Who are you without an automatic habit?

I have been feeling very restless recently. It's the kind of restlessness that feels promising, as if I am getting in touch with my own appetite for life again, wanting to taste it and touch it and consume it. I feel like I am reaching out to something more, to something more alive.

And in this mood, I just read something that makes complete sense to me. It's an exercise from Sarah Susanka's lovely book The Not So Big Life. She talks about an assignment her first teacher gave to her that profoundly changed how she experienced her daily life.

Susanka says: "Once she had named these patterns, I recognized my attachment to them, but until that moment I had been unaware of how much each one defined who I took myself to be. These were the three patterns she identified and her requests for change:

1. You always wear long skirts. No more skirts. 
2. You have worn your hair long for many years. Cut your hair.
3. You have a glass of wine when you return home  from work each day. No more alcohol after 5.00 p.m.

The three assignments proved to be brilliant catalysts for change, not only in those patterns of behavior but in my entire self-image."

When she was given this exercise, she didn't own a pair of pants, so she had to go out and buy a couple of pairs. She had never thought about it, but her self-image was deeply tied to her skirt collection. She found the hair assignment even more difficult. She did cut a few inches off her hair, but she felt that she didn't quite fulfill the assignment as completely as she could have. She did stop having the glass of wine, and this small shift actually dramatically changed the quality of her evenings, simply because she was more alert.

She kept this up for nine months, as prescribed by her teacher.  

Susanka says: "All these changes allowed me to experience firsthand that my ideas about how I "am" are quite arbitrary and that by making even small changes in behavior patterns, big shifts will occur all by themselves."

As we begin to identify our own daily habits, we may find that we think of some as practical choices and have no good rationale for others. "Either kind of habit will work in this exercise, since even those habits you think you've adopted for purely utilitarian purposes will in all likelihood prove to be more than that. What you'll discover, whichever habits you change, is that everything you do affects both how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you."

And how do we identify these habits? We can think of how we dress and we can think of what our routines are. For example: Are your clothes predominantly one color? Then, maybe stop wearing that color for six months. Do you always or never wear makeup or perfume? What if you changed that? What if you only wore skirts instead of jeans?

What about your routines? Do you habitually watch the news or read something at a particular time? Do you clean up from meals right away or later? Do you habitually have a cup of tea or coffee at a certain time?

Which of these do you feel most attached to as something that you "have" to do? Which of these ways of being do you feel most resistant to changing? You could choose something to change that either feels hard or simple, though the harder thing will, of course, be more rewarding.

What happens if you do something different for six months? What have you broken away from? What have you discovered? Were you using something as an excuse? Was your self-image closely wrapped around something insubstantial?

How does changing your moves affect the rest of your life? Does it make you feel a little bit more alive? Does it make you feel vulnerable? Does it make you feel something else altogether?

What do you think? Would you like to try something like this - something that shifts an underlying pattern and reveals something more about how you live your life?        

A Quote from Jane Eyre

                  “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”  

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

                                                                                             
I read Jane Eyre as a teenager and couldn't quite pin-point all the things I loved about it. But loved it, I did. Maybe because, in part, it's a book about freedom -- about our right to feel our own feelings and to think our own thoughts. 

On writing loves

I have found another writing love! Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul has been on my reading list for a few months now. Yesterday, I finally began the book. I am only a few chapters in, and I already know that this is a book I will love.

I woke up today feeling the kind of expansive, comforting feeling that comes only when you catch a glimpse of the bigger picture and things start to make sense. 

There are so many things that Moore talks about with such great understanding.

One thing that he talks about is our tendency to move between two extremes. He tells the story of a client of his comes to him and tells him that she wants to be more independent. She thinks her dependence is creating problems in her relationships, and becoming independent will solve them.

Moore says that this is not necessarily so. The soul has many aspects, and cutting off one of them in service of the other wouldn't solve the issue. She would only be facing it again from the other side. He says, "The fact that her dependency is making itself felt doesn't mean it should be bludgeoned or surgically removed; it may be asserting itself because it needs attention. Her heroic championing of independence might be a way of avoiding and repressing the strong need of something in her to be dependent."

He tries framing her need differently, in words that don't reek of the wimpiness that seems to bother her. He asks her, "Don't you want to be attached to people, learn from them, get close, rely on friendship, get advice from someone you respect, be part of a community where people need each other, find intimacy with someone that is so delicious you can't live without it?"

Is that dependence, she questions back. Yes, he says, that's what it sounds like to him. And like everything else, there's no way to have the good without also having to deal with its shadows. The good that comes from healthy dependence is accompanied by its shadows - its neediness, inferiority, its loss of control.

Moore says that he had the feeling that his client was avoiding intimacy and friendship by "focusing these qualities into a caricature of excessive dependency." By getting caught in this caricature, she was failing to understand the deeper issues involved. Like her, we might be scared of being deeply involved with the people in our lives and the life being lived around us.

