DIGS [Developing the Internal Guidance System: Second Practice]

What Am I Hungry For?

The practice is a kind of extension from the first practice. You use your feeling tones, getting that internal aura in your inward parts, but do so in terms of the metaphor of What am I hungry for? This question as a metaphor I have adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Ever been in a restaurant and you are quite hungry, but as your eye runs down the menu, nothing on it seems to satisfy? Hmmm, What am I hungry for? You see possibilities, but none of them quite fit with your body sense of what you want. What the body wants seems to be very exact and it is quite fussy about it. Maybe they have burgers of all kinds, and nice steaks, but no fish, and you want fish. Or maybe your body is hankering for seafood pasta and you can only fine steak and potato specials on the menu. If you’ve had this experience you already know something about how to discriminate in a bodily felt way, because when you search the menu, there is an intricate physical process going on, you may not have realized it, but you are checking in with your body’s appetite.

In this second practice, we use this as a metaphor and ask, What am I hungry for in this situation that I am now in? But I wont offer you clear steps or tell you which one’s to do first. I am inviting you to use your IGS to determine that. Ask, What amongst these am I drawn to explore first. As you practice these inquiries, be sure to write down what you discover in your journal, and later share it with you therapist or a friend. Sharing it helps establish it.

A close version of this which you may prefer is to ask: What am I drawn towards…what would it feel delightful, or fascinating, or relaxing to do? What would “hit the spot” exactly?. Many pregnant women know this kind of power of discrimination and use it to an uncommonly high degree.

We will also want to pay attention to what we are not drawn to, even what we recoil from the way a jelly fish recoils from some noxious stimuli. The body’s IGS tells us what feels right, and what feels wrong organismically.

For this practice it is good to make two kinds of lists in your journal. One list concerns items that you know you are hungry for or are drawn two. The other list is to be comprised of items you know you recoil from, are revolted by, or for which you just feel like sighing  “ Ïck!!!!”

If you have been Invited to do this practice, there a good chance you can benefit from practicing it a little bit every day until you’ve got it habitualized. It won’t take very long. Be sure to keep the Critic out of the way and let yourself explore what you are drawn towards and away from.

You can spend a week each exploring your IGS with respect to any of the following topics:

Love, sex, art, music, religion, work, recreation, hobbies, kind of books you like to read/avoid, kind of fabrics you are drawn towards…textures, surfaces :e.g. woods, leathers, down feathers, velvet), knick knacks, grocery shopping, what to do with free time on your days off, Issues, people, values.

You can pick a topic, like People, and ask: What kind of people am I attracted to anyway? What kind give me the heebeegeebies?

Another good question is to ask, What have I found surprisingly delightful lately?

There is no end to this practice. Try doing it until you feel you are now regularly using your own IGS, and thus consulting your own heart about things. This is an important practice in developing the capacity to feel, and in creating more of the life you want, and less of the life you don’t want. You will be able to create the day you want, able to take walks and explore what you are drawn toward, able to make decisions about what to do with more of a clear sense of rightness about it. I have found that if a person gives as little as two weeks to this practice, there life starts changing in a really noticeable way, and they have made another big step in learning to live from and honor their hearts and the Invitations that arise.

Remember: The heart’s Invitations often first arise into awareness through the feeling tones of the IGS. So this becomes not only a psychological but a Spiritual practice and skill.

Once you have the practice of consulting your IGS down well, the next that it would be good to build onto this with would be learning the practicing of Focusing on a felt-sense.

C. Michael Smith, Ph.D.