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.
In Alexandra Stoddard's delightful book, The Decoration of Houses, she talks about the art of making our homes a haven. We can all transform our spaces into a feast for our senses and a well of deep, lasting comfort.
This is how she talks about the fabrics we use in dressing up our spaces: "I have often said, "If your fabrics aren't fading, you should move." I love the way fabrics fade in the light. We should start out with colors as fresh as crayons in a box, and accept the inevitable bleaching over time from the light and warmth of the sun."
And then, she goes on: "No new material is as charming as one that has been loved up by sunshine. The energy from the sun penetrates the textile and, however subtle, is felt. Just as teenagers love faded jeans and even buy them in this condition, so bleached-out fabric, a symbol of hours of sunlight, should be cherished. To live in the dark to protect your textiles is a sad waste of potential vitality."
When she talks about textures, she tells us to look beyond just fabrics, and also think about the textures of natural objects: "Texture exists everywhere in nature; we grasp it through our senses of sight and touch. We see the grain in the wood, and feel its splintered or sanded surface. We see the shiny or dull surface of pebbles, and feel their smooth or rough surface. A seashell, a maple leaf, a wild-flower, grass, a cliff face, moss, soil, bark, sand, sea water - each has a unique texture that deepens our experience of nature."
And then she says something that gleams like a blue pond: "The more authentic the textures in your rooms, the greater your sense of fulfillment and stability."
Bringing the textures that we love inside our houses - the real interplay of rough and soft - help make our homes a sanctuary. There is an emotional comfort in being surrounded by familiar, evocative textures and by those textures that are real.
Here, in India, I re-encounter textures I haven't experienced for the last two years. There is a different weave to the life lived here - there are hand-woven chattais and dhurries (rugs , clay pottery, block-printed Jaipuri bed-sheets.
In an incense store, I buy diffuser oils that comfort my soul. One of them is magnolia and it reminds me of the prayers from my childhood, when incense sticks were lit and the perfume wafted deep into the room, and became inextricably linked with feelings of comfort.
Another is aniseed, and I love how I can almost taste its sweetness in my mouth, and think that when I go back to America, I need to brew some aniseed tea.
I see with fresh eyes the motifs of the ambi or the mango that are part of many textile designs. I think of shaking mango trees with sticks in my grandparent's homes to eat the raw, tangy mangoes. An image of my great-grandmother's grape vine springs to mind.
All these colors, patterns, fragrances awaken and create little ripples. I can reach through and inside them to different parts of me at different times. They have tied up in them times of innocence, a time when the world was fresh and new.
After two years away from India, I feel like consciously inviting them in - the sounds of prayers that are deeper than the rivers, the fragrances that live in joyous trees, the rich weave of life from which so many beautiful arts spring forth. Adding them to my new life would make it deeper, more textured, more complete. It would be a declaration of all my different loves, and the way they nourish and feed my soul.
In his small and wonderful book, The Courage to Create, Rollo May illuminates the mysterious, glorious subject of creativity in such a wonderful way. I am in love with his mind and his thoughts.
Creativity needs encounter, he says, when something inside us meets the outside world, and something new is born into the world.
And for this meeting, this alchemy to take place, we artistes need tools.
We need our pens and paintbrushes and musical instruments. These tools make us as much as we make something with them. Without them, we are unformed, undeveloped. With them, we realize the potential that was always inside us, but that had no shape and form.
With our tools, we mold ourselves. We give ourselves shape and form.
I believe and understand this now. And if you are someone who is asking, am I an artiste, am I, the answer lies in picking up a camera or a pen or taking a design class. Engaging with different tools will help you encounter your creative spirit. You will find your joys and loves and shape the magical, powerful energy that is swirling inside you.
And as you give birth to what's inside you, you too will be born.
How is this creating different from a child's play ? Mature creativity, May says, is about staying with the anxiety of not knowing whether you will be able to bring your visions to completion.
You may have an idea in your head about a book, or a series of paintings, or a performance piece. But your struggle with the void to bring something new into being has no guarantees.
The dance piece, the work of art exists perfectly in your head. But can you bring it to life?
All artistes, all creative people struggle with this feeling, this sense of going out into the forest where there are no maps. And that takes courage.
Creativity, in its true form, is the process of "bringing something new into being." The something new will take time to sprout wings, and in its hatching stage, it might look ungainly.
We, as artistes, have to find the courage to stay with this weird and wonderful being, have to believe in our visions, have to feel our frailty as we sense our way through the darkness. We have no guarantees, and that's the challenge of our calling, to move forward in faith, to knock on the door and believe that our knock will be answered.