What we need to do, though, is to "go with the symptoms" instead of against them. What this woman needed was to find ways to be dependent that felt fulfilling to her and that were not so extreme that they split off dependence off from independence. She needed to value healthy dependence and not idolize a quality she perceived as being the panacea for what was ailing her.

Our soul is manifested in many aspects. In this client, Moore says, the dependent face of the soul needed to be acknowledged and honored. Cutting off her needs to be dependent was actually a move against her inner life, against her soul.

This is something for all of us to grapple with. When I look inside, I can see how easily polarized I become, how I take up position on one extreme. I love the guidance that Moore offers, as he asks us to listen to the different needs within us and honor all these needs, instead of getting shut off in a corner. This is something I will attempt to do more of this year, to flow more instead of stagnating on one side.   

How hunger and lack of sleep are related.

Yesterday, I talked about the mind-body link that Deepak Chopra discusses in his book, What are you hungry for? Changing our relationship with food goes beyond making informed nutritional choices. We might have to go deeper and address issues like emotional hunger or the way our lifestyle hampers us and contributes to overeating.

Here's what Deepak Chopra says about his own struggle with weight: "Because everything is connected, something like getting a good night's sleep was part of my new way of eating. Lack of sleep throws off the balance between two hormones (leptin and ghrelin) responsible for making you feel hungry and full. People who don't sleep well overeat easily when their body stops sending the right hormonal messages. Belly fat disturbs the same hormones. And what you end up with is a self-perpetuating cycle that is not only unhealthy but potentially dangerous."

As I work to change my own relationship with food, deconstructing why and when I overeat has become more and more important. Since lack of sleep is an issue for many people, becoming aware that it could be contributing to overeating can provide that nudge to make the change and actually get more sleep.

Awareness is the key to making any change. How is your lifestyle affecting the way you eat?

What's your hunger telling you?

Are you someone who wants to change their relationship with food? Do you suspect that there is more going on when you overeat than simply making bad food choices? Are you looking for a solution that is whole instead of fragmented, holistic instead of linear?

Deepak Chopra's book What are you hungry for? offers valuable insights and suggestions that can help us become more aware of how we relate to food and why we might be misusing it. Among other things, Chopra talks about how food can become a substitute for other things that we might be looking for.

Why does this happen? Why do we turn to food for comfort and security instead of keeping it in its proper place.

The answer, Chopra says, lies in the fact that we, human beings, are complex organisms. "In its natural state, the brain controls hunger automatically. When your blood sugar falls below a certain level, messages are sent to an almond-sized region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which is responsible for regulating hunger. When it receives messages of decreased blood sugar, your hypothalamus secretes hormones to make you feel hungry, and when you've eaten enough, the hormones reverse, making you no longer hungry. This feedback loop between blood and brain operates on its own, as it has for millions of years. Any animal with a spinal cord (vertebrate) has a hypothalamus, which makes sense, because hunger is so basic." 

But, what makes people different is that in us, pure physical hunger gets interfered with easily. For example, we might be distracted and forget to eat. We might be extremely stressed out, which makes us ravenously hungry. We are always in search for what will satisfy us.


Although this might feel like self-destructive behavior when it comes to eating, it is, in fact, a normal human drive to seek fulfillment. What we need to understand is how this process works physiologically, how we start substituting food for other things we need.

Chopra says that we need to look beyond the simple circuitry that controls our basic hunger drive through the hypothalamus. We need to be aware that our brains are more complex than that, that we have the capacity to override simple signals from our body.

He says: "Imagine that three telephone conversations converge at one junction, which in reality is the meeting of three basic regions of the brain. Each region has something to tell you; each is sending neural messages to you at once. Each is seeking a different kind of satisfaction. The lower brain is satisfied when you feel good physically. The limbic system is satisfied when you feel good emotionally. The higher brain is satisfied when you are making good decisions for yourself.

The miracle of the human brain is that all three lines can merge and cooperate. The lower brain can send the message "I'm hungry," which the emotional brain accepts, because "Eating puts me in a good mood," so the higher brain can say, "Let's stop for a meal." This balancing act is natural, and it works to the benefit of all three regions of the brain. None of them must force its message through, trying to get heard by pushing the others out of the way. Your brain is structured to find happiness at every level."

So, unlike a baby who operates almost exclusively with basic instincts from the lower brain, and eats when he is hungry or sleeps when he is tired, in an adult, the interaction amongst different parts of the brain becomes more complex as the limbic system and the higher brain also have their individual pieces to communicate. "Their version of happiness is far more complex" than simply meeting biological needs.

So what does this mean for us? If we are aware of how our brains and different motivations work, we can also see that our bodies are not turning against us. There is an unsatisfied need in some other part of our life that is reflected in the way that we are eating, or rather, overeating.

