BODY AWARENESS

I find that I have ignored my body so long, that I can no longer hear the signals it sends me. I don't feel hunger, thirst, the urgency of voiding, the grumble of an impending bowel movement.

I must be completely inactive, sitting or lying quietly, in order to begin to sense the subtle signals of my body's needs. In the silence of resting, if I listen very closely, I begin to sense what seems like gentle, slow-moving waves passing over my body. If I stay very still, the waves take form and become more concrete. I begin to distinguish not only hunger from thirst, but hunger for exactly what my body wants. Perhaps the light sweetness of grapes or the rich oiliness of an avocado, the salty softeness of cheese or the robust firmness of a piece of meat.

Once over the twin hurdles of "Am I hungry?" and "What do I want to eat?", I must decide how much is enough. When I eat mindfully, I seem to have a tipping point where I have had all I want. However, if I eat too quickly, I breeze by the finish flag and consequently, eat too much.

Thirst is just as difficult to identify, but I have given up drinking on a schedule in favour of learning to feel thirsty. I keep a crystal glass of fresh water on the table by my chair where I can see it at all times. Sometimes it just looks like a pretty glass, but when I am thirsty, it looks like an oasis in the desert. I now appreciate the expression 'sweetness of water', and often just hold it in my mouth to enjoy the refreshing feeling of it around my tongue.

For many years, I suffered from what doctor's called 'constipation' because I go many days between bowel movements. It now occurs to me that they were wrong. It is many years since I began consistently eating less than 1000 calories per day. As that energy deficit took its toll, my body became less and less willing to part with 'waste'. The only 'normal' bowel movement I routinely produce occurs after I have eaten a large meal at a party or restaurant. Occasionally, usually after eating raw vegetables, I will experience a bout of diarrhea, which leaves me feeling absolutely wrung out. Now that I am eating more and more often, I experience gut sounds and cramping both before and after meals. Usually the warmth and pressure of a heating pad is enough to give me ease, and I trust that in time as I contine to eat freely, these discomforts will disappear.

I feel sad that I have asked my body to do so much for me on so little fuel. In seeing food as a threat, I came to regard my body as the enemy, when in reality, it is my closest ally. By learning now to listen, I hope to rebuild the holistic communication that my childhood experiences destroyed.