.

  215. A clear and simple understanding of sugar cravings and addictions and the trap we get into with our emotions also leading the way. A great sharing and understanding of the real issues behind it and the beauty of our connection and innermost stillness that is pure gold to our livingness and daily life if we choose it and the joy that this comes with.

  216. Your concluding sentence will inspire others. ‘So… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness. No sugar needed!’ An example of how we transform self limiting beliefs into something much grander and more supportive.

  217. Understanding and learning to live with the constant tension on being in this world but not actually truly designed to be in this temporal world is something we can struggle to accept but an essential part to our evolution in returning back to our true origins.

  218. Misery like all emotion is a specific series of movements. Therefore the only way out, is to move our way out. What we are is determined by how we move.

  219. When our mind is running the show, in other words, when you are not present in your body, your movements will be at the mercy of this. The body then has to move in a way that is not its natural tender movement it would move in when we would be connected to our inner heart instead.

  220. The stillness within is our connection with God, the all loving God that does not need anything of us. He only continuously presents to us the space of the stillness to connect to from which we naturally will be impulsed to live from the love that we are.

  221. I mentioned voice, and mine tends to go sharp when I feel frustrated or annoyed, for example, our dog loves to be around when we are eating because she often gets fed scraps, but it annoys me, especially when I’ve just fed her her own meal. So when she begs and whines, then I try to stop the annoying noise and speak sharply to her. It works momentarily but then she continues and the situation escalates. I guess as a parent I probably did the same, got frustrated with my children and told them to ‘shut up’. Learning to observe and not absorb is a lesson I am still learning, as well as not reacting to external noises, not letting things annoy me because they disturb my ‘comfort’. Life is full of lessons and we can choose to learn or not to learn from them.

  222. I also notice the same thing Carmel in Ladies toilets. Going to the toilet is a physical stopping moment we can not avoid, yet the way we are in the toilets indicates that every effort is used to not stop. Eg. Talking to another person while going to the toilet, the rush going to the toilet or washing hands is done with, the mess left in the toilets and around the sink area, the slamming of doors, the pee left on seats from rushing to get up etc etc All done to avoid the moment of stopping because when we stop we feel, and when we feel we register the tension we have been moving and living with – and the fact that we feel this as a tension means we know there is a stillness point that is our natural inner gauge (the one we all knew very well as young children)

    1. I love how you go into detail here, laying out the opportunities that are given to us in a simple act like going to the toilet. It could be a very sacred place to be, as odd as that might sound, as it is in fact a moment to stop, to let go, to then start / continue afresh.

      1. Just had a conversation about how often we do not listen to our body when it first signals the bladder needs emptying. Instead we ignore it and hold on, until bursting to go and when we get there it is anything but sacred and yet it could be. To honour the first signal, is to honour self. When we go to the toilet with this still quality and focus on what we’re doing and not already in a rush to get it over with as quickly as possible and on to the next thing, it begins to offer space, time to be with self before the next movement. Enjoy it.

  223. ‘there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy. ’ this is gold and brings everything back to self responsibility. We are totally in control of whether we allow ourselves to connect with, access and live with that stillness that is actually burning within each and eveyone of us. Our natural settled way of being.

  224. I love this Carmel, ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.‘
    Delicate balance – these two words being a real detail to just how our bodies work physically and energetically.

  225. It’s interesting how we in society accept on one level the highs and lows with sugar yet frown upon those who use other substances for highs and lows. We all know sugar does this to our bodies. What we do not question is why we go for it and why we want to have highs and lows instead of balance. Sugar is increasingly being proven to be and act like a drug on the human body, – so the question is ‘Do we continue to wait for researchers to say how bad it actually is or do we bring our authority back to our bodies and listen to the wisdom our bodies are already sharing with us.

    1. Great to identify this for it is easy for us to fall into judgement of others because of what they do when in fact we are doing the same thing only through a behaviour we deem to be ok or better in some way.

    2. Great point, Johanna, there have been studies proving that sugar is more addictive than cocaine, yet as a society we go into our classic ‘justification’ – if someone is doing something that we perceive to be a lot worse than what we’re doing ie cocaine or any narcotic compared to sugar, then what we’re doing is ‘ok’, and it’s, currently, completely acceptable and ‘normal’ to have sugar.
      However, energetically, how different are they really, in terms of the harmful effect on our body?

      1. Why do we allow ourselves to be guided by the ‘acceptable norm’, rather than choosing to take responsibility for our own bodies, being honest enough to listen and be responsive when we know what we’re choosing to put into our bodies is causing us to feel unsettled within, changing the way we feel, how we move, how we are with others – this is pretty significant.

    3. Yes, Johanna, when it comes to addictions the only direction to point a finger is towards ourselves. I may not be an alcoholic but there are some deep rooted habits I’ve still not relinquished. I’m not seeking highs, but comfort or relief I get from eating certain foods. Understanding what is truly at play here is vital if I am to come out of the cycle.

  226. Going to the toilet is not the same now Carmel 🙃 I will forever be reading your words as I reach for the toilet paper, I love simple reminders of how we can be in life with so much more tenderness.

    1. I love this too Vanessa. I notice when I snatch at the toilet paper or when I have actually given myself the space to be in the toilet and take the paper gently.

  227. This is a very interesting read, because many people do not realise that sugar has such a detrimental effect on our bodies and something that actually it doesn’t need as we have our own energy cells which work extremely well. However they cannot work when we clog ourselves up with things that over stimulate our bodies as these ingredients put our bodies out of its naturally harmonious status.

  228. Yes, when I am truly loving myself I don’t want to eat or do anything that severs this connection. This includes sugar or really salty foods, eating too much, watching TV, getting emotional, not exercising or over exercising, putting too much to do on my plate. There are a myriad of ways to disconnect but also to connect.

    It’s never, and I have been in the blame game a lot, the situation that causes me to disconnect but what quality I choose to respond or react with. Yes, some situations I find super challenging but they’re the ones with such potential for healing if I stay connected, feel the absolute love and support always on offer and feel my way through. Often I don’t give myself the chance to experience the power staying connected provides. It’s time I did.

  229. Sugar is easy to avoid if the ‘lift’ it gives you feels more like a punch. Perhaps it is worthwhile to observe in detail what happens to the body and mind when we eat sugar until we have an understanding when we want sugar.

  230. I have observed that there is one day a week where I volunteer and my craving for sugar goes up. It is a choir in an elderly care home. Singing each week has helped me with confidence to pitch a note and I find that when I feel my whole body as I sing, it feels like the whole choir goes up a notch. So what am I trying not to feel? Sure it is sad that so many people end up curved and bent and some with dementia, but I’m sure that’s not it. I am not feeling miserable at the moment so that’s not it either. Could it simply be that I am afraid of hearing my own true voice? That the raciness of sugar means I don’t have to read what’s truly going on? For example, am I getting smashed by the energy in the songs we are singing? More to observe here…

    1. Love reading your observations, Carmel – there is so much for us to explore in our day to day which then provides us with the understanding to be able to de-construct lifetimes upon lifetimes of harmful patterns of behaviour, freeing us up to live our divinity unencumbered. Everything is there for us to learn when we have a willingness to do so.

  231. it is so interesting how one small thing can lead to another and we get the downhill spiral feeling out of control. Knowing everything is energy explains it all.

    1. Yeah and for me I often willingly and willfully make the choice that is unloving just to stop being in alignment to love.

    2. I have been observing lately how thick and fast I can feel incapacitated by another energy, with rapidly increasing levels of anxiety. I know it’s not me and I know the key to freeing myself is to surrender, come back to my body, to breathe and be super aware of all of my movements. It’s beautiful to feel how easily we can shift energy, my challenge is being able to do this whilst in a busy work environment – all great learning.

    3. If we are not aware we are led by an energy that does not wants us to go uphill, it wants us at least to plateau or preferably in that downwards spiral, which in fact is by matter of choice self created.

      1. I’ve become aware what is at play when I choose to plateau and very occasionally spiral and beginning to play with way that does not settle for less.. It is an unfolding journey and I’m open to learn, explore and expand.

  232. ‘I have the awareness that there is a certain tension in my body that I really don’t want to feel and an understanding that overeating has been my ‘go-to’ numbing device, but it’s no longer working.’ – And it feels as thought this awareness is only the beginning of an unfolding back to honouring our body and feeling that ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance’ and once we feel this exquisiteness in our body anything sugary and sweet pales into insignificance.

  233. Having the tools that Serge Benhayon has shared like The Gentle Breath Meditation to support you to come back to our innermost our soul and feel the stillness that we are is worth Gold. Then applying this into our daily lives and having this as our marker of how we can truly be is what we have deep down always known to be true.

    1. I agree Natalie, the number of ‘tools’ offered to us all by Serge and Universal Medicine in many and each offer the opportunity to support us to reconnect us to that which is us and untouched within – truly heaven sent.

  234. Coffee with its caffeine and sugar or energy drinks that have more of both. Are they the same as a bullet? Sugar is the primer that kick starts you and caffeine is the force of how far you can travel till you fall back to earth. Without this, we get to walk in ourselves at our own pace.

    1. “Without this, we get to walk in ourselves at our own pace.” What a beautiful quote, Steve. We have invented so many substances that catapult us through the day in a disembodied state, which in itself becomes a vicious circle as no one likes to feel the true effects that these substances have on us. When we clean up our diets and are prepared to feel who we truly are, we are free to move in the complete grace of a body that walks in harmony and hence experience a real, steady joy throughout the day.

      1. Not only are we careering through life at a great rate when primed from sugary drinks and caffeine, but we are also not present with ourselves at all. The raciness within has us jumping 3 or 4 steps ahead of where we are, so we are quire unaware of how we are moving, how we are treating our body. To do this, we harden, so we are unable to feel the body’s protests, the felt consequences of being this way. We become so exhausted and ‘down’ as the ‘substances wear off’ that all we can ‘think’ about is doing it again to ‘pick our selves up’.

    2. “Without this, we get to walk in ourselves at our own pace.” This is spot on and the dots between this quote and a cup of coffee or sugary drink are super obvious…but it prompted me to ask myself what else is there in my life that I am choosing which prevents me from walking at my own pace? The list is long and we each have our vices irrespective of how ‘visible’ they may be.

  235. I like how you tie misery, sugar and movement together in the title Carmel. Movements without presence leave us open to all sorts of ill emotions that then lead to what we feel drawn to eat.

    1. Yes, in my experience it is how I move that makes me either want sugar or wants me to ignore sugar and starch and similar items.

      1. This is my experience as well Christoph – the way we move through life has a huge affect on what we choose and the kinds of thoughts we end up having.

    2. It’s actually very simple – we can change how we feel through our movements, yet it feels like we all too easily slip into emotion making everything very complicated – allowing us to justify why we can’t do this or that, when maybe it’s more about resistance, our resistance to being our divine selves.

  236. I feel that losing weight is simple when it’s not about trying to lose the weight per say, rather, a choice to truly take care of our bodies. In that, we start to make food choices that nourish and support us and with time, we naturally eat less as we are being guided from our body as to when it supports us to eat and how much, rather than using food as a means to medicate ourselves to dull the dis-ease we feel within.

    1. The best diet is love, for our selves and everyone else. We can never have too much and the more we consume/allow, the richer we become and so do all of our relationships.

  237. “The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices.” Honesty is a game-changer… it lays a foundation to then move forward in truth.

  238. ‘It is something we do every day without thinking and that’s the point… when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.’ – love this reminder of how a lapse in conscious presence has a very significant affect on our body – how easy it is for our movements to harden as a result and this may continue for a while before we clock it.

  239. When we eat sugar we get racy and then we cannot feel as clearly what is going on…And if what we are feeling is not something that is very pleasant, then it can appear easier to opt for feeling racy than having to deal with what we are feeling at the time. But in reality if we did allow ourselves to feel, instead of avoiding what we are feeling, the body knows exactly what to do and how to handle things.

  240. The simple truth about sugar revealed: “I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression. The trouble with eating sugar is that it gives you a lift and then drops you down even lower, so there is a cycle of feeling low, eating sugar, a moment of feeling OK then a crash back down to feeling low again.” – so why do we keep doing this when we know it does not help?

  241. In order to lose weight we have to want to lose weight. Now this may sound like a funny statement to make, but not so when we consider that the weight we gain serves as a buffer between us and the outside world and is a protection we have sourced to numb ourselves from all that we feel that we think we cannot handle. Surrendering these fortress walls is a delicate process by which we give ourselves permission to be more open, more transparent and more vulnerable. The key during this process is to remember it is the delicateness of our love that gives us strength and not the hardness we adopt when we divorce ourselves from this.

    1. This is so beautifully understanding. Thank you Liane. The delicateness of our love is what gives us strength and not the hardness we often adopt. It’s so worth exploring this other way.

  242. It is a lot of fun to explore and begin to understand how much the way we move determines the source of energy we align to (love or not-love). If we find ourselves craving certain foods, it is a sure sign we have not been loving and present with ourselves, thereby allowing our vehicle of expression (our body) to align to the source of energy that has no love to it. A simple move on our behalf can be all that is needed to readjust our positioning energetically as well as physically so we allow more love to be expressed through our body, as well as looking at the energetic root cause of why our movements went out in the first place. By doing this we claim the space within us and all around us rather than allowing our bodies to drift like urban tumbleweed ‘willy-nilly’ across the landscape. It gives us more purpose and it is this purpose that dissolves the craving for food because it fills the ‘emptiness’ we create when we live void of it.

  243. ‘We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair. The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices.’ – This medicine should be prescribed by every doctor instead of taking the ‘easy way out’ with a quick fix pharmaceutical drug.

  244. The whole dieting industry is based on focusing on losing weight and what you eat and so we can think of nothing but food 24/7. The only way I started to lose weight was through focusing on developing self love. The food I eat sorts itself out because the more I listen to my body the more careful I am with what I eat.

    1. My experience with dieting is that I’ve always become obsessive about food, and it felt as though I was ‘punishing’ myself for not being enough, for not having the right body shape – there is a judgment there that just adds to the already existing self-loathing. The diet may have worked for a few weeks, but generally the swing back afterwards meant the weight was re-gained, and some, because rather than appreciating and choosing to love the body I have, I’m rejecting it as not meeting the picture I believe is where I ‘need to get to’.

    2. Yes, simply removing foods without looking at the behaviours or emotions behind our choices does not truly change anything. Developing a deeper awareness and connection with our bodies and being does.

    3. Absolutely Carmel diets don’t work, it is only through developing self love for oneself that we bring a deeper connection to our body, and through this our body talks to us, what is supportive or not.

    1. Often most of us don’t even realise that we are throwing stones at our own body, until our body gives up and then somewhere some how we get a reflection from someone that there is another way to live. I know this is what supported me a reflection from others who have chosen to live ‘The Way of The Livingness’ which is starting with self care.

  246. “I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression.” In my observation many of us know this but we have become so used to for the sweets to be our pick me up that we do not take a step back and say there is another way, another way that allows me to get off this merry go round. So just by observing and being honest we come a huge step closer to what is truly going on.

  247. The antidote is to feel how the body is truly feeling, this is such a great antidote and one we can use in any situation at any time if we really want the truth.

  248. I remember being in cycles I thought I could not get out of like drinking alcohol and smoking and more recently decaf coffee but it is just a choice and that choice becomes easier and easier to do what is right for the body once we become more loving and tender with ourselves.

    2. No different to judgement or anger. A door left open is a gateway for anything to come through and run our body.

    3. Absolutely Jane… once we start it is a self-perpetuating process – unless we are prepared to look deeper for the truth of why we made that choice in the first place.

    4. It is a vicious cycle, eat sugar you then get tired, you then want sugar and then more tired, it is such a hook to keep us trapped in this sugar craving and tiredness which then eventually turns into exhaustion. However most of us feel the quick sugar hit is giving us energy, but we don’t realise its a false energy which is short lived and drops more further than where we started.

  250. What I am discovering is the more we fall back in love with ourselves the less abusive we want to be with ourselves. This is huge for me because since I can remember I have been very hard and disregarding preferring to believe what others thought of me than actually finding out what I know to be true about me. This has kept me in a prison of my own making, so my question has to be how many other people in this world live believing what others think of them rather taking the steps to know about themselves and living that way.

    1. A very valid point you have raised here Mary. At a guess I would say currently … most people in the world! I also really love what you share about falling back in love with ourselves, mostly because it is coming from a Livingness within you of you feeling and experiencing this for yourself ✨ Very beautifull.

    2. Beautiful Mary what you share, when we truly understand the power of loving ourselves this is when we actually free ourselves from being caught in what others think about us. Truly loving ourselves inside out, each and every particle in our body.

  251. We think we have to control what we eat through dieting and many of us know that this doesn’t work but when we change our movements from harsh to being gentle and present, this then leads us to eat very differently. So, one of the ways to heal our addiction is not through discipline or control but in the quality of our movements and this includes our thoughts and quality of expression.

  252. I am beginning to see how the real addiction is not the sugar, but the issue that is created because of consuming said sugar. And now the big question is, do I need the issue to know who I am or can I live life without the need to stand out in any form or manner?

    1. And, I when I’ve had sugar, I open up my body to channeling an energy that is highly destructive.

      3. I also find sugar makes me feel very anxious – because my body is a bit more wired, its like i feel on edge and tense and far more likely to feel paranoid

    2. Sluggish is a great word – I can totally crash and feel like I can’t keep myself awake, all for a few minutes of being seemingly less tired and the taste on the lips!

  254. I am still amazed at how simple it is to reconnect to everything through our movements and posture following a few basic principles.

    1. Spot on Michael, posture and movements are the foundation of our connection to ourselves.

  255. It is remarkable whenever something reminds me to be more caring, gentle or tender in any area and I choose to honour that impulse, immediately I start to become more conscious of other areas that are inviting me to go further. Life offers us a constant pull to return to the love that is our true and innate essence.

  256. Sugar is often hidden in foods – today I came across an ice cream that looked healthy because it was gluten and dairy free, but to maintain the ‘yumminess’ of ice cream it had several chemicals to maintain the texture, the creaminess and the taste. Not surprisingly, it contained both sugar and salt, a few E numbers and Maltodextrin and Dextrose. Well worth reading packets you simply wouldn’t touch processed food if you did!

    1. Sugar is put in the most random things. For example why would you want or need to put sugar in say a can of beans! But as we know supply comes from demand so we as humanity have on some level demanded this. Time to change the standards and raise the quality of what we would like not only in our lives but also for our future generations.

      1. Yes so true, this means we have to take more responsibility in moving in a way that we don’t add to this demand and then when there is no demand the change takes place automatically, through out movements.