Instead of solving the problem only from a nutritional standpoint by cutting calories, we can look beyond the surface to see the underlying web of what's driving us. Is our natural hunger getting converted into a ravenous emotional hunger? Which of our needs are we not taking care of? 

We can start the process of change by asking ourselves what is it that would truly satisfy us.

Maybe it is something that brings us joy like music, maybe it is creating a more meaningful life. Maybe it is a need for connection.

Whatever need lies beneath our hunger, fulfilling that would help us approach our hunger from a more holistic perspective that recognizes that we are complex and multi-layered.

What are you hungry for? And what will satisfy your hunger?  

HSPs and Overeating

I have written earlier about learning to honor your own instincts when you are figuring out what kind of exercise would work best for you. For me, it's been yoga because of its scope for gentleness and its emphasis on the mind-body connection.

The other part of this equation is learning to eat correctly. Instead of opting for the standard, one-size fits all solution, as HSPs, we need to look at our eating from a holistic perspective. What works for everyone won't necessarily work for us.

Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch's book Intuitive Eating is one book that breaks away from the follow a diet mentality and nudges us to make healthy changes. Instead of putting pressure to do a total diet overhaul, they help us examine and re-define our relationship with food.

One thing that they talk about is the fact that we need to re-discover the pleasures of eating. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, letting ourselves enjoy what we eat ultimately adds up to eating less in the long run. This is because we are satisfied and not craving things and crashing and burning.

Some questions that they urge us to ask ourselves include: "What do I feel like eating?" "What food aroma might appeal to me?" "Do I want something sweet, salty, sour, or even slightly bitter?" "Do I want something crunchy, smooth, creamy, soft, lumpy, fluid, etc?" "Do I want something light, airy, heavy filling, or in-between?"

Asking these questions is important because most of us are so out of touch with our bodies and what would satisfy us. We are also used to using food as a reward or relating to it with guilt or self-inflicted punishment when we break a diet rule. But when we tune in to our bodies to ask ourselves what we need, we can change our relationship to food.

Instead of a reward or a punishment, it becomes a source of nurturing. If we really take into consideration what we want, we might accept that in this cold weather, a warm breakfast would satisfy our basic hunger. We might think about the textures of food and realize that we want something crunchy, something we can really bite into.

Tribole and Resch talk about clients who after learning to tune in, become aware of how only specific foods give them that feeling of satisfaction. Learning their own preferences and including it in their meals makes eating a more pleasurable experience and helps them be satisfied now, so that they can eat less later.

We all know people who eat like this instinctively. They check in with themselves about what they want. They let themselves savor and enjoy their food. While they eat healthily, they don't deprive themselves or eat only health foods.

If they love sweets, they let themselves eat a high-quality rich dessert instead of settling for something that is sub-standard or one that has artificial sweeteners. Research shows that calorie-free, artificial sweeteners offer only partial activation of the food reward pathways in the brain. This means that we are not fully satisfied even after eating, and are motivated to eat more.

Research also indicates that artificially sweetened food may actually encourage sugar cravings. This is because the more often we are exposed to a flavor, the more this becomes a preference for us. So, if we are used to the intense sweetness of artificially sweetened food and beverages, we start favoring them more than naturally sweetened food.

Our perception of these foods as being lower in calories also causes us to overeat.

Instead of falling on the diet bandwagon, if we can honor our hunger and check in about what our bodies need and want, we can start moving towards becoming an intuitive eater. As part of this process, I have become aware that I want food with a creamy texture nowadays. That means that soups and broths are highly satisfying. I also know that I always enjoy a warm breakfast, especially in the winters, but regardless of the weather. I also love the satisfying crunch of sugar snap peas and I love food with specific tastes like ginger.

Including these different preferences in my daily meals makes for a more satisfying experience. It also means that I am nurturing my self by giving importance to what I like and don't like. It helps me look for satisfying and healthy options without making food into something bigger than it is.

This is only one step in learning to eat intuitively, but learning to take pleasure in what we eat is a good place to start when we are re-deciding how we want to eat and live.   

We are Always in Transition

Before I'd left for India a week ago, I got a stack of new books from the library. In one of them, Pema Chodron said something that leapt out at me. It went something like this: we are always in transition. 

Such a simple statement, yet so true. We are always in transition. 

Delhi feels different, although it hasn't changed much. There are still the same or similar models and actresses in the magazines. The ads on T.V. are familiar. There is still the overwhelming sea of humanity whenever I have ventured outside. 

It is difficult to just walk to the market for an errand, sidestepping the onset of people and cars and bicycles. It is difficult to not feel slightly uncomfortable as people get into my space. Personal space is an oxymoron in public spaces here. It irks me no end. I can finally see how much I need my personal and metaphorical space as an HSP and empath.

And yet, when I got out of the car today after a shopping trip, there is a scent in the trees around, a fragrance that I can't quite name, but that I can place. It has some part of me wrapped up in it, and inhaling it takes me back to that part. 

