Susan Harrow

I’ve got a great story of transformation through martial arts. Here’s a little background: I started doing Tae Kwon Do (Korean martial art) when I was 11 years old, and got my black belt when I was 17. I’ve been training on and off since then and I’m 24 years old now. I was a really shy, less than confident girl before I started Tae Kwon Do, and I was actually bullied a lot as a child. I was very small framed and often spoke very softly. After Tae Kwon Do, I became immensely more confident, started to do better in school, was able to concentrate and make friends. I also got stronger physically, being able to break boards, and even defend myself if need be. 

I also competed in the USA Nationals competitions and won several medals. It was quite the broadening experience for me, because I hadn’t traveled a lot as a child. This eventually led to my love to travel and exploration. It showed me what was out there. I don’t think I had ever seen so many people in one big room before, so it was just such an expansive experience to be competing in front of them. 

Honestly I believe that the effect of doing martial arts goes so much deeper than the immediate changes I experienced as a child. I think I’m a lot more aware of my surroundings, more assertive, and also less fearful. It also put me in touch with my instructor, who is another strong woman who does martial arts. (You can visit her at: http://bluewavemartialartsmaine.com ) She taught me so much about life in general, and really put me on the course I am on today. 

I studied to be a software programmer and graduated with a degree in Software Engineering. But after graduation I decided to follow my dreams, which were to travel to Asia. I have no doubt that my love for Asia was inspired by martial arts. I visited Korea and got to see the country where a lot of these trainings came from. 

I also decided after returning from Asia that I wanted to start my own business. So I did. Now I’ve created a business that helps me teach others how to eat right. Which is something else that was planted in me at an early age through martial arts: the importance of eating properly before fights or trainings.I think martial arts is something that can change young girls’ lives like nothing else. But the effects of doing martial arts are with you forever. I know I am a better person and a happier person for it.

Nathalie Lussier turned down a job on Wall Street to start her own wellness company. She is now known as The Raw Foods Witch because she’s got magickal powers that take the spookiness out of eating more raw fruits and vegetables, so you can start feeling incredible! She was once a junk food addict, eating cookies for breakfast and stuffing my emotions with food. Now she’s taken her health back into her own hands and is helping others do the same.

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I was.

In my early teens I learned to eat in the closet, literally. I inhaled sweets. In the mornings before school I’d fake that I’d eaten a bowl of cereal by putting a few flakes and a dash of milk in the bowl and deposit it in the sink. Then I’d get into my father’s airtight cookie bin and take 10 Oreos up to my room and savor them privately, in my walk-in closet…with guilt. I was 5’2″ 105 pounds. I was athletic, popular, and never thought about barfing or purging. I wanted to lose 5 pounds. But I wasn’t about to give up cookies to do it.

What drove me into the closet was shame. Disapproving looks came first. Then words. Early on questions from my parents and relatives like, “Are you sure you want a second helping?” “Do you want to eat that?” “What, another cookie?” turned me into a sneak. I wanted to eat where I could enjoy myself. In private.

I ate because of the luxurious deliciousness of sugar. I ate for the pleasure of companionship with other girls my age when we bought Ho Hos and Ding Dongs and boxes of Entenmann’s cookies and talked for hours together about intimate things. Dessert and confidential conversations became synonymous with the creation of a secret world, the secret world of girls, soft and dreamy, behind locked bedroom doors where we could share our thoughts — without adult intrusion or snooping. This was short lived.

The intrusion of mothers came by example. One chubby mother would eat a whole box of chocolates and then say, “I hate myself.” Another friend’s slim mother would smoke cigarettes at the kitchen table lost in thought, easy in our presence, while my friend and I would eat home made bialys smeared with lox and cream cheese happily chattering away.

In time I came to recognize the difference between self destruction and punishment through food and eating food for nourishment and deepening the bonds of intimacy through shared experience and pleasure.

But I still have remnants of the sneak eating. The other day I bought a flourless chocolate cake for my book group meeting at our home. There were a few pieces left over so I put them in the laundry room out of sight so I would only eat a piece if I really wanted it. I found myself waiting until my sweetie left the kitchen to seek out those last morsels. I caught myself feeling the familiar impulse to hide.

