To support our working in healing body shame, I offer a monthly Goddess Guidance reflection. The images and card meanings are from The Goddess Oracle Deck by Amy Sophia Marashinksy. For each goddess, I offer a reflection on what insights/challenges/gifts are being we might embrace on our Body Sovereignty Journey.
The Importance of How We Relate to Food
Our relationship to food is intrinsically linked to how we feel about our body and vice versa. When we experience body shame or don’t feel at home in our skin, our diet is often blamed and we feel pressure (both internal and external) to fix our body by eating a certain way. This causes us to have a strained relationship with food, one rooted in fear and confusion.
Food is a basic survival need, along with shelter, water, air and sleep. When we diet to lose weight, we put ourselves at odds with deeply encoded survival mechanisms in our body, and this can be really hard on our psyche. Check out this post to learn about non-diet ways to eat.
This month Corn Woman invites us to reconnect with the sacred nature of food and focus on providing ourselves nourishment. I love this card! Read below for the mythology of Corn Woman and a powerful ritual suggestion to support you in nurturing peace in your relationship with food.
Reflective Questions
Do you fear food? Does just looking at food make you feel like you are gaining weight? Are you too busy, too stressed, to involved with more important things than nourishing yourself? Do you nourish others but not yourself? Do you have a love-hate relationship with food? Corn Woman says that eating is one of the most basic acts of self-nourishment and that the way to wholeness for you lies in coming into right relationship with food.
Mythology (from the Goddess Oracle)
Southwestern indigenous aboriginals and pueblo peoples – the Arikara, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidasta, Abnaki, Cherokee and Huron – see corn as a Goddess. Corn Woman encompasses the figures of Corn Mother, the Corn Maidens, and Yellow Woman. They all relate to corn as a sacred being who gives of herself to her people to sustain them and nourish them. The Arikara Creator God, Nesaru, fashioned Corn Mother from an ear of corn which grew in heaven. Corn Mother then came to earth and taught people how to honor the deities and to plant corn.
Meaning of the Card
Corn Woman brings her love for you in the form of food to tell you it is time to nourish yourself. Eating is a sacred act. Something living dies and you take it in, whether you hunt/kill the animals you eat with your own hands or buy your vegetables in the supermarket. Part of being human means causing death in order to live. To treat the act of eating as a chore, as something to be feared or avoided, is to denigrate the gift of love from Corn Woman and the plants and animals.
Ritual Suggestion
The time is breakfast, lunch, or dinner and the place is where you eat your meals. You can do this alone or with loved ones or friends. You can either prepare the food yourself or have others prepare it. When the food is ready, sit at your place. Take a moment to look at the food, to see, sense, or feel the life force of the food before you. Then close your eyes and take a deep breath. Notice any feelings come up. Now feel the energy from the earth moving up into your toes, into your calves, your thighs, and so on, into each part of your body until you feel centered, focused, aware, and fully in your body. Take another deep breath and feel all your cells breathe with you. Now open your eyes.
Serve yourself some food. Honour the plants and/or animals by saying words of gratitude. As you take a bite, slow down, be with the food, with the sensations, with all your senses. Chew slowly, giving yourself time to really taste, smell, and savour the flavours. Try to taste all the ingredients. With your next bite, focus on the life force. Do you feel a tingling as you chew, like energy surges pulsating in your mouth? Feel how you and the food become one as it dissolves in your mouth. Let yourself take in the life force of the food and feel it nourish your own life force. Give yourself permission to fully enjoy the pleasure you get from eating. Continue to eat in this focused, sacred way, being present in your body, paying attention to all your senses, until you have eaten what you need. When you are finished, take a deep breath and let the energy you have gained circulate throughout your body. Give thanks to Corn Woman and to yourself for nourishment.
Sydney is a body image therapist providing online counselling grounded in Health at Every Size principles. Heal body shame by reclaiming Body Sovereignty and once again experience peace, trust and respect in your body. Learn more about Sydney’s approach here.