There is the India that I love, made up in my memories. I think of people I haven't thought about with any immediacy for these last few years. I fall back into old parts of myself, both good and bad. 

Do you like being in America, someone asks me. I like it, I say. I do. They are expecting me to say that I miss India, which I fail to mention, although I do miss it. They are expecting me to maybe talk about how sanitized and uniform America is, which I think it sometimes is. 

The truth is that you can never say this is better than that. There are things that I love about India. There are things that I hate about it. Both loving and hating it makes it mine. 

Then, there are things I dislike about America and things I still don't understand. But it's the place where I am finding my voice. It's the place that is helping me to question, where I have become a little more of who I am. I already have a storehouse of memories there, even in this short time. 

On my layover here, I looked at an Indian woman and thought about her travelling across the ocean, from one side of the world to another. After two years in America, I can start to see the layers of beliefs super-imposed on someone like her, because she is also someone like me, going back and forth in two different spaces. 

When I am more familiar with Americans, I will be able to see all the beliefs that shape and mold who they are. How much of us is just programs running, a place out of which we'e grown? How much of us is real?  

I had started reading Rollo May's The Courage to Create back home in America. Now, in my parent's home in Delhi, I start reading it again. I love what he writes. He talks about being and becoming. We are different from the rest of nature in how we become ourselves. 

An acorn becomes an oak, a cat becomes a kitten automatically. There is no choice involved. But to be iand become who we are is not automatic. It requires courage. We have to commit to and assert our true self if the self has to have a reality.   

Here in India, I think about and come close to all the old me's, many of whom were automatic. I feel the shell of my ego that's hardened. I hear the beat of my heart that's lost inside.  

I think about the thin layer of guilt that always coated me here. I couldn't quite pull it apart then from among a thousand other motivations. Now, I know that as an empath - as someone who can sense and almost feel other people's feelings - Delhi was completely overwhelming. 

Just going outside was an assault on the senses. Numbing myself and being more like other people - detached - was a coping mechanism. But not feeling or not channeling my feelings into action was harmful. 

Maybe I couldn't or didn't want to help every poor or distressed person I came into contact with. But not responding, not giving when I have the capacity to give, made me passive. It took away my power. 

As empaths and sensitive people who feel too much, maybe this is part of our journey - to look back and see where we might have done wrong, or just had bad habits, or little understanding from those around us, and cut ourselves from a source of our strength.  

Instead of getting mired in feelings and thinking, taking some of that energy and channeling it into doing something straightens me up. I can't do everything, but maybe I am not required to. 

Finding What Works for Us

Sometimes, we need a new way of looking at the same thing for us to be able to adopt it fully. I have been doing yoga for the last couple of months now. This is not the first time I've attempted yoga. 

But this is the first time that it has started to work for me. 

I started it with the intention of adopting a gentle practice to feel better physically. 

I wanted to lose weight but I wanted to get away from trying to lose weight by working out. I wanted to work from the inside-out and change in a real way, even if it took time.

I began because I had a sense that working out in a gym (even though it was a cozy, women's only place) didn't work for me for a couple of reasons. One was that I didn't like being looked at when I was working out. Was that an HSP thing? 

I also didn't like the pain. I know you are supposed to say you like it, or at least submit to it for a larger purpose. But that made it harder to want to do it everyday although I did feel a sense of strength after exercising. That, I liked. 

But the most important thing was that I didn't like being asked questions. I didn't like talking about my weight with people there, in any form or capacity. I know that weight is a socially-acceptable area to talk about, where people feel free to give advice, even when you haven't asked for it. 

But it made it unpleasant to go there. 

There are reasons that I have struggled with my weight for so many years. There are reasons that there are so many people struggling with so much weight. And many of them go beyond a basic dietary explanation. And so, when someone talks about our weight, they are usually talking without any understanding. 

They are touching on something very personal, something they have no insight about. 

For once, I made sense of all this, of all my different reasons. For once, I gave importance to my discomfort with talking about my weight. For once, I decided to comfort myself and to exercise in a more private way.

For once, I thought about what I needed and wanted, about what would fit into my nature.  

I was familiar with the works of the somatic therapist Anodea Judith, so I started with bio-energetic exercises and with her take on yoga postures. This was a very different entry-point from the yoga I had attempted earlier. Most of that had been focused on the physical aspect. 

Most of that had either left me cold or left me intimidated. 

This time, the entry-point was understanding that the body has its own wisdom, that this was a practice that could also help still my mind. The focus was on working with the body, not working beyond the body. 

As I read more and more, I like yoga more and more. The physical postures are not the point of yoga, mindfulness is. Doing a simple posture with full attention is better than doing an advanced posture with no attention to yourself and the present moment.  

What yoga philosophy says aligns with what I have come to believe - that the body is an important part of the whole. It is not something to be trampled upon, or something to be made into an ornament. It is an instrument through which sounds plays, the form that our spirit takes. It is sacred. 

