Day 10 Final Day of My Autumn Cleanse!

October 9 Day 9 Master Cleanser:
7:15 AM Enema
9:15 AM 1 Quart Master Cleanser with: 1 quart warmed water, 5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, pulp (and seeds), 4 tablespoons Grade B maple syrup and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne spicy
11:15 AM Core Strengthening Exercises
1:30 PM 1 Quart Master Cleanser
7:30 PM 1 Quart Master Cleanser
Total: 3 Quarts

October 10 Day 10 Master Cleanser:
9:55 AM 1 Quart Master Cleanser
1:30 PM 1 Quart Master Cleanser
7:00 PM 1 Quart Master Cleanser
Total: 3 Quarts

I cannot believe it's almost over, and that tomorrow morning, I'll be starting my day with 8 ounces of soaked organic prunes and no Master Cleanser. Moving right into my life, I'll be having a lunchtime counseling session as well, though I will be somewhere that I can eat raw and light. Still, it feels strange to think about.
Though I feel complete and in gratitude that I cleansed according to my vision and commitment, I also feel a little sad to let it go. If I weren't moving into some venues where I would be sharing meals with other people, I would keep it going for a few more days. My body feels like it is in its truth, so to speak. I am releasing old beliefs and ways of coping every day, and meeting myself in all aspects of my life without food as an avoidance masked as pleasure.
How often do we just eat for the pure joy of eating? When I cleanse, I see an even deeper layer than I was aware. As much as I counsel others in Ecstatic Eating! and what it means to purely nourish ourselves and have a passionate relationship with our food, our bodies and our health, I understand how even I can deceive myself sometimes around food. I would say that I quite often do know the distinction between eating for the unadulterated sake of eating and eating to momentarily fill, avoid, numb or push away life. But even I witnessed a number of times during the past ten days, where if I had been eating solid food, I would have reached for it in relation to my experience of my life at just that moment. It's subtle sometimes, as those moments can also correlate with true hunger or mealtime; but it's that moment when food becomes a reaction rather than an action.
In the wild, animals don't look at the clock or even the sun to gage their hunger; they feel it instinctively. Because their emotional senses are not nearly as developed as ours (though their spiritual senses are, if you've ever had a cat), the stuff of life does not cloud their instinct. Even if a lion cub gets killed by another lion, its parent does not track down food to quell the sadness. It is only the human species who acts out their life experiences with food.
Today was a particularly difficult day for me emotionally. I had a major disappointment and an expectation of something in my life that didn't come to pass. I even had what I would call a meltdown in terms of the depth of emotion, pain and frustration I felt about this. At that moment, I felt physically wiped and exhausted, with no desire to uphold all the fabulous commitments in my life. Luckily, my commitment to myself and self-love rose above this painful period of time, and I put one foot in front of the other, walking through my day where I needed to be, until the feelings passed. There is no doubt that had I been eating solid food, I would have reached for something healthy, raw and fabulous a few times during those hours; I would have used food to soothe my mood.
Cleansing not only cleans out the waste and toxins; it is also a time for us to retrain our somatic, body response in not acting out with food in reaction to the intensity of emotion; that if we remove the food at that moment, the intensity will still pass, not by numbing out, but by allowing.  Even more, the emotion will not be digested along with the food. Throughout my years of counseling, I have encountered a number of clients who, even after shifting into very aligned eating for weight loss, were not losing. Once we cleared out the old emotional waste, then the weight could come off. We digest our food with our lives, and cleansing is an opportunity to heal that response mechanism and return to our highest relationship with food; the one with which we were born and were meant to have.
I will take this gift with me tomorrow as I move into Ecstatic Eating!
I want to also thank my Facebook Ecstatic Eating! community for supporting me and one another in this adventure called a cleanse. As I finish mine, others are now inspired to start theirs. Thank you.