    2. There are over 50 names for sugar. So, reading the labels can be deceptive! If you look at most gluten and dairy free items, most are full of sugar to make them palatable. I still smile, when I find the healthy sounding ingredient called, evaporated cane juice!

      1. This is when we need to take responsibility and discern what is on the label, feel into why we are craving that food, is it for the sugar or is it for something else.

  257. Your opening paragraph shows me that the pull of evolution is constant. We are always being asked to be more and we always have the choice to resist that. I feel no judgement in that – just a loving awareness of then even-more-glory that we absolutely are.

    1. Very true, Otto – it feels like a lot of our resistance comes in the form of playing dumb – pretending that we don’t know, or don’t understand, especially when it comes to food. It’s more a case of allowing our selves to be tricked into thinking we can eat what we like without there being any consequences – this simply is not true, if we wanted to be honest, we already know this, but we think we enjoy our indulgences, whilst actively ignoring the very real effects that prevail throughout our body, affecting our mood, how we move, how we are with ourselves and each other. Everything is connected and we never ‘get away’ with anything.

    2. The ‘getting away with it’ is very revealing as it exposes our commitment to creation. Why try to make something that doesn’t work, work?

  258. The best thing about stillness is that it creates space within that expands that effects everyone around us. All of this and more by just being ourselves. Sugar takes this away from us!

    1. Sugar makes us racy and takes us away from our stillness, therefore the space we have created to connect to our awareness reduces. Sugar is great evil, yet we are so addicted to it, how crazy is this.

  259. That cycle of feeling low, eating sugar and then crashing again is probably why we put on weight in the first place. Often we may feel low because we had lots of starch (which is sugar in a different form and can be broken down into sugar by the body) already. That raises the blood sugar level and calls insulin out. The insulin captures the sugar and dumps it into the liver.

    What does the liver do? If it doesn’t need the energy it dumps it into the body’s storage – fat cells. We then feel the insulin-induced drop in blood sugar levels, take more sugar or starch and the cycle starts again.

    1. It’s interesting how we pride our selves, as the human race, in being of superior intelligence to other species and yet, we act in a very ‘unintelligent’ way when it comes to how we take care of our bodies – both in terms of what we physically put into them and the energy with which we do this, and generally the way in which we treat our bodies. Animals absolutely follow their innate wisdom in how to care for themselves, without any hesitation.

  260. In fact Carmel I notice that your answer of ‘awareness and understanding’ to the question ‘But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?’ is applicable to all of our states of being that fall outside of feeling harmony. With awareness and understanding we can guide ourselves out of all manner of false beliefs and un-supportive choices.

    1. I find it really interesting that when I used to eat sugar I had no idea of how it was affecting my body. I could honestly say that I wasn’t aware that I was feeling racy or that I would get a low after eating it. However over time the more I weaned myself off it the more I would notice its effects. Now, if I even eat a piece of fruit, my body registers the sugar in that instant; I immediately get a sugar rush. Some people may say that in not eating sugar anymore I have created a problem for myself in that my body can no longer tolerate this substance or even fruit. However, what if this was always what was going on in my body but it was just that I was too numb to feel it?

      1. Michelle I used to eat tonnes of sugar, there were times that I ate chocolate for breakfast, conning myself that because the chocolate was covering dried fruit and nuts that it was some kind of fancy muesli bar! Looking back, I think that there were 2 main reasons why I didn’t register the effects of sugar and they are 1) that I was so exhausted that the sugar didn’t actually pick me up that significantly and 2) that I was so ‘all over the shop’ with emotions and food choices that I didn’t notice another up or down, unless it was really dramatic.

    2. Very true Alexis. It took me three years of cleaning up my diet before I could even get a hint of what sugar was doing to my body. However, once felt I was empowered to make a different choice based on how much better I was already feeling and then gradually weaning myself off the need to ‘treat’ myself with a product that actually poisons me.

    3. Its not until we really start to eliminate sugar from our diet and our body starts to adjust that when we eat it again we can feel the pollution of sugar. When body is already polluted, it just craves more and more to keep it in the cycle.

    1. I absolutely agree with you Alexis, we moved out of love and it is our responsibility to move back to love.

      1. It is as simple as that we move away from love with choices of eating sugar and we can easily move back to love by taking responsibility of choose foods without sugar. This is all a simple movement through responsibility.

  263. Reaching for sugar is just the end result of something…an emotion or reaction to something that I don’t like the feel of. When I’ve had sugar in any form, I no longer feel what’s going on for me, or around me and so it is a temporary distraction…until the next time the emotion or reaction comes up again.

    2. Sugar is a form of drug and distraction to stop us from connecting to our awareness, by taking us away from our stillness as sugar makes us racy. When we are racy we stop the flow of multi-dimensionality and our connection to the Universe.

  264. Nothing ever just ‘happens’, nor do we ever experience random feelings or emotions; there is always a cause and an effect. In this case misery is never a random feeling but a result of actions or better said reactions to what we’ve chosen or seen.

    1. Thank you Susie for that simply sharing and reminder “misery is never a random feeling but a result of action or better said reaction to what we’ve chosen or seen.”

  265. I find this is true in my experience too Carmel – bringing more conscious presence to the body brings more presence with everything and underneath tenderness, there is a quality of delicacy to be felt.
    “when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.”

  266. Movement is a powerful game-changer – it can transform a mood, negative thoughts, feelings of contraction and tension in our bodies … all dissolved by moving in a way that truly honours us.

    1. This is so important to understand Paula and what you’ve shared is spot on. I notice we have been taught to use our minds to heal addictions but it is our movements and our connection to our body that is what will support us.

      1. Yes its crazy how there are many therapies out there in the world that say we have to use our minds to heal addictions, but it truth that does not work, it is really through out movements that we can truly heal addictions.

  267. “We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair.” This is all part of the game, taking us so far away from the truth of who we innately are… like a ploy to distract us from knowing the powerful beings we naturally are.

  268. Most of us spend our time plugging up the body sensors that allow us to feel everything and then bimble through life! When we clean our filters, we return to being the princess and the pea and feel everything.

  269. Excess sugar and salt really does unsettle the body exacerbating the problem or emotions we don’t want to look at and deal with. By heightening the nervous system, we get less rest, become more tired and slip into a cycle of craving the foods that continue the problem. Cutting out these foods from our diet and dealing with our underlying emotions is a great way to re-address the problem of feeling miserable.

    1. Interesting, isn’t it, Rachel, that so many processed foods now contain both sugar and salt, almost a deliberate plot to destroy any sensitivities we might have so that we can continue to live in ignorance of who we truly are and not take any responsibility for ourselves and the energy we allow to pass through our bodies.

      1. True, Carmel…we are huge buyers of processed foods with such high sugar and salt content the body, for most if not all of us, wouldn’t know that place of settlement through so much stimulation. I was definitely in that camp. I loved chocolate, sweet things and precessed foods and whilst I didn’t put on weight I thought I was getting away with it. Then I developed hypoglycaemia and realised I wasn’t getting away with it at all, my nervous system was in overdrive and my diet needed a drastic change. It was only by cutting out salt and sugar gradually that I got to feel the difference without it in my body. Now if I have anything salty and sugary my body responses in a nano-second and my heart beat increases… it’s like the sensation of drinking super strong coffee.

  270. It is good thing to not kid ourselves about what is and what isn’t sugar including carbs and the sugar that is in fruit or the sugar that is packed into these so called healthy snack bars and another good thing is to know the reason behind why we feel we need such foods.

  271. “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too…” You show here how even self-care evolves, As love deepens & becomes a part of the way we live, think, move, then the fundamentals and detail of the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of Self-Care also deepen.

  272. For most of us our life style is so way of because we eat, drink and snack continually so to not feel the drop and then wonder why we awaken feel tired and lethargic then we have to reach for some stimulus like coffee or tea.
    “Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, we have been provided with many tools and techniques for bringing ourselves back into balance and one of them is the quality of our movements.”

  273. “Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.” It’s so true, the sensitiviteit of the body is huge and I noticed it increases when I pay more attention to it. I notice now that sugar not only races the body, it also hardens the body. And even though it gives a high temporally it does not really last and gives a sustainable feeling of contentment. Your tips of moving tender are great and I have been applying them lately.

  274. I know that feeling well, of the see-sawing sugar lows and highs from the past Carmel, and even when I eat something slightly sweet now, I can feel the effect of it in my body. I am finding the way to stop it is simply pause for a moment and return to myself, feel my breath in the body and check in to what is going on.

  275. Sugar may seem like a treat when we are feeling miserable, but I know for fact that it just adds to the problem. Nothing compares to treating our selves with utmost tenderness, respect and love, the biggest treat of all.

    1. So true Rowena, the biggest treat of all is for us to honour our selves through each choice that we make, then we are also honouring everyone else also.

  276. ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.’ In this is the ability of the body to communicate so much to us due to its amazing sensitivity. The more we allow it space the more it can tell us.

  277. When I want to take the edge off the tension I feel I know I can go to any number of food types to get a form of sugar into my body – even the most seemingly ok or healthy food can ‘hit the spot’. But through these experiences we importantly get to learn the tricks we play to try and resist the ever present pull to be all of who we truly are.

  278. I have come to a point that I hate the fact that when I heave eaten some foods that change my clarity of thought, my mood or lightness in the body. This helps me even more to not eat those foods but I also must be honest to the fact that the thinking mind at times still convinces me that there is no harm in it by eating those and then my body has to suffer the consequences.

    1. That’s the problem with allowing our thoughts to govern our actions, Nico. When we totally rely on what we feel in the body to direct our actions, it will only act with love because it is love. Our mind can be used to channel energies that harm us with thoughts that are not true and our minds can override our body’s signals and as you say, we suffer the consequences.

      1. Yes we do suffer the consequences but too delay our way back to soul, that way we are are all walking but at times let to be interfered by the thought of our minds.

  279. Is the secret in being presence with our movements that does help us to become more aware of our innate intentions to life?

  280. When we drop usage of sugar, which will happen when the truth of the sugar industry is fully exposed and well known, there will be a massive increase in depression and exhaustion – both of which sugar hides.

    1. This is scary and confronting for us to consider as the rates of depression and exhaustion have already increased massively over the last few years and are affecting people at a much younger age – including children in primary school.

  281. Although we can be aware of whats going on within us and around us, it is bringing understanding to ourselves that truly turns our lives around… and then to deeply appreciate ourselves brings a whole other level of gorgeousness to our lives. And the beauty of this is that it filters out to all those around us to also be inspired if they so choose.

  282. If we were all to understand the truth of what is delivered in this blog then so much useable land would be turned into areas for foods that are good for use and not the empty energy that sugar provides.

    1. And too Greg, the supermarkets will be unrecognizable by not having all the rows of shelves filled with food and substances that actually are not good for us.

    2. In Indonesia alone, an area the size of a football pitch is lost every 25 secs to grow palm oil. Palm oil is in everything; our foods, cosmetics and cleaning products. It has become the common ingredient used with sugar. Our obsession with sugar is causing deforestation on a global scale!

      1. Our obsession-with-obesity obviously is-an-obstacle one-needs-to-observe on-going-ley, otherwise we will observably become oblivious and not-omitting taking sugar thus our orientation towards one-ness is off-set.

    3. Wow that is such a good point Greg, might be worth a blog on its own. I was at a museum about water and the amount of energy that is required to produce one hamburger is bonkers something like 2180 litres of water!!!! We need to change our ways.

      1. So true Vanessa, nourishing and nurturing our bodies with what we eat should always be at the top of our list before we even make a move towards a grocery store or butchers.

    4. I recently travelled further North into Queensland and I was horrified at the acres and acres that are used to grow a poison that we really don’t need.

      1. Yes a manufactured poison produced in great quantities that is playing a huge part in the global deaths by preventable life style choices.
        1 “Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) caused 71% of deaths globally, ranging from 37% in low-income countries to 88% in high-income countries. All but one of the 10 leading causes of death in high-income countries were NCDs. In terms of absolute number of deaths, however, 78% of global NCD deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries.”
        Reference;
        1) http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death

  283. Such a great reminder to allow ourselves awareness and understanding when we feel a tension within our body and not to go into any kind of reaction to it. I know personally that I have had a default setting of becoming judgmental of myself in such circumstances which means being super tough on myself when being even more loving in how I treat myself and move is the answer I really need at that time.

    1. I love the honesty in your comment here, Michael, and can very much relate to this myself. I can feel how when I go into reaction, I am behaving in the complete opposite way to how I know I ‘should’ be behaving – enter judgment. However, letting go of the judgment and instead allowing myself to feel the rawness, with love, gives me the space to be able to address or at least be aware of what is truly going on for me in that moment.

    2. The lovely thing is, Michael, that we have a choice – we are not stuck in judgement forever and the more we can appreciate ourselves and the qualities we bring the less hold on us self judgement has. It is designed to keep us small whereas appreciation helps us to evolve.

    3. Yes I agree Michael, it we layer judgement on top of the choice that in hindsight we would rather have not made it is not supportive at all. Rather being honest and looking at why allows for understanding.

  284. The fact that we do register other people’s quality of movements shows how connected we are to each other. What we pick up is a form of communication and through our body what we communicate can is either healing or harming, evolving or in delay.

  285. ‘When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different’ – The quality of our movements is absolute key, they affect not only our entire body but also our surroundings – they are affecting the All.

  286. You give us a very simple tool to counteract the need for something, to observe our movements and focus on the tenderness we bring, no hard discipline just the focus on the tenderness that is there (or not) and allowing for the tenderness to deepen.

    1. It really is simple, isn’t it? Whenever I find myself reacting now it feels so uncomfortable in my body I want to change it straight away and that reminds me to be tender. As soon as I change my breath and connect with the inner feeling, I find that reading the situation gives me instant access to understanding, knowing for example, what old hurt of mine I have just re-experienced that I can now let go of. I love the way life constantly presents us with reflections and lessons.

  287. The body receives the energy that makes us move, think and do the things we do in life and it is the quality of the energy we thus magnify and spread in and through our bodies that makes us either feel well or not so well, tense or tender, lovely or miserable. In more simpler words, what we put in (and move) is what we get out.

    1. “what we put in (and move) is what we get out.” This is all that is needed, said in a few words, that what we consume brings to us what we then are able to put out.

      1. And what we ‘put out’ not only affects us, but everyone around us, meaning our choices aren’t just affecting us, but everyone, always.

  288. In the same way that we can be addicted to sugar we can also be addicted to misery and that is often a harder addiction to crack.

    2. So true Elizabeth what you’ve shared about addiction to misery, I have seen this play out. Also, anyone who is addicted to the misery I reckon is guaranteed to be addicted to sugar as a result. So, our sugar addiction may seem to be harder to crack because we are not addressing the root cause of our addictions.

  289. “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different” Thank you Carmel for a beautiful reminder of how to reclaim all our bodies by connecting to the quality of movement in our hands. So much can unravel in our arms, shoulders, neck, back and legs when we open up our hands and move with our fingers with a delicate, beautiful precision.

  290. “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.” It is amazing how, when we do start to do things more gently, the extent to which we can feel other parts of our body engaging in even the smallest of movements. This really is a confirmation of how every single part of our body is connected, and seems crazy that this can sometimes still be dipsuted.

    1. And the beautiful part of this is, once we let go of the control and surrender within, our bodies know exactly what is needed in every moment, our bodies know how to move in loving gentleness – we just have to choose to let go and be impulsed from our amazing bodies, rather than overriding with our minds with the misconception that we need to control our movements.

  291. The way we eat is impacted on from the whole way we live our life – every moment and not just the time when we are directly buying/ ordering/ cooking/ eating and so it makes much true sense to me that making changes in how we live throughout the day will have an effect on our food choices rather than just focusing on the food in isolation…

  292. More and more I hear it being called “Food Manufacturing” rather than “Food supplying” – which says a lot about how our food is being specifically tailored to the demands we are making – demands that are a product of the way we are moving. This brilliant blog, starts to lift the lid on this subject. Thank you Carmel, for your lived wisdom.

    1. There is so much on offer in our supermarkets that enable us to prepare quick and easy dinners – but at what cost. Preprepared sauces, mixes, meals are all laced with so many unpronounceable ingredients, which surely has to beg the question as to what they are and do we really want to be consuming them.

      1. Which do we value more; your irreplaceable body and preparing it a simple nutritious meal or an utterly forgettable TV show in front of which we consume this junk? It’s such a simple question, that we then have to look deeper as to why we are making these choices. And in truth it is nothing to do with the food or the TV show…it is the way we have lived and moved up to that moment. If our day has been hard, loveless and a pursuit of distraction, then it is highly unlikely that we are going to turn that around at meal times; in fact quite the opposite – we will crave the stimuli and numbing that these foods supply to ease the pain of living what we know to not be the truth; they are in fact the perfect medicine for the day we have lived.

  293. Coping with our misery through overeating, inevitably does not work. Over-eating and over stimulating the body does not bring it to a place of rest. Focusing on tender movement, tender understanding and getting real and honest brings the change we are seeking, otherwise we are in pure indulgence.

  294. “I have been overweight most of my adult life” – was just reading an article on how Type 2 Diabetes is rapidly rising in under 30 year olds. We are accepting such a low level of health in society that there are millions of people who are “overweight most of their adult life”. I would go so far as to say that many of us have entirely given up and accepted this way of being, which is a gigantic stress on the body and a denial of our natural vitality; and that is before we even get into the deeper causes of why our bodies are as they are. This is why articles like this, honesty like this and conversations like this are so vital. Dieting on it’s own doesn’t work. We need to get much more transparent and really dig to the root causes of why we are eating as we are eating and why almost every single shop on the high street is now a food shop, why every single work desk is laden with food, why sugar abounds in almost every single food and why the health systems are on their knees.

    1. Great questions Ottos, as a society as you’ve shared we have accepted a lower standard of health. I feel by not questioning what we see around us that is clearly not working is a sign of irresponsibility and disempowerment.

      1. I like your use of the word ‘questioning”. Because that is a great opening to a deeper understanding and awareness. Just asking those simple question; “Mmm…why is it that chocolate bars are twice or thrice the size they used to be?”

      2. And why is it that chocolate bars always seem to be on sale lately – luring you in to buy a bar that twice the size that it used to be for half the price.

  295. Carmel, this is interesting; ‘My voice is an obvious one because when I am racy it tends to go a bit hard, so I breathe gently and that helps to take out the hard edge.’ I have notuced recently that if I overeat or eat sweet foods that I am more likely to be argumentative and talk in a harsh way.

