Candlelight illuminates Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. The candle flame has long been a symbol of your own inner fire, soul energy, creative powers and life force. How do you care for and tend your inner fire now that Thanksgiving has passed and two big holidays are near?
Will you be captured by cultural extravagance and get set uncontrollably ablaze in your eating disorder thinking and behaviors? Or will you be mindful, appreciative and attentive to your flame within?
I found the blue flame pictured above on the NASA site. It's the flame of a candle in almost no gravity conditions. Air provides buoyancy. Without the presence of buoyancy in space, a candle flame appears as a small blue flame centered on the wick.
What a gorgeous metaphor! You, between the energy surges of the holidays, can use this image to tend to your own natural inner fire as it eternally blooms when cultural pressures are absent.
How much buoyancy from your environment and learned habits will you bring to your blue flame? You've survived Thanksgiving and perhaps learned more about your triggers and how to cope with them.
More triggers are coming if you allow them. You don't have to let this time before the holidays pour tension and expectations into your life. You can choose what, when and how much, just as you are learning to choose what, when and how much of the food you eat.
Bringing air to the blue flame in space creates hot fire. Astronauts learn how to keep that stimulation at a minimum while providing enough oxygen for them to breathe. What steps can you take to keep holiday stimulation at a minimum while you accept enough refreshing pleasure to allow you to enjoy this time?
See how astronauts learn to prevent fire in space here.
Now is the time to meet your present challenge. You don't want dramatic emotions or major eating or starving activities to erupt. Yet you want enjoyable holidays.
Question for your meditation and prompt for your journal: How can you tend your inner fire and keep it blue?
Please share your response here, too.
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Written by Joanna Poppink, MFT. Joanna is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in eating disorder recovery, stress, PTSD, and adult development.
She is licensed in CA, AZ, OR, FL, and UT. Author of the Book: Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder
Appointments are virtual.
For a free telephone consultation, e-mail her at
Add comment