So I put the cake back and waited until he returned and then ate a piece while enjoying his company. I’m building new neural pathways in my brain to eradicate the shame. Continuing to associate the pleasure of companionship with the enjoyment of food gives me those same good feelings I had with my girlfriends, filmy, fluid and fun. I even tell my sweetie a secret or two over pudding, lemon curd, or cake, and feel good about it.

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In the beginning her coaching practice attracted women who were living small lives, preoccupied by things that didn’t matter. Brown now attracts women who want to move into a state of joy and who have a substantial effect in the world with their presence, their words, their work.

“There’s a whole secret dialog that goes with that,” Brown says, speaking from her own personal experience. It’s often the seemingly small unimportant things that are having a large cumulative effect. In her shower stall, for example there is room on the shelf for three items across. Four of those were hers, two were her husband’s. She put hers in the back so he could access his more easily.

One day she thought, “Forget that. I’ve got more stuff I need more room.” So she moved her stuff to the front. Result? He didn’t even notice. “That`s when I realized there were so many little things I was deferring. Things that had bothered me for a long time. I was doing all this so it would be more convenient for my spouse, dismissing what was best for me.”

This may seem insignificant but these subtleties accumulate and suddenly women find themselves at a place where they’ve lost themselves in the process. “Smart women think this doesn’t happen to them,” says Brown, “And yet it does. I speak about this in terms of integrity, keeping a wholeness about yourself and your needs, keeping promises to yourself. You don’t gain or lose integrity in one choice but in the many choices over time.”

Another way that women give away their power is in how they make requests of others. For example, when a woman wants to go to the movies she may ask her spouse, “Do you still want to go to a movie today?” Asking in this way defers her own needs. Instead Brown recommends saying, “I’m going to go to a movie do you still want to join me?” This puts the power back in your hands as no matter what he says you’re still going and don’t have to explain it. Contrarily, if you say you’re going to go that could be construed as a subtle diss to him. Asking in this way you’re neither deferring your power nor being over-controlling. “True power doesn’t need to control or accommodate,” Brown notes.

In her practice Brown teaches non-judgement. That means not judging your body, what you eat, how you react at work or at home. “Judgement and learning can’t co-exist. If you choose to go down the path of judgement you set yourself up to go to this moment again and again and get stuck. Once you choose learning everything opens up and becomes curiosity-driven. It’s a compassionate lens and everything is new. This works even if you feel you need to go to store and indulge.” Brown recommends looking at that experience and recognizing that you may need to do it to learn from it as an experience of contrast to behaviour you actually want in your life.

“Notice “what is” and that truth is neutral. If you’re fighting reality you’re spending a lot of energy fighting “what is” and that energy isn’t available for other parts of your life.

Brown considers herself fortunate to have had coaches who were excited with whatever she brought to them no matter how “negative” or extreme. “They thought everything was ‘awesome’. They were my compassionate witness and my unconditional champion.” We need constants like this in our lives, whether it be a coach, parent, or friend who teach us, believe in us and see every act we do as revolutionary and necessary for our progress so we can internalize these qualities for ourselves.

Kathrine Brown, North America’s most innovative weight loss coach, is the developer of the process Conscious Weight Loss: weight loss while life happens and the publisher of the ezine Wisdom Connoisseur: your voice of clarity on weight loss, which has subscribers in 10 countries.

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When my mother and her mother are enchanting the world goes right for a very long time.

When my mother and her mother make emblems-after all we are descended from the first pope-and are not overly proud about it, but merely properly pleased, we feel closer to God, as if we had privilege before others, though deep down are sad, because we know there is no truth to that.

When my mother and her mother make luscious cakes that dance on air, the world seems bearable after all.

When my mother and her mother make joyous pizzellas, the matrix that joins each of the family together becomes more than a symbol, legend, or story, it makes a pathway, mysterious and hard as butter.

When my mother and her mother call out “scungele,” or “calamari,” or “biscotti,” or “pizza” or “funculo,” then I know that there is no chance to be other than I am.

When my mother and her mother crawl on their knuckles away from their grave I begin the slow digging of my own-believing I can separate myself in death.

When my mother and her mother lose their teeth, their tongues fall into the wishing well, their words will follow me like a hungry stray who smells meat.

When my mother and her mother say that I am their daughter I wonder whose language they speak, and know that somewhere I must understand that this shall never change.

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