As I read more on yoga philosophy, I understand the reasons why yoga practice didn't appeal to me before. The explanations I had read talked about withdrawing your senses from the outside world. They felt like a giving up of the experience of being human - of touching, of tasting, of seeing. They felt ascetic in a way that didn't appeal to me. 

The explanations that I read now explain it differently. They resonate with the truth I can feel inside. The reason we withdraw our senses or meditate is to get in touch with what's inside. It's to experience that part of us that remains constant. 

It is, in fact, to find the center that we might have lost. That calms us down. It does not make us feel less. We are not giving up anything. In fact, it creates a little bit more space inside us. It gives us a better sense of who we are.   

Disconnecting from our thoughts does not mean we no longer think or that our mind is not important. It means that we realize that the automatic part of our mind can run us over. It hangs on to certainty, makes us scared. 

We don't want to live from here. We want to live from a knowing that runs through our body, that is greater than the fear our thoughts can tumble down into. 

My sense is that the change that practicing the postures will bring - whether it is feeling better physically or feeling calmer mentally - will not be dramatic or painful. It will be instead, a gentle uncovering, a gradual process. It will be a shift that does not topple me over, but helps me give up the patterns and beliefs that distort how I think. 

Like other people, I have been scared of going inside myself. But inside me is also the real me. I think it is just fear that misleads us, that makes us feel that we won't be able to deal with what's inside, or that we will just feel emptiness or negation. Sometimes, we do find that. 

We also find ourselves. We get so buried in our thoughts and feelings and reactions, at least I do, that sweeping them out is helpful. Thoughts are not all I am. Feelings are not all I am. There is something bigger, and that's such a relief.   

HSPs and Finding Meaning

Always feeling can become a bad habit. Swimming in the sea of sensations, caught up in the rip-tide of emotions, it's easy to lose sight of the reality of a shore, a solid ground that can hold us just as well as the never-ending ocean. 

Looking back, there was a time in my life when I was practical, aware of what was happening around me, aware of how the people around affected me. 

Then, there were also the many years when I felt as if I was thrashing around in the water, getting swept up by feelings, out of control, reacting. 

Now, I think that over-identifying with any part of us unbalances us. Emotions are very important, but if we don't think and make sense of them, they can carry us like the wind. 

On the other hand, if we run away into our minds, cutting off from any feeling, we are subject to a never-ending churning of the same thoughts over and over again or we get addicted to fantasies. 

Maybe one way to think of ourselves could be as amphibians. 

Being an HSP doesn't mean that we always have to swim in the sea of emotions. How can we be of any use if all we are doing is always feeling? Shifting to thinking gives us objectivity and the practicality to see what will help us and what won't. 

Lately, I have been thinking about how to stay with polarities, how to explore them both, instead of swinging from one extreme to the other. There are advantages to left-brained planning, just as there are advantages to right-brained creating. 

There are times when I need to think to support myself and move forward. There are times when my thinking is clouded because I don't let myself feel the real feeling underneath. Is it anger that I am feeling, or sadness? What information does that give me? 

And then there is my body, the most neglected of my three parts. 

As HSPs, sometimes, we can pride ourselves on being above the mundane, almost turning our identities towards our minds or our emotions. We neglect the sense of homecoming that our bodies can give us. 

It is in our bodies that our emotions and our minds live and inter-penetrate. 

When I think now about making meaning of my life, I think of summoning up all my resources and accessing all the parts that had gotten submerged in over-feeling. There is a part that can strategize. There is a part that can be logical. There is a part that is self-protective. 

When I can balance all these parts, use all these parts, I can make something cohesive. Otherwise, I am left scattered, pointless. 

Have you confined yourself to a narrow definition of who you are? Have you boxed yourself in one aspect? Maybe, like me, you would like to let that over-simplification go, and start using your thinking, objective, planning side. 

To me, it feels like a life of meaning is on the other side of this divide - of mind and body, of thinking and emotion, of being and doing. And the task for us all is to keep experimenting, to keep correcting our course till little by little that life emerges and we broaden our own capacity for receiving.      

Coming Home to the Body

What is your relationship with your body? Is it a shell that houses your mind? Is it something that you just carry around with you? Or is the relationship sacred? Do you feel as if your entire life is built on its foundation, as if it is the testing ground for your truth?

Lately, I have been exploring my relationship to my body. Part of this has to do with weight, and part of it with how connected I feel with my body.

In relation to the connection, I have been doing yoga and some bio-energetic exercises. Some of these exercises are meant to charge the body and bring more energy into the legs and feet, so that you feel energized and dynamically present in your body.

Others are meant to discharge pent-up energy - the accumulated stress and tensions - and leave the body feeling lighter.

If you wanted to do a common sense energizing exercise, you might try jogging, even just jogging on the spot. If you wanted an exercise to release pent-up tension, you might lie down on your back and kick your legs in the air, just like a baby does.

