Geneen Roth Session #6

This is the last online session that happened back last summer. Since I am dusting off all my Geneen Roth materials I decided to finish the last session that I never got to.

Geneen has many practices that she outlines throughout her books and her session. She wants us to pick one practice at a time and work on that. Not to try to do this all at the same time. It's too overwhelming to make all the changes at once. But change isn't going to happen on its own- we have to work the practice one at a time. Master one and move to the next practice. Continue to work all the past practices. What are you willing to put into practice?

Notes -

1. We do not change ourselves by force, deprivation, guilt, fear, shame, or punishment. This results in a counter force that makes your rebound in some way at some time.
2. Force closes the heart.
3. Change happens from love to love.
4. When we practice being kind to ourselves and listening to ourselves it becomes impossible to binge. (what is going on, am i hungry, am i full, why do i want to binge) - be quiet with yourself and listen.
5. Take in the good in your life - what's positive, appreciate it, acknowledge (not necessarily huge things - small accomplishments are great too).
6. Do you feel safe at the weight you are at? Do you need to feel badly about yourself to feel safe? Do you identify yourself at a certain weight?
7. Who are you loyal to? What are you loyal to?
8. What do you need to do to feel loved? Is it maladaptive?
9. How do you realign? Be curious about it, inquire about it, sit with it, disengage from "the voice"
10. Brain likes familiarity. Outside of this creates dissonance, lack of safety feeling, pull to go back
11. Expect to be very uncomfortable getting outside of your comfort zone.
12. The more you turn to food when you are not hungry the more powerless you feel about taking action on your own behalf. You feel younger, more hopeless, more dependant.
13. Food is not teaching you to trust yourself, feel more powerful, not serving your best interest, not bringing you closer to yourself
14. It's good to have an inquiry partner that you can meet with regularly to talk. Follow the inquiry steps in the back of Women, Food and God.
15. Change your orientation or relationship to your experiences and redirect from food.
16. It's not about the experience itself it's how you react to it.
17. Meditation - don't feel like a failure if this is hard to do.
18. Meditation - time to be with yourself, know what is going on in your mind, getting to know your mind
19. Don't let your thoughts send you to a binge. They are just thoughts and shouldn't have that power. No matter how horrible or mean. All thoughts should be welcomed and questioned.
20. Thoughts are uncontrollable, what you can control is where you place your attention (relationship to them)
21. "When I get to the end of my life I want to a bride that was married to amazement."
22. Our life is not about the number on the scale or how good we did last week or our pants size. It's about knowing who we are. Use our relationship with food to know who we are.

Geneen Roth Session #5 Notes

This isn't a must read all for all. I am just using the blog as a place to take my notes from the Geneen Roth session that was held, just a short 8 months ago. I never finished listening to the sessions. Something about listening without seeing is hard to do. I don't know how they did it back in the day when a radio was all people had. YIKES!



"Relearning Loveliness"

1. Change needs to be taken slowly. It doesn't happen overnight. Make your choices and start to make small changes and build on that new habit.


2. How do you change a habit? By wanting to make a change.


3. Binge = bolting from yourself and avoiding discomfort


4. Become aware on a daily basis your goals.


5. Every binge = a lost opportunity to be with yourself and to break free from your pattern.


6. Question the beliefs that lead you to think that it is not OK for you to be happy.


7. Sometimes it is necessary to retreach a thing its loveliness. To put a hand on its brow on the flow and to retell it in words and in touch that it is lovely.


8. Question the belief that you are not lovely (i.e. always a failure, not loveable, not fixable)


9. This process is not an intellectual process.


10. When your mind stops you can reach your true being. Tap into essense.


11. Know your patterns and you will be able to divert more quickly. You don't have to keep rexploring it.

Geneen Roth Session #4

OK, OK - so I am behind just a little bit and am doing 2 sessions in one day. :o) And the 5th session is in 2 days. So I am really behind. But that's OK. I guess I need to reflect and practice inquiry around why it is taking me this long to get to the classes. I think I know the answer - CHANGE and being afraid that this is just another thing that I am getting my hopes up about and it not working. So I am working on that.

It is so weird that I wrote the sentences above, started the recorded session and the first question that came up today was from a participant that is saying that she started feeling hopeful and now is feeling defeated and feeling like this is just something else to fail at. Very interesting. It's amazing how you think you are the only one feeling these feelings and you suddenly find out that it is so far from the truth.

Session #4 Topic - "Finding Your Enough"

Beginning Questions

1.) Things do not change in 4 weeks. Don't be impatient. The thought of wanting to change does not change us. Insight is not enough. Actions need to be taken that are different from what you have done before. Words alone do not change - you must take action!

2.) Align yourself with intention can feel like deprivation, but the follow through on intention is more of an undoing that a doing. Undoing of our habitual ways of being unconscious. We are going against our usual way of being unconscious.

3.) We are loyal to our old way of doing things. Dig in and determine who we are being loyal to.

4.) A lot of us have the longing to have someone else do this for us and to fix us. As we know though, no one can do this for us. This is the child inside of us coming out. Have compassion for this voice.

5.) Exercise - you can't shame yourself into working out and have it be good for you. Pay attention to the kind of movement that feels best for you. How would I like to move? What is the answer - go with that.

6.) Rest, contact, food and movement - the 4 things the body must have.

Today's Topic

1.) Each of us has an essence. We have lost this knowledge and feel homeless.

2.) We identify with our personality or ego - this is the small self that we take ourselves to be.

3.) Inquiry allows us to remove the barriers that are holding us back inside ourselves. We have unlimited potential.

