You want your life to feel less rushed,
But you can't find the spare hour to slow down.
So today I want to show you a simple way how you can use something you're already doing every day to bring more mindfulness into your daily life.
Mindful eating.
Mindful eating can include many things and it starts way before the plate is in front of you.
But today I want to talk about three simple ways that you can actually eat more mindfully.
The first step is to arrive with your whole body,
Presence and attention fully into here.
So take a moment,
30 seconds or 1-2 minutes to just breathe before your meal.
If you're comfortable,
You can close your eyes.
Just feel into the sensations of your breath in your nostrils or feeling your breath in your body.
Doing this prevents you from bringing stress,
That last email,
Comment or message with you.
When you arrive carrying all that stress with you to your meal,
Your body is still braced and a braced body isn't set up to digest properly.
A slow breath or two lets your body settle so it's ready to fully receive the meal.
The second step is about that you can only ever pay full attention to one thing at a time.
Whatever you hand your attention to during a meal gets your life for those minutes.
And usually,
That's a screen.
The food and your body go unnoticed.
So the second step is to eat with no distraction.
No laptop,
No phone.
An analysis of 24 studies showed that when we eat distracted,
We barely register the food so it satisfies us less.
How often have you craved something,
And when you finally sat down to eat it,
It was gone before you'd even tasted it?
If you're not there to receive it,
You finish eating still feeling unfed.
There's one thing I want to mention here and that is that I allow a sense of balance to everything in my life.
And on Friday nights,
There's nothing I love more than cooking a creamy pasta and enjoying it with my favourite movie.
And that's totally okay.
It's what we do most of the time that sets the trajectory of our life,
And it's chosen flexibility that allows life to be life.
The third step is very simple,
Put the fork down between each bite.
Most of the time we've barely had enough time to chew and swallow before our hand is automatically bringing the next forkful.
Intentionally putting that fork down naturally creates more space and allows us to have more time to savour,
To chew,
To taste the food that we're eating,
Which leads to a more relaxed way of eating and more enjoyment of the food.
That automatic reaching for the next fork is the same as that automatic reach for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing barely finishing off what we're doing right now.
So putting the fork down is also a way of practicing to finish one thing before moving on to the next.
These are habits,
And in the beginning they might take a bit of intentional choice and remembering.
When I first started,
I'd forget to breathe and only remember halfway through.
Or when my friends began practicing these,
They would message me frustrated because they just couldn't remember.
Here's what I told them and what I want to tell you.
Just keep going.
Sooner than you think,
It stops being something that you have to remember and becomes something that your body wants to do.
You'll get to a point where you won't want to eat before you've taken that moment to arrive and to breathe.
To let go of the overstimulation of the world.
So take your time.
With your food and with everything else.
I'll see you next time.
