Eating Meditation

Eating is a daily activity which is a great opportunity to exercise mindfulness. It is common to eat while doing something else, like watching television, using your phone, talking, or even driving. Yet, eating is one of the most nourishing & important interactions in life. It sustains the physical body, brings pleasurable sensations, can fill us with joy and satisfaction, and can be a powerful source of spiritual insight. 

Making eating a practice of undisturbed mindfulness reinforces the core skills of concentration, sensory awareness & clarity, and emotional equanimity. Mindfulness brings flavors & the sensations of eating to a heightened level, making for a more relaxed body & mind, and a more satisfying experience.

Eating meditation increases your physical health, by removing the most common cause of weight gain. Eating too fast & unfocused often equates to eating more than you otherwise would. The feeling of the stomach being full takes a little while to come to attention, and eating slowly allows the ‘full signal’ to be recognized, before over eating. Many people experience foundational life changes in awareness from the simple act of eating mindfully, awareness & mindfulness which branches out to other facets of life.

Pay close attention to the physical activity of eating slowly, while contemplating the food itself.

1. During a meal, take a single piece of food and hold it in front of you. 

2. Pay close attention to the sensual quality of the food. If it is between your fingers, how does it feel? What is it’s texture? Feel it’s weight, shape, and physicality. Be mindfully aware of the perception of how it looks. What color(s) is it? What aromas does it give off? In every way possible, deeply encounter the food on the level of your senses (without putting it in your mouth yet). 

3. Tune in to your emotions around this bite of food. Are you attracted to it? Do you feel in a hurry to get it into your mouth? Are you annoyed at having to slow down and consider the food? Or are you perhaps unattracted to this food, and filled with a sense of disgust and not wanting to eat it? What are you hoping to get out of eating this food? 

3. Now consider where this food came from. Think of the farms where it was grown, the farmers who worked to grow it. Think of the sun and the rain it required to grow, the air and the soil which supported it, and so on. Then consider what it took for this food to get to you. It may have been picked, sorted, transported many miles, sorted, packaged, and so forth. It may have then been shipped to a grocery store, where people unpacked it, displayed it, sold it, and bagged it. Once in your kitchen, the food then had to be cooked or prepared in some way, even if only by washing. An enormous, complex web of interactions, elements, people, and perhaps animals and machines had to come together, all to bring you this single bite of food. It may have even originally come from the other side of the planet, all so that you could eat it, now. 

4. Now slowly and mindfully put the food in your mouth, but do no chew it yet. Simply feel the food on your tongue. Taste how it tastes before being chewed. Take in its smell, and its texture on your tongue. Notice how your whole body reacts and changes to the food in your mouth. Notice when salivation begins. The stomach may become active. Pay close attention to the entire process. It can be helpful to close your eyes, and fully dial into the sensations.

5. Next, slowly and mindfully chew the food. Attempt to chew in an attentive, active manner. As much as possible, remove the robotic, mechanical, habitual aspect of chewing. Instead, make each chew a conscious act, done with awareness, care and consideration. Notice how chewing the food changes it in many ways. New flavors and aromas are released. The texture and size of the food undergoes a remarkable change. As much as possible, keep your attention on the food and the act of chewing it. Let go of all other thoughts. Again, closing your eyes can enhance awareness of the experience.

6. Feel the food going down as you swallow. Feel it entering the stomach, and feel the sensations of the stomach receiving the food and working to digest it. 

7. Let go and relax, noticing all the sensations that arise from having eaten this bite of food. 

8. Repeat this process until the meal is ended.