The Hunger
Dismantling the power and pull of hunger - and the importance of love when breaking habits
There is a hunger in me
A desire for a full life. I travel, I read, I connect, I learn, I absorb, I eat - quite a lot in fact.
In fact an old friends family nicknamed me “food” on account of the amount I ate as a guest. There is a power in this hunger, it moves me to action, it means I have gone out to meet life, to connect with it in lip smacking ways.
And there is a flip side to it of course.
It can dictate and dominate and drain me.
I want to rush through things, eat everything off the buffet but not take time to digest.
In this sense my hunger can feed me but not satiate me.
And emptying is borderline terrifying for me. It taps into a deep seam of scarcity in my system.
What happens if I lean into that, what if I take a break from constantly feeding myself?
Earlier this month I took a week of not eating. In the literal sense. No food for 7 days bar some specific enzymes and warm water. No chewing, no sipping, no cooking, no inhaling the sweet smell of a well flavoured dish. Nada
I cleared out in other ways too.
Oil pulling
Dry skin brushing
Yoga nidra
Chanting and silence and then
a whole 24 hours of silence, no devices, no writing, no communication, no input, no output - more on that another time but how TF to people do 10 days of that?
Instead I was a witness to my habit of consuming.
Alongside it.
Breathing with it
Holding the hand of the part of me that wants to devour, to pull things toward her.
I sat one morning in the beautiful sunshine and immediately my mind went to ‘More’
- maybe I should walk across the fields, maybe I should lie down in the sunshine, maybe I should REALLY be OUT in it, commit fully to the sunshine.
Get more IN me. So restless with it.
My god.
I had come outside because I found myself over consuming recordings of a mentoring programme I am in. Trying to get MORE in me when I hadn’t digested what I had just watched. Eating a starter and reaching a fork out to the main course.
Caught myself. Pressed stop. Came outside.
Same story with the sun.
Wherever you go, there you are.
These patterns run so deep.
And then the temptation to collapse into self criticism. And THIS is where we can really trip up.
How do you treat yourself when you catch yourself in the patterns you run.
How much love can you pour in here.
It takes some mettle to hold oneself here.
It requires some energy, some power and all the AWARENESS of our capacity.
And then the MOST self compassion for where we are at.
These past 18 months of moving country and beginning a life again in the UK, rebirthing a business (and honestly, getting a LOT of things wrong there) have been a relentless run from one task to the next, lead by the hunger good and bad.
I am of course grateful I could take some time to slow down, to empty, to listen deeply and to hold myself lovingly with what I discovered in that place. For along with the lessons in hunger, there were moments of clear, clean energy running through me during that week. The clearing out, reducing the internal noise, oh the noise, the steady daily recommitment to the cleanse and the loving practices gave me access to some clear unquestionable knowing deep in my body about what to do next.
And I would love that to be it, but I know that now the practice of continuing to reconnect to that place begins.
What patterns do you run that need a committed approach.
And how much love can you pour in here.
Cat x
#patterns #cleanse #fast #therapyforchange #somatics #compassion