Over the past few weeks we have explored how mindful eating can lead to improved health and wellbeing as well as the best foods to introduce into your diet – if not already.
The purpose of this meditation is to help you increase your appreciation of the food you consume and to bring you from wherever you might be in your busy day back to the present moment, to the here and now. By doing this, you can give your whirring mind a break and replace it with a few minutes of calm.
For this example, we’re going to use one piece of chocolate, but you can use a different food if you prefer.
- Remove yourself from whatever could distract your attention for the next few minutes.
- Sit down with the piece of chocolate on a plate in front of you.
- Notice the shape, colour, textures, and markings on the chocolate.
- Lean towards the plate and inhale the cocoa aroma. Can you feel a physical or mental response to the smell?
- Consider the journey the chocolate has been on to reach your plate – the cocoa beans, growing, being harvested, processed, packaged, and travelling distances to arrive here on your plate.
- Pick up the square of chocolate, how does it feel in your fingers? Soft, hard, light, heavy?
- Put it in your mouth and just hold it there for a moment, without chewing or swallowing, noticing the sensation of the chocolate on your tongue.
- Begin to chew slowly, focusing your attention on the flavour, its intensity, sweetness, or bitterness.
- If you feel you want to swallow it notice that feeling first.
- Then, as you swallow the chocolate slowly, follow the sensation as it travels down your throat to your stomach.
- Observe any residue left in your mouth, any lingering textures, or flavours.
Allow yourself to savour this experience for as long as you need. Then take a full, deep breath in through the nose. Then slowly release the air through your mouth with a whoosh noise.