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Mindfulness Practices
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There is more to mindful eating. Below is a link to look at: MINDFUL EATING: Recently, my wife and I walked through an outside mall containing several restaurants. We checked out several menus and were undecided until we stepped into one restaurant that was filled the most delicious aroma. “Let’s eat here,” I said instantly. For this meditation, practice being mindful of all your senses. 1) Use your sight to look at food’s color and shape with full concentration. 2) Smell a food’s aroma—both cooked and uncooked. Can you tell when something is fresh or spoiled? 3) Taste a food by letting it linger in your mouth for a long time, chewing it and extracting all the flavor it has to give you. Do you like (or dislike) it? 4) Experience details of a food’s texture and sound as you chew. 5) Hear food as you crunch, munch, and pop it in your mouth. Meditation: Experience food deeply, with all your senses. (from MEAL BY MEAL by Donald Altman) When Brother Alan, a jovial, gray-haired monk quipped "If you want a quick way to see how people relate to God, watch the way they eat," I had to laugh! I could immediately see what he meant. Since food is an expression and creation of the divine, how can your relationship to food and the divine be separate things? While watching others is fascinating, it is also useful to watch yourself. If your style of eating reflected how you relate to the divine, what would that relationship be? How would you want to change it? Use mindfulness to create the relationship you want—with food and the divine. Set an intention before each bite. Follow up with action. Then, observe your thoughts and senses while eating. Let nothing escape your net of awareness. Be deeply present and grateful as you ingest the divine energy of food with each bite. Meditation: Watch your own relationship with food and eating through mindfulness. (from MEAL BY MEAL by Donald Altman) Sour, sweet, bitter, pungent—all must be tasted. True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success. When “the ax is dull,” mindless eating results. Fortunately, you can sharpen the edge of your mindfulness with skill. Sharpen your mindfulness by paying attention to: 1) your sensations, 2) your mind/perceptions, and 3) your body. Sensations are your visceral experience of the meal, including how it tastes, looks, feels, and smells, as well as your liking or disliking the food. You can practice being aware with any food. Next, pay attention to your thoughts as you eat, including such things as judgments and desires regarding your eating habits, diet, and eating conflicts. Do not let anything escape the net of your conscious awareness. Lastly, you can cut through mindless routine by sharpening the awareness of your body movements. This includes how you sit at the table, pick up the fork, move the food to your mouth, how you chew and swallow, etc. This could also include the feeling of bodily fullness and hunger. Meditation: Sharpen your mindfulness practices. (from MEAL BY MEAL by Donald Altman) Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent. Food eaten at a table is better for you than food eaten hunched over a desk, at a counter, or driving in a car. And I believe that, wherever you do it, hurried eating has ruined more digestive systems than foie gras. Our deepest self-knowledge resides in the body, which a great deal of the time does not speak the same language as the mind. The truth is that good and bad coexist; sour and sweet coexist. They aren’t really opposed to each other. Are you ever at war with your dinner? Do you fight over what and how much of a particular food to eat? Do you deny, weigh, portion, and nibble at your food? When you experience this inner battle over food opposites, then savoring food and experiencing it fully is difficult because there is always the idea that something is missing. This is the reason why most diets do not work: When you deny yourself that pie, ice cream, or chips, then you create an opposite and equal (or greater) desire for what is being denied! This is simple cause and effect. But what if you slowly practiced healthy moderation in place of denial? This lets you slowly change a habit, by taking one less bite of offending food—and one more bite of desirable food—than you did the meal before. Meditation: Be aware of your inner food struggle and try moderation (from MEAL BY MEAL by Donald Altman) |
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