For me, easing into the yoga stretches, doing these exercises brings my conscious awareness into my body. In the moment of the stretch, the mind falls off. There is something wonderful about joining as one with the body, instead of thinking of it as a secondary thing and identifying with the mind.

I have been reading the works of the wonderful somatic therapist and writer Anodea Judith, and she talks about how "to validate the body is to identify with it. If my chest is hurting, I admit that my emotional heart is hurting."

And what follows naturally is that certain movements bring up feelings and sensations that are part of the body's memories. Our emotions leave imprints, and shaking our bodies, moving them puts us in touch with things we thought had passed, but haven't, and dislodges these feelings and sensations from the space they occupy.  

In one of my favorite writing books, Writing Begins with the Breath, Laraine Herring talks about this. There is something to be said about slow writing, she says, just as there is something to be said about staying with a movement or posture in yoga. In both, there is something we learn by going deeper, by staying with the writing as it emerges, with the yoga pose as it deepens.

Going deeper changes our understanding. The language of the body communicates things to us.

Judith, in her books, also talks about how, sometimes, we don't want to be in touch. Being in touch means that we have to let ourselves experience what's there, and when there is pain stuck in the body, or something else that is negative, many of us don't want to go there. Even if going there could ultimately help us release that thing.

So, we treat our bodies like aliens instead of seeing them as us. If our bodies are cramped or weak or numb, it's quite likely that we are also cramped or weak or numb.

As I have started listening, only little murmurs till now, I can see how my body is me. I can see its rigidity, and sense my own rigidity. When I feel its strength, I gain confidence in my own strength.

I can also see another part of the equation that Judith talks about. She says that "When we have a sense of self that comes from the body, we have less need to affirm ourselves through ego inflation." There is a sense of home - security and safety - that comes from resting in our own selves.

I am beginning my journey to a place where I don't treat my body and soul as separate. My mind also has its place, so does my body, and I can see that aliveness comes through the body. I can start treating my body better.

There is a feeling of rightness about it, and it feels natural as I affirm my body bit by bit.

How has your relationship with  your body changed over time? How do you stay connected to your body?       

On Faith

Have you ever thought: Maybe my over-dependence on other people is because I lack a connection with something bigger? Maybe my fears, in part, have to do with not having a sense of security in the overall goodness of the world?

It's hard to talk about God. It's hard to decide even what to name that something that is bigger than us. Naming it defines our relationship. 


Do we call this force by a name? Do we think of it as simply consciousness? 

And how do we grapple with our hundred different thoughts of what God has meant to us in the past as well as how these ideas have changed. As I have practiced writing in the last few months, I have become more aware of the parts of my life that call out their absence. I don't have any spiritual practice, and I pray very little. If you were to ask me though, I could tell you what I believe.

It's founded in my experience of a few different moments in my life. For brief instants, I touched that thin space between life and death. I knew, with a surety that defies reason, that I was part of something bigger. 

I knew that when we die, only the form disappears. The essence remains intact, it continues. But even though I have touched this place, I have not been able to live this experience in a way that frees me. It has ended up becoming a frozen intellectual thought. 

As I have gone through life, I have picked up other debris. Like you, I have had shocks to my system. When something unfair has happened, I have asked, like many others: Why would God allow this? Is there really a God?

And so, I have developed a deep ambivalence, and my relationship with God is one in which I have stopped talking, and stopped listening. Maybe you are in a similar place. You have a faith that you have carried through your life. You also have doubts that lock you in place.

All we can do when we realize this is start walking again in the direction of our questions. And resolve the faulty beliefs that might have stopped us in our tracks. Maybe we have stopped our search because we don't have the internal permission to pray in our own way. 

Maybe we have turned away from the meaninglessness behind rituals, but haven't actually turned towards something. We have a right to synthesize our own practice. If our creativity helps us encounter ourselves, and encounter sacredness, then that's one form of prayer. 

Service is another. We don't need to necessarily follow conventions, or mindlessly accept that there is a “right” way and that if this way doesn't resonate with us, we are left with nothing.

It is radical for me to think that I could have let such flimsy reasons come in the way of such an important relationship. But the real reason, of course, is the hurt and anger that we all carry. We don't know what will happen when we start relating, start asking again. 

There was a time when we thought that we would crumble if we asked, and did not get an answer. That self that was hurt needs compassion. Maybe today, we are a little bit stronger, and can let ourselves fumble in the dark. 

We can risk asking. We can shake lose our frozen, numb places and start on what really is the ultimate quest that gives meaning to our lives.

On Self-esteem

“Children don't belong to us. They are little strangers who arrive in our lives and give us the pleasure and duty of caring for them – but we don't own them. We help them become who they are.” Gloria Steinem remembers her mother saying this in her wonderful Revolution from Within where she talks about self esteem, its roots and the many champions and detractors who shape how we think about ourselves and this world.