4.) When you are not connected to who you really are - you feel broken, wounded. Until you understand yourself and connect with yourself - you will always feel lonely.

5.) If as a child we could have been able to stay connected to ourselves when someone else did something to us - the wound would not have happened. We would have been able to see that the action was about the other person and not ourselves. Because we were not able to do that as a child we separated from ourselves. We need to focus that this is still the case that it has to do with the other person and not ourselves. We need to learn the way back.

6.) Food is the doorway to your essence. It is the closest thing we have to our essence because it's the present link to it.

7.) We don't pay attention to our awareness, we pay attention to the thought itself.

8.) Determining your true self is not going to get you to an ultimate goal. It is just itself the nature of itself - you will be closer to yourself.

Practices for the Week

Eat what your body wants. - this is not what think you should be eating, deprivation, what you wanted as a child

Notice what you are loyal to.

Geneen Roth Session #3

The topic of this session is - "What are you really hungry for?" This is a great question for me. I think ultimately I am looking for acceptance mostly for myself, I am looking for love and I am looking for purpose. I know that sitting on the couch on the weekends binging is not the life that I want to lead or one that I will be fulfilled with when the end comes.

Below are the notes for week #3 from Geneen Roth's online retreat.

Session began with class member questions -

1.) What should we eat when hungry? Listen to your body hungry. Tune in to it. Check into your body and figure out what works and what doesn't.

2.) How do I eat when I am hungry on a structured schedule? Make the guidelines work for you. Take into consideration what works for you. Take care of yourself.

3.) Should I eat breakfast? Know your body.

4.) Should I lose weight before I start working the guidelines? this seems to be more like a deferral process. Scared of change. Dig deep into your thoughts and determine your real motives.

Messages on Tonight's Topic

1.) Inquiry - allows you to be curious about what you really believe and feel. Conscious or unconscious. Self-image and identity are made up of beliefs, feelings and thoughts. This is what we believe to be the truth because we have thought it so long and no longer question the truth. How we define success and failure. Inquiry is the focus and questioning our resistance to what we are feeling.

2.) Curiosity - how was it handled as a child? Were you allowed to ask questions were you scolded?

3.) Being a victim and victim mentality is the opposite of curiosity. It allows you to remove yourself from this reflection.

4.) We no longer rely on adults to take care of us. We are adults now. If we keep repeating what we heard as children and to believe it we are allowing those other adult voices to be our voices.

5.) Whatever you are feeling - treat it as if it's the first time you have felt it and really look at the feeling and explore it.

6.) Inquiry
a.) Cannot have an agenda.
b.) Cannot have preferences on emotions
c.) No judgements allowed
d.) Voice needs to be questions and disengaged
e.) Don't analyze it
f.) You have to be willing to know something you may not want to know

7.) Sensation Location - what is the sensation and where do I feel it the most? Become more precise from there. Color, shape, true feeling? This is the first step of inquiry.

8.) This is a practice and isn't going to be an instant ah-ha moment. We aren't going to be good at it in the beginning.

The Voice

1.) We are so blended with the voice that it is in the first person and it does sound like ourselves talking to ourselves.

2.) Recognize the attack of the voice - you suddenly feel small and diminished.

3.) You may not in the beginning that the voice is talking to you, but you will feel the after effects. Now you can start working yourself backwards to figure out what is going on.

4.) Sometimes you feel desperate and need to find someone else really smart. Need to find a guide or a mentor. This is the influence of the voice.

5.) Work at the "you" and "me" process. Put your voice into second person and start to separate. Talk back to the voice and put it in it's place.

This week's practice -

Eat without distractions - no television, reading, computer

Practice Inquiry - start developing your curiosity. Ask yourself why you did something you told yourself you weren't going to do. Be kind to your self.

June 1st Session

I was out of town last week and missed the Geneen Roth session. I am just getting to the class now. Here are the learning and interesting comments for the evening:

Identifications from the previous week:

1. we hardly eat when we are hungry.
2. we eat on a schedule.
3. we don't need nearly as much food as you need.
4. nothing is a rule.
5. if you eat when you are not hungry, there is no gauge to tell you to stop.
6. if you eat when you are not hungry, you will not know what you are hungry for.
7. when you stop using food to push down your feelings you have to deal with them.
8. when you stop eating when you are not hungry, you will start feeling new things and wonder what to do with your time.
9. commit to yourself
10. what is the most important thing to you - re-decide on a daily basis
11. eat what your body wants
12. mouth hunger - looking, smelling food
13. body hunger - what your body needs for nourishment, energy, vitality
14. mind hunger - choosing what used to be forbidden
15. beliefs drive actions and they should be questioned
16. taking time with yourself is not self indulgent of selfish

"Beyond What's Broken: Becoming Whole Again"

1. Every single one of us start our lives with a sense of being fine without self reflection.
2. As we get older we begin to learn what approval and disapproval is.
3. Construct our self images based on what we learn as lovable and what is not lovable - what was paid attention to.
4. Change is impossible until we understand our inner critic and the voice that says you CAN'T DO THIS!
5. Current status quo is having a dysfunctional relationship with food. Changing this upsets the voice and it comes in to stun you to stop transformation.
6. The voice's function is supposed to stop us from doing what to do and what not to do in society. It starts as our parents and becomes internalized as we get older.
7. The voice takes objective truth and blends it with moral judgement. (i gained 20 lbs this year blends with I am a loser and have no will power).
8. You know you are under the influence of the voice when you feel paralyzed, needy, weak, shamed or desperate.
9. Name your voice. It is possible to separate ourselves from the voice.
10. Disengage from your voice. Defend against your voice and tell it to get lost.
11. Practice. Practice. Practice.