Eating

1. In the Dentist Office - wherein I discover the Inner Playground: (mp3)
2. The Inner Playground - defined
3. My Inner Inner City
4. My Own Private Hollywood
5. Part Two: Games for the Inner Player
6. Freeze Tag
7. Mother May I
8. Simon Says
9. Part Three: Building an Inner Playground
10. The Inner Seesaw
11. My Inner Swingset
12. Part Four: Introducing Serious and Silly
13. Serious and Silly (mp3)
14. Kick the Can

According to the Oaqui*, fun is the reason we do anything we don't have to do, especially if we do it more than once. Chewing gum. Jumping rope. Climbing mountains. Fun. All for fun.

Under the category of "things we don't have to do" the Oaqui include/s many of the so-called psychological "disorders," from the relatively innocuous act of overeating all the way to the obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anorexia of the profoundly nervosa.

Psychofuniatry, the Oaqui precursor to our belovedly fun-centered therapy, looks at these so-called illnesses not as disorders, but as orders, well-ordered orders, complex and engaging inner-games that, given the alternatives, are just too much fun to quit.

Overeating, for example, is not, unless you were Oaqui, what you'd call a healthy thing to be doing, physically or psychologically speaking. And yet, physically and psychologically speaking, overeating is fun.

The Oaqui describe/s the overeating game as the art of getting to eat more than you actually need without getting sick or suicidal afterwards. In the meantime, you get to taste, tongue, suck, crush, crumble and chomp in state of near-blissful mastication, generally having so much fun you can just about lose yourself. Especially if you're playing while driving or watching TV.

It can be so deep, this overeating, so intricate. There's an entire company of wonderfully sensuous players that you can bring into this inner-game: taste, touch, smell, appetite, intestinal capacity.

To add to the drama of the whole thing, inner-voices and characterizations can transform the apparently simple act of overeating into a gut-wrenching family encounter between:  1) your mother who made you eat more than you wanted, 2) your self at three, with fully-developed hand-mouth reflexes that can feed you faster than you can think, and 3) your stomach as played by your father.

Such a genuinely delicious game. Intricate enough to allow you to weave a whole tapestry of strategies, from soup to nuts, binge to purge. Enticing enough that if you can't find anything more fun to do, you can spend the rest of your life eating yourself to death.

According to the Oaqui, overeating is not the problem. It is the solution - a brilliant game that you can play anywhere, anytime, all your life. The psychofuniatric intervention: not to end overeating, but to increase the repertoire. Not to deny the fun, but to make it more fun.

"When developing the inner-playground," the Oaqui* often say/s, "why tear down the swings when you could be building a sandbox or something."