Hi there,
Jesse here.
Welcome back to these reflections on incorporating mindfulness in concussion care.
And I welcome you here,
Even if you're not a part of the concussion club,
Wherever you are,
If you're in Calgary or Cape Town or Christchurch or Cleveland,
Welcome.
Today we're going to continue our exploration of how we can come to our senses and use our five senses to pop into presence,
To practice coming to presence.
And today we're going to focus on the sense of taste.
Ooh,
How nice.
I say that,
But I had a student once who found it really difficult because they had a lot of nausea as a symptom of their traumatic brain injury.
So it can be a little tricky perhaps,
But I invite you now,
As I talk,
To go rummage around in your fridge in your kitchen to find a tasty treat,
Something that you like,
Whether it's sweet,
Like some chocolate or a cookie or something more savory.
I recommend for this practice time that you choose one item,
Like an apple,
Rather than kind of like a meal.
And you may have noticed in life,
I should have,
Times when I'm eating something like a treat,
And let's say it's that cookie,
And I'm looking around for it,
You know,
Where did I put that cookie down?
And then I realized,
Oh,
I finished it.
How tragic.
I kind of missed it,
You know?
Sometimes you can be eating a treat and you just don't even register.
Kind of like a lost opportunity for some sweetness,
Literally and figuratively.
So today,
One of the main skills we're going to be practicing is savoring.
And it seems funny in a way that it is a skill to practice.
One would think that,
Oh,
We would be good at good at staying with pleasant sensations because we like them.
But oftentimes what we end up doing instead is,
Rather than fully sinking into savoring,
We're grasping for it.
Oh,
I love this.
Oh,
I want more of it.
You know,
I might be looking at a sunset.
And instead of enjoying the sunset,
We're parading ourselves for not enjoying more sunsets.
Or sometimes we can get distracted by doing things and just not paying attention to what we're doing and therefore missing out on the tasty saltiness of bag of chips.
All right,
So by now I'm hoping that you have gotten your own.
And you are getting into a comfortable position to enjoy that treat.
And once again,
Inviting you to begin practice by doing something that you've never done before.
And once again,
Inviting you to begin practice by cueing some relaxation.
Just a gentle letting go of any tension that may have mounted.
Noticing any tension in the jaw in particular,
Around the eyes,
And the neck and shoulders.
As we begin to tune in,
Each time we begin to practice,
Whatever practice we choose,
It becomes easier to remember,
Oh,
This is where I hold tension because your body's different than mine.
It's going to be in a different place.
And it's going to change day by day,
But bit by bit,
It can be like a marker.
Oh,
I'm starting to practice now because I'm letting go.
And in this case,
It's best to practice eyes open so that we can include sight initially in our exploration of mindful eating.
And then once you get going,
It can be nice to close the eyes and savor.
So let's give it a try.
First,
Let's invite in that sense of sight to really see the food that we're going to eat before we focus in on taste.
And just look at it with all the colors and shapes.
And if you're able to touch it as well,
We can invite in that you've already done sight and touch so far,
So you might be familiar with that if you've done the other videos.
If you can touch it,
Is it smooth or what's the texture of this snack?
So taking a moment to explore with sight and touch.
And then slowly,
Very slowly,
Bring the food up to your mouth and just start with a little bit of a,
We're going to just preempt the scent day.
And just look at that.
Scent day.
And just give it a little sniff.
You can enhance our flavor if we can smell.
My daughter actually doesn't have a sense of smell and it really affects her ability to taste.
And now starting by just bringing the food up to your mouth and just beginning to take the tiniest of a nibble.
Getting a little bit of the food in your mouth and just really allowing your attention to land on the flavor.
As though your taste buds are just have like little flashlights in them,
Shining on this flavor.
And slowly,
Slowly taking small little nibbles and really chewing as long as makes sense,
Depending on what you're eating before you swallow.
Inviting in a sense of savoring,
Enjoying without grasping for it to last.
Without grasping for it to last.
And you may find,
As usual,
That your mind wanders,
That thoughts,
That you get caught up in thoughts,
Perhaps about the future,
Something about the past.
And just remember that just like your mouth is secreting saliva as you eat,
Your brain secretes thoughts.
They come unbidden.
There's no way to control thoughts.
But what we can begin to do is to choose to not to follow them,
Not to follow them down the rabbit hole in particular,
And just to bring the attention back to the sensation of taste.
Noticing there's any aspects of this flavor that are evident.
Is it sweet,
Sour,
Salty,
Savory,
Spicy?
What do you notice?
Now I'm going to bring this formal practice to a close,
But once this ends,
You can continue on to enjoy your treat.
And as you wrap up your last bite here,
Just touch into how that was for you.
And I know that,
You know,
For some people,
Eating can bring up a lot of complex emotions and feelings.
And that's normal too.
In mindfulness,
We we come to just recognize whatever feelings are here and know that they're okay.
Everything's welcome.
And also just touching into whether that was something that you'd like to do more of.
And if so,
It's really helpful to make a plan around our practice.
So,
So far I've been talking about the idea of stopping,
Say,
And in natural moments of pause to practice seeing,
Practice practice,
Touch.
But with eating,
It can be helpful to make a plan and say at this point in the day,
This is when I'm going to practice a little bit of mindful eating.
Even if it's just to say at lunch,
I'm going to stop for the first two minutes and enjoy my food before I go and check my email while I'm eating.
So again,
It's beginning to notice what rhythm works for you in your life.
And I find that with concussion care,
It's really helpful to begin to bead a necklace with multiple points through the day where we intentionally come to present.
I've spent time at monasteries and the monks and nuns don't just automatically stay present.
They have bells in their life,
Literal bells and figurative bells that remind them too to come to present.
So when it comes to mindful eating,
Is there a way in which you would like to begin to incorporate a little bit of that in your life,
One cookie at a time?
See you next time.