  296. Carmel, thank you for your very practical support here; ‘By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.’

  297. Tender movements are so healing and powerful. In fact it is the only way that I have experienced to break through self-criticism and return to love when we feel its particularly challenging to do so. It’s like a very loving parent with their child – when we move tenderly we are saying that this body is made of love and worthy of love, no matter what.

    1. ‘Tender movements are so healing and powerful. In fact it is the only way that I have experienced to break through self-criticism and return to love when we feel its particularly challenging to do so.’ Beautiful, Simone, and so true – choosing to move with tenderness magnifies, reflects and confirms the love that we already are.

  298. The addictive nature of sugar is so intense that when called to eliminate it, for example on health grounds, but without understanding the root cause of the sugar craving, creates an emptiness, which we then seek to fill with another substance. This was the dilemma facing a woman I met in a health food store yesterday. Diagnosed with as pre-diabetes, she had cut out primary sugars but struggled with withdrawal symptoms and between meals searched for alternative ‘more healthy’ fillers on the shop shelves. Not until we get to the heart of the why we need sugar in the first place: lack of self worth, self care or nurturing, can we truly eliminate addictions and cravings.

  299. Athletics has shown the limits of what our bodies can do! We are now using science to help go further and drugs to push beyond that point. We create machines to function and mimic our body’s to lift and move things. Sugar is often found in this mix to do more with less. All of this effort to do more with a body that can be as gentle as the wind of a butterflies wing!

  300. There is no getting away from it sugar makes me tired, if I eat sugar at night I find it really hard to get up in the morning.

  301. There have been many ‘movements’ in human history but none that I am aware of that have focused on the quality of the way we move – till the Way of The Livingness Religion. This is astounding – for surely it makes sense that the way we oscillate and vibrate and navigate our environment has a huge effect on us all and the world?

    1. So true Joseph, we are vibrational beings and considering this highlights the power we have as a collective of ‘vibrations’ … bringing awareness to the quality of the music we are making.

  302. I love how you bring up the importance of awareness and understanding, it is like we become the adult in our own lives and with that we bring generosity and true compassion to our own process and growth.

  303. I love the example you have offered of how “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.” Even the smallest living choice always has a huge and profound knock on effect.

  304. We might wonder how sugar could affect movements – but really as it spurs on the Nervous system it contributes to the movements being faster, jarring and harsher…wow!

  305. Sugar is one of the those ingredients in food that we can get addicted to…we can literally crave it, and find it hard to go without as we become dependent on it to feel a certain way. And thus is can take a bit to detox from sugar, in other words reduce the amount of sugar one is eating. When we stop eating sugar or reduce the amounts we normally eat, we can get sugar headaches, irritability or feelings of agitation and moodiness, fatigue or lethargy, brain fog etc. so it can be quite a challenge to cut back and reduce sugar, but it is well worth it for how much more clear, vital and settled one feels afterwards!

  306. “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.” So true and what a beautiful incentive to not go for sugar to feel better that only lasts for a moment and gets worse after, causing one to go for more sugar and so the cycle continues with the loss of oneself and ones inner connection… hence the misery returns. A great realisation to get to and feel Carmel and the beautiful dedication you share to being you and to moving all of you lovingly..

  307. I have found that movement indeed is the key for you can have a super healthy diet and be super fit and do lots of exercise etc but if your movements are not honouring of your body and your being than you will still be unwell and uneasy.

    1. Yes – pushing through exercise can be as unhealthy as doing too little. So many of us go through life doing the ‘recommended’ amount of walking, running, weights, eating the ‘recommended’ amount of fibre, fruit, carbs etc., (or try to). But what if the recommended amount is too much or is not what the body needs? And what happens when we try to live up to that standard but feel like we have failed when we fail to hit those targets? This is as equally as damaging on the body. But who set these limits and from what source of information do they set them from? No one (apart from UM) really talks about checking in to the body and assessing what it needs, not from the mind, but from the body itself.

    2. Take a look at all kinds of sportsmen and athletes. They have the ‘best’ nutritionists and body/health consultants in the business – but over and over we see their bodies breaking down…so there must be something else at play as you suggest Andrew.

    3. How true, we can’t fake our movements, if they are off they are off no matter how much we do the ‘right things’.

    4. So true.. you can be as healthy as you want with food and exercise but if you’re pushing it at work and poisoning yourself with stress, or not speaking up and forever silencing yourself, that too has a huge impact on the body, our health and how we feel.

  308. I recently cut out sugar having gotten into the habit of daily pick me ups what was astounding was the level of exhaustion I was self medicating with the sugar, I can understand why so many people are using sugar and caffeine to get through the day. Now I am out of that cycle I feel so much better, clearer and steady the exhaustion has lessened – not completely by any means but it feels so much lovelier to not be in the raciness of sugar.

    1. Not to mention not having hangovers anymore from the excess sugar, there is no doubt in my mind that sugar is a drug just as alcohol is with all the horrible side effects.

    2. Yes indeed, exhaustion is the modern day plague and most people are not even aware of it because like you say, there are so many ways to self medicate – sugar, coffee and wine are just a few examples. But the trick is, this ‘medication’ does not make us healthier, on the contrary the condition gets worse and so we need to constantly up the ‘medication’.

  309. I read the title here and was unsure how misery, sugar and movement all were connected. But you show the many signs we have Carmel to notice when we are being racy, by our feelings, our movements , our voices, or when we reach for sweet sugary foods..So there is a connection with everything we think and everything we do that leads to our movements, it’s great to observe this thank you

    1. I agree Rowena, we are addicted to the misery and the sugar cements that misery even further. Which is crazy when you think about it because we are made of joy, love, harmony, truth and stillness. Misery isn’t what we really want, we are just addicted.

  311. Love is the naturally occurring fuel that feeds the body. To want anything else is already makes less.

  312. Dips and misery pits are of our own making and we visit these dark spots from time to time, it is true. And yet, it is not the sugar that’s problem, but something deep within us that must be seen and healed. Tenderness as you say Carmel is the antidote to misery. Keep being tender with self, make each movement tender, this is what we naturally are.and what the body craves.

  314. If you want to go sugar-free without the use of sweeteners, it’s not that easy. Nearly every product on the shelf has some form of sweetener or re-named sugar so as to not sound like sugar. It seems that we are so used to having high levels of sugar that when we start to cut it out of our food, everything tastes so bland, and the same goes for salt. It’s as if we have to re-train our taste buds to get used to what food tastes like without it.

    1. I have chosen to re-train my taste buds and it is highly recommended, you would be surprised how much the food itself tastes!

    2. Someone described giving up sugar as UGH! I offered this to her ‘You can turn this round: see giving up sugar as being loving to yourself and eating sugar as UGH, and poisoning your body”

    3. “not that easy”. I’d say it was nigh on impossible unless if we buy any packeted food off the shelves of the supermarket. I was in a supermarket the other day; cooked chicken pieces – had sugar in them, packet prawns – had sugar in them, sliced turkey – had sugar in it – none of these foods have sugar naturally in them, so food manufacturers are actively sweetening them to appeal to our tastes. But they are just the suppliers…the truth lies in why we, the demanders, are needing this drug.

      2. So true Otto, sugar is like a drug, and is also super addictive with more side effects than most drugs but once we have relinquished sugar from our diet all the natural flavours of any food is so tasty and never bland!

  315. Beautiful sharing Carmel – sugar and drepression is not a link I have heard discussed too much, perhaps because depression seems like a mysterious dead end to most of us. But when we see that depression comes when we deny our awareness, the conversation opens right up.

    1. Agreed Joseph, its something that neither had I but then when I think about it. All the times that I’ve felt down and moody after sugar just lead onto depression. Change that by removing sugar and no moods so in my personal experience i certainly agree.

  316. “when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.” so true Carmel as soon as I am not with myself I make loads of mistakes, I bump into things and my movements are so much more harsher.

  317. What I am learning to look at is not the food addiction itself, but what happens after I have consumed the foods that I know crash my circuits. Learning to observe this in myself is enabling me to see that the food is by-product of a much deeper addiction to the aftermath, the struggle, crisis, drama or withdrawal that the food triggers in my body.

  318. We are so much more powerful and empowered than we like to believe.. it’s easy to think of ourselves as victims of life, of our own thoughts, feelings and energy levels, when in fact we are the very creators of it. A huge game we play with ourselves to avoid claiming who we are, what we feel, and moving forward in our life.

  319. ‘I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression.’ I can so relate. It’s when I’m not feeling my sweetness because I’ve taken on board the tensions and any yuckiness in life that I then crave sweets to take me out of there.

  320. For me sugar was a sure way that I could distract myself from the awareness of what my body was communicating to me about how I was living and how I had pushed and disregarded myself and truth through my day. It has been very empowering to realise and experience that when we allow our awareness to communicate the truth, and honour it with honesty, we then are free to respond in a way that honours the love we are and heal that which has permitted us to move away from our connection to our divine essence.

  321. “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.” I find my body will continue to deepen in stillness and it’s stillness that ‘calls me back’ when I get too racy or caught up in something, therefore I know that as stillness develops then so too do I become more sensitive to whatever it is that disturbs that sense in my body.

  322. What’s shared here is that developing quality in our movements leads to a natural weight-loss – These two factors are currently so far divorced in general understanding, but as we, on a global scale, continue to carry more and more weight in our bodies this blog helps to raise awareness.

  323. When we truly listen to our body it continually gives us clues as to how it wants and needs to move again to restore harmony in the body. Very eye opening when we see the amount of ways that we try and distract ourselves so to not get these clear messages.

  324. The sugar is a killer. When I have it (in whatever form) I’m usually in craving mode just wanting to shun something inside but afterwards I feel, like you shared, not aware of what is going on around me and it’s like a merry go round inside my mind. Stillness is so much more enjoyable even though I at times react to it.

  325. I have also lost a lot of weight and bloating through changing my diet and looking at how I am living. When I started listening to my body more, gluten and dairy had to go and yes sugar in all its many forms is consistency but not completely out of my everyday, and how do I feel, so amazing, I used to be tired, low, lacking purpose. No perfect here and always more to learn, but I really recommend looking at how we are with food and emotions.

  326. When it is something as simple as the way and quality of our movement which can change the way we feel and experience everything around us we have to ask why we have chosen to overlook it for so long and embrace it now our awareness has returned to it for the full support which can be accessed.

  327. Carmel, I can really relate to the highs and lows from sugar, I loved this way for a number of years with my mother telling me that the sugar was impacting how I was feeling, I remember thinking I knew better because I definitely did not want to hear the truth.

  328. It is beautiful to read through this and feel how we can support ourselves during the day with these little attentions to our tenderness and movements.

  329. Sugar is like a circus fire eater! You put fuel in your body that doesn’t do a lot of good to the body. You have to burn it up outside of your body, and then you are left empty.

      1. It doesn’t, yet it’s promoted constantly as a treat, something you do together, a celebration etc. If we asked the body it would say something very different. True celebration of our body would look very different if we listened.

    2. Indeed Sugar is one of those things that messes you up when you have it but then you are left wanting more and more, everywhere I go I speak to people who share their addictions to Sugar. Language barriers don’t get in the way of that addiction.

    3. Empty and craving more because we need to be re-fuelled on a regular basis as the false energy is burnt up leaving us empty of energy, this is a ridiculous vicious cycle.

  330. The title of your blog is so accurate, because it is from the state of emotion we are in that then filters into the choices of food (sugar) we eat, that then precipitates into the body, making it move in a way that feeds back on itself in a perpetual cycle… Deal with the misery first and this changes everything.

    1. I agree Johanne, as with everything emotion precedes movement and choices. Our attention should be on primary cause, not secondary action. What Carmel shares is the unfolding nature of the journey. With patience and tenderness, not judgement, we connect back to the love we truly are.

    2. Spot on Johanne, and also posture and movement is key, for if you can support how you move you will be able to kick the craving faster.

  331. Feeling miserable is simply a mood we use to make ourselves feel less and in that we are the creators of this misery which in truth is not real.

    1. It is an eye opener when getting to the point of understanding that we create our own misery. No matter the external circumstance we are always in control of our own inner circumstance.

    2. So true Nico – revealing the simple truth of creating our own moods to suit a need to not feel all we are for the responsibility it brings.

      1. Well said Michael, by choosing to live in a mood that makes us to feel full of self pity or whatever other mood we may choose, we do create an excuse to not take responsibility for our own lives and with that for how our societies are.

  332. The tone, volume, pitch, timbre, vibrato are all qualities of the voice which we can express ourselves with and are the tools with which we can manipulate the way we want to express ourselves in the world or, when used for self healing, will show us if we are in harmony with ourself or not.

    1. What I love about our voices is that they offer an absolutely honest reflection of how we’re feeling. We can mouth certain words but it’s how we say them that really reflects the truth of how we’re feeling.

      1. Yes that is true, our voice can feel so much connected to our inner heart, but also not and that you can clearly hear as we all know the science of the voice as off when we where born.

      2. Yes, so true, and thus there is so much for ourselves to observe and take as markers / clues where we are at.

      3. The whole of life acts like a great big arrow, pointing to where we’re at and yet the incredible thing is, that most of us are so deeply caught up in the detail of what’s going on, that we are seemingly oblivious to where we’re at in life in more of a panoramic sense.

      4. We have simply learned to not pay attention to all the obvious signs of the truth of our wellbeing of our body. It is indeed not rocket science but the ignorance of simply wanting to do what we like is stronger than the many signs we receive and live with daily.

  333. Eating sugar for energy or a pick me up is a slippery slope for our health. It seems like it is ok, and you are getting the desired effect. But I find the more I eat foods that I crave, the more that need takes over and I am far less able to even think of healthy food options. It also burns out our adrenal glands, as sugar puts you into fight or flight. I feel we have enough of a tendency towards anxiousness, without adding sugary fuel to the fire!

  334. No sugar is needed when we connect to our inner-sweetness that is more deep and sweet than any sugar contains. Forever we are known for the beauty and sweetness that comes from our heart, especially when living from this exact place inside us.

  335. We can make life so complicated when it can be so very simple…”… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness.”

  336. ‘when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.’ – True, if we but pay attention and listen to the sound of our movements, like slamming doors or gently closing the doors, it is a give away.

    1. I agree, we can not be tender unless we are aware of the choice to be so, hense we need to be with ourselves in the moment, to be connected and making choices.

  337. Everything can be placed into one of two categories. The first category, does it leave the body alone? The second category, does it disrupt the body in any way? Knowing that we are everything already these two categories are crucial.

  338. I love how our movement is the ultimate medicine, so gorgeous, and brings everything back to our vibrational quality being the foundation, and key to what behaviour we choose next.

  339. Carmel, this puts the responsibility of the quality of our life firmly back in our own court and the choices we make pre-determine our day – stillness or raciness.
    “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy”.

  340. I cannot blame the world for any tension I feel. When I do feel uneasy, perhaps intimidated or got at, it’s such a beautiful thing to be able move in a way with such delicacy I can reconnect to the loveliness within that we all have.

    1. Given what we know of the addictive nature of sugar and it’s effect on our bodies, why is it that we stand by and allow the food industry to drug us in their liberal addition of sugar to so much of what is produced, often for no other reason than as a flavour enhancer?

  342. Great to hear how you stopped the sugar high and low cycle by bringing more awareness and honesty to how your body was feeling and love to how you are with yourself.

  343. The knowing there is the stillness inside which we disconnect from when we choose raciness makes us aware that it is our own decisions to choose these choices and gives us the power to choose differently in the future and return back to the stillness. It is always there for us.

  344. “….there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.” I love the simplicitiy and clarity of this Carmel. I have never thought of the stillness inside me as being ‘shattered’ when I do something that disturbs it, but that is exactly how it feels.

  345. Yesterday, I did a no sugar experiment and it made such a difference to the end of my day, I was far less tired and woke up naturally earlier this morning.

    1. One loving choice leads to another and another and before we know it, we’ve laid a new marker for our selves, based on a foundation of love.

    2. Hi Fiona, yes, it is good to experiment, I’ve been doing the same. Recently I’ve been on a dates and almond bender and yesterday I had none. I also ate less and that feels good. It pulled me up short a few days ago when someone wrote about how digesting all the excess food can be exhausting. If I’m not tired, I don’t crave sugar so it pays to not get exhausted in the first place. I’ve also been working on being more loving in myself and in all my relationships, and that makes a difference too, especially working with the voice, feeling it in my body as I speak.

  346. I am becoming more aware of how aware we actually are, to the finest detail! We feel everything and yes it can be intense sometimes but and I say this with the utmost of love for myself this doesn’t give me an excuse or justification to eat! I can feel, we all can and I have a responsibility not only to myself but to everyone to allow myself to feel and be aware of everything that is going on.

  348. Very true Shirley-Ann – as we deepen our awareness and understanding we deepen our relationship with ourselves and, therefore, with everyone and everything.

  349. ‘We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair.’ – it feels like ‘food’ is the most prevalent and effective way in which we sabotage ourselves. The food that we eat and the way in which we eat it has a direct effect on our bodies, we are either nurturing and supporting them, or the complete opposite, there is no in between.

  350. I agree Jane – and also worth saying just how amazing it is that if we choose to move in gentleness and with loving care then this is the quality of vibration other bodies receive instead.

  351. This is one of the things that until we try it we don’t really appreciate the immensity of what it means to resume control of our movements and move with an exquisite tenderness. After a while you can begin to feel a silky smoothness in the way you walk, work, move around the house that makes it then very evident when you have slipped into anxiety, frustration or nervous energy, which drain us completely and leaves us craving the sweet stuff by way of compensation.

  352. Yeah understanding is a huge help in bringing more love in rather than criticism and judgement.

  353. Love all your practical examples, another is how I touch the keyboard of it is really hard or gentle. It can sound like a machine gun!

  354. I have been sugar free for over 7 years, but lately I have started to want more sweet things, so have been making gluten/dairy and sugar free alternatives for example nutballs. What I have observed is that I am stil seeking reward and some extra sweetness in my life, so I am eating the so called healthier options just in the same way I ate ordinary cake and chocolate – not good. It is clear my body no longer needs or wants anything sweet, and so it feels to me like I am giving up sugar all over again, as I have not let go needing a ‘reward or treat’, but actually I am being asked to deepen the connection with myself and bring more presence to all my movement which will support me to let go of need for a sweet reward or treat!

  355. Many people change their diet but don’t lose weight as there may be non-diet related reasons why we carry excess weight. I have come across a lot of people who became more loving towards themselves and then others, whose diet then changed naturally and many, but not all, shed excess weight and also a number of those who were underweight then actually put on weight.

  357. I am very sensitive to not being tender with myself: I always end up with bruises because I bump into something. And I am also very aware of others not being tender with themselves: then it is mostly the sounds that give it away and the way people move their body; it is almost hurts to hear and watch.

