Eating in the Light of the Moon: how women can transform their relationships with food through myths, metaphors, & storytelling by Anita Johnston, Ph.D.

Johnston focuses
on rediscovering the inner feminine, our intuition, and using that to shed
light on our disordered eating. Through stories, the author tells of our
struggles with food stemming from hidden feelings and an imbalance in our
energies, our intuition has been ignored and our light has been extinguished.
There is some reason that we turn to food for sustenance. Johnston explains a
woman’s recovery as being a journey into a great labyrinth, where we have to
wind around and around until we reach the very center of it, our core where all
of our demons dwell, and then we have to face them and make the spiraling
journey back out of the labyrinth into the world again. A woman must heal her
relationships with her femininity, her sexuality, her body and her Self before
she can conquer disordered eating.
I loved the use of metaphor in this book, it really speaks
my language. What I got most out of this book was that food is a metaphor for
other forms of sustenance, for a different kind of hunger, not only the
physical. The most memorable part of this book for me was the metaphor about
the animals that were starving and that couldn’t reach the fruit from the
splendid tree because they couldn’t remember its name. They sent 3 different
animals back to the lion to learn the name of the tree so they could eat of its
fruit. Both the gazelle and the elephant could not make it back from the lion
without tripping into a hole and forgetting the name. Finally, they sent the
tortoise, whose great-great-great grandmother had told about the tree and how
to remember. After getting the name from the lion, the tortoise repeated it to
itself over and over again until it reached the other animals, “Ungalli.
Ungalli. The name of the tree is Ungalli.” It repeated this over and over again
until returning to the tree and announcing the name, and immediately the limbs
of the tree extended to the ground and the animals were able to eat of the
fruit. This story explains how you need to know the name of your hunger
in order to recover and how you must keep it in front of you the entire time of
your journey. Johnston says that it
is only when your hunger is named that you can be truly fed. She explains the
difference between nourishment and Nourishment with a capitol “N”. The woman
who suffers from disordered eating must keep the name of her hunger in the
forefront of her mind and repeat it to herself whenever she struggles with her
own personal food symbolism.
This book focuses on how women who suffer from disordered
eating have lost touch with their bodies and have become disconnected from
their inner feminine; there is an imbalance between their masculine and
feminine selves. It highlights the importance of the symbolism in our dreams
and suggests using them for knowledge about our hidden fears and feelings. It also
guides you, through insights and practical exercises, toward empowerment,
explaining how to regain the power of your intuition and get in touch with your
feelings, instead of stuffing them down or numbing them away. It focuses on
feeding your “shadow sister” who wishes to be heard instead of starved or
stuffed, by recognizing those parts of you that have been hidden or lost. Once
you can see through the illusion that food is really the issue, you can dive
deeper into your feelings and really begin to feel them again. Remember your
hunger; always know what it is that you are truly hungry for, be it acceptance,
love, respect, or creative expression. Keep it in front of you at all times and
you will be able to give yourself the Nourishment that you TRULY desire. The
name of the tree is Ungalli!!
SOURCES:
Eating in the Light of the Moon: how women can transform
their relationships with food through myths, metaphors, & storytelling by
Anita Johnston, Ph.D.
Johnston, Anita Ph.D.
Carlsbad, CA.
Gurze Books. 1996
No comments:
Post a Comment