Guilty Pleasures

Candy Corn.  That's mine...at least during the fall.  In the spring it turns to jelly beans.  Apparently my pleasures are very seasonal...there's also red wine in winter, white in the summer.  I'm well aware that candy corn is made up almost entirely of sugar and corn syrup and a handful of other things I can neither spell nor pronounce which means my body is no place for these mystery products to be going.  Nonetheless, when the season rolls around, clean eating be damned!  As a very health conscious person, I've always felt guilty about putting something so artificial in my body. But did I stop, or even attempt to stop?  Not really.  What I have come to find though yoga though, is that its not about self-denial or the denial of all things pleasurable.  Yoga isn't about eradicating ourselves of our imperfections, or making ourselves into a perfect human being.  No such thing exists.  We are only human.  Its about awareness of our imperfections, mindfulness, and moderation of them.  Its about bringing them into our consciousness. Instead of mindlessly eating handful after handful of candy corn, I've made it into a little evening ritual that takes place in the fall.  We have one bag of candy corn in the house.  Every couple of nights as we sit reading or watching TV, I sit down with a hot cup of pumpkin spice decaf tea and a small handful of my delightful candy corn.  I eat it very slowly, almost letting it dissolve in my mouth.  Between each piece, I take a sip of tea.  This little ritual has transformed a guilty pleasure into blissful experience.

There is pleasure. And there is bliss. Forgo the first to possess the second. Buddha