The Hungry Ghost

By Dana Robinson-Wild

She’s always right here with me, my little Hungry Ghost.

Usually she’s 11 years old, sitting up against the wall in my spacious, light-filled bedroom of the low income apartment I grew up in. Her knees are pulled tightly to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. Usually, she’s crying here. Sometimes looking at me with anger, unable to comprehend how it is that I allowed something new and hurtful to happen to us. Sometimes she’s feeling lonely and needing love. Sometimes she’s hoping I can somehow “fix” her so she can be more “lovable.” Sometimes she’s mourning that our family doesn’t fit the cookie cutter outline that society seems to glorify. She’s been crying for a “whole” family and to “belong” for as long as I can remember. 

Her fears of rejection, failure and abandonment move through me, haunting my nervous system, sometimes buried deep beneath the surface, other times pounding relentlessly against the walls of my mind and body.

In Eastern philosophy, the Hungry Ghost is a creature known to represent the part of us that endlessly craves. The aching place inside us that believes we are without something essential.

It is the part that begs us to fix our feelings externally. The part that blames others, is overly critical of ourselves, overeats, drinks too much, loses and satiates itself in relationships, sex, work, or the endless scroll of our phones.

Always searching. Always convinced there is something out there we can consume, hold, claim, control, find or become that will finally make us feel whole.

Safe.

Loved.

Enough.

The Hungry Ghost is often the root of our addictions, that part of us that just cannot let up. And when the thing that we want is right in front of our face, and we believe that it really is the thing that is finally going to fix our feelings, oh boy, watch out… because nothing good comes from feeding the Hungry Ghost.

It is said that if you feed the Hungry Ghost what it wants, it'll try to chew it up and swallow it, but its throat is so small and narrow that oftentimes whatever it's trying to consume gets stuck. The Hungry Ghost has to throw it up, expel it. The Hungry Ghost’s stomach is bloated and starving, but every time it eats, its stomach hurts even worse. It gets larger, more bloated, more painful, more desperate.

The paradox is that the Hungry Ghost cannot be healed by giving it exactly what it craves.

For example, my Hungry Ghost is a hurting little 11 year old girl that craves so much to be loved. The way that she understands love comes through romantic connection. “She wants to belong.” 

Sometimes the guy is a really wonderful guy, and it makes sense that she would want to be close to him. But most often, and I would say 98% of the time, the men that she decides she wants to be attached to are the ones that continue perpetuating the harm that she/I have already been through. They perpetuate the trauma I have experienced, the abandonment, the verbal abuse, the inconsistency.

She starts analyzing his every move, what he thinks about her, if she’s behaving correctly, what she needs to do to secure his love. Becoming more and more desperate to “keep” him. 

So what is the antidote?

The antidote is to love her myself. To show her and myself safe love. To not abandon her. To provide for her and give her the stability, the good food, and the care that she and I actually need.

I do this by making art. I do this through meditation, prayer, and spirituality. If I’m really needing love, I call my best friend, I pray and connect to God and get my spirit filled that way.

The more that I feed my Hungry Ghost the things that she’s not craving, but the things that she truly needs, the more peaceful she becomes… the more peaceful I become. 

It’s important to understand that all interaction with the Hungry Ghost happens through imagination, the mind’s eye. The hungry ghost is not something outside of us. It is something within us, something living in the nervous system, memory, emotion, and subconscious mind. Working with it means learning how to sit with ourselves with deep compassion and grace… internally and visualize our personal Hungry Ghost. Learning what it feels like in our bodies when the Hungry Ghost is triggered. 

When I feel My Hungry Ghost in my nervous system knocking at the walls of my mind, I slowly breathe. I imagine seeing her with me. I visualized sitting across from her and asking her to share her feelings with me. I listen and allow myself to feel all the sensations running through my body until they slowly ease. 

I breathe with her, in through the nose and out through the mouth, until she starts breathing with me. She becomes peaceful with me. She becomes regulated with me.

I often ask her, “Do you wanna go sit outside? Do you wanna listen to a song? Would you like some water?”

