Vania Phitidis
Written by Vania Phitidis
Peaceful Eating Coach
Last updated on 21 October 2024
Reading time: 2 minutes

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Our modern lives tend to be busy. Many of my clients seem to be in perpetual motion, perpetual engagement, perpetually being ‘on.’

Screens have sneaked their way into our lives to the point where the only time away from them is when we’re sleeping, and for some, not even then. It’s interesting: a few decades ago, information and knowledge were highly prized. Now we can’t get away from them. Practically anything you could ever want to know is available at the touch of a screen. These days, people pay top dollar to go to places with no WiFi, no cell phone signal and no television – it’s a rarity.

Going nowhere: being everywhere

You don’t actually need to pay thousands to go to one of the few places in the world that is unplugged. You don’t need to use a plane, train or automobile to find peace.

You just need to sit. In stillness. Preferably every day.

When you sit in stillness, you’re going Nowhere. You’re not moving. You’re not distracting yourself with anything outside of you. You’re right here, right now, with these thoughts, these feelings, these physical sensations. The practice is to acknowledge whatever arises and then consistently bring your attention to your breath, as it makes its way in and out of your body.

And in the breath, is a vast open space.

It’s like the desert sky: still, clear, open… immense.

Time expands.

Extraordinarily, it delivers you to Everywhere. It’s like the whole universe is right inside your breath.

Food can be used to fill a whole host of needs

including the need for solitude, stillness, quietude and/a connection with that which is greater than ourselves (call it God, Spirit, Life, The Mystery etc.). Read more about that here.

Food fills our tummies – and that’s immensely satisfying, especially when hungry! I have found that stillness fills me up in a different way. Sometimes, non-hunger eating might be coming from hunger for spiritual nourishment that cannot be satisfied by outside distractions – be they food, entertainment, conversation, or material consumption.

My biggest breakthrough with my own journey to freedom from food came with the practice of meditation, and it’s something I see with my clients, over and over.

We need to feed all parts of ourselves. Food isn’t the answer to all our hungers.

With love from Vania