Traffic helicopter

[Guest guest]

I subscribe to an e-mail newsletter from Sara Ivanhoe who is the instructor on some of my yoga videos. I copied some of her current newsletter below (I cut out some of the parts that were more about yoga). It's about yoga but I think it applies to intuitive eating quite nicely! I'd like to share something that I learned about life that has helped my yoga practice.It begins, as most of my stories do, with my beloved teacher h Schiffman. Actually, it's his lesson, which he uses as part of his teacher training. It's called "The Traffic Helicopter."Imagine you are driving down a road that you frequently travel. You pass a fork in the road and to your knowledge, the road to the left is the quickest, so you take it. What you don't know is that way up ahead,

around a bend, past what you can see WITH YOUR EYES, there has been an accident and traffic is beginning to pile up at a standstill. Had you known this, you would have taken the road to the right, seemingly the long way, but now in fact, the quciker route. But you didn't take it, because you were looking for the ground level and from your limited perspective, it seemed all clear. That is why the traffic helicopter was invented. The traffic helicopter gives us the aerial perspective (big picture) and it reports down with the news. We can actually avoid getting stuck in traffic by taking an alternative route if we HAVE OUR RADIOS TURNED ON. We can get instructions from something larger than ourselves and avoid hurt, injury, or traffic. We as humans have our own personal traffic helicopter that we can tune into at any time. It's called our intuition, or inner guidance. Begin with something simple. You're at the grocery store and you're trying to figure

out what kind of bread to buy. You say to yourself "Well whole grain bread is healthier, so I should buy that". You pick it up and there is another voice that says, "Buy the white bread." You ignore it, as you usually do and so it repeats "Buy the white bread." This time, you actually listen to the voice and purchase the bread for no apparently good reason. When you get home, you find that Grandma has paid you a surprise visit and she can only stomach white bread. We all have our own helicopter. We just have to decide to turn on the radio and start listening. I try to do this all the time, with every choice I have to make. Sometimes it takes a little longer for me. I have moments when I ignore the voice because it doesn't go with my "plans." I always regret it. As many of you know, the word "yoga" comes from Sanskrit root "yuj" meaning "yoke", or "to connect with", "to have union with" something GREATER THAN OURSELVES. We can call it God, we can call it a

higher power, or we can call it our intuition. h calls it our "Traffic Helicopter" and that's just fine with me.

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