Detailed List of Retreats
You Can't Fill The Hole In Your Heart With Food: Developing a mindful approach to eating
As a practice, mindful eating can bring us awareness of our habits and thoughts around food and our bodies. This workshop is based on a combination of Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness and Intuitive Eating Principles. The focus is on creating a healthy relationship with food, using a non-judgemental and compassionate approach to re-learning internal physical and emotional cues to guide us when, what and how much we eat. The workshop covers how to deal with cravings and urges through the development of mindfulness skills. It also draws on techniques from cognitive behaviour therapy that enables us to become aware of, and manage, our sometimes destructive patterns and habits around food, eating and our bodies. We will also look at emotional triggers that can lead to overeating and binge eating, and how these may be effectively understood and dealt with.
Xenia Ayiotis has transformed her relationship with food through many years of mindfulness and yoga practice. She holds a Masters degree in languages from Wits University and has a background in organising tours to southern Africa. She is a certified Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training Practitioner and Intuitive Eating Counsellor. She is in private practice and facilitates workshops on how to achieve a balanced, respectful, healthy and joyful relationship with food.
Richard-John Chippindall had an academic career in Microbiology until attending Louis van Loon’s retreat Hell is Other People in the 1990’s where this introduction to Buddhist philosophy inspired him to study clinical psychology. After qualifying, he spent eleven years working at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London where he gained extensive experience in providing mindfulness-based interventions to patients with emotional and psychological difficulties, as well as chronic health problems. He is now in private practice in Johannesburg.