The Hidden Key to a Healthier Life: How E-CET Uses the Power of Cultivating Presence for Lasting Well-Being
July 3, 2023 | Roni Davis
You’re sick of diets and the feelings of shame and failure that follow futile attempts to willpower your way to eating the things you think you should while avoiding the things you think you shouldn’t.
I know, it’s an exhausting battle.
That’s why I created E-CET and its paradigm-shifting approach that I call wholehearted being.
Wholehearted being, as I teach it in E-CET, is about cultivating a life that’s grounded in self-love and worthiness, right now today, exactly as you are. This is wholeheartedness. From there, being present and connected in the moment, and in your body, curious about what your own internal moment-to-moment mental, emotional and physical experiences are telling you you need and being intentional about honoring those needs.
In this post, we'll explore the profound benefits of cultivating presence through E-CET.
Discover how presence empowers you to develop healthier choices and relationships with food, self, and body.
Learn how to best support and nurture your overall well-being, unlocking a healthier, more balanced, and peaceful approach to health and life in general.
The Power of Cultivating Presence
In a world filled with rules and to-dos surrounding your health, not to mention endless distractions and constant busyness, cultivating presence is a powerful first step towards:
Let’s explore each of these a little bit further.
Redefining Healthy Eating and Living
Think about how much healthy eating or general health information you’ve consumed over the course of your life. I’m willing to guess it’s more than you can even begin to wrap your mind around.
Decades worth of books, videos, documentaries, the media, friends/family, social media, google searches, health & fitness coaches and professionals, your doctor, dieticians, nutritions, ‘holistic’ wellness coaches, the list goes on and on.
Now consider, of all that advice and information, how many times has any of it included the suggestion to simply pause, check in with your body, ask it what it needs right now to feel its best and then honor that communication?
I’m guessing, not once.
Because that’s not how the weight loss, health, fitness & wellness industries work.
They teach us to ignore our bodies.
That the only path to healthy eating and living requires implementing strict discipline, willpower and hard work to resist, fight, control, and even punish our bodies.
To eat what they say we should, when they say we should, even how much they say we should.
To not eat what they say we shouldn’t.
To move in the ways they say we should.
To drink (or not drink) what they say we should (or shouldn't).
We learn to fear food, to fear and distrust our own bodies.
The result? We become painfully disconnected from ourselves, our bodies and our own unique, individual, moment to moment needs.
We rush through meals, mindlessly munch on whatever is front of us, futility attempt to control never-ending cravings, ignore internal cues in lieu of trying to follow the ever-changing list of to-dos we’ve gotten from all the external advice, live in fear, get stuck in self-destructive patterns of behaviors that feel too compulsive to ever change, and struggle in our relationships with food, ourselves and our bodies.
If, instead, we redefine healthy eating and living though wholehearted being, we begin to see that the key to healthy eating and living is not about how much we can control and manipulate our bodies to achieve some goal at a later date.
Rather, it’s about how well we understand, honor and support our own unique, individual needs in the present.
Presence allows us to do this by giving us space to recognize when we’re stuck in old patterns of fighting to control and adhere to the fear-based shoulds (that are never sustainable) and gives us the space required to shift into this new way of being that’s directed by internal communication about our actual needs.
Reconnecting to Self and Body
Weight and food struggles have a number of things in common among everyone living them. One of the biggest is disconnection from that innate wisdom; disconnection from self and body.
You simply cannot be connected to self or body when you’re living in a state of chronic fear and stress over the size you think your body should be, over what you should or shouldn’t be eating, how you should be moving, etc.
And if you’re not connected to self or body, you’re not truly able to meet your actual needs because you’re not even able to determine what they are.
Our bodies possess innate wisdom, constantly sending us messages about what they truly need, when they need it.
The problem is that the noise of the industries that profit off us fearing and distrusting them, along with other external influences and societal conditioning teaches us to drown out and ignore these signals.
Embodiment practices form an integral part of E-CET, deepening the connection between the mind and body. By engaging in practices such as mindfulness, meditation, yoga, breathwork, etc, you can enhance your awareness of internal cues, emotions, and body sensations related to food and overall well-being.
Connection through embodiment practices promotes self-discovery and self-acceptance and provides valuable tools to navigate stress, emotional eating, and other challenges that may arise in your life.
Presence provides the gateway needed for these practices to thrive.
Rewiring Unhealthy Patterns of Thoughts and Behaviors
Your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors around food and lifestyle choices are influenced primarily by the societal conditioning and personal experiences you’re exposed to over the course of your life.
And these are the things that drive the choices you’re making every day.
Over time, they become so deeply ingrained into who you are and how you live, that they begin to dictate just about every aspect of your life, almost completely unconsciously.
That’s one of the biggest reasons why unhealthy food choices feel so compulsive and lifestyle changes never stick.
Because the underlying driving factors, the wiring that drives them, isn’t happening within your conscious control, and it never gets addressed by those traditional approaches.
On top of that, traditional ‘healthy’ eating rules and restrictions usually only serve to reinforce or even create the very unhealthy patterns of behavior that aren’t serving us.
Again, presence is the first key to change because presence allows the space required between your triggers and your responses to build awareness and begin intentionally rewiring new patterns that better serve you and your overall well-being.
“You can't change what's going on around you until you change what's going on within you."
~ Zig Ziglar
Repairing Relationships with Food, Self and Body
The relationships we have with food, self and body become part of the conditioning that I just spoke of and drive a lot of the choices we make for ourselves and our bodies.
When these relationships get damaged, the choices we make are negatively impacted because we treat ourselves the way we believe we deserve to be treated.
And they are all interconnected.
The relationship we have with our body is a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves. The relationship we have with food is a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves and our bodies.
By cultivating presence, we’re better able to begin to understand the complex interplay of these relationships and how they are impacting our well-being.
We’re also able to intentionally begin repairing them, create more nurturing, trusting relationships with each and ultimately change the choices we make for ourselves and our bodies, leading to a healthier, more fulfilling relationship with food and yourself.
Conclusion
By cultivating presence as part of E-CET's wholehearted being approach to healthy eating and living, you take the first step towards gaining the power required to redefine healthy eating and living, reconnect with your body and self, rewire unhealthy patterns of thoughts and behaviors (with food and otherwise), and repair the relationships you have with food, self, and body.
When you do, the unhealthy or compulsive patterns with food that you’ve been stuck in, naturally fade away all on their own, leaving room for truly healthy eating and living to become the natural result.
Peace and a greater sense of overall well-being are able to thrive.
E-CET provides an expert-led, supportive environment to explore and learn to integrate these principles into your life.
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