Now comes the beginning of the fun stuff...

As far as my body goes:

Do I like it? Sometimes it's ok. There are some parts of it that I like, like the dot in between my eyes & my eyes & my feet (except for right now when they're all dry). I like the fact that I'm able to do lots of things with it that some people can't do. There are parts of it that I hate, like my stomach and my chest. I don't like the fact that my hips are so tight that it's hard to sit in a cross-legged position for longer than a few moments without being in a lot of pain.

I used to have an eating disorder, not a major eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, and not the type that people typically think of when they think of an eating disorder. Basically, an eating disorder is an obsession with food that negatively effects a person's health and functioning, physically or mentally.

I've had that since sometime in college (I think it was college, Jin if you remember when it was then you should let me know), and I'm pretty much over it now, just sometimes somethings set it off and I catch myself thinking certain things and have to be really careful not to fall into the things I used to do back then. Which I'm glad to say I'm pretty good at now, but none the less, it's still there way far back in the back of my mind somewhere, & totally in my root chakra.

It's interesting because I'm sure that two of my cousins have the same tendencies as I did/do with it and I later found out that my Grandmother on that side used to and I've noticed things that my mom says at times which lean towards her feeling that way sometimes too. They do say part of it's genetic, but I also think it has a lot to do with the way you're brought up (like when your mom tells you all the time you need to lose 15 pounds because she wants you to go to the gym with her and when your dad calls you up in and says "so, are you getting fat out there or are you staying skinny?")

Anyways, the type of eating disorder that I have (it's really hard for me to say "have" now because I want to write "had" since I do feel that I had it opposed to having it now, but since it still effects me I'm going to write "have" because it's something I've been working on), is excessive exercising and limiting my diet & trying tons of different things to fix the parts of my body that I'm not fond of. There's no total starvation or purging, just exercise. Things that are scary about it:

• I scared Jin once in the grocery store over some peanut butter chips.
• I scared Jason a lot, to the point where he told me a year after we broke up that when we lived together he always thought about telling me to eat different things and exercise less but he was too scared to tell me.
• I'm really great at convincing myself that it's healthy. (There's a fine line between a cleanse and doing something to lose weight, I'm pretty sure I know the difference, and there have been times in the past when it was definitely not used to cleanse, however, the more recent cleanses I've done have been really beneficial as far as health goes (like getting rid of precancerous cervical cells and getting off my prescription medications) so they wouldn't fall into this category, however I do know that I have to really look into what I'm doing and how I'm doing it as far as cleanses go to make sure my intentions are good).
  
• I totally messed up my metabolism and blood sugar so now I'm going about fixing those since I got to Portland (and it sucks).

Psychologically eating disorders are about control, many people who develop them sense a lack of control in their lives and use eating as one of the few (or only) things they can control. They also have to do with society's influence/the media and sometimes have to do with a traumatic incident. For me I think it might have had a little to do with control and a little to do with society, but like I said earlier, my case is an extremely mild case in comparison to those you think about when you think "eating disorder".

Your first chakra is how you relate to your body and your environment, how you move and control what's around you, how you manifest things. Living in the culture that we live in there are certain expectations about how your body should be, which sometimes effects the way you look at yourself and the functioning of your first chakra.

I do feel like I do a really good job of listening to my body now. The anti-inflammatory diet helped me a lot with that (and then re-introducing foods into my diet and seeing how my body felt eating them). I can now tell the difference in my body when I eat eggs, chicken, broccoli, fish, or yogurt, etc., which I think is pretty awesome. So now I eat what makes me feel good. I listen to my body when I need to sleep, eat, etc. Yoga is also really good for listening to your body, feeling like you're in your body, feeling changes in your body both physically and emotionally, and feeling the energy system of your body.

Overall, as far as the "body" part of my first chakra is concerned, I think I'm doing a good job with diet, exercise, and overall health. I do need to keep an eye on the whole eating disorder thing, and I need to accept that there are some things about my body that just aren't going to change, and others that are ok as they are, but could be improved over a long healthy period of time. I should also work on adding more variety to the foods that I eat, and making food to eat just for the sake of enjoying it, not just eating because I need to in order to function. I don't always feel like I'm in my body (I'm often bumping into things & I often go off daydreaming while driving or carrying out everyday tasks), so being more present would be a good thing.