Welcome To Mindfulness Training For Eating Disorders
A Dr Irina Webster MD Site

If you have arrived at this site you probably have an eating disorder, anorexia- bulimia or know someone who has and you are looking for help. Well, you are at the right place to learn about mindfulness training to stop eating disorders.

So Let's Continue.

Everyone has heard about meditation, but what about mindfulness training? The Internet has heaps of meditation pages, but does anyone really know about mindfulness training when it comes to eating disorders, like anorexia and bulimia?

Good Question?

The answer is, not much! So luckily you have come to the best place to learn.

What is Mindfulness Training?

Well: If you have visited any of our other sites you will see that we do not teach anything that is not based on science: this site is no exception.
 
Mindfulness training is based on the science of Neuroplasticity and the fact that we now realize that the brain is malleable from cradle to grave and scientists have been able to document it through PET scans etc.

But what does this mean? Well in means that we can change the way our brains are wired by what we think and what we say. In other words: our feelings and emotions can change our brains patterns because the brain is plastic and susceptible to change. The strange thing is that ancient people knew about this but we have only recently discovered it again (More on this later but for now)

Let me tell you a little story that is absolutely true and did happed to a young girl called Jenny.

Jenny's Story

You see Jenny was a young swimmer and she was a budding champion holding many swimming titles for her age and even a couple from above her age: she was good. Then one day while training in the gym to strengthen her muscles she tripped over a weight and broke her ankle badly requiring an operation to fix it.

Jenny was devastated because she had a State title swim meet in a months time and she had to pullout. It took her over 3 months to get back to swimming. Of course Jenny over that time could do no training or exercise and put on  quite few pounds.

When she returned to start swimming her coach said on seeing her, that she was a bit overweight and would have to do something about it. To the coach this was just an observation but to Jenny in was a huge deal, as it came from a person in authority who she respected.

Jenny started going on a diet as the words her coach had said kept going around and around in her young mind and eventually she lost her weight and was swimming fast again. This may seem a good place to end the story and I wish it was but unfortunately Jenny had programmed her subconscious mind and now believed that eating meant getting fat and not being able to swim fast: so she stopped eating.

Jenny then developed a full blown case of anorexia that she could not stop and soon she was too weak to swim and had to give it up. So a promising career and a possible Olympic champion was lost to anorexia all through the careless words of her coach.

Jenny battled her anorexia for over 10 years, in and out of hospital, clinics and years of therapy which simply did not work. It was only when Jenny started doing mindfulness training meditation and attacked the anorexia where it lived, in the subconscious mind that she was finally able to beat the anorexia.

What Actually Happened to Jenny.

You see what happened to Jenny was she built a set of faulty self beliefs based on what her coach said and food. She built these using child logic e.g. food = getting fat = swimming slower = not feeling good, the remedy: stop eating.

You see self belief is very powerful and can change who you are by programming our brain, and like Jenny it can be as simple as being told she had to lose weight.

Mindfulness Training like Neuroplasticity is a double edged sword.

Jenny programmed herself into her anorexia by her feelings and emotions. She had a choice of thinking positive or negative but she perceived things only one way, negative: this then ultimately led to her anorexia. So mindfulness training can also take you down the path to an eating disorder: but once there it can take you back again with the correct methods, like the methods we talk about here. 

Feelings and Emotions are to Blame for our Suffering.

People with depression get that way not because they are full of energy and positive emotions, they don't spring out of bed looking forward to the new day. On the contrary they are always in the negative with nothing good ever happening to them and hating the thought of facing another day. Of course there could be a medical reason for their depression but that can also be changed, as we have said the brain is plastic and changeable.

 So why does mindfulness training meditation work? The simple answer is it allows us to reach a state of relaxation where we can access the subconscious mind and hence allows us to change the way it functions. You see the subconscious mind is really in control of everything you know, do and say, in fact it is the real you.

All your hopes and fears live in the subconscious mind, it is home to all your feelings and emotions whether good or bad and the scary thing is you have no logical control over the subconscious mind. To get a bit technical the medical name for it is the Limbic system.

Who is the real you?

The part that you show to the world comes from your logical mind, this is the part that decides what you want to wear to work, what you want to have for lunch, basically your everyday things. But it has no control over your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind actually controls your logical mind and you don't even know it is doing it.

For most people in the world this works out just fine and we muddle through our life with just the normal ups and downs that affect all of us from time to time. But what about the people who unfortunately get an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia: what about them? 

You see sufferers of anorexia and bulimia are totally controlled by their subconscious mind. Their eating disorder is so entrenched that they can not find a way to logically stop. You have to understand that telling an anorexic to just eat, or a bulimic to stop binging is like asking you to stop breathing air: it can't be done.

Where do self beliefs come from?

We have thousands of these sub-conscious self-beliefs that govern all areas of our lives but where do self-beliefs come from?

They are mostly developed in us at a very young age. The key is they are then cemented in the subconscious mind and make up our personality. It’s interesting to note that, unlike adults, children spend the majority of their waking time in the alpha state (more on this later).

Most of our adult behaviours are based on “programming” we picked up before the age of 5 or 6. Studies have shown that small children receive over 400 negative messages a day (“don’t be naughty”, “you’re too noisy”, “stop being so messy”) compared with only about 20 positive ones. Is it surprising that low self-esteem or negative self-image is so common?

