What do you hunger for?
I have been contemplating on this in an ever deepening way recently.
Hunger.
What does it mean to be in relationship to our hunger?
Around 12 years ago I was initiated into chronic illness and after over 8 years in remission, it has come back around to teach me something about hunger.
One of my symptoms you see is the lack of hunger.
Or getting full fast.
Usually both.
In my own experience, my body’s physiological response is a mirror to all aspects of my life and my being and so naturally I began to contemplate the simple mundane experiences of hunger and how it also relates to my current existential mid-life crisis I currently find myself in.
What is my relationship with hunger?
When I feel these greater big picture type themes playing out in my life, I sometimes find it simplifies things to go to the most basic mundane aspect of how something shows up.
I go to my body.
I go to curiosity and sensation.
I go to the most basic, tangible, and embodied expression, and I slow down and notice.
Way back when I was transitioning from chronic illness to a relatively stable state of remission, I had been in a profound state of a layered embodiment journey. I was exploring the most simplest and mundane experiences of my life – from how I chewed my food, and how I brushed my teeth. I had found simple and embodied somatic explorations that eventually would lead me to study and become a biodynamic craniosacral therapist.
One of the most simple and profound practices was reshaping my relationship to my body and to pleasure.
Esther Perel talks about our relationship to the erotic as more than our sexual experience but the whole entirety of the sensorial spectrum of what it feels like to be alive.
I reconnected to Eros in an environment of safety, able to for the first time explore the experience of pleasure without the veil of shame.
Shame is part of most of our cultural experience when it comes to our relationship with the Erotic, however in my case it carried the added layers of cult like conditioning, puritan culture, and severe toxic family dynamics rooted in multigenerational trauma.
I remember feeling so surprised that such simple practices and connectivity would alter my experience so profoundly and how quickly I could go from debilitating illness to full vitality in such a short period of time. I admit that I had thought at one point foolishly that I had found some secret “formula” to permanently healing chronic disease.
Of course, life is so much more nuanced and complex than that – and at the same time, simpler.
This is something I keep in mind when I see all of the programs and gurus out there selling their magic formulas and protocols. The truth is that no one really has the answer but you.
That is both the most frustrating and empowering truth I have come to realize.
Part of us would secretly love a magic pill to make the suffering just go away, and yet, it would also rob of us the wisdom of sitting in our own experience.
Not to romanticize chronic illness (I don’t wish it upon anyone), it is still important to have the capacity to be with what is in this experience I like to call “Earth School”.
Back to hunger.
What does hunger have to do with anything?
One of the most interesting things I have been noticing in my own hunger (or lack of hunger) is what do I do with it?
I’ve been skipping that part.
On a physiological level, I’m hungry, I eat (quickly), I’m full (rather quickly), and then I feel bloated and the consequences of my sluggish and compromised digestion.
Rarely do I ever ask myself
“what am I hungry for?”
This is such an important question, I mean in a world where we all want to know our purpose in life and be in relationship with our desires, how the hell do we know what we want if we don’t know what we hunger for?
Desire and hunger are directly related but they are not the same thing at all.
Hunger is the physical sensation.
It’s the gnawing, the growling, the gurgle of our literal “gut” intuition.
Hunger is the wisdom of the belly.
How do we relate?
Do we take the time to stop, really feel hunger and ask it “what do I hunger for?”
I’ve come to realize that in our quest for the “good” life and actualizing our desires we are actually missing a crucial step in the process and that is simply being in relationship and listening to our hunger.
We are so busy filling ourselves to ask – is this what I really hunger for?
Am I slowing down enough to really listen?
Am I checking in with each bit to see if this is still nourishing, satisfying, or if I am full or perhaps just done?
With food …
But also with energy,
Other people,
Experiences.
I notice that how I approach my hunger translates to how I relate to other people, particularly with social situations.
There is a parallel between how I digest my food and the experience of life.
I feel I’m just scratching the surface of something very simple and yet very much profound and pervasive in my experience of life.
For now, I will just leave you dear reader with the question …
How do you relate to your hunger?
What do you really hunger for when you stop, pause, and listen?
xo,
jenn