Quiet time

I had a very interesting session yesterday, covering so many things that I was exhausted after 45 minutes when usually I want to go for a second hour!

I talked about my recent yearning and craving for quiet time.  I've been driving home from work at night swearing that I will set my alarm to get up just a little bit early and go to my beautiful quiet office - where I have purchased a "nursing" glider just for me (at one point I had purchased a comfy recliner just for me but it was reassigned to the living room).  But every morning I sleep late and dash out of the house, coffee in hand.  However, after yesterday's session, I did get up early this morning, and just sat quietly with my coffee in my beautiful personal room.  The feeling was so exquisite I actually started crying.  I read the second-day declaration from Joel Osteen's book "I Declare" and it was so nice to read it aloud and have the quiet and serenity to pay attention.

When I was in my office I looked around and realized that I have things from two of my aunts and my mother in there, and I just wrote a fourth sister to ask her if she would like to give me something of hers to complete the energy.  I also have a lovely portrait of my grandmother from when she was 16, done sometime in the 1800's that I will also hang in there to complete the energy of the Finkle women.  Anyway - it was a lovely way to start the day and not something that I will be apt to miss from hereon.

When I began talking about my yearning for quiet time and about how if I could just have a drop in cortisol levels then I would probably lose weight, my counselor talked to me about the autonomic nervous system (ANS).  From the way I live my life, my "fight or flight" branch of the ANS is in strong working order, but not so much the "rest and digest" branch, and that's what I am going to work on.  Finding some quiet time for myself is going to be a priority right now.  The wedding is over, my mother is not in any sort of crisis situation, my son is doing well, and, all in all, life is good.  No need to fight or flight it.

But how this all began is that I was telling her that I had a very strange episode on Monday night.  I was experiencing..... NOTHING!!!!!!  I sat quiet for a few minutes in the evening, and realized that I wasn't hungry and I wasn't full.  I was absolutely in the middle- not even a little bit to the right or left of middle.  I told her it was almost scary.  It is at that quiet moment that I usually jump up and eat and do my most destruction with nighttime eating.  It is always after dinner when I am NOT hungry at all.  Things are quiet.  I'm not necessarily even bored or lonely or stressed from the day.  I'm NOTHING....  With my overdeveloped "fight or flight" energy I always feel I have to be doing something, feeling something, EATING something.  It's uncomfortable to NOT be uncomfortable. LOL!

So she asked me to explore the tension between the fear of the quiet and the craving of the quiet.  That middle point of NOTHINGNESS, where I am torn between wanting to jump up and eat because I am afraid of the quiet and wanting to just sit with it and let it envelop me.  I am hoping that my morning exercise of sitting quietly in my special room will help me overcome the fear of quiet.  I believe that once I reach that point I can also defeat my need to be always eating and always on the go.

Have you had your quiet time today?
Miriam