Usually, I can hear what it is that she would actually like to have, something nourishing, something that will enrich her childlike, sweet spirit. I give it to her by doing that thing myself. My Hungry Ghost and I take a lot of walks on my country road. We smell the air and listen to the birds together… She also loves to dance.

I share with her my perspective. I assure her I am going to take good care of her. 

The Recovery:

The more I sat with her when she signaled me, I noticed over time that she was growing more relaxed when something came up that was usually triggering for me. 

Instead of pounding in my nervous system subconsciously, she now says, “I know this feeling. Dana, will you come sit with me for a moment? I feel scared.”

And I do.

I find a spot, close my eyes, and sit with her. Sometimes we make daisy chains, and I imagine us sitting in the sun, feeling the breeze in one of my favorite places I would play when I was about eight years old.

Over time, my Hungry Ghost moved out of the bedroom that she so often cried in. I now often find her sitting right next to me when I’m in a tough situation. Sometimes I imagine her riding in the car with me. Sometimes when I’m worried she smiles at me and says, “It’s gonna be OK.”

Healing trauma is done through consistent practice, grace and compassion for ourselves.

Practicing compassion for ourselves means we are feeding ourselves good food. And when I say food, I am speaking of actual food, but I’m also speaking of proverbial food. I’m speaking of the things that are going to feed our mind, body, and spirit. I’m speaking of the kind of food that retrains your nervous system into understanding that we are actually thriving rather than surviving. 

When we were children, we were reliant on our parents to feed us this proverbial good food, but now that we’re adults, it becomes our responsibility.

Displacing blame and pointing fingers at our exes, our parents, or our bosses, or becoming unfairly critical of ourselves is never going to get us anywhere productive. It is all coming from that hungry ghost seeking a way to make itself feel better.

Everything starts from within. We get to choose. We get to make the changes. We get to create boundaries… because boundaries are a gift we give ourselves. 

A five minute practice:

Close your eyes, and begin taking slow breaths, inhaling for five seconds through your nose and exhaling for five seconds through your mouth.

Breathe here for about a minute, and then begin to imagine your Hungry Ghost through your mind’s eye.

Notice how old your hungry ghost is. Where is your Hungry Ghost hanging out? What do they look like? Can you show love to your hungry ghost? Can you breathe with your Hungry Ghost and watch him or her calm down? Can you listen to its fears, allow it to scream, cry, hide, whatever it needs, and feed it “good food?”

Imagine giving it love. Give it a glass of water and a hug. Invite it to dance with you to your favorite song. Imagine sitting with it somewhere peaceful and safe.

Find a quiet spot and give it a go!

We are powerful beings, and we have the choice to decide. We get to choose freedom and wisdom over fear and control if we want to. We have the power to decide how we are going to perceive things, how we want to feel about things, and we can go about healing ourselves, if we so choose. It is possible.

Understanding your Hungry Ghost can become a powerful doorway into healing the nervous system and retraining the patterns that pull us into fight, flight, freeze, or self-indulgence. The more compassion we practice toward the parts of ourselves that are hurting, the more safety the body begins to feel.

Healing does not happen overnight. It happens slowly, through consistency, presence, and learning how to stop abandoning ourselves.

If you feel called to begin a deeply healing practice and would like the support of a compassionate guide, I invite you to schedule a session with me. It’s incredible what can shift when we consistently work with the brain, body, and nervous system in safe and supportive ways.

If you’d rather begin on your own, practices like meditation, breathwork, and gentle movement can be beautiful places to start. Yin Yoga, in particular, is a slow and grounding practice rooted in stillness, breath, and nervous system regulation. Kundalini Yoga can also be deeply supportive, offering meditations, movement, and mantras designed to restore balance to the mind and body.

Guided meditation apps may also help strengthen your ability to visualize your Hungry.

No matter where you begin, healing start

s the moment you choose to sit beside yourself instead of running from your pain.

Dana Robinson-Wild is a KRI Certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher specializing in nervous system regulation and trauma-informed practices. She integrates neuroscience-backed approaches, and Kundalini Yoga to support emotional balance, resilience, and cognitive function, including work with trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and brain injury recovery.