    1. How many lives have we spent living our life like a Pachinko ball? Falling through life as a steel ball, bouncing off of everything and feeling nothing?

  358. ‘But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?’ This is a great question, Carmel. When we feel miserable we can move in forever decreasing circles, making more and more unloving choices to try and dull and numb what we do not what to feel. To get out of this cycle, as you say, is to bring understanding and awareness… I would also add this leads to a getting rid of the self-judgement and an openness about the way forward.

  359. It seems we as a humanity are addicted to not only sugar but also misery… otherwise surely we would have woken up to the fact that the way we are exisiting, ie not joyfuly living, is clearly not serving any of us.

      1. Our dramas create the distraction we need to allow us to continue on our merry, irresponsible way, believing we are the victim of our situation, rather than the creator of it.

  362. The thing about eating sugar as a remedy for when I am feeling low, is that no matter how much it doesn’t work, I will still continue to use it. And I have looked in to this behaviour very deeply and seen that there is a part of me that is just looking for a moment of respite, regardless of its effectivity. I just want to step off the wheels of life for a moment and deal with the consequences of this choice later. But the trap is, that what that actually does is keeps me on another wheel, one that goes around and around in a circle of tensions and relief with out ever really dealing with or addressing the core and root causes so that I can learn and grow and change – possibly even change so much that the tensions of life can be handled.

  363. I also notice a little more these days as I get more tender with myself, when others are not being so tender, like if someone gets in or out of my car or van and slams the door it goes right through me which never feels very nice at all. I have commented that the doors don’t need so much force to be shut but can get met with a sort of confused or annoyed look.

    1. It’s true kevmcardy, that the harsh slamming of a van door or a a roughness in placing something on the table or hard plumping a cushion are movements that are not clocked consciously, so no wonder it is met with puzzlement. Though what I get here is a beautiful confirmation of your sensitivity.

    2. I can totally relate to this Kevchardy… and I would have looked at you in the same way before attending Universal Medicine – choosing to be oblivious and unaware of how I was energetically affecting anyone. We so need to be taught/shown/role modelled how to live gently in this world from very young – because not only is it exquisite to live this way, it is honouring of all of us.

    3. It’s tricky with car doors because some just have to be closed hard, so how do we do it? I also find that some ladies’ toilet doors inside business buildings or conference centres are so tightly sprung (because they are fire doors) that you have to push or pull very hard to open them. There is a knack, and I’m finding that it has to do with aligning your body and your fingertips…

      1. Yes, there is a way to bring quality even to forceful movements if the force is a necessary part of the movement. Another option is to have a car that has soft close doors – in that case a very gentle action is plenty and the car does the rest.

    4. Yes, it is beautiful to return to our sensitivity and feel it in every move that is made.

  364. I had smoked 50 cigarettes a day in what now seems like another lifetime. I had found it was easy to quit and even easier to start again! Alcohol was the same. But, I just substituted it for eating There was no addiction just a filling of emptiness within or so I thought. I had securely locked up my inner light in an impenetrable fortress. The fortress has been a thing in the past for many years now, But, in the runes of my fortress, there are still the occasional remnants of sugar hiding in the rubble. My feet are already wet when it comes to crossing the Rubicon on sugar!

    1. I love the point you raise here, Steve, about replacing one addiction for another – when we are not addressing the root cause of why it is that we feel compelled to seek relief with whatever our addiction may be, if we managed to quit that addiction, we will just replace it with something else that may be more ‘acceptable’, like exercise – great reminder for us to use our awareness and honesty to root out areas in our lives where these hidden addictions may lie.

  365. Its interesting how eating sugary foods keeps you wanting to consume more sugar… quite a cycle of not getting enough, doesn’t satisfy, after the high then the dip, you start to crave for more… It overrides the body in thought and movement… in effect, it a powerful drug in the way it alters behaviour and responses.

  366. Today I can feel this misery hanging over me like a cloak – so beautiful to read this blog Carmel and be inspired to make my movements the most graceful ones I can make.

  367. I was out to lunch with friends at the weekend and I chose the ‘Green Bowl’ off the menu, which was poached eggs with all different green vegetables – it was delicious. The reaction this prompted from my friends was so funny, they were asking me if I’d given up fish and meat now and why I chose to eat this particular dish and not any of the others. What I felt was that I, without any hesitation, felt into what would support my body as opposed to what I thought I wanted to eat – I feel maybe this was what people may have been reacting to.

      1. Choosing to be inspired than offers us the opportunity to look more deeply into the behaviours that we often return to time and time again but we know deep down inside they are far from supportive.

    2. I recently visited a restaurant with volunteer colleagues who go there every week – one lady ordered her ‘my usual please’ whereas I found myself feeling my way through the menu. I chose the same as her and it tasted delicious so I’m not surprised it gets re-ordered, but we cannot rely on tastes alone because sugar makes things taste great – we have to feel the energy of how it is prepared, the integrity of the cook/chef, and the energy of the ingredients – we can know this in our body even before we enter the restaurant and look at the menu. Our body’s intelligence is very wise and we rarely give ourselves credit for this amazing ability.

  368. ‘We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair.’ – there is a feeling of being incapacitated that comes with these thoughts, which is why it’s so important for us to know that none of this is true, it’s just energy that we are allowing to affect us in this way. As you share, Carmel, honesty is our ticket out, being aware of how we feel as we re-connect with our body and feel the truth that is being shared, that we always have a choice to support ourselves or not.

  369. “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy” This stillness is within us all – yet many including myself run from it, funny how we are literally given everything and yet we still choose to not see it!

  370. It is mind blowing how focusing on something as simple as our movements can completely change the way we are thinking and feeling about ourselves. It shows that everything really is energy.

  371. How can I Love-my-self when I indulge with foods. Yes I absolutely enjoy everything I eat have eaten and will eat but our mind always wants to over-ride and suggest eating more or have desert over eating never being satisfied because it is so yummy. Could it be that we need the absolute Loving discipline to eat to stay connected to our essence and not be distracted by our head, which is taking advantage of our physicality, which will always want moooore?
    What happens when we eat feeling from our body and being in the understanding that we are eating to bring to the fore our most Divine Aspect, Essence, Inner-Most, Esoteric or Soul, which are all one in the same, as this is where we deepen our awareness and stay connected to our Divine-Essence? Maybe being aware of our deepening awareness and how amazing we are as Beings of Love and Light who once reconnected to that Essence of Divine-Love would understand from the body our purpose in Life Thus eat to only ever bring a forever deepening service to our-selves and others is something that is continually developing by listening constantly to our bodies and not be distracted by thus loosing the Forever Deepening Loving way the body will deliver!!

  372. When we are tired and should really have a rest is a time to watch out for as it can easily be misinterpreted as a need for a snack of some kind, only adding to the tiredness as the body has to now digest and move the extra load.

    1. Ha! Gabriele you have hit the nail right on the head – yes, so easy to pep ourselves up with a small snackette thinking it is nourishing and then, as you say, the body then has to expend energy digesting that. Food for thought… I’ve spent most of my life thinking about food and what my next meal or snack is going to be. No wonder I was (am) so exhausted! It is a huge consciousness to break, the one that tells us that food supplies energy – it is just an excuse really to hide the fact that we are feeling energetically empty.

      1. Ah great point Carmel. When we are tired and not hungry but then we eat, we’re asking our body to expend further energy. For me I then go into drive and the exhaustion then catches up with me and feels like a tired all the way through my bones.

  373. “when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.” – This is the kind of approach to life and our every movement as being medicine (or not) for our body that we really need now, for it shows that every action or movement we make with our body has an effect on every other part of our body and even those of other people around us. So the responsibility is there to take heed of this and make our every move as gentle and tender as possible, staying with our body in the process.

  374. In the case of sugar, it offers and promises everything – more energy, happy thoughts, good feelings, motivation and all the sensory delightfulness you could ever want. At the end of the day, it takes everything, it takes the vital energy our bodies would otherwise have without the sugar, it takes the ‘happy’ or steady thoughts and replaces them with erratic and unclear muddy thoughts, good bye good feelings and welcome hesitation, doubt and paranoia and this makes people lazy and only motivated for their next hit… it’s an awful substance and should be illegal, but that probably wouldn’t stop the demand within our addicted society.

    1. That is a very clear explanation of the give and take that is a sugar addiction, sadly we don’t recognise what it takes from us (clear thoughts and steadiness) until we have stopped eating it, and stopping eating sugar takes either enormous willpower (also draining) or true self love and tenderness.

  375. We get all the messages from the body that we need, but we have to acknowledge and accept them. Only when we are honest about how wayward we are, will we be able to make a change.

  376. Constant doing and staying in the raciness of busyness is also a choice just like eating sugar to avoid feeling our exhaustion.

  377. When we make any movement it has an effect on our whole body, even if it appears that only a part of it is moving and further to this, such a movement also has an effect on everything such is the interconnected energetic nature of all things.

  378. It is far too easy to think we are trapped in certain behaviours or addicted to certain foods but as you say awareness and understanding are the get out of jail cards we all need. I have stopped eating various foods easily but let them sneak back in when I let my awareness and understanding drop away.

    1. How often have we heard or said ourselves “I’d love to give it up, but I just can’t”. If you can decide that it’s a bad idea to jump off a cliff because you know it might damage you, then you can decide to give up eating a certain food. Any excuses or complications are choices.

    2. I find those foods sneak back in for me when I don’t want to be aware or to understand, and to indulge in whatever it is that I am in. Furthermore, I know precisely what it is I am doing when I am going to the fridge or cupboard – the thing is, we always do know what we are choosing and if we were truly honest we would always be able to nominate why.

  379. The sweetness we crave is the sweetness we deny ourselves – the exquisite embodiment of all the love that we are.

  380. In the US, products are required to list the RDA the (recommended daily allowance) on all food labels. A research board was asked to come up with an RDA for all the standard items; carbohydrates, fats, salt sugar, protein. When they were ready to publish, the sugar lobbyists demanded the 0.5 grams RDA of sugar be set at 25 grams. The scientists refused to change their findings. The Lobbyists then threatened removing all their funding. The compromise was, the section that contained the research on sugar was deleted from the published work. Surprisingly, the American Heart Association recommends no more than 6 (25 grams) teaspoons for women, 9 for men per day! . If you look at any food product from the US… sugar does not have an RDA on the label!

    1. That is a prime example of sponsored science and the fact that it bows to commercial interests rather than serve the common good.

    2. Why doesn’t that surprise me ….. having lived in the US for 7 years I can attest to the fact that it is extremely difficult to buy any processed food that does not contain sugar and I’m not talking of small amounts – it felt like everything was very obviously sweet.

    3. Unfortunately, we allow the lobbyists to be corrupt and get away with it because the demand for sugar is there. If we listened to our bodies, clearly 25 grams a day would send obvious signals about what we are choosing. The thing is we like the raciness, thank you very much, as we then don’t have to connect, feel or read what is going on for us.

  381. I noticed too that eating does not have the same effect as it had on me anymore and how I then can get in a loop of eating more and more just to get that numbing or racy feeling a part of me is seeking when life gets either too simple and amazing or when there is something I find challenging to feel. Yet it is not coming, it is just that I keep snacking and that is really not a nice feeling.

  382. I do love this question ”But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?” Looking from the perspective of our limited mind this seems to be mission impossible. But that might only be impossible if we stay within the same way of thinking and discount the power of love in this. As life is so much more than just the functioning and coping with all the demands that are put on us if we allow love to be our guide in life and let go all the limiting thinking of our heads.

  383. While we think movement is only in the physical, moving from A to B, but movement is also in our thoughts, the way we eat, the way we speak, the way we are with our bodies etc. Therefore movement is everywhere and becoming aware of this fact we can come to understand that movement is everything. That the way we move our physical body determines our thoughts, but visa versa too. So the interaction, the interwovenness of movement is huge and to me something that is important to get a deeper understanding of.

  384. Bringing true understanding to any situation allows us to step out of the emotions that we may feel we are in.

  385. We recently had an incident in our neighbourhood that was a little scary, with drunken men hanging around in the street outside our house. It happens quite a lot but this time it felt different because they didn’t move on. By reminding myself to move tenderly and to stay steady, I was able to stay calm and not go into a huge reaction, but I did call the police and explained what was going on, that there was a party going on in the house opposite with loud music. It finally went quiet at 3.30am. Being able to read the situation was important, understanding what was truly going on, feeling the energy, and knowing what happens when people are drinking alcohol. When I eat foods that make me racy, I lose the ability to read energy.

  386. Thanks Carmel, this is a timely reminder for me to be more self-loving for I too have been looking for something sugary to distract and avoid the tension I have been feeling, when in truth I know it doesn’t work, it only prolongs the unsettlement I am feeling in my body. And I also know the simplest thing is for me to be more gentle in all my movements and then I can feel how vulnerable I am and it follows on, that in my movements towards the people I come into contact with I become more honouring for I am aware of their tender and vulnerable qualities.

  387. Serge Benhayon offers us a fascinating opportunity to observe the details of our day to day movements. Habitual movements like retrieving toilet paper or turning a door handle may seem small perhaps insignificant but when we are able to clock a careless or rough manner, then we can begin to unpick the parts of the whole that we call our normal.

  388. The antidote to any kind of addictive behaviour is deep honesty with oneself; with out honesty we have lost our way before we even begin.

  389. ‘My body is warning me it’s too much because I am putting extra weight back on, so I know that I need to bring myself back to me – to re-establish my inner connection.’ – there is so much love being shared with us from our body and so much love in the way you are talking about the way in which our bodies communicate with us, Carmel. I couldn’t help but reflect on how I have reacted to my body over the years when I’ve put weight on, not ever seeing this as a very obvious, yet still loving prompt for me to see that my eating patterns are not supporting me. What I am truly reacting to is not wanting to acknowledge my dis-regarding behaviour, rather I go into self loathing, which generally just invites even more dis-honouring choices.

  390. I notice that the moment I have sugar I want more, no different to a child, it’s so addictive it really should come with a warning.

  391. When I go through a period of honouring and listening to my body I do not feel like eating the foods which I know my body doesn’t like. The moment I go back to eating them I’m often surprised by how sweet or sickly they are. Our bodies naturally clear the moment we give it a chance.

  392. Being at least gentle in our movements with and from our bodies, begins to accumulate within, like interest in the bank account – the body has the ability to simply feed back to us the love we have given it. e.g. when deeply connected within ourselves, there is an exquisite delicacy and feeling of harmony that can be felt coming through the arms even when opening a cupboard door or driving a car.

  393. It is never about the food that we eat, but about what we have lived in the moments preceding the event. Surely we would not need chocolate cake or ice cream if we had just had the most exquisite day and were full up on the glory of it 🙂

  394. It is good to have misery and sugar linked. We hold onto the belief that sugar makes us happy, but this is simply not true.

  395. Moving with tenderness helps us to stay present with our body and what we do because it is lovely to move in a tender way. It might take some time to start to feel the effects after having moved in a harsh way but it is worth committing to.

  396. Yes, it is the little things all day long that will make us crave sugar or be indifferent to it. That sounds strange but it really works.

  397. The teachings of Serge Benhayon on the importance of movement, is deeply significant if we are to return to a more joyful and harmonious relationship with ourselves and others. It’s so simple, yet powerful and effective to move with presence and gentleness. The body aligns to an inner settlement so quickly. It’s well worth making the effort for, because its life changing.

    1. I agree Rachel and would add that not only is changing our movements ‘life changing’ but it’s actually ‘lifetimes’ changing, because the only way out of the cycle of being repeatedly born here on Earth is to move our way out. And that is actually what we are all either consciously or unconsciously involved in, moving our way individually and collectively out of this cycle of continual re-birth on Earth.

      1. This is a huge topic and some might find a very challenging subject. Years ago, before being ready to hear this, I would have balked at what you share, dismissed it as being rubbish and thought it would be a crazy concept. But yes, when considering the bigger picture of why we are here, how we came to be here and what the point is, it all makes sense. Moving ourselves out of this continual re-birth individually and collectively is the point. Every religion at some point speaks about ascension, and this for many millions is an accepted fact of life… it’s just a disagreement on how we get there!

  398. I am really beginning to feel the part of me that doesn’t want to let go of sugar, and learning not to fight and try and push myself, but to get underneath as to why there is still an attachment to it

    1. I love your honest sharing Rebecca and your willingness to explore and understand what is behind your attachment to sugar. For me, I notice I have crunchy food cravings or naturally sweetened foods cravings due to feeling disconnected from my body and due to a lack of purpose in my day.

      1. Thats really interesting – when I am ‘on’ so to speak, involved in my work and feeling purpose, I don’t even get hungry let alone crave sugar. When I am full with myself and feeling a connection to what I am doing I don’t need to be filled up with anything else.

  399. “The trouble with eating sugar is that it gives you a lift and then drops you down even lower….” how crazy it is that sugar is such a major feature in so many aspects of the ‘accepted’ diet in todays society. The demands and fall out from it are enormous – it seems very clear that there must be another agenda here driving the sales of this product to stop us from staying connected to who we are.

    1. It is also incredibly insidious how liberally sugar is being added to so many of our food products, where it isn’t needed. Sugar and salt are being used more and more as flavour enhancers without any regard for the resulting effect on consumers. It’s just about making more money for the food companies and making their product stand out a little more from the rest.

  400. When we can bring love and understanding to why we are making certain choices and can take the self-bashing out, all that we are left with is an opportunity to learn and expand.

  401. The action of sugar on the body is a reflection that short-term fixes only lead to long-term issues.

  402. When I crave food nowadays, it is a sign to stop and feel if I have reacted to something and shut down in some way, as I know that when I feel joy and harmony in my body there is no need for anything else. Eating then becomes a physical support to be able to express more of who I am in the world.

    1. Beautifully expressed Janet, this is so true and very inspiring. I have started to appreciate these signs and be open to learning from them.

  403. Carmel, this is very true; ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile’. I took part in a water sport recently that felt hard and have been suffering with an achy body ever since. It has made me reflect that my body likes to be treated really gently and delicately.

  404. What jumps out at me here is that the simplest of movements affects the whole body. And this affects how we feel both physically in the enjoyment of our body and psychologically as a result. Whether the movement is harsh and unregistered by the mind, or made consciously and gently it will affect us; “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.”We choose, either as Carmel describes it here, or otherwise to the detriment of our well-being.

    1. Very true, Rosanna, the quality of our movements not only affect and lead us into the quality of our next movement and the next, but also affect the way we feel within our selves. When my movements are gentle, this is an outward expression of how I am feeling within, equally when there is a harshness, it’s a reflection for me to be aware that I have stepped away from myself.

