October 30, 2018
Indulge Your Senses With Mindful Eating
Is your mind full or are you mindful?
I use this mindfulness technique when teaching a couple of classes. I love to see the reaction people have when they eat something in this new way. The shock and surprise that arises from eating a raisin or small piece of chocolate in this manner gets me every time.
I have learned that not a lot of people know how to use the art of mindfulness to treat the food they are eating as an indulgence. I also have learned from experience that if you eat mindfully you may find that the foods you were scarfing down does not really taste like what you think it does when you slow the process down.
The feedback I get from people that start to use this technique is that they become fully aware of how fast they eat, that they are eating for other psychological reasons other than hunger. The progress I have seen in my classes when people can get to that place is remarkable.
I would like to take you on a journey of eating even just a bite of each meal mindfully, in order for you to see what my tribe have learned as part of their journeys.
Mindful Eating Exercise
Start by taking 3 deep breaths deep into the belly.
Next pick up what you are going to eat either into your hand or on your fork/spoon and really look at it. See all the sides, the texture – is it smooth or does it have dimension? Does the light hit it in different ways? What do you notice about what is going to enter your body?
Then, bring the bite to your ear is there anything that you can hear? This may seem odd but maybe you can hear the meat inside of a raisin move around as you move it between your fingers or the seeds of a strawberry as you rub your finger over it or maybe there is no sound and that is OK too.
Move the bite to your nose and take a big smell of the food. Is it as delicious as you thought it was going to smell, is it making your mouth water? Inhale deeply and take in the aroma of what you are going to feed the temple of your body at this moment.
Notice if the saliva in your mouth has started to flow in anticipation of what it is about to receive. Slowly open your mouth and place the bite inside without chewing it, just roll it around your tongue so that all of the taste buds get a chance to savour the tastes and flavours.
Once you have finished moving the bite around in your mouth slowly bite into the food and explore the full force of the flavours. Do they live up to your expectations or exceed them? Is this really what you wanted at this time? Is your head-brain satisfied with what you are feeding your gut-brain? Realize what reactions are happening in your mouth as you swallow that one bite.
I hope you enjoyed this meditation and have learned what it is to eat mindfully. Try it at each meal to see what you can learn about what foods you are feeding the temple that is your body. Let me know what you have learned through this process.
