Mindful, meditative eating is a powerful practice popular with both ancient monks and modern Americans, and consists of bringing focus, attention, and presence to the process of eating.
We start by cutting out as many distractions as we can. During meals, we aim to have no computer, no phone, no TV, no reading, no music or radio, and – when practicing most diligently – no social conversation. We eat seated, at a table, with both feet on the floor and in an upright posture, not standing, walking, driving, or otherwise on the go.
When we take on this practice, we slow the process of eating down, taking one thing at a time and savoring each bite. The goal is to replace frenzied scarfing with dignified dining, chewing each mouthful before picking up another, and maybe even pausing and putting down utensils for a bit in order to deepen the state.
We continuously, with patience and acceptance, bring our attention back from spacing out into daydreams of past and future to the simplicity of the present moment of eating. We try to strip away habitual concepts, associations, preferences, and other perceptual filters we might otherwise put between our actual food and our experience of it.
We experience, in a direct and immediate sense, what we are seeing, hearing, and feeling, what our intentions, emotions, and thoughts are, what is feeling bad and what feels good, and especially what we smell and taste. By cultivating intimacy with the raw immediate process of eating, we find a fresher, more rich, more textured, and more enjoyable experience with eating even familiar foods.
Mindful eating can help us to listen to our body, and more often stop when we’ve had enough. We can tease apart appetite – eating to try to fill spiritual or emotional emptiness, or because the food looks good – from true hunger. As we do this, we find more freedom from compulsion, drivenness, impulsiveness, and impatience.
The end of the year holidays, with all of their infamous opportunities for overindulgence, may be a great time to experiment with the practice. When at holiday meals, we are often socializing, so giving the entirety of our attention to eating may not be possible. But by setting our intention to stay more present with the process of eating, we may find ourselves enjoying it on a deeper level, and better able to listen to our bodies, to know when we are satiated and it is time to stop.
In a season filled with favorite foods and treats, we have many opportunities to bring real awareness to our consumption. This, in turn, can help us to deeply nourish and consciously enjoy ourselves, and turn a common everyday activity into an opportunity for meditative practice.