DR BRIDELL’S logical and rational & poetic and beautiful & completely guaranteed DIET
#10: Poetry (living in and seeing the moment)
By the Mysterious Dr Bridell

Author's note: This is the tenth installment of a column that explores a new diet based on spiritual rather than physical paradigms.  It is arranged in "bite-sized chunks" that come to you each Friday and that build on each other.  It is sometimes called the "eat-half" diet and is built around some surprisingly simple concepts that require discipline and commitment (and practice) to implement — these physical principles lay the foundation for the more enlightening and revealing mental and spiritual concepts to come.  Your challenge as a participant is to put the principles into practice each week as they come to you.  If you missed any of the earlier columns, catch up by clicking here to go to the Bridell archives.  And remember that Dr Bridell appreciates feedback and comments as well as questions which you can send to him by clicking here

Where are we going with this one?  Poetry as part of a diet?  Yes!  And it’s not as weird as you think.  Here’s the deal: This diet is all about awareness and sensitivity… Being aware of the quality and amount of what you eat… Appreciating it… Tasting it… Sipping and savoring.  To improve and perfect our ability to do this, we have to work on improving and perfecting our ability to be aware and sensitive in the broader and more general sense.  Awareness and sensitivity are qualities that can be developed, skills that can be learned and practiced.

And there is no better way to do that than to attempt some poetry!  (Have no fear, this is private poetry that no one will critique or judge.  In fact, no one will even see it unless you happen to write one so good that you just have to show it to somebody.)

Think about the process of writing a poem ― or if you’ve never tried it, imagine what you think that process might be.  First, you have to really notice something ― to become acutely aware of how it looks or sounds or feels or smells or tastes, and of how it makes you feel.  Second, you have to hold that image in your mind, to visualize it.  Third, you have to discipline yourself to actually sit down and try to describe it, to write about it.

The awareness and visualization and discipline of the eat-half diet are so similar.  And the skills and perspectives you develop by trying to write poetry will help you become good at the diet.

Poetry can be about anything you notice and appreciate.  But try to write some of your poems about your own body, about your appreciation for some of its particular function or form, about your visualization of how you want it to become, about the miraculous nature of its ability to assimilate high quality food and turn them into energy and muscle.

Use visualization to heal and improve your body.  Write poems about health and vigor.  “See” yourself the way you want to be.  Imagine, in vivid detail your arteries carrying blood or your lungs assimilating oxygen or your antibodies warding off infection.  Use poetry as a way of capturing these positive images.

The type of thinking required to support and enhance the eat-half diet is both analytic and artistic, part science and part creativity; and poetry (or even bad attempts at poetry) are the best way to mentally summon the combination!

Here’s the challenge:  Get a notebook or diary or some kind of little blank book that you can keep track of, and write something in it every day.  It might just be one line of a poem, or a description of something you noticed that you can incorporate into a poem later.  Some days you will be inspired and write a complete poem; other days you may just jot down a couple of lines, but the commitment to write something every day will cause you to be aware and to be looking and noticing more than usual.

Try thinking about where you are, what you can see or hear, what you are feeling, what your body is doing, while you are eating.  While you are sipping, savoring and smelling your half portion of food, use the slowness of those moments to reflect a little, to let thoughts come into your mind, to try to be in the moment as you taste and appreciate your food.  Open your book and write what you feel.

Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, or to follow some particular meter or structure.  Just use the most graphic and clear words you can think of to describe what you are noticing or feeling. Use as few words as you can.  Choose the words like you are learning to choose your food, with quality being more important than quantity.

Here, as examples, are three or four poems that were written by diet clients of mine.  None of them will win a prize or be published, but writing them was helpful in noticing, helpful in slowing down, helpful in being in the present, and thus helpful in dieting.  You can do just as well!

Liquid Light
The clear glass fills with clear water,
Bubbling up cold from tap to rim, catching light.
Then to my lips, a sip, a swallow, then a pulsing river flowing down,
Cooling and cleansing, pooling in the center of me,
Then trickling out through my tributaries to legs and arms
Some percolates back up, through another part of my neck
To cool and clear my brain.

Aerobics, First Day
A strange mood prompts me to see
if I can survive an hour.
By happenstance I get in an advanced class.
The instructor is a girl shaped like a
silver stovepipe,
insufficient flesh to have curves
and wearing shiny grey tights.
Even her hoarse voice is metallic,
And she is bionic.
I realize it as she never stops,
never tires or frowns or moans,
never even sweats.
I do all of those things.
Each provides a modicum of relief.
The music pulses loud against
the glitter and glass.
It’s a disco really; strobe lights
would look right in place,
glistening bodies and leg warmers.
A new phenomenon combining
narcissism and vanity
But a more obtainable pride
than most
and not all bad
(but don’t ask my body!).

A Sky Like That
Leaving the office one routine day
glanced up
and beheld
the glory bursts of heaven’s sun
behind the gray receding storm clouds.
Late March after a day-long snow
now, air winter crisp,
clarion clear.
Sky’s pure, pale delicate blue
(since it’s so new) and the still gray retreating clouds
with edges dazzling white,
giving away the presence of the sun.
They still try to hide ―
Had I been all day in a great museum
unseen ― studying works of master man
my reaction would have been the same
walking out…
“This is beauty”
and all works of man
fail to compare.

Early Light
Looked out this morning early
light
long before usual
white round snow, white round moon, blue sky, gold only along east rim
even light,
with no dominating source
part moon, part dawn, part snow-earth reflection
stereophonic light ― or triphonic ― or multi-phonic
comes from everywhere
bathes all the air with just enough illumination
to see
and be
moved
by its beauty.

So try your hand at a poem or two ― it is part of the eat-half diet!  And you can do it!  See you next week when we will reveal the metaphorical heart of the Dr. Bridell diet!

Remember that Dr. Bridell appreciates feedback and comments as well as questions, all of which you can send directly to him/her by clicking here.