Feeding Your Demons outlines a strategy for transforming negative emotions, relationships, fears, illness, and self-defeating patterns. Demons are our obsessions and fears, chronic illnesses, depression, anxiety, and addiction.
As a Certified Practitioner of Feeding Your Demons, I have seen, first hand, the gentle profound transformation that comes from this clinical practice. This unique practice brings together psychological and spiritual insights; it can be experienced both from a secular or spiritual vantage point.
Developed by renowned American Buddhist teacher Lama Tsultrim Allione, Feeding Your Demons is based on an extraordinarily simple yet effective, transformative five-step practice that recognizes your personal demons, gives them form, and then feeds them, freeing yourself from the constant inner battle to overcome those aspects of yourself that continue to undermine your ability to let go of self-defeating patterns. Instead this unique practice of Feeding Your Demons offers us a revolutionary path to resolve conflict that leads to psychological integration and inner peace.
Lama Tsultrim recognizing the political and spirual polarization of our age, has offered us, through the practice of Feeding Your Demons, a fresh approach to conflict.
The approach of giving form to these inner forces, and feeding rather than struggling against them, was originally articulated by an eleventh-century female Buddhist teacher, Machig Labdron (1055-1145). Her spiritual practice was called Chod (pronounced “chuh”) which means “to cut through”. She developed this form of meditation, unusual even in her time in Tibet, and it generated such amzaing results that it became very popular, spreading to all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism and beyond.
This simple five-step practice doesn’t required any knowledge or belief in Buddhism.
Step One In the first step we find where in the body we hold our “demon” most strongly. This demon might be addiction, self-hatred, perfectionism, anger, jealouse, or anything that is draining your energy. Our demons are what we fear - anything that blocks complete inner freedom is a demon.
Step Two we allow the energy that we find in the body to take personified form right in front of us. giving the energy a shape, a colour, a texture moving it our of your body to become a being with limbs, a face, eyes and so on.
Step Three we discover what the demon needs by putting ourself in the demon’s place, becoming the demon -similiar to a Gestalt exercise. As the demon, we answer 3 questions to find what the demon needs, wants and how the demon will feel when it receives what it really needs.
Step Four we imagine dissolving our own body into nectar or whatever it is that the demon needs, and we let this flow to the demon. In this way we nurture the demon, feeding it to complete satisfaction. Having satisfied the demon, we find that the energy that was tied up in the demon turns into an ally. This ally offers us protection and support then dissolves into us as light. At the end of the fourth step, we dissolve into emptiness.
Step Five in the final step, we simply rest in the open awareness that comes from dissolving into emptiness.
Paradoxically, feeding our demons to complete satisfaction does not strengthen the demons; rather it allows the energy that has been locked up in the demon to become accessible. When we fight against or repress the disowned parts of ourselves that this practice calls demons, they actually gain power and develop resistance. When we feed our demons we are not only rendering them harmless; we are also, by addressing them instead of running away from them, nurturing the shadow parts of ourselves, so that the energy caught in the struggle transforms into a positive protective force.
The above information was taken from Lama Tsultrim Allione’s book “FEEDING YOUR DEMONS” ISBN-13: 978-0-316-01313-0.
Lama Tsultrim Allione is a pioneering Buddhist teacher and the founder of Tara Mandala Retreat Center in Colorado, USA, dedicated to empowering women in Buddhism and preserving the wisdom of the Tibetan tradition. As an emanation of Machig Labdrön, the 11th-century Tibetan yogini and founder of the Chöd lineage, Lama Tsultrim carries forward the profound practices of compassion, wisdom, and transformation.
For additional information on Feeding Your Demons training program: please contact Tara Mandela Buddhist Retreat Center in https://www.taramandala.org/programs-overview/long-term-study-pathways/feeding-your-demons/training-tracks-and-paths-for-certification/fyd-online-program/