 But here is the crunch: When it comes to getting results, your self-belief (programming) will always win out over your conscious desire: Always!
 
This means that no matter how much you consciously think that you want to give up smoking (for example), no matter how desperate you feel about it, or how certain you are that it’s “the right thing for you”, if you have an underlying self-belief (program) that is stopping you from giving up, then it won’t happen.
Jenny had an underlying self belief that if she ate she would not be able to swim fast, so she did not eat.

Jenny found a solution: Mindfulness Training Meditation.

But luckily Jenny found out about using mindfulness training meditation in the correct way so was able to finally change the way she thought, felt and reacted to her emotions.

 But before you go running out the door to get some meditation CDs, one has to be a bit careful of what you get and what problem you have to deal with. It will be totally useless getting just any CD unless it is tailored made for the problem you have or your loved one has. A common meditation CD will not work and is a waste of your money: it has to be mindfulness training based on neuroplasticity for it to work on eating disorders. Plus there is a difference between anorexia and bulimia and each has to be treated a little different when it comes to reprogramming the brain.

There is the right and wrong kind of meditation.

A meditation CD that just says to relax and listen to it will simply not work. A meditation session has to get the sufferer to participate in a set of mental exercises: positive mindfulness training. After all it was a set of negative mental exercises just like the ones Jenny had by her constantly replaying in her mind what the coach had said: then adding emotions and forming a set of pictures about what she was feeling in her mind, that eventually sent her down the slippery slide into the anorexia.

And you can rest assured that you as a sufferer did the same thing or the loved one you want to help did the same also.

You see unless you can use the same kind of process that got you to where you are today: emotions, feelings and pictures you will not affect the subconscious mind and you will stay suffering. Positive mindfulness training can reverse the negative input that has led to your anorexia or bulimia eating disorder.

Here is the reason why!

The importance of emotions, feelings and pictures

You may ask why pictures are so important to freeing yourself from your eating disorder? Well it is the fact that we turn all our thoughts into pictures. If you think about something in the past you will recall it as a set of pictures and emotions not a set of words. Try this yourself, if I say Cat what do you see in your mind the word Cat or a picture of a Cat, you see a picture.

Try this little test.

Here is a little test to prove to you what I am saying is true and I am even going to trick your mind right here right now.

OK: Now whatever you do, DO NOT THINK of the Statue of Liberty hopping up and down on one leg juggling its torch.

HEY, I said don't think of that!

Do you see what happened not only did you think of the Statue of Liberty but now you can't get it out of your head. And I even told you in advance I was going to trick your mind.

The power of pictures.

This is the power of pictures and animation on your mind, and luckily this was a silly picture of the Statue of Liberty, imagine how powerful negative thoughts played over and over in the sufferers mind must be like.

So any meditation that is any good must have all the above elements, emotions, feelings, visualization (pictures) and participation (mindfulness training).

What kind of meditation is right for me?

We have been asked to do a specialized set of meditation CDs for anorexia and bulimia and we have given into the requests, but not just any old meditation, we use mindfulness training.

When we started to think about exactly what to make we realized that most people do not know how to relax properly. For the meditation to work the mind must be in an Alpha state, this is the state where you can access the subconscious mind.
 
Here is a brief description of the different brain waves.
 
 Beta (15 – 40 cycles per second) Conscious (thinking, rationalizing)

Alpha (9 – 14 cycles per second) Sub-conscious (feelings, emotions, pictures) It’s where you should be to beat your eating disorder.

Theta (5 – 8 cycles per second) Sleep (deep meditation direct access to the subconscious mind)

Delta (1.5 – 4 cycles per second) Coma

To get to the subconscious mind we must first get you to the Alpha state where the meditation CD can do its work.

For a more detailed explanation of how brain waves work see the bottom of this page.

What we found.

Checking around we found that no one in their CDs actually teaches you to relax properly, so we have made a special CD that takes you and tells you exactly how to relax to get to the Alpha state where you can access the subconscious mind. This is a special technique that few know about and has its roots as far back as the Ancient Egyptians surpassing the Indian methods by thousands of years and is not generally shared around unless you are a master guru.

But not only that, once you master this process you can quickly relax relieving stress in a matter of seconds, even sitting at a set of traffic lights in your car. How handy would that be to you?

Unique mindfulness training meditation

Then we put together a special meditation CD one for Anorexia and a different one for Bulimia. These are not the same information and music with the word Anorexia changed to Bulimia; like most of the so called eating disorder CDs out there.

Our CDs are individually made for each problem and specially mixed with the correct kind of alpha music to reach the subconscious mind. They also have individual emotion, feelings, visualization and mental participation (mindfulness training) for anorexia and bulimia.

To top the range off, we have a special nighttime CD that actually works by affecting your subconscious mind at the Theta brain wave level while you are sleeping and reprograms the way you are thinking at the deepest level. This is a powerful way of treating your eating disorder as you are asleep with no distractions. Again it is a very special mix one for anorexia and bulimia.

So you have the choice of daytime treatment and nighttime treatment or all 3 of them.

Here is what our Mindfulness Training Meditation CDs consist of!
Anorexia Mindfulness Training CDs
 

Bulimia Mindfulness Training CDs