  405. Carmel, I too have been doing this; ‘But recently I’ve been eating more sugary foods (including carbohydrates and dried fruits, which are all sugar in one form or another) and have started to put some weight back on.’ What I have noticed is that I can instantly feel the weight go on when I eat these foods, I also feel more sleepy and less clear. I know that if something upsets me or I want to feel comforted then I eat these foods.

  406. ‘My voice is an obvious one because when I am racy it tends to go a bit hard, so I breathe gently and that helps to take out the hard edge.’ – I have become much more aware of this lately, how when I am anxious my voice rises in volume and there is a harshness to it’s resonance, a forcefulness in the way I am speaking. Yet, when I clock this and allow myself to come back to my body, my voice has a gorgeous soft richness – my true voice.

  407. ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.’ – I cringe when I consider how arrogant and ignorant I have allowed myself to be in terms of how I have treated my precious body for most of my life.

    1. Our bodies are both fragile and very resilient. We do better when we don’t need to be resilient as the fragility can then turn into awareness.

  409. More often than not our food choices and cravings are a symptom of something else going on and not the direct cause. This is one reason that trying to fix it by controlling the food choices does not work. Need to address the underlying tension and then the food choices naturally change.

  410. Food is a big stumbling block for many – if not all of us. I know I reach for food when procrastinating, often because I believe it will be a challenge when inevitably it isn’t… and also when I’m feeling amazing – just to bring myself down and avoid appreciating my amazingness – how crazy is that?!

    1. It is crazy to self-sabotage ourselves because we are feeling too amazing and contract as if we just found out we were naked in public. When connected to ourselves, we have nothing to hide!

  411. How we move is so important … in fact all ways of expressing – verbal, movement, thoughts, the way we look from our eyes… all come with a quality that exposes how we live, and so we have a choice to change the way we look, speak, move etc to a way of living that is gentle, loving and harmonious.

  412. I agree with you Jane, and our consumption of sugar in Australia alone is huge. It is pretty much in every food pre-made or packaged.

  413. I wonder too Alison but I reckon most people would not be able to function at work because their level of exhaustion would be revealed. 2 weeks would simply highlight how exhausted people’s bodies are without sugar to mask their exhaustion and in order to see the effect of how our bodies functions without sugar I reckon we need more like a 6 weeks trial. When I gave up refined sugar luckily I was working from home. Usually do not have naps but I felt so exhausted I had to have a nap everyday after lunch for about 4 weeks. I was not able to keep my eyes open or concentrate. After 4 weeks I felt incredible, my exhaustion had cleared, I felt more myself and no more afternoon naps. I haven’t eaten refined sugar since. At first, I did this as an experiment to see how I felt and with the results, I couldn’t avoid the fact that sugar actually made me feel exhausted and it was numbing my body to a point where I was not able to feel vital or be myself.

  414. Food is nothing compared to our willingness to choose Love but the smallest slip in eating what we need can let an energy of disregard. It’s the energy of overriding more than the food that smashes us.

  415. A deeply profound message is provided in the question and answer about how to love regardless: “Question: But how can I love myself when I feel miserable? Answer: Awareness and Understanding.” If we simply apply this to ourselves and to all other relationships the world would be a totally different place.

  416. Carmel, what you’ve shared here is huge support for people who suffer from depression, ‘…. the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender.’ And, this is exquisite Carmel.

  417. I’ve noticed this too.. that the less sugar I eat, the less I want to eat it, because when I do, the effects really stand out, loud and clear: I feel like my body is running on turbo-charged energy, faster than it’s natural rhythm and it doesn’t feel good! It takes me off and out of that steady consistency that is the body’s natural way of being.

  418. Whatever we eat, if we are eating to bury what we don’t won’t to deal with or feel then it is stored energetically in our body and we will put on weight.

  419. Oh My – so much Gold in one blog Carmel, I really hear what you are saying, I often will go to fruit when I am feeling exhausted and low. We really do have the answer to this as you say Carmel all we need to do is appreciate those tender loving moments we have with ourselves.

  420. This was lovely to read. A sweet and precious blog, the sweetness of which far outweighs the sweetness of sugar in quality. Thank you Carmel.

  421. There are so many questions that come up around our use of sugar. One such question is ‘ when it’s a substance of addition that harms the body and masks what’s really going on, how is it that we wrap it up in beautiful packaging and give it as a gift?’

    1. Once you enter into the distraction of using for instance sugar to mask your exhaustion or to take the edge off of the reality of life, you can either wrap it as a gift, as a treat you deserve or you can wrap it as the irresistible, the addiction you have created and will hold you imprisoned for the rest of your life.

  423. To understand that the relationship with our body is ongoing and that it is forever deepening and thus bound to change opens up a whole new way of living.

  424. I can relate to this Carmel. When I feel exhausted I reach for fruit or nuts, and get into a cycle of needing them again and again. Much better and much more true to admit the exhaustion and treat my body in a loving way and give it what it truly needs.

    1. It’s interesting the detail of the semantics here. Do we reach for the nuts because we feel exhausted and want what we might classify an “energy boost”, or do we reach for nuts to numb the feeling of exhaustion and escape dealing with the truth of how we got here? Whether we eat the nuts/fruit or not is irrelevant; neither are going to do serious long-term damage! What matters is whether we look at the why and consider changing our moves – lying will cause serious long-term damage.

      2. “The lies do more harm than the…..” And into this gap we can put any number of words, verbs, movements, choices. Lying delays our evolution and this resistant force does much damage to our body.

  425. Doing what is needed in stillness leaves us whole and complete, doing in constant busyness however leaves us in the thought that we’ve never done enough and fragmented in the ideal of accomplishment at the end of the day.

    1. This reminds me of when people ask me if I’d like sugar in my tea, I sometimes playfully reply, ‘No, I am already sweet enough’. And how often do we allow ourselves to feel our inner sweetness?

      1. ha! that’s a good one. Yes if we fully embraced our qualities and settled into simply being ourselves without the usual struggle, push, drive and effort to be something we are not perhaps we would not crave food, drink and other forms of distraction in the same way or to the same extent?

  427. For me this alone shows just how unloving and harmful gluten and dairy is to the body ‘I have been overweight most of my adult life, but since changing my diet to gluten and dairy free pretty much all of that excess weight dropped away over a period’. Since I have removed gluten and dairy from my diet (for around 10 years now) I can testify that my body feels sooo much lighter and more beautifull to be in.

  428. “So… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness. No sugar needed!” Love this Carmel – and it is so true. When we are full – with ourselves – we have no desire for sugar.

  429. Thinking we have things to do is enough, we do not allow ourselves to truly stop but avoid the feeling of overload through food, vegging out or other activities to try and not be still. Thinking we are busy is not efficient, purposeful or meaningful, it is distraction. Reconnecting with our stillness within knocks out the busyness, and we can still be active but not with the restless frenetic excess of stress, anxiety or tension.

    1. Beautifully summarised, Samantha, ‘Reconnecting with our stillness within knocks out the busyness, and we can still be active but not with the restless frenetic excess of stress, anxiety or tension.’ Love it.

  430. This is so great Carmel and the big trick is that we think we cannot get out of these behaviours, when we get distracted. But there is a knowing that we are only affected on a very superficial level, and deep down, it was such a minor blip that we can let go of very easily.

    1. We never can say I was not aware, or it was a bolt from the blue, as the body does never not warn us. It is only up to the level of honesty we want to be with ourselves and more so with our bodies.

      1. Not forgetting that absolute honesty is a quality that belongs to the body because our bodies and their particles belong to a far greater body that we know of as the Universe, or in occult terms; the Body of God and in this sense are forever aligned to this universal order, its rhythms and its laws. Therefore, in order to not listen to the absolute honesty of the body, we have to introduce into the equation a way of living that is completely dishonest and therefore at odds to the natural energetic positioning of the body. It is this very movement that sets us on the pathway of ill health and disease as the body will continue to send us messages, signals and warnings that we have deviated from our true normal that get louder and LOUDER until we can no longer ignore it. Such is life in human form and the divinity we are a part of that also lives within us and will forever call us back to what is true.

      3. “our bodies and their particles belong to a far greater body that we know of as the Universe, or in occult terms; the Body of God and in this sense are forever aligned to this universal order, its rhythms and its laws.” Words that call us to a deeper stillness and obedience, thank you for this delicious breakfast Liane, Nico and Otto.

  432. Our bodies are systems of delicate balance and when we truly understand this and start treating them as such we will then easily start treating nature and its delicate system in the same way and through this start developing what is important and not what is not.

  433. When we look at life from a racy point of view sugar is part, yet when we look at our bodies and the feeling of loveliness inside, sugar simply is no part.

  434. ‘My voice is an obvious one because when I am racy it tends to go a bit hard, so I breathe gently and that helps to take out the hard edge.’ I can relate to this sharing, the voice is always a give away of where we are at.

    2. I agree Jacqueline. Recently I have started to use the audio recording device on my phone and it’s very interesting for me to hear the quality of my voice at various times throughout the day. It’s a little bit like looking in the mirror, my voice is a reflection of me.

    3. I agree, to I have really begun to hear the tone of my voice changes, with the speed. When I have eaten sugar it is now so obvious that my body tells me something is out and does not feel true.

  435. It’s a great question Alison, as we would get to see how our children are when then they are not stimulated by sugar and the difference would be significant.

  436. I haven’t been observing that when I go to eat sugar I may be feeling low or feeling a lack of self worth, it of course makes sense because when I am appreciating who I am and feeling the love that I am and valuing myself and how deeply precious I am by being very present with my movements then I naturally do not want to eat sugary food because I don’t want to eat something that is going to take me away from the loveliness that I am feeling.

  437. I used to take my body and everything it does for granted, but learning about our physiology made me realize the magic and the divine order that it operates by. So, I agree: ‘Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.’

    1. I agree, learning about the magic of physiology and homeostasis builds an appreciation of the delicate sensitivity of our bodies. It is not a dry subject, it does indeed feel magic and wonderful.

  439. Bringing a delicate awareness to the quality of our movements is an amazing way to gently re-tune our focus and awareness, which in turn can help us read the messages from our bodies, so we rest when we tired, allow our selves space to process what happens in life and not let our heads run wild trying to sort out things it can’t control.

    1. I know that when I push my body I want to eat food that gives me a quick buzz, like sugary stuff. But why push myself or override it? Often we get exhausted through how we use our body and this is in our movements, so if we do not want to feel exhausted, it is wise to consider how we are moving and using our bodies in the first place it sets us up to seek sugar.

    2. Giving our heads ‘things to sort out’ often leads to confusion, lack of clarity and complication. On the other hand, giving the body things to sort out, leads to simplicity, clarity and truth.

  440. I love that question “how can I love myself when I feel miserable?”! it is such a common state of mind when we’re in that space of going for the stimulating food – or achieved by other means – eg argument, driving recklessly, rushing, that the last thing we think we can do (or want) is to get out of it. Yet there is an essence and a register of love in our bodies that is forever there, I find to change the way I move, feeling my body’s movements and staying with the tenderness I’m able to reintroduce that loving way with myself rather than spiral into the stimulation.

  441. The way we are with our body makes such a difference – as in you could’ve gotten hard on yourself and judgemental, which in my experience just makes things worse, or like you share you can work on deepening the connection with your essence through how you are in everyday life and changing the behaviour from that perspective…

  442. Thank you for this reminder, Carmel – “Our bodies are systems of delicate balance, yet we tend to treat them hard and rough even though they are really very fragile.” When I react or get caught in a thought the first sign is seen and felt in the clunkiness of my movements due to a dishonouring of my delicateness.

  443. “My voice is an obvious one because when I am racy it tends to go a bit hard, so I breathe gently and that helps to take out the hard edge” – yes i can relate to that too Carmel, when voice carries reaction and the whole face contorts and body tenses up in areas … When we realise that our reactions are our living hurts coming out in expression at that moment, we realise the crucial aspect that is in us dealing with anything unresolved to allow the body its natural and rightful ease.

    1. I love what you offer here, Zofia, that we have the responsibility to deal with our hurts to let our body and our voice express it’s delicacy.

  444. I love what you are presenting for us to consider here Carmel. We cannot ‘think’ ourselves out of misery as we have already aligned to the source of energy that is providing it. The key is to move very gently and with great presence so as to realign ourselves with our true source of energy, which is love.

    1. Yes indeed Liane this has been my experience also that when I am not feeling myself there is no way I can think my way out of it, the only thing that works is bringing a conscious presence to the quality of my movements.

    2. We may not be able to think ourselves out of misery but we can think ourselves in. As you share what we can do is move ourselves out of misery through moving with gentleness and presence which does not mean it needs to be slow!

      1. True movement will also change our thoughts – it is a bit like changing the radio frequency!

  446. Honesty invites us to let go of control, to allow our selves to feel our fragility and the beauty in making this choice, to appreciate ourselves in the knowing that it’s ok to feel off, upset or whatever it is, and to nominate why we feel the way we do, then it’s easy for us to address this, without it becoming another piece of baggage that we carry around, weighing us down.

  447. ‘The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling because then we can choose to look after our bodies through self-loving choices.’ – I love the simplicity in this advice. It’s when we resist being honest and acknowledging how we are feeling that we make life so much more complicated for ourselves.

  448. Children and young people connect to truth so readily and so easily… imagine if we were all presented with how to truly live in this world from very young – the importance of deeply honouring and respecting our bodies, energetic integrity and responsibility, how we move/speak/think, how everything impacts everything… we would all move towards true brotherhood and harmony, and the burden of disease on our healthcare systems would be dramatically reduced.

  449. Agreed Carmel, finding out how carbs as a sugary substitute is such a blessing and then it is to simple, as this revelation makes it easy to eliminate carbohydrates from our diet.

  450. Carmel, you present a very simple practical way forward for a big life issue. I would think that many of us have wondered – in our own way – how do love myself when I feel miserable? Or if they have not specially wondered that, could have asked – how do I stop being so hard on myself or repeating XYZ when I feel miserable? Thank you for sharing your wisdom and lived experienced with us.

  451. I have noticed this as well that whether I crave certain foods or not depends on how I much I am wanting to feel or not feel what is happening around me and inside me.

  452. Yeah and that makes sense that so many of us collectively want to have sugar to protect ourselves from our perceived hurts, just reading a paper is enough to send me reeling all the madness is a lot to witness but that’s the illusion – self created – that being hard protects you from the fragility of being open hearted and loving vulnerable but that is where our strength lies because then we are physically tender and in the flow of the universe, the greatest love beholding us.

  453. One of the things I love doing is sharing with kids how absolutely amazing and incredible our bodies are, it’s awesome seeing their faces burst with a wow and in that moment of acknowledging they are in the most amazing body and that is part of them it can only follow that we are also amazing.

    2. How gorgeous and how inspiring Vanessa… to see the revelation in their faces and to feel we are all the same – we are all one.

    3. Love that, Vanessa…it’s like being reminded that you have the greatest friend always with you.

  454. Our body speaks very loud and clear. Both whether we are living in a way that is loving and supportive and if we are not. If feel though importantly as we learn to be more and more loving with ourselves how important appreciating those steps is. I know when I don’t or more so simply take something for granted then I can slip easily in the movements of not being loving with myself.

    1. The more we surrender to being gentle and loving with our selves, the more obvious it becomes for us to be aware of when we are not.

  455. I love the way that you have turned this around. Because I was always taught that sugary foods are a part of what makes life fun, enjoyable and absolutely essential for any childhood, because that is what we all want children to be – having fun and enjoying life. But I love how you have experienced another way to enjoy not only life but who you are, a way that is not dependant on something to consume, but rather something that is wholly and completely within ourselves – the power to determine the quality of our movements.

    1. So true Shami, so true. Every single school event, simple test, prize-giving, sports game, fund-raiser etc is rewarded with sweets or chocolate. Do well and you get a reward. How about getting confirmed in the glory that you already are and thus being inspired to take that further.

  456. Any message where we are craving something is an opportunity to take a moment and feel the choices we have been making prior to this craving and honour the truth we find. We hold a beautifully designed communication tool within our body to encourage ‘Love’ first and in every moment.

  457. I wonder if there has been a study done on the correlation between society’s rise in consumption of sugar and rise in depression. For me, when I used to consume sugar I felt down, heavy and even depressed and also I felt very irritable, irrational and very tired. After over four years of being refined sugar free, I feel amazing, I never realised I had very mild depression until I came out of it. There is sugar in almost every prepackaged/processed foods, so I’ve eliminated those too. My body is highly sensitive to sugar and I now avoid most fruits because of its sugar content and I do this by listening to my body.

    1. You make a great point here, Chan, we don’t realise that we are mildly depressed until we come out of it and as you say, so much is in any processed foods and fruit, which we consider ‘healthy’ is also loaded with sugar. On a long haul flight I got very fidgety and then I realised that was because I was snacking on apples and apple juice and the sugar made me restless.

  458. It’s true the ladies toilets are often a place of disharmony and can be left in total disregard which is very telling with how we conduct ourselves during the day.

  459. Sugar, ‘a little pick me up and a drop me down’ and we introduce this substance and therefore it’s yo-yoing effects into the lives of very young children. Not only that but we dress it up as a treat or something special. We wouldn’t lay out lines of coke at a children’s party but we’re happy to have bowls of sweets and an ice cream cake. To the delicate body of a child, does a massive intake of sugar feel feel much different to a line of coke?

  460. I reintroduced the movement of eating cereal into my life and am very aware now, that it’s not that easy to stop the movement. But what it has done is made me very aware not to reintroduce other similar movements because I understand how any movement quickly becomes part of my routine.

  461. How we speak, the speed of what we are saying, the timbre of our voice, all are great indicators of where we are at in our lives. After all everything we are and everything we are feeling comes with what we say, held in the words that are simply little packets of energy. We can learn so much about ourselves and others simply by listening to the voice.

  462. Thank you for bringing clarity to the matter of sugar, Carmel. We get fed the idea that sugar brings us happiness, but this is not true, and what we actually do is use sugar as a medication but we do not see it like that. And that is where the vicious circle starts. If we do not call things for what they are we keep fooling ourselves that they are normal and maybe even good for us.

  463. I have found that when it comes to building the level of love, care and regard in my life, every single tiny step has a compounding effect and is profound in its impact. I love the examples you offer by your observation of the significance of your movements and the tenderness in your voice. Most of us don’t pay nearly enough attention to these areas.

    1. Agreed I am not one for detail or attention so it’s a great area to bring light to and realise I have to be a master at details in order to live the opposite.

    2. I couldn’t agree more Golnaz. What I have noticed is that by paying attention to the ‘every single tiny step’ then I can go into movements that are not loving. Every one tiny step matters and one step leads to the next.