Steinem talks about how amazingly hard it must have been for her mother to break the pattern of her own upbringing and give her children this unconditional acceptance. For her mother, her children weren't “bad girls” if they did something she didn't like, nor were they “good” girls if they obeyed. 

They were loved regardless, and she constantly made an effort to distinguish between the child and her behavior.

Steinem talks about how this kind of unconditional love creates a “core” sense of self – a fundamental self esteem that no one and nothing can shake easily. But without having this experience of intrinsic value, “it's hard for children to survive the process of failing and trying again that precedes any accomplishment.”

Surviving the process of failing and trying again - isn't that what many of us are struggling with? It's not the vision that we lack, but the emotional wherewithal to make mistakes without falling apart. 

Most of us have had experiences in our life where our being was only accepted conditionally. We go on looking for external validation, not realizing that getting it won't solve our problems. What we are looking for is unconditional acceptance, a home that will shelter us when the world gets too much.  

As a woman who spent most of her 20s in a corporate job feeling lost and as if she couldn't breathe, I know what it means to not have the internal permission to risk and make mistakes. I also know that self esteem is something that we can nurture and build brick by brick through our own actions. 

But it doesn't last forever. Every day, it either grows or diminishes because of the risks we take or don't take. It's not something that we can have and be done with. And we all need to find our own champions, who can love us when our own self-love is in short supply, who can encourage us to start our journey of becoming more of who we are.

As I take more small steps in becoming who I am, I think of myself as a plant taking root. I think of the task for this season, and it is to take up space, make room for my own self to expand and grow. And as a woman from a culture where babies are almost expected and who is approaching her mid-30s, I think the real answer is that we all have our own season for doing things. 

I used to think that I am out of step when I didn't check the same major life transitions when others did. But checking things off isn't the point.

I am on my journey. I am a writer. I am an artiste.  

I am someone, with or without a child. I am someone with a creative youngster inside her, who is learning to parent that child and letting her become all that she is capable of being.   

HSPs: Giving, Not Overgiving

Are you someone who gives a lot to other people? You accommodate, you give without thinking what’s in it for you. Maybe you are an HSP or empath who identifies so much with other people’s feelings that you take on their pain. Giving and compassion are your primary values.

But sometimes, you wish that they weren’t. This thing – this thinking about others first, putting them before you – can leave you feeling depleted. On one hand, you want to give. This is who you are. On the other hand, you feel trapped. You realize that it often works against you.

In my corporate career in India, I made all the mistakes that go along with giving in a way that harms you, instead of propelling you forward. I am empathetic, so I expressed that. But I also played too nice and gave to colleagues in a setting and culture where it was each one for themselves. Looking back, I feel that I wasted precious years. I gave in a way that made me vulnerable to people who were blatant takers. I used up my energy in helping other people fulfill their own agendas.

Maybe you’ve done this too. You can’t seem to give in a way that actually feels good. Is it possible to change? Won’t not giving make you feel inauthentic?

For someone who is both an empath and an individualist, this tension between being good to others while staying true to myself has been ever-present. Fortunately, I am finding answers now. In his hugely comforting book, Give and Take, organizational psychologist and Wharton professor Adam Grant introduces us to a concept that can help natural Givers shift to giving in a way that empowers them instead of depleting them.

Grant talks about becoming an “Otherish Giver.” Otherish Givers are people who value giving, and who also value making an impact, and so want to use their time in a way that promotes that objective. In that sense, they actually have a strong sense of self. They are not “selfless." 

Research says that Otherish Givers contribute more than purely selfless givers. Their giving is directed, not scattered and they get energy from seeing the impact that they are making. This spurs them on to making bigger contributions. They don’t crash and burn like selfless givers. 

While reading Grant’s book, I realize that we need to strip the common belief that the self is always wrong. For people who have the capacity to be caring and compassionate, the self is exactly what needs to be expressed.  

Grant also emphasizes that givers need to guard against the Takers and Fake Givers of the world. Most givers learn how to do this through hard experience and trial and error. But once they have learnt to differentiate, Givers need to give up their naivete and move from a place of understanding that everyone does not operate like they do.

Becoming more discriminating, more otherish is possible. To do this, what we need to do is expand our definition of what we can and cannot change in ourselves. If we are too attached to simply being nice to everyone, we’ll fail to see when our giving becomes ineffectual.  

If you are a selfless giver who has a fixed mindset, you might think to yourself: I just can’t do this. This is who I am. Then, the real question to ask is: Are you giving because of an underlying value or because it is a compulsive habit? Are you giving because you are too attached to other people thinking well of you?

Adopting what psychologists call a growth mindset can make you more otherish and more productive. Having a growth mindset simply means that you believe that you can change aspects of yourself that are not working and that are coming in the way of your higher values.

By becoming more mindful of who you give to and when, you will be able to translate the best of who you are into the real world instead of letting your energy be used up by whoever wants it first.

