Mindful Eating With Awakened Body

Join Sara from Awakened Body for a mindful meal. Eating can be fraught for so many of us, acting like a time-machine that transports us back to painful moments from the past or worries over the future. It need not be that way. Let this meal be an opportunity to taste just how blessed you are right here, right now.

Transcript

Hello,

I'm Sarah from Awakened Body and I'm honored to be able to enjoy this meal with you.

This is a guided meditation to accompany you while eating mindfully.

You see me here sitting opposite a colorful meal that I've prepared for myself with love.

My intention in eating it is to enjoy every bite,

Simple as that.

And yet for so many of us,

Eating is fraught.

Eating becomes an opportunity to touch into our anxieties,

Our self-criticism,

Painful moments from our past and fears about our future.

Our goal now is to shake this food free of all that,

To let it simply be sunlight that has been turned by Mother Earth into sweetness for us.

That we can take in every bite and enjoy it as a blessing.

Such that when we finish,

We can feel deep satisfaction.

This paradigm,

Which suggests that the simple human act of eating can actually be a powerful opportunity for spiritual practice.

It's offered to us in the Hebrew Bible.

There it says that the task of eating should be arranged in a process of awareness,

Then gratitude and then deep satisfaction.

So let's begin now by bringing the totality of our attention to bear on the food before us.

I hope you prepared it with some good music on in the background,

With a sense of awareness that you are loving yourself by preparing wholesome,

Fresh,

Local food as a gift,

An offering to your body.

Your body is your tool.

It's your vessel.

It works so hard for you,

Making it possible for you to do your work and live your dreams.

And so it's your job to take care of it,

To give back to it however you can.

And that's what we're going to do.

Invite all five senses now to the meal.

See your food.

See its colors.

Notice the textures on its surface.

Inhale deeply through the nose.

Take in the aroma.

Take as much time as you need to notice each of the ingredients you're giving yourself,

Each one a gift for your body.

Each aroma,

An indication of a different vitamin or mineral,

A different location on the planet where the food you're about to put into your body came to be what it is.

Just taking it all in.

In the Jewish tradition,

We say thank you for the food by acknowledging its origins.

So ask yourself now,

Where the food before you grew?

Did some of your ingredients grow in the earth and others grow from a tree?

Are you eating meat that perhaps walked at one time,

Perhaps drank milk or ate from its mother's beak?

You have in front of you on your plate,

A snapshot of planet earth,

A microcosm.

Just as your body is a microcosm.

Before we take our first bite,

Let's settle into a moment or two of meditation.

Take a deep breath in and feel the spine grow long.

Stretching the head skyward.

Exhale out the mouth and release tension.

Bring yourself fully to this here and now.

Here I am ready to enjoy this beautiful bounty.

With each inhale,

Feel the spaciousness in your body.

You are a microcosm of the universe.

With each exhale,

Feel yourself rooting into this particular place,

This particular here and now.

This is all there is.

This beautiful bounty and my blessed ability to taste it,

To see it and hear it and touch it and smell it.

To appreciate the fact that this place,

Planet earth that I call home,

It exists because it's just the right distance from the star that we call the sun.

And that star radiates out light which warms the planet just so.

And here in this place I call home,

There are magical,

Mysterious creatures who know how to turn this sunlight into sweetness,

Into calories.

Not scary demon calories,

But sweetness.

Energy that tastes delicious.

Begin now to scan the body.

Just noticing how you're feeling about this prospect of eating today,

Of eating this meal.

Taking note,

Labeling,

If any difficult sensations or emotions are arising,

Any tightness in any particular area of the body,

Any painful memories.

If you find that the prospect of eating for you is a little bit like time travel,

Throwing you into the past or into the future,

You might want to adopt the practice of having a journal with you so that as a painful memory arises,

You can offer it to the page and ask the journal to hold it for you so that you can be here in this blessed moment,

Ready to eat this wholesome food.

So let's bring ourselves fully into the here and now and let's get ready for our first bite.

Choose something on the plate before you that you know where it grew.

You know its name.

It's not the result of some long list of chemical ingredients,

But rather it is a simple,

Delicious piece of food.

Smell it and as you're ready,

Take your first bite and begin to chew it slowly.

Noticing the different areas of the palates have the capacity to taste different flavors.

Chewing slowly,

Being fully with the explosion of flavor that's happening right now in your mouth.

When it's time,

When your body indicates its desire to swallow,

You should have chewed at least 20 times.

Then swallow the piece of that first bite and pause.

Just noticing the sensation of the food entering the body,

Passing over the back of the throat,

Beginning to make its way towards the esophagus.

Where you'll lose nerve sensation of the bite.

That you can imagine the sunlight turned into sweetness that's now going to enter your body.

Your mouth already began the process of digestion for you for some foods.

Now your esophagus and then your stomach will take over.

Your body knowing how to meet this little bit of creation that came from outside of it perfectly.

How to identify the various components.

Sort and categorize that which serves us to be passed along to the cells and that which does not serve us to be passed along to our expiratory system of waste and removal.

Every bite of this meal is a miracle.

Every bite is the harnessing of unfathomable amounts of energy.

That from the sun and the work of the plant or the animal that created the food you are now eating.

And also likely that from other humans who have helped this food to come to you.

This plate in front of you,

It represents untold quantities of blessing.

You are so blessed.

You are so loved.

Look how bountiful this moment is.

Thanks to this bounty before you,

You will not go hungry today.

You will have the energy that you need to learn,

To grow,

To love,

To heal yourself and those around you.

Eat as slowly as you can with as few distractions as these moments allow.

Don't miss this opportunity to enjoy the blessings on this plate.

They are beautiful.

They are delicious.

They represent power,

Energy to fuel you.

And you,

Just by virtue of the fact that you are alive and you have chosen now to be fully present,

To be grateful.

Just that it is proof enough that you are the most worthy that any human has ever been to enjoy this bounty.

It is yours.

It's been given to you thanks to untold forces and causes.

Some credit due to you and some just an expression of the generosity of which you are the recipient.

As you eat,

You might notice the mind begin to wander as that is what our monkey minds do.

They scurry away.

And that's okay because you have delicious sweetness in your mouth.

And so it's the easiest thing in the world to invite that monkey mind back here.

Ask it to join you.

Ask it to enjoy this bounty.

Again and again,

Return the fullness of your attention to this meal.

Now that we've been eating for some time,

It's time to begin to pause between bites.

Long enough to begin to allow the body to speak to you.

Let it tell you if you're hungry or beginning to feel full.

Let it tell you how this food feels for you.

The more we learn to listen deeply to the body,

The healthier we become.

The body carries great wisdom.

It knows how to identify the food that grows on planet earth.

It will tell you what serves you and what does not.

So beginning now to notice is your food making you feel good?

Is it making you feel full?

Is it making you feel drowsy or weighty?

Is it making you feel numb?

This time at the end of the meal is a beautiful opportunity to drop into meditation.

Sitting here in silence for at least 10 minutes,

Allowing your body to do the work of digestion and stillness.

Inhaling the space,

Each breath,

Inhaling and exhaling gratitude.

No matter the challenges that await you after this meal.

For right now,

You have had enough.

You are safe.

You are blessed.

You are full.

Breathing gratitude.

May this meal fuel you for your day.

May you use the energy of this sunlight turned to sweetness to heal,

To heal the planet and to make this world a better place.

Everything is on your way.