  464. A great sharing about food cravings.. “I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed…” I have come to realise how a craving for sugar is a way that I am choosing to avoid stillness – and yet, when you are in stillness, there is absolutely nothing more delicious than this.

  465. Our voice, tone, speed of talking is super revealing of how we are and can be very supporting in connecting. I know I am super sensitive to the way people express and also how big the impact is when I talk with someone else, being a friend or client. I have not yet used my voice and way of speaking to connect back to myself and bring tenderness back into my day.

  466. So great to have such simple but profoundly effective tools to return to our connection to our essence which is untouched by the outside world.

  467. I love this sharing Carmel so much “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy. So…” We have it all here beautifully clearly coming back to our body our gentleness, movements and love and this is a real gift to remember.

  468. What an amazing sharing of honesty sugar and misery all tied up together so simply and clearly felt and so identifiable with. The raciness and not wanting to feel can happen in a split second and the result of the sugar lasts on and on in the body and changes everything.Choosing stillness is a beautiful commitment with allowing the love we are to be felt.

  469. Through the teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I am becoming far more aware that before we reach for anything like sugar our movements have changed and are not as clear. For if there is presence, clarity and joy in our movements there would be no way we would want to have such things.

  470. When we find ourselves craving for something sugary or salty it is not the food that we need to address. The actual type of food that we are craving for may help us to find out but more to the point we need to dig deeper and question what it is we are avoiding in life.

    1. It is a specific vibration we seek, when I am looking for my next fix, only a specific food will satisfy the craving, there is an exact science to it, in that whatever we are trying to suppress, we know exactly how to do it.

      1. So true Carmel, it sounds like we are a master at self-destruction and avoiding being a master at being loving, nurturing and caring for ourselves.

    2. I find food cravings are a result of how I have been living. If I have crazy food cravings it is a sure sign of disconnection and a need to fill a void. Life should be light, joyful and full but when I do not live this, I turn to distractions and numbing foods in a flash in order not to feel the consequences of my choices.

  471. Most bad things to the body we have done have taken time to beat down our senses to make it normal. Dairy, alcohol, sugar, drugs, smoking the list is endless and took years. So, why beat ourselves up when we start feeling our body again when we reduce these items and have the occasional relapse. It helps the process for it magnifies what it has been doing to the body.

  472. “When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different: for example, when turning a doorknob, I have to allow my hand, my wrist and my shoulder to be gentle, which affects my back, my hips and my legs too.” This is such a beautiful, simple and practical example of how everything is connected.

  474. What comes to me as I am reading this is the simplicity of the self loving choices you are making. It only takes a moment to pause and observe where you are at before taking loo paper from a toilet roll. It’s something I have never considered and now you mention it I can feel how I am often in a rush on the toilet without giving any care to the quality or presence I am moving in. Something to play with the next time I’m on the loo, which like you say is pretty often.

  475. Our bodies are great markers of truth and how we are being with ourselves. When I eat things that dull me or don’t agree with my body I feel the effects instantly; from bloating to tiredness or headaches.

  476. Carmel, I really notice that this is the case for me too; ‘when I truly love myself I naturally don’t want to eat anything containing sugar – which can also include fresh fruit – because it makes me racy and I can’t feel what’s going on around me.’ What I notice when I eat anything sugary is that I am not clear about things and that I can get grumpy and argumentative.

  477. I was observing what a lot of people are putting in their shopping baskets yesterday while waiting be served at the super markets and I wondered how many of us are even aware of the amount of sugar we are eating, how many of us do check the labels? I mean so many foods including drinks like smoothies deemed as being healthy are actually just feeding our addiction to sugar.

  478. Truth in advertising would go a long way in educating people about sugar. There’s a slogan for one of the ice cream companies that says ‘Ice-cream makes you happy’, it would be much truer if they were to add
    ‘-momentarily and then it makes you sadder’.

  479. Carmel I love what you have shared: “. . . when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.” That is a great reminder – thank you!

  480. That life is a misery at times is so on the surface. Everything does not work, what ever we do, it just not sustains or builds up to a sustainable supportive environment we can rely on. Human life is never intended to be like that because it is not from divine creation but by being conscious present and move from the inside qualities out, we can stop being in the drive of it and experience that stillness from within in everything that we do and with everybody we are with. Something we never can experience when we keep reaching out for it and clutter our body with the foods that are not supportive to it.

  481. There is a grace and sacredness to be lived in the body but that is only possible when we are aware of it and have not dulled it or made it racy by eating some particular foods or through becoming exited on any outer stimulant.

  482. It makes perfect sense as in the drop after the high, we feel lower than we did before we even had the sugar, this can then often be further compounded with self judgment leading on to low self esteem.

  483. There appears to be a supply-demand relationship with the sugar industry considering we are surrounded by so much advertising to buy sugar food products … or perhaps more accurately it is a ‘demand-supply-demand’ relationship given that there is a general level of more exhaustion way we are living these days?

  484. It is such a vicious cycle once we eat sugar, and then it sets you up to crave more sugar… it is ‘vicious’, as it is quite an assault on the body, its physiology, on thoughts, in body movements that perpetuate its craving cycle to keep going.

  485. The hard and rough is so often sold to us as the image of building the powerful body with the super muscular frame – a lie when we stop to feel the innate delicateness inside.

  487. So the focus is not just what we are doing but why we are doing what we are doing. The cycle really brings in a despair that has a giving up energy and therefore an indulging behaviour. The cycle has to have a pause button and that button offers the space to consider the why.

  488. We use stimulation to move away from ourself to escape the misery we feel. Yet the catcher is it’s this Houdini act that leaves us sad. So the cycle perpetuates unless we stop running away.

  489. Sugar or any other food in excess of what the body needs dulls our awareness and makes daily life rather tedious, slow and cumbersome; it is as though power and joy have gone from our movements.

  490. How we move or hold our posture is crucial in how we feel. When I am feeling down I tend to slump over, and this confirms me in the feeling down. If however, I attempt to correct my posture and stand up or sit up straight, it is that much harder for me to stay feeling down. So we actually have to make the choice to remain down in the dumps to hold that posture as it is actually quite simple to change that and walk straight and really let oneself feel what is happening. Hilarious the games we play with ourselves without realising it.

  491. What we eat certainly has an impact on how we feel, both physically but also emotionally and mentally. And like wise how we feel will influence our food choices. One impacts the other – either in a supportive way or not.

  492. Choosing to be awake and aware of what foods we’re craving and why gives us so much more of an insight into what we’re reacting to in life and not wanting to feel. And the same goes for our movements- we can keep ourselves from not feeling what we don’t want to feel,
    just by moving in a harsh and abusive way.

    1. When we are willing to explore in detail why we are choosing certain foods, and it is very specifically targeted, I agree Bryony, it gives us more of an insight to what we are avoiding feeling. Sometimes it is tension but sometimes it is our magnificence and our power that we can’t quite accept.

  493. “We can get into a cycle we think we can’t get out of and fall into despair… The antidote is to be totally honest with how the body is feeling…” When we bring total honesty to the table we expose all that is underlying our choices… and this brings about true and lasting healing.

  494. “But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?” Fabulous question to ask and one that is so beautifully answered by Universal Medicine and its array of self help tools that teach us how to read the reasons behind the misery and empower our selves to make some fundamentally loving choices in response.

  495. Being moved by our essence, the stillness of who we are within, the impulse of our Soul is the epitome of fulfillment, as we are with everything that we divinely are. In our choice to not be with ourselves, our quality, we feel a loss and as such crave to ‘fill the gap’ or to not ‘feel the gap’ with foods that only really distract us from the truth of what we have chosen. It is so true that our bodies will always reflect the quality of our choices and reveal to us what we are choosing to align to.

  496. This makes sense to me too Richard. I definitely notice a drop in my mood and energy levels when I have eaten something that is naturally sweetened. I can feel the dullness and heaviness coming on and I just listen to my body and allow myself to go through the uncomfortable process to observe and learn. I also ask myself is it worth feeling disconnected for a short moment of taste and sensation? This blog is supporting me to look at my movements and how tender I am with my body. I find when I disconnect from my body and move in hardness, I tend to reach for foods that are numbing. Interesting to be aware of this and have a deeper understanding of my relationship with food.

  497. This is a brilliant article Carmel. You have turned the dieting industry upside down, its focus has been about teaching people to control their intake of food, measuring calories and quantity etc. but our weight gain and loss has much to do with our movements and not just about food. Through your sharing, you’ve shown us that our food choices are the end result of the quality of our movements. Wow!!!

  498. When I was addicted to coffee (up to 6-8 cups a day) a good friend said to me, ‘what comes up, must come down’. And in hearing that I saw my addiction for the ridiculousness that it was…..here I am pumping up my body only to bring it crashing down a while later. It took a while for me to stop it but that marker of seeing it clearly for those moments was there and held me as I let go of that addiction and became more honest with my body.

  499. Even coconut water when thought of sends the mind racy once all sugary foods are eliminated and also if it is drunk the coconut water has so much sugar it causes me to have to go to the toilet 4 or 5 times in the night to eliminate the excess sugar!

  500. It’s actually very common to lose weight after cutting gluten and/or dairy out of your diet, and particularly with dairy a lot of people say that they get sicker much less frequently since reducing or stopping how much they eat.

  501. It is amazing how so much weight can be lost, and then remain stable just by cutting out dairy and gluten from the diet. Very different to any other diet I have ever come across, and one that supports the body to be in true health as well. And also very interesting that so much of our standard diet in the western world contains dairy and gluten in one form or another.

  502. Great observation here that : “I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason and if not addressed, can lead to a mild form of depression”. It seems we all instinctively know when something is not okay and each have our go-to coping behaviours. Very wise to acknowledge this when we want to change something or another, like our eating choices. Because what actually needs addressing is the reaction to life which led us to that point, not the behaviour itself.

  503. “My body is warning me it’s too much because I am putting extra weight back on, so I know that I need to bring myself back to me – to re-establish my inner connection.” I love that, the true answer to all our woes is connection to our inner-essence. We can try to fight it the weight with our minds, being strict or dieting but nothing truly works if we do not first connect deeply with ourselves.

  504. Our bodies are super sensitive and delicate Jane. What came to me when reading your comment was how being delicate and feeling our sensitivity to everything is rubbished and put down in society. I have been called a ‘princess’ many times and not as an adhering comment but more so a derogatory ‘your weak’ meaning because I haven’t lifted something heavy or haven’t participated in an activity that will hurt me. Every step we make in gentleness makes an impact more than we know in our workplaces, our lives, families, homes and streets.

  505. Even if we don’t eat sugar to elevate and excite our body we can still do this in many many numerous ways but the results are always the same… a false rise up and then a crashing down, no wonder entertainment, sugar, attractions, reality shows etc. are at a all time high to keep this roller coaster way of living going. I have found tools from Universal Medicine to be the ticket off the roller coaster, which any of us can do at any time.

  506. Reading your blog Carmel and at the end was thinking is it that simple, no new diet advice or exercises, no struggle needed, no other complications.. really? Accepting and appreciating the divine design of the body is the way to change; ‘I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness.’

  507. In studying anatomy and physiology I was struck and delighted by how the body works, the very precise, delicate, and particular way it works and how immensely sensitive it is inspired me to reconnect with my body and it’s messages in a completely different way. It is a beautiful thing to be aware of.

  508. We are love, and so the way back to being this love is to move in a way that is firstly gentle, then tender and delicate. The love is still there, our movements have just become such that we are disconnected from it.

  509. ‘all of those feelings are simply love letters from the body asking us to look deeper at what is going on and how we are living’ your words gave me goosebumps – it reminds me that our body loves us no matter what and we can choose to love it back at any time

  510. Yes, Jane, our bodies are truly amazing and it is lovely to learn about the intricate feedback systems that keep everything in balance and how easily our lifestyle choices can upset that fine balance.

  511. Overeating is a go to that has been confirmed or encouraged from such a young age for many. Overeating doesn’t need to mean piles and piles of food, it can be extra times you eat or just a couple of mouthfuls that tip you over the edge, all so you don’t have the awareness to feel and read what is going on.

    1. For most of us, eating food is something that we want to make into a pleasurable experience meaning it can often then become more about the perceived ‘pleasure’ than feeling into what will truly support and nourish our body – which may be very little, or a walk, rather than food.

    2. A s a child I always had to eat everything that was on my plate even when I did no liked it or when I had enough. At times, when not conscious aware, I still do that in my adult life because it has become an addiction to dull my body with food when life becomes somehow intense.

    3. Providing too much food is actively encouraged in most cultures, it is seen as a form of abundance, a way of being hospitable, a way of showing respect, a way of caring for others, a way of making a statement about status, there are so many beliefs around the provision and acceptance of food, none of which are based on truth. And if it’s not based on truth then there is no real benefit in it, to anybody.

  512. So helpful for people to read of your experience, it inspires me, the care and awareness that you have with your body and worthwhile it is to have a relationship with it.

  513. It does make me cringe when I remember how I have treated this body of mine…

    1. You’re not alone there, Michael. However, whilst there is a lot more for me to let go of to allow my relationship with my body to deepen even further, it’s also very beautiful to appreciate the changes that I’ve already made and how gorgeous it feels to, finally, once again, be living in connection with my amazing body – even if it isn’t all the time, it’s a start.

  514. I love your honesty, Carmel. Whether we crave sugar or choose something else to distract from what we are not wanting to feel, to know there is a way to come back through gentle movement, focusing on the breath or simply self-appreciating is an amazing life tool that can steer us through stormy waters and enable us to come home to the truth of who we are.

    1. Agreed. Given that we are not perfect and there are definitely going to be moments when we drop the ball to have been given the tools back to truth is literally a heaven-sent support.

  515. Maybe there should be another health warning that goes with sugar … ‘comes with misery!’

    1. Yes, I like that. It would be quite refreshing to have such honesty in our advertisements.

    2. I like the health warning Vicky and the funny thing is I reckon pretty much every adult who has eaten sugar already registers what happens after a sugar hit.

    4. I like that, and how about – takes you on a roller-coaster ride which can be difficult to get off; true movement recommended.

  516. Truly, physiologically hungry or craving? Truly, physiologically hungry or trying to numb? Truly, physiologically hungry or emotional? Truly, physiologically hungry or tired? Truly, physiologically hungry or anxious? Truly, physiologically hungry or unwilling to accept the glory and joy we are feeling? Truly, physiologically hungry or trying to avoid the reflection of another? Truly, physiologically hungry or bored? Truly, physiologically hungry or being polite? etc….If we are really honest with ourselves, then 9 times out of 10 it is probably the second answer. I am still eating for the second reason sometimes, but even asking myself this question is the beginning of a more honest relationship with myself and where I am at – as long as I don’t lie to myself!

  517. I stopped eating sugar as my wife and I worked out that we’d often have some kind of argument afterwards. Thus, giving up sugar came down to removing it from our relationship, not about will power. As a skinny guy already, I didn’t notice any weight loss, but I do notice I am more steady and stable throughout my day.

    1. That is awesome you noticed how sugar was affecting your relationship. I’ve experienced the same thing too. I used to be very grumpy and irritable when I was eating sugar, gluten, and dairy. Now, I feel so much more myself, less drama and more love.

    2. Nick that’s so amazing to realise, I wonder how many arguments and disputes could be eradicated if we took greater care of what we eat and how we live.

    3. Funny you should say that, Nick, I noticed how ratty I was with my partner after eating certain carbohydrates, and that was a great incentive to stop. We have all witnessed children’s bad behaviour after they’ve eaten sweets.

    4. I can relate to that Nick, I can definitely say that sugar influences my mood and how I am with other people and I must say it is not for the good, I in fact start to care less.

  518. I love your attention to detail Carmel, because it is in the tiny details that we notice, right down to how we attack the toilet paper off the toilet roll. We need that awareness to know we are moving in a different way, to realise that changes happen well before the food gets into the mouth.

    1. Yes, the honesty is very important as a starting point to notice those little supposedly innocuous moments that then feed the next moment. Going to the toilet will never be the same again!

  520. It is of course true that the more food we eat and the more sugary foods we eat, the more weight we will put on. However there is definitely another element to our weight/strength – and that is energy. I have been monitoring my weight daily for about three years now; over that period the volume of food that I have eaten and also the actual varieties of food I have eaten have remained very, very constant. And yet my weight has not and nor has my muscle mass (often irrespective of how much exercise of weights I have been doing). I am still playing with this and still examining it – but there is absolutely no doubt in me that my weight and strength is to do with how I am living, what choices I am making and the authority and strength of my movements. When those drop, which they have often over this period, then invariably my weight and strength will drop. When I claim myself in full, then my strength (and muscle weight) goes up. It’s fascinating and I don’t profess to understand it in full – but the figures speak for themselves.

    1. The authority and strength in our movements is a powerful link in how this reflects our weight. When we walk knowing this there is no inclination or pull to bring in sugar or other foods that numb the solidness felt within.

    2. Thank you Otto for showing that to discover truth the greatest science lab is our own body.

    3. Yes, Otto. My weight fluctuates all of the time, and it has become pretty obvious that I bloat when I absorb emotional energy from a situation or go into a reaction myself.

    4. Thank you, Otto for your observations, there is so much for us still to learn about energy and how our lifestyle affects our body shape and size. Our body language and posture are affected by our moods, and we can create tension internally just with our negative thoughts.

    5. Great observations Otto, there is so much more going on then purely just the food we eat when it comes to whether or not we put on weight or not. I know for me I can eat huge amounts and not put any weight on especially when I am worried or feeling anxious, and often when I do this I then go to sugary foods and my body reacts through spots, diarrhoea, fogginess etc.. So I am running my body internally at a million miles an hour. I can also bloat as well. Yet when I am feeling myself my body shape and size comes into line and my shape suits me. It is like you say a fascinating ongoing science experiement. You have inspired me to take more notice as well, thank you.

    6. I agree Ottto I have found this too, in that sometimes even if I do not have a lot of food yet been busy my body feels super strong and really clear. It just goes to show, as you have shared, that it is more about our movements and how we live not what we eat to keep us ‘strong and healthy!’

      1. If what you say is true Vicky – then no wonder the food giants are so deeply manipulative in what they put in their products – specifically and scientifically stimulating the chemicals and enzymes that make us think that we want more food, specifically and scientifically lacing their products with addictive substances, specifically and scientifically engineering their foods to over-ride the body’s natural ability to self-regulate. What I mean is if we actually stopped for a minute and asked our body whether it wanted what we are putting into it (including liquids like coffee, sugary drinks and alcohol), it’s not hard to imagine what the response would be. Thus the food manufactures are constantly looking to ensure that ‘crave’ comes before ‘common sense’.