Being heard

In the shade of a giant tree, in a neighborhood park, Susan tells me about her life. She talks about her divorce – it happened a long time ago – and about a son she doesn’t meet very often. She tells me her mother grudges her things she needs and about the jewelry from her grandmother that should have been hers. In her mind, not getting these things is somehow connected to her former husband.

At one point, I think she is paranoid. She weaves through the start and end points of incidents, mixing random events. She makes up motivations for why someone said something, why certain things happened. I don’t know Susan very well. She is, at best, an acquaintance. I listen because I know that she needs someone to listen to her.

But I feel slightly jaded. My attention flits away. I think, here I go again, playing my default role. What use will my listening be? Then, I think, not everything has to have a use. This is something I can give. I will myself to listen.

After she has talked for a while, Susan looks cheerful. I walk back home, realizing that it’s been almost two hours. For the last many weeks, I have been extremely resistant to doing any creative work, whether it’s writing or photography, and I have completely stopped writing my daily morning pages.       

It’s only when I start writing them again that I acknowledge what’s been happening. Writing wipes down the smudges, gives a clarity that’s threatening. It’s easier to just float along and think that everything is pleasant. As soon as something uncomfortable comes up, I shut down.

Given a choice between telling my own truth and displeasing other people, I have usually chosen other people and abandoned myself. Not this time, I think. I start my writing practice again, without scolding myself for stopping.

At the end of our conversation, after having got some of the gunk out, Susan told me she knew she got anxious. Maybe it was just the anxiety talking. I think of Susan - how she is both fanciful and lonely. Can not being heard make you go crazy. Can turning your imagination against yourself make you less than sane?

I decide that Susan is not crazy. She has just built up so much loneliness that she has entangled all the different things in her life.

The Flavors of Home

In my kitchen in the heart of Silicon Valley, I try to recreate the flavors of home. I simply call this "khaana" or food, while my equally Indian husband, having grown up in the Middle East and Canada, calls it "Indian food." 

I make rotis  (Indian bread) to accompany the curries, dals and vegetable side dishes that I whip up. To do this, I first knead the dough with my hands, and then make small round balls that I flatten using a rolling pin. Finally, I toast these on a griddle. Generations of women in my country have followed these exact same steps.   

When I started making rotis about a year and a half back, this laborious process would irritate me. I struggled against it constantly, blanking out as I wrestled with the dough. My marriage to this wonderful man had also landed me in the default role of an expat house-wife, "the house-wife" part of which I chafed at.

But I did my best. I expanded my knowledge of cooking beyond the basics. Apart from Indian food, I made soups and pasta sauces from scratch and baked muffins. And of course, I practiced my roti-making skills, wishing that there was a way to get through it quickly.    

And then, some friends lent us a tortilla press so we could try and make rotis a little more easily. I still needed to knead the dough and form it into balls. But I could try and shave some time off the rolling. I didn't know whether it would work, but thought it was worth a try. 

Weeks passed, and the little press remained unused. I always thought I would use it tomorrow, only I never did. Something in me just couldn't let go of the common thread that binds me to my mother, my grandmother and all the countless women before them. The vein passed from them into me and connected me to the marrow of my culture. 

That's why food is so precious. It grounds our memories and connects us to everything that nourished us in the past. So, even though it takes time, I bhuno (slow-fry) vegetables, cooking them in their own juices, instead of drowning the taste with water. I make chutneys, including a special tomato one using jaggery and a special 5-spice mix called panch phoron, just the way my mother makes. 

Now, I try to see cooking as a medium to create my new home. I use it to settle into the deep rhythms of the home that I carry inside. And try to synchronize that rhythm with that of my husband's, whose memories of "ghar ka khaana" or home food consist of shawarmas, falafels, and kebabs. 

With him, I have discovered other homes. This exploration has been full of surprising recognitions. When I tried Baba Ghanoush, a Middle-eastern aubergine dip, I immediately felt comforted. Its smoky, earthy flavor echoes the notes of the Indian baingan bharta.

Another delightful discovery has been the preserved ginger that comes with sushi. It tastes almost exactly like the wondrous ginger pickle that can only be found in small shops in the narrow alleys of Old Delhi's spice market, amid the shops that sell whole spices: star-shaped anise and buds of cloves. 

Although these discoveries have been wonderful, the journey of combining the different homes that we both carry inside has had its ups and downs. We struggled in the beginning. I thought I was adjusting more, cooking dishes that he liked. He thought he adjusted a lot, eating the mostly Indian food I cooked at home instead of the "2 or 3 days Indian" that he was used to.

The truth is that we both moved, we both adjusted. We still get wobbly, but through our sharing, I am catching a glimpse of what it would be like to have a larger, more expansive home - a home where I can both recreate the way home tasted and felt in the past, and also synthesize a new home - a home that we are both making together. 

All I have to do is let go of the idea that home is a static place, instead of this moving, dynamic space that opens up whenever I do.