  521. Thank you Carmel for this beautiful recipe for life with no sweetner required ‘So… if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness, I simply have to breathe gently and move with tenderness.’

  522. I am feeling more an more my addiction to sugar – the relief when I eat it, the craving it when I haven’t had it for a while, and yet without it i feel my skin clear and my weight change and I feel more at ease in my body.

  523. “Our bodies are systems of delicate balance” — this is our state of physical nature so it is our truth. Something that stays with me that I will never forget and love to share with you. When I had a procedure in hospital recently, and they looked at my whole digestive system from top to bottom, they took some photos and I was amazed that looking inside of my digestive system, it reflected the universe to me. It was so delicate and intelligent it amazed me. I still do eat to that delicacy which I clocked and I have continuos pains all day long but my feeling of not being in pain is growing more in my favour in how I want to feel. “when we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.”
    ​

  524. What an amazing ‘Question: But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?’ This could become a chicken or egg question, but your answer of awareness and understanding can put a stop to the addiction of using food or something else to bring the vibration down, that otherwise wants to go up.

  525. Being with ourselves even in misery, so in fact having no attachment to how we are, but understanding that everything passes and that we have a choice in that moment … we can compound our misery, and being racy will do that for sure or we can be tender with us and in doing so open up greater understanding of who and how we are, and allowing us to connect to the stillness within. The real choice as noted here is between raciness and stillness.

  526. Reading this has brought up the question of how many people are depressed, exhausted and using sugar as a boost and do not realise it? If you look at the supply and demand figures for sugar then I would say quite a lot.

    1. Questioning the population in exhaustion but especially with depression also went through my mind Julie while reading this blog. Regardless as to whether it is a low or mild case it is still depression. Could we be living with illness and disease and so arrogant and ignorant that we don’t want to see, let alone address that our daily choices affects our well being because of the comfort we want and prefer to live in?

    2. Or – another way to look at it; imagine if the world didn’t eat sugar for a week – the level of exhaustion that would then be fully exposed. Would we be like a bunch of zombies walking around almost unable to function?

  527. It is not the sugar or foods we crave but the meaning we give them that is the problem. We believe they make us feel better when in truth they offer temporary and fleeting relief.

  528. I love the simplicity with which you write Carmel and it is a great sharing of your personal experience of how to return to loving oneself when feeling miserable as that is most important time to do so. Your suggestions are both helpful and inspirational.

  529. This is so true, Carmel – ‘when I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different’. This is the power we have in each moment at our fingertips, to choose a quality of delicateness that has an ongoing ripple effect throughout our bodies and the world around us.

  530. “So if I want to let go of misery, and enjoy the inner stillness” – I need to come back to myself instead of keeping myself at a distance through ineffective and unproductive activity called busyness; busy doing nothing really. In stillness [quality] we are busy doing everything. Huge difference.

    1. The busyness we use, is also a great form of distraction from what we do not want to feel and like sugar, it can be equally addictive. Allowing the stillness to be present through a deeper connection with ourselves, changes all. No longer a distraction, in true service, the stillness changes everything.

      1. So true Rachel. I’ve been a busy person most of my life – but just now my body is producing symptoms that have called me to stop, to rest and be much more still. Despite not being well, it feels great!

  531. Carmel, I feel this too; ‘When I move my hands with tenderness my whole body feels different’. I have noticed that if I am delicate in my hands and gentle in my walk then my body loves this. If I move roughly or in a rush I get painful knees and achy legs.

    1. I like this Rebecca. My body loves purpose; if I am connected to true purpose the engine kicks into 6th gear and the fuel tanks never run out.

  532. Thank you Carmel, yesterday I had a strong sugar craving to eat fruit and did. It brought me back to your article and made me more aware of how we can be enticed and distracted off course. Cravings reveal a lack of self love, needs unfulfilled, tiredness and yet with awareness have huge potential to be transcended. To deepen our inner connection through self loving movements is the only way to quench them.

    1. The thing is when we eat sugar it leaves us feeling more tired. It was a real eye opener when I twigged that coffee, sugar and fizzy water all do the same.

  533. I feel we have very interesting and often complex relationships with food that are often very revealing. I definitely feel I’ve been conditioned to believe that food, along with being a necessity, is there as a ‘treat’. It has been my go to place when I want to give myself a reward, equally, something I use to numb how I’m feeling when things aren’t going so well – but in this instance it tends to be consumed in quite a different way, however, in both cases, energetically, it’s equally as harmful as I am not, first and foremost feeling into what is it that will truly nurture and support my body in that moment.

    1. Observe how often children (as I was) are given sweets as treats and rewards. As a consequence, the association continues into adult life and we play the same record in our heads over and over, never once discerning or seeking to break a habit of a lifetime. We can change the record at any time and play on repeat that ‘sugar is not a treat but a poison that harms the body’.

    2. The consciousness around food is incredibly thick and heavy. It was a huge revelation (and yet surprisingly not so at the same time because it was an unarticulated known) to understand that what we eat really does affect how we feel. Supporting myself to feel clear with the food I choose has meant that not only do I feel healthy, but I am much better able to handle life and reactions supporting me to go deeper in my relationship with myself and then of course with all others.

    3. Seeing food as a treat is something many of us do, I’ve seen parents reward children with sweets that I know will lead to bad behaviour later, and we reward our pets with treats.

  535. It is quite surprising to know that you have been overweight because I only ever saw the trim, new you.

  536. In 2017-2018 the world consumed 174.13 million metric tons of sugar! It is hard to find anything we consume today that doesn’t contain this addictive empty calorie substance.

    2. Yes, even so-called savoury foods have sugar in – I was amazed when I worked in a supermarket to read how much sugar is in a family loaf of sliced bread.

  537. When a blog like this is written with such tenderness and honesty the author may never know how many people it helps but it will keep on helping and the ripple effects will be felt forevermore.

  538. Its great to be aware of why we feel the need for sugar or sweet things at various times so we do have the awareness and tools to combat such situations, and know it is just a choice and the way out is just a movement away.

  539. I so agree Carmel that it is absolutely miserable to be disconnected from ourselves, which is why we need tools that support us to come back to ourselves. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have provided a large array of tools for this and it is exactly what humanity needs at the moment.

    2. There are many qualities we all have that we can sometimes see in others but rarely in ourselves but they are nonetheless there and accepting their presence goes a long way towards developing self appreciation.

    3. Good question Joseph, I cannot say I have truly embraced my sweetness, there is still a part in me that wants me to be strong and tough. For a long time I reacted when people called me sweet, that’s gone but to say I have embraced it…lets call it work in progress.

  543. The openness, honesty and truth of your experience is so easily felt in your blogs Carmel, they are very relatable and this particular one brings me to contemplating the choices I make and when and why I make them more openly within myself.

    1. I agree they have a very open and supportive quality, the honesty inspires honesty in others and enables us to be understanding with ourselves.

  544. We are like finely tuned instruments that have a particular vibrational quality, and our resonance can be one of harmony or discordance. To feel the vibration of love is beautiful, our natural key.

  545. I like the reminder that our bodies are actually like very fined tuned instruments and yet we do not seem to treat them with that respect that any fine instrument is due. I do believe we look after our cars, boats, horses, dogs etc., with a lot more care than we give to ourselves

    1. I agree Mary, I would never consider putting diesel in my car that drives on petrol or consider walking in my house with tons of mud on my shoes.

    2. The analogy of a car is always a good one: we only put the correct fuel into our cars whereas we expect our bodies to run efficiently on junk food and alcohol.

      1. I love the reflection a car offers in so many aspects. The more I am aware of what I eat and put into my body and as a result the ‘cleaner’ my car looks inside.

  546. “All I do is eat more and more sugary foods with a kind of desperate addictive behaviour” – It’s true that sugar can have the same addictiveness as drugs such as cocaine, and it’s proven to have physiological effects on the body which can result in withdrawal-like symptoms when you try to come off it.

  547. When we want to change, for example, to be more healthy etc. we tend to focus on changing just one aspect but true change requires us to look at everything. Our movements and the quality of energy we choose to align to affect our choices from food to the way we express, work and socialise. Everything matters and everything counts.

    1. Food is usually the one we focus on, and that is supported by the huge weight loss and low fat industry. When we do look at everything and understand what’s beneath our cravings, then food becomes a non-issue

  548. This is GOLD what you have presented here Question: But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?
    Answer: Awareness and Understanding.’

  549. And this highlights to me why so many dieting regimes don’t work. This could turn all the dieting programs out there upside down because when we understand that losing weight to return to our natural size and shape is not just about food but everything to do with our movements. The quantity and quality of our food choices are governed by our movements.

  550. Gorgeous and inspiring blog Carmel, so beautifully reminding us how important our movements are. As I was reading, I recall the times when I moved in a rush and in hardness, I tend to then crave for food that are either sweet or crunchy. It is almost instant and I notice the hard energy I was in also carries through to the way I speak to people. The hardness I can feel in my body is becoming more and more obvious as I live more and more in tenderness and gentleness, and these moments of disconnection stands out like a sore thumb.

  551. This is my story. Thank you for sharing yours so I can see mine. I sat up more supportingly reading this, more tenderness came in and I saw a way forward out of the sugar slump I was in (too many biscuits last night!).

  552. Thank you for sharing what is behind the cravings Carmel this is so supportive to read and brings me to a deeper understanding of what is happening in my body. I have a toddler, work full time and am a couple of weeks away from having a second baby, and in all this I have not really stopped, hence my craving for sweet things has gone up because I am not feeling the exhaustion in my body. So reading this really shows me that my body is calling out for me to slow down.

    1. Yes, care for our body is paramount, we like to think we are indispensable, needed, and work our butts off to keep up appearances or to please or to fit with our image of Superwoman and all the while our bodies are screaming at us and we’re not listening. The new baby is talking with you too…

  553. Enjoying moments of tenderness…”… the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender.” And the more moments we are tender, the more tender we become, and the more anything that is not tender stands out. Love the simplicity of how this works… its so super supportive for us all.

  554. I can already tell this will be a blog I will be returning to repeatedly. Such a simple and great message: “way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself”

  555. I love how you share about voices Carmel. That is something I have been aware of for some time, the quality of how we speak. I have come back from being on retreat over a week and observed how loud we can be and how harsh in our tone. There are so many layers in our communication or as you have referred Carmel our movements, which is also the quality in how we speak.

  556. With the world such a mess it makes sense that so many people don’t want to feel and therefore we are surrounded by sugar.

  557. Beautiful to read this Carmel makes so much sense to me and definitely know that there is no will power required with sweet things when your more connected, it simply isn’t desirable.

  558. So gorgeous, they are simply ‘love letters from the body.’ This brings us back to love, loving us so much especially when we’re feeling the consequences of our loving choices.

  559. I love your observations on yourself and when you know you have gone into hardness or raciness for example. I’m wondering how helpful this is for me to reflect on in myself and know the layers that are uncovered when I do let go of the hardness that is more obvious such as wanting to swear! What are my more subtle notes so I observe them before I want to lose it but already have!

  560. The moment we are with our focus in the outside we seek and get distracted with things/ foods/ emotions/ excitements from the outside. The moment we are focused and connected with our body we realise how less we need to actually live very joyfully and in true harmony .

    1. Beautifully said, Steffi, we need very little and we can give so much without exhausting ourselves in the process, all we have to do is be ourselves in full.

  561. If behaviours come back it does not necessary mean, that you haven´t moved on. It could be that you stepped up and sensing the greater responsibility lets you fall back into known behaviours that worked many years before to sabotage you. But in fact it has no grip on you anymore. Simply the avoidance of more power needs to be called out and it is much easier to let go of the called in behaviour.

    1. This makes sense, ‘Simply the avoidance of more power needs to be called out’ we are evolving every day and holding back slows down but does not stop the process. Once we are aware then we can make different choices.

  562. This is a great question Carmel “But how can I love myself when I feel miserable?”, one which most of us would love the answer for. The feeling of miserable-ness can be so overwhelming, so self-encompassing that all we want to do is bury it, which is usually done with our favourite numbing techniques like sugary filled food and drink, or maybe watching excess television or nose-diving into a book. This used to be me but now – well most of the time – I bring my awareness to how I am moving and begin to move in a very gentle and conscious way and by doing this I have found that it doesn’t take to long to move that misery right out of my body.

  563. Getting in touch with my body has supported me feel what is going on when I eat. I am starting to feel a sense of ease and contentment in my body. This has allowed me to not use food as a comfort thing.

  564. Carmel, your wisdom has unplugged the myth that we need sugar to keep us going. All we need to be loving and tender to ourselves and listen to our body. I also spent most of my life dieting. I put on weight easily and then spent months starving myself to lose it again. This never worked long term and it wasn’t until I gave up gluten, dairy and sugar that my weight has stabilised. Not only has my weight stabilised but so have my moods – we really are what we eat.

    1. Yes, the ‘Sugar gives us energy’ belief is a marketing myth. We do much better is we understand what drains our energy, and that can be how we are in our relationships, what TV programmes we watch, what time we go to bed. Sports ‘energy’ drinks that claim to give you ‘wings’ are also a marketing con – it’s just caffeine and sugar and probably a few nasty chemicals and colourants. We don’t truly need any of that but they have become embedded in our ‘I need’ and ‘I want’ files.

  566. Sugar is such poison we all know. But we can see that our body give us clear signals of what the effect of sugar is, but how well do we listen? And what makes us crave for this feeling?

  567. I find that Friday evenings are a challenge for me to avoid sugar or carbs. My body feels tired and if I’m not aware of what is going on the energy will take me to sugar. I get a lift for a few minutes, my eyes pop out and then I feel even more tired. I enjoyed reading your honest blog which felt sugar and roller coaster.

  568. Its a title (of your blog) I would not often read or be enticed to read for some reason, however I did, and it was brilliant what I deepened with. It is very true about the lasting effects of movement with tenderness. Even though I am already aware of it it reignited me again. If the breath is tender as it goes in it will be cool at the tip of the nose — the out breath should follow naturally being gentle and warm at the bottom of the nose. The body feels luscious when treated with tenderness.

  569. Beautiful sharing, bringing it back to our tenderness and concious presence brings us back to our inner stillness.

  570. The honesty and sensitivity that you express with Carmel is deeply inspiring. Thank you.

  571. Great blog Carmel – when craving sugar it is a clear signpost that I am not in conscious presence with my body and sometimes the craving for sugar can be so intense, that the body signal is temporarily dulled down further. A horrible yo-yo cycle if not observed and cut.

  572. This evening I was unpacking my suitcase and I put out my PJ’s and healing pillows on the bed, I put them out automatically not paying much attention to what I was doing. As I was leaving the room I caught sight of my PJ’s and eye pillows and I could feel the disrespected with which I had placed them down on the bed. So I stopped and rearranged them with more care. This is a big lesson for me in how I just do things without really paying much attention to the detail of what I’m doing. And all the little things add up to big things that I cannot ignore. So actually taking the time to be aware has a massive impact on our lives, as the more we feel the more there is to feel.

  573. There is a fascinating documentary called THAT SUGAR FILM, in which the presenter chooses to eat “healthy foods” for a month. No fast food, no fizzy soft drinks, no sweets, nothing that obviously has sugar in it or is obviously unhealthy. He eats health bars, low fat foods and all sorts that are publicised as being healthy. But in each case he shows exactly how much sugar is in each piece of food. It is mind-blowing. In one particularly graphic sequence he actually eats the amount of sugar that is hidden in the food as spoonfuls of raw sugar. So he is seen eating a chicken dish, but instead of adding the ‘healthy’ sauce, he pours 5 spoonfuls of sugar onto his chicken. Instead of drinking a healthy fruit smoothie he has a glass of water with 7 spoonfuls of sugar dissolved in it. Etc…etc….It’s a very powerful expose of enormous amounts of sugar that are hidden, often under pseudonyms, within our food. The food industry are drug dealers, very specifically, scientifically and consciously getting their customers addicted to their products with the sugar content. When we see a drug addict we know there is something wrong….so why do we not ask the same question of ourselves when so many of us are so clearly sugar addicts?

  574. Sugar is hidden in almost every food on the supermarket shelves. A horrendous corruption of gargantuan proportions. Your transparency and honesty is a beautiful counter to these grotesque lies from the food industry.

  575. It really is worth appreciating the difference it makes by taking care of how we move and hold our body in each moment…

  576. “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery, and that stillness is shattered by anything that makes me racy.” I love how you have described this Carmel as I know it to be true for myself. We can so easily shatter this innate stillness in the tiniest of ways when we put our own wants, needs and desires over the divine connection we have within us.

  577. Misery is hard work. It requires consistency and constant effort. Of course, you cannot do it on your own because it is alien to us. So, you need an extra hand. That is where sugar (just one possible choice) and movement come into the equation. You need something that guarantees disconnection and a specific type of movement feeding your state of misery and confirming your choice of intimacy with it.

  578. It all feels related to our avoidance of stillness, a beautiful quality of surrender to the universal whole that is naturally within us all.

  579. The truth is that we are always going to experience a level of tension so best to develop a relationship and understanding with the tension rather than try to bludgeon it. Sometimes the tension is there to show us that something needs to change and sometimes the tension confirms that we are doing well – we need to discern which one it is. Whichever one it is we can learn if we listen and discern.

  580. The way that we move has a huge affect on how we feel about ourselves and it certainly supports us to get out of any emotional reaction if we move in gentleness and tenderness.

    1. Everything comes back to movements and reconfiguring a true way of moving in all that we do.

    2. Yes, Elizabeth, I find that when I am about to react to a tone of voice or particular trigger words spoken, if I stay calm and breathe tenderly instead, the whole drama is diffused like a puff of magical smoke.

  581. A key is not to beat ourselves up if we do choose to go for the ‘sugar’. Accepting where we are at feels important. When we fill up our self love bucket, the desire for sweet melts away.

    1. I agree sueq2012 acceptance of where we are at is vital for if we berate or judge ourselves we continue the spiral downwards and leave ourselves open for further unloving choices.

      1. Yes, Rosemary, berating ourselves cements low self worth, and it is insidious, look how many women apologise for the smallest of actions, or make self deprecating remarks – I’m noticing how much I still do this and am working on deepening appreciation of myself and it is happening less often

  582. “I always know that when I crave sweet things it means I am exhausted or feeling low for some reason;” I know this one, but filling up with sugar – be it ‘healthy’ with fresh fruit isn’t the answer and the feel good factor is momentary. I used to get this with chocolate. Clocking my movements prior to going for the hit can make a difference, even if in the end we choose to go for the sugar in whatever form.

  583. It is great to express about why we want sugar, for it is already widely spread that sugar is addictive and damaging to our health and well being. So the fact that we still have it aplenty all around us shows we want in, no matter what the consequences. Thus if we want to deal with sugar we have to deal with the reasons why we want it.

  584. Yes I agree Carmel, I can relate to making unloving choices which leads to exhaustion then sugar cravings and feeling low, a cycle that keeps on repeating itself till I’ve had enough to change my movements but why do I allow this to happen? Why do I delay evolution, that which is going to occur anyway?! It really does make me stop and feel even though I resist, harden my body and cry of the possibility and potential of the immense power and authority that resides within us.

  585. Thank you Carmel for the great practical tips to notice when we are not being tender and how to rectify that as being tender in my movements definitely eliminates my desire for not only sugar but also salt.

    1. Great sharing Jstewart51, I am the same. I have been trying to work out how to eliminate certain food cravings and Carmel has so beautiful shared the answers with us. It is so clear that it is about the quality of my movements as this will support me to make more loving choices.

  586. I love the simplicity with which you wrote this Carmel as you raise the important question..how can I love myself when I feel miserable. It is exactly that, returning to the quality of our movement, our breath and reconnecting to what we are inside, no matter what our choices have been up to that point. If we react to ourselves, being harsh, judgmental or critical we are doing the opposite and therefore digging the hole deeper.

  587. Carmel – this is such a super supportive blog. ‘By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.’ A beautiful reminder of what taking care of our bodies looks like – not so much about the doing (the musts) – but about letting go and being tender.

  588. I love the simplicity you offer here Carmel to simply focus on how you are with yourself, how you touch things, how you move, how you simply focus on how gentle you are. A very delicate and caring matter compared to reaching for the sugar and denying oneself this sensitivity.

  589. Carmel something that you share here is for all of us its the fact that “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery” this means to me that inside all of us there is a stillness that does not allow for anything but the quality of that stillness, it never goes and despite whatever emotion or upset we may feel it is always there for us. It changes the need to fix us and instead puts it back on re-connection.

  590. Great sharing Carmel, it is interesting how sugar can grab you and get you into a cycle of needing more. Yet as soon as you break the cycle you wonder what this fuss was all about as you realise you never really wanted or needed it. Just like a drug you can easily fall under its control – say yes to a small amount and you say yes to the whole. So whilst the initial few days of saying yes to love and no to sugar may seem challenging as soon as they pass the thoughts no longer have any hold over you especially when your movements are based on love. And we are not perfect so we cannot aim for perfection either which is important to remember so their is no self-bashing, which can be worse than eating sugar!

  591. Resonate with your everyday life observations Carmel – “For example, one I’ve particularly noticed is in ladies’ toilets – the way I hear some women attack the toilet roll or the paper towels makes me smile” – and in the past, I can recall a time where a colleague dropped her handbag down from a height and it landing with the most hugest of thuds and others in the space carried on oblivious to the noise — a noise we’ve all become so accustomed to making it does not even register in our already submerged way of living. I’m just feeling here too how the way we handle or place down anything, like our handbags, is the way or quality in which we also hold or place and therefore treat our own bodies too. Nothing is ever nothing.

    1. Yes, once our own movements become tender it is easier to feel when people plonk things down, whether it be handbags on the floor, papers on our desk or fruit and vegetables onto the supermarket shelves.

  592. Thank you, Carmel, for another down to earth article. I agree coming back to our movements when things get hairy really supports us and there’s nothing like the loveliness we feel when with the body.

  593. Very true Carmel. All sugar does is artificially lift us out of our tension for a very short moment and then crashes all our finely tuned circuits, taking with it a lot of nutrients on the way and thus depleting us on all levels. Connecting to the quality of our movements and breath enables us to feel the real effects of sugar and to get to the deeper awareness of why we want to eat it – exhaustion, tension, a loss of connection to our own sweet sacredness, avoidance and so on. Working at these deeper levels empowers us to cut the addiction and deal with the real issues.

    1. You raise a good point here Rowena how sometimes our choices can deplete our bodies of valuable nutrients thereby adding to our exhaustion

  594. Recently I am paying much more attention to the quality of my voice. It is a great marker as to where I am at and what is going on within myself and in life.

  595. I like this reminder of the balance or homoeostasis that our bodies are designed to be in, and that if we listen, the body will speak to us telling us what is out of balance. Its not complicated and there is no rocket science to it. The big question is do we listen to it and respond, or try to carry on and mask it… setting ourselves up for a bigger correction later on.

    1. …and what is so beautiful, Simon, is that the more we listen to our bodies, the more we can hear, and the easier it becomes to make healthy lifestyle choices.

  596. Sugar really is just like a drug, if it isn’t classed as one already. I used to always say that I didn’t have a sweet tooth and didn’t do sugar when I smoked and drank alcohol, oh how I was kidding myself! Sugar has though in its many forms become more of a go to when feeling tension in my body so thanks Carmel for the reminder of these practical tips that through movement we are treating the body with more care and is the way out of putting on those extra pounds.

    1. Exactly Kevin, and I can track the feelings I want to suppress with it, the kick it gives me, and then how it takes hold for a few days and demands more of the same once its in my body till after 2 or 3 days the craving diminishes.

    3. Ha ha, I said exactly the same thing kevmchardy, until I gave up alcohol and realised how much sugar I’d been getting through wine, the lack of which exposed how addicted I had become to sugar.

  597. Using sugar to try and sweeten and fill our emptiness can leave a sour feeling in the body.

    1. Yes, so true, sugar does not hold what it promises. It might be sweet for a moment but the after taste and aftermath is quite a different one to endure.

    2. Its a continous cycle or sugar, exhaustion, sugar exhaustion as its something I have got myself caught into when I have not been bringing it back to my tenderness.

      1. So we need to step out of the cycle of moment to moment solution and take a look at how we are living affects us in the longer run and a simple tool as bringing our focus back to tenderness can help us bring our ‘out of sort behaviour’ to a stop and to a focus where we can step by step reel ourselves back.

  598. The truth is we all want to feel good in ourselves. Part of self love is learning to find ways of responding to ourselves that truly support us, instead of turning to behaviours that temporarily take the edge off like overeating (that can lead to other issues like weight gain). I have also been discovering movement as a way of lovingly supporting myself, and with the support of Esoteric Yoga I have found that moving tenderly and with awareness of my body brings in a really beautiful quality of energy that is truly wonderful to experience. In fact I have found when I feel awful inside myself changing the quality of my movements can change how I feel pretty instantly.

    1. Thoughts are movements too, and when we change our thoughts we can change our mood and our demeanour lightens – what a great reflection to the world that can bring, and no sugar required.

  599. When we are hard with ourselves, naturally it follows that we carry that hardness with us. But, as you have so gorgeously expressed Carmel, the essence of our being is tenderness so when we do stop and register this hardness, we feel it as an assault on the body, which it is. And then if we are not willing to address this we will seek food to mask the fact that we have allowed into our body a substance so foreign to us, it acts like a poison in us.

  600. Great tip, Carmel, and I agree – being tender and gentle in the way I move my body is truly a great way to start enjoying being me.

    1. What I am finding is bringing tenderness and sacredness to my movements that is super supportive in staying connected with my self and conciously present.

  601. I am realising more and more that it is the way that we move that dictates what our next move will be. And that, by becoming more conscious of our movements we start to naturally include another source of energy from which to choose from, one that is impulsed by the soul. So if we want to know the validity of any person who says that they are a person of God, all we need to do, is to observe the way that they move and they will either be moving with God or without, it’s as simple as that.

    1. So true, how we move with our body off sets anything we put into our body. If we move in the true vibration, we will not get the food craving.

  603. Women’s toilets are indeed interesting places, I am always amazed by all the slamming doors and activity even though the toilet can be offering a moment of repose and reflection in our day. To feel who we are and what has been going on for ourselves that day which could help with not getting so exhausted by the end of the day.

  604. An honest and tender sharing Carmel. “there is a stillness inside that does not allow for misery”, We are all learning to move from the stillness we innately are and away from movements that disrupt or pollute it.

  605. Yes, Carmel. I work at a college and often see, hear and feel the harshness with which the young people move themselves around. There is definitely a gap in the curriculum that we are not taught how to treat our bodies with loving care.

    1. We all feel harsh movements in ourselves and others like an assault whether we choose to be aware of it or not.

    2. Janet, I agree there is definitely a gap, I have many younger members in my family and can see by there movements the harshness in their body.

  606. With all the craze around being a certain weight, we have forgotten (or are ignoring) the impact sugar has on our state of being – the high and low moods are so very important as those drops after sugar intake can actually make us feel depressed. It’s similar to stronger drugs such as cocaine, MDM etc. they all have a comedown effect which can often lead people to want to kill themselves. Yet, we’ve made sugar legal, and often award our children with it.

  607. In my experience with food and conscious presence, I’ve found something significant and that is that the less present I am in my body, the more cravings I have. Now I’m reflecting on that and understanding that is the absence of me what makes me look outside to fill me, either with food or with external attention. It’s interesting, because those cravings don’t nurture or satiate me ever, but instead make me fall in a circle of more cravings. Very different to the feeling of being complete and connected to my body. From there, I just look for what is needed at each time, without desperation or attachment, simply from the understanding of what my body needs and the awareness of what makes it feel healthy. Then it’s easy to respond and lovingly offer to it what it really needs.

    1. Thank you Amparo for sharing your experience, I found it very supportive to read.

  608. Carmel, I always really enjoy reading your articles, they are always so practical and supportive, thank you.

  609. Carmel, this is really helpful to read; ‘By being especially gentle and tender in my walk, my touch, my breath, I am taking more care of my body, and that is the start to being self-loving through our movements.’

    1. Yes its a simple and helpful reminder to where we can start to being tender and gentle with ourselves, sometimes we just have to bring it back to the basics.

  610. When we take sugar out of the diet and then reintroduce it you get to feel clearly the effects it has on the body, it is very addictive like any other drug. I love how you bring ‘awareness and understanding’ as to why, and get underneath the drive for this. We can only truly change our behaviours when we look at the root causes for them, with love and understanding.

    1. Yes sugar is very addictive and harmful. It is very worthwhile to reduce it!

  611. I laughed in reference to ladies attacking the toilet roll and paper towels.. it’s true. Bringing a quality of presence and gentleness to our daily tasks completely changes the quality of our relationship with ourselves, and this has a flow on effect with others.

    1. Observing people’s movements gives us a clear sense of what is going on inside. We think no-one is noticing our bad mood or distressed internal state, but everything is seen and felt and this goes for all of us whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

    2. I laughed at that too Victoria and it is so true. It is also a great reminder of the many thing in the day we do not pay attention to and that we can use to change the quality in which we move by simply being aware of how we do it.

    3. I’ve noticed this in swimming pool changing rooms too – bang crash! We are not taught to treat ourselves with tenderness, so its no surprise that a habitual pattern of crashing and banging pervades our lives. I was totally unaware of the fact (before attending Universal Medicine presentations) that moving gently – with every move I make – would make such a difference to my life,

      1. Before Universal Medicine I did not even know there was a particular quality to move in let alone that I could focus my attention on it, change it and relieve my body of much held hardness and tension.

    4. Its quite funny, but we don’t realise how we are moving when we are in that level of disregards we can only see that level of behaviour once we have started to make a change and then feel that disturbance ourselves.

  612. I’ve recently been on an expression course in which we have been invited to feel our voice in our body as we speak and sing. Whenever I have paid that kind of detailed attention, my body has felt amazing and I know my voice changes to a vibration that fills the room, not loud, just felt.

    1. I love the way you have described this Carmel. To express at ‘full volume’ is not dependant on how much sound we make, but on how much space we fill with our true quality.

      1. Yes. I have noticed how people often talk to the elderly and infirm in a loud voice, as if expecting that they will not be able to hear so raising the volume to make sure. I have found myself doing this too and then being surprised to find that if I talk from my heart in a ‘normal range’ voice they get exactly what I am saying.

  613. I also want sugar when I feel intimidated by feeling a non-attachment with the world. It is a tension felt from the world of feeling—you’re different and we don’t want you. And so I eat sugar to remain a part of everything the status quo. Therefore, I appreciate what I feel.

  614. I have cut out sugar in the past without knowing why from the point of view from the body, apart from being told it’s bad for me and would make me gain weight.
    Now I learn and understand the effects of sugar in my body. It is amazing Carmel to be honest about why we eat sugar and thus the choices to keep eating or not. I realize that when I want sugar it is a hardness that I feel I have to protect myself with in the lifestyle and business I have chosen to be. But the truth is, no matter how hard the world has chosen to be normal, it is being deeply gentle to ourselves and each other that is reflection needed. So instead of feeling a need to fit in and an investment to be accepted, it is a call of awareness in asking—what if it is abuse that I am asking to be accepted into and would I still want this acceptance then? To have two feet on the ground is super important but how to do it and respect ourselves is key.

  615. And seeing as I am on a roll now, one more comment, as I just cannot resist…movement is key as you have shared here Carmel – our movements can be harsh and hardened which will numb our bodies out and push us to eat foods that will harden or numb us out further. Or our movements can be gentle and full of care which will also lead to our food choices being full of care and far more support to our body.

  616. Food is a very effective way to numb us out, in other words to stop us from feeling what we are feeling – and there is a plethora of foods that can make us buzz (coffee, sugar, sweets, fruit etc), and other foods that can make us feel quite dulled out – in fact mere over-eating can do this too! When we use foods to not feel, then it does lead us to putting on weight as a form of protection from all that we can feel. At some point, it is the greatest gift we can give ourselves to simply allow ourselves to feel and be ok with what we are feeling, and then food does not matter (as it falls away) as a means to dull it all out.

  617. Carmel – thank you very much for this awesome, simple and wonderful reminder! I have had one of those mornings feeling so much and not quite remembering how to handle it all and … Voila… I stumbled across your blog as such a simple yet powerful reminder that I know exactly what I need to do: bring back the gentleness and tenderness and allow myself the understand and grace that I am feeling so much, so I might as well just feel the beauty that is there too!

  618. I had a bit of a giggle, Carmel, when I read your account of hearing how some women attack the toilet roll or the paper towels, as that is something I too have noticed. In fact it is often my noting the sound I’ve made doing something that is what calls me back to my body. The noise I make serves as a signpost when I am not completing an action in tenderness and yes, the tone of one’s voice is also a great giveaway that one has lost true connection with their stillness as well.
    As you say, ‘When we do anything without conscious presence, we are not being tender.’ That is what underpins and drives the subsequent unsupportive choices we then make as to what we eat.

  619. Love this blog. It’s very real and honest and I can relate to it very well at this point in my life.

  620. The way we are with ourselves in these down moments is what defines how we grow. If we listen and hold our sensitivity close to heart it can be the springboard to much bigger things.

    2. Joseph, so true in those down moments if we allow ourselves the space and understand we can bring ourselves back without indulging in sugar.

  621. ‘the way for me to feel less misery is to enjoy moments of tenderness with myself, because my body is beautiful and it feels beautiful when it is being tender’ – this seems so obvious, yet, because we have been living in disconnection from our bodies for so long, it’s all to easy to slip back into this familiar pattern of hardness. How gorgeous it will be when moving with tenderness becomes our norm.

  622. What a gorgeous blog, thank you Carmel. You write with such honesty and deep tender care for yourself – it’s very beautiful to feel. I love how you’re inviting us all to go to another level with ourselves in terms of being aware of how we are feeling when we get ‘unloving’ cravings and allowing the understanding, rather than judging ourselves, which then makes it so much easier to make more loving choices in that moment.

  623. Thanks you Carmel for sharing ,connecting back to our natural tenderness and connection are great ways of coming home when our reactions to the world or life makes us want to numb or dull down our awareness through sugar or foods. Its seems that food thing is a total set up , just a way to self medicate, by dulling down what we feel or changing the channel in a way by food choices. But unfortunately it serves us nil as usually takes us to a lower vibratory state with even less wisdom understanding or connection.

  624. “Our bodies are systems of delicate balance” – So true. It’s a great question to ask ourselves how we’d treat our bodies if we saw them as truly delicate and divinely designed, which in fact they are.

  625. We are all very sensitive beings, and many of us have spent our lifetime hardening and toughening up to protect our sensitivity… no wonder everyone is so exhausted – it creates a lot of tension and takes a huge amount of energy to hold that protection in our bodies. And so we go to stimulants like sugar, caffeine and salt to give us a boost and counteract the exhaustion we feel – however there is a guaranteed low afterwards, and so we yo-yo through life.

    1. Good point, Paula, we underestimate how much energy our ‘protection’ drains, when staying sensitive to what is going on is all the protection we truly need.

  626. The tension you describe can seem unbearable and food or snacking appears as our saviours, momentarily anyway. But just like with alcohol or any other addiction, the moment the effect wears off, the original ‘problem’ is back and incidentally, it can feel as though, the more we try to numb it, the stronger it seems to get.

    1. Yes, greatly put, we just cover the problem but it will not go away, and the problem that we then create on top of the problem with this behaviour is that we become less and less clear about what is really going on getting stuck in the behaviour but never returning back to the root cause of it.

    2. I know this feeling well, and ultimately it is great the ‘problem’ does not go away because it is asking us to look at it and address it rather than suppress it. If we get away with suppressing it then we are not learning and so when it comes back it has to seemingly be more intense so we see it and change it. After all life is about returning back to the love we are so anything less than this level of love needs to be readdressed and seen for what it is.

    3. So true Conrad, when we choose food as our ‘medicine’, it’s as though there is a force pushing us to indulge more and more – as though we know that we’re actually making things worse, by avoiding dealing with the real issue as to why we’re feeling the way we are, but the ‘seeming enjoyment’ of whatever it is that we are eating overrides our knowing that we’re not supporting ourselves, in fact we’re making things worse. Then we can go into judgment which compounds things even further.

    4. Eating, exercising, smoking pot, watching telly, shopping etc are all as effective at addressing tension, as pulling the top off a weed without getting to the root.

      1. Very true Conrad, Alison & Alexis the short-term relief and pleasure never lasts and with every time we postpone addressing the issue it only seeks to intensify. Once we commence consistently to address the tension as it arises the easier and less intense the tension becomes, in fact it can even become, though not necessarily of pleasure, moments to welcome as they are opportunities to evolve.

    5. Agreed Conrad its like we turn to anything to stop feeling that tension, something happens that we don’t like to feel and bang we are eating our way through a packet of biscuits. Today at work, we have to deal with much abuse from customers – no wonder the desks are full of cakes.

  627. Conscious presence is a very powerful tool for bringing us back to feeling our bodies